'The coal chute.'
'That's how they get in and out?' She didn't answer. I was right then-the kids had gotten into the house some other way besides the back door. I couldn't help wondering what kind of mother would make her children come in and out of the house through a coal chute. Not your standard, garden variety, cookies-and-milk type mother, that's for damn sure.
'I'll meet you in the basement,' Linda Decker called down to me. 'I'll go switch on the light.'
With a sigh I turned away from the front door of the house. The woman at the store in Doty was probably right. Linda Decker was crazy as a bedbug.
Regretting that I was wearing good clothes, I walked back to the coal chute and lifted the door. It was heavy but not so heavy that kids wouldn't be able to open and close it themselves. There was no squawk of protest from the hinges. Although there was still some rust showing, they had recently been thoroughly oiled.
I paused long enough to run my hand over the padlock hasp on the outside of the door. I wondered if sometimes Linda locked her children inside the house when she was away. If she did, she wouldn't be the first mother who made that sometimes fatal mistake in houses with barred doors and windows. They lock the doors to protect their children, and the children die of smoke inhalation or worse. The idea made me shudder.
I peered down into the coal chute. The top of a ladder was visible, coming up out of the darkened depths of the basement. It leaned against the inside of the box close enough that the top rung was within easy reach. A light switched on in the basement below me. I heard Linda Decker's voice again.
'Just step over the edge of the box and climb down the ladder.'
Beneath me, the ladder seemed to be set firmly enough on a bare concrete floor. I put one hand on it and tested it for stability. It didn't wobble at all. If Linda Decker trusted the ladder enough to let her children climb up and down it, I supposed it was good enough for me. Not only that, the coal chute itself looked as though every trace of coal dust had been carefully scrubbed away. That must have taken some doing.
Swinging one leg up and over the side of the box, I found the top rung of the ladder with one foot and stepped onto it. Before starting down the ladder, I took one last look around outside. I was half afraid some neighbor would see me and think I was breaking into Linda Decker's house. There was no one in sight.
The ladder was solid and steady beneath my feet. I started down, one rung at a time. As my shoulders and head descended into the basement, I could see that the room was nearly empty, except for a scatter of boxes and a few odd pieces of discarded furniture. The room was lit by the glaring glow of one bare bulb dangling from an ancient cord in the middle of the raw plywood ceiling.
One foot was on the floor and the other was still on the bottom rung of the ladder when suddenly the heavy door to the coal chute slammed shut over my head. At the same instant the light went out, plunging me into total darkness.
Above me, I heard somebody struggling with the hasp. The padlock! Someone was trying to fasten the padlock!
Scrambling hand over hand, I raced back up the ladder only to crash head-first into the door just as the lock clicked home.
'We got him, Mommie,' a child's voice crowed in triumph. 'We got him.'
They sure as hell had.
CHAPTER 12
Reeling from the self-inflicted blow to my head and afraid of falling, I clung desperately to the ladder as tiny pinpricks of light exploded around me. Unfortunately, the stars flashing before my eyes did nothing to lighten the inky blackness of Linda Decker's basement.
My legs shook uncontrollably. Fighting vertigo, I made my way back down to the floor. I counted the rungs on the ladder. Seven in all from the point where I'd banged my head.
I stood on the floor holding the side of the ladder for several minutes trying to get my bearings, waiting for the shaking and dizziness to stop, hoping that somehow my eyes would adjust to the darkness. Eventually the trembling diminished, but I still couldn't see my hand in front of my face when I tackled the ladder again. I didn't know what was going on, but one thing was clear: I had to try to get out.
Careful not to damage my head further, I counted the rungs as I climbed, inching my way up the ladder far enough to brace my back and shoulders against the door. I grunted with exertion, pushing against the resistant wood as hard as I could, but the pressure wasn't enough. The hasp, the hinges, and the wood all held firm.
Giving up, I stood for a moment hunched under the door, listening for any sound of voice or movement outside or inside. There was nothing-no footsteps in the room above me, no whispered deliberations outside-only the dull interior thud of my own pounding heartbeat.
I was over being surprised and scared. Now I was angry. Pissed. I was certain the childish cry of victory had come from the little boy as he slammed shut the coal chute door. What the hell were they up to? I could picture the three of them, Linda Decker and her two children, standing somewhere just out of earshot, gloating over my having fallen into their little trap.
They'd trapped me all right, but we'd see who had the last laugh on that score. Assaulting a police officer is no joke. Kidnapping one isn't either. Linda Decker hadn't figured that out yet, but I fully intended to show her, just as soon as I got the hell out of her goddamned basement.
Cautiously counting the rungs, I made my way back down to the floor. In the instant before the light had gone out, I could remember glimpsing a stairway on the other side of the basement. Now, with my eyes finally accustomed to the dark, I could see a faint glow that had to be daylight leaking into the basement through a crack under a door at the top of the stairs.
I attempted walking toward it, only to stumble over an invisible box on the floor and crash, nose-first, into a solid upright timber. A quick spurt of blood told me I'd done something to my nose-something bad, something that would add another lump to it and give my face more character. Just what I needed.
Maybe I'm not too bright at times, but at least I learn from my mistakes. I dropped to my hands and knees and began crawling toward that tiny sliver of light at the top of the stairs. The concrete floor was cold and damp beneath me as I groped my way across it, creeping along like an overgrown baby. The basement was musty and reeked with the smell of long-resident mice. The house had probably stood vacant for some time before Linda Decker and her children moved into it.
I made slow progress. The actual distance across the basement couldn't have been more than twenty feet or so, but in the dark it was one hell of an obstacle course. What had seemed like a relatively empty room with the light on was actually a jumble of wood and boxes, furniture and tools.
Along the way I jammed my knee down on something sharp, a piece of broken glass or a loose nail that my scouting hands had missed. There was a sudden telltale wetness on my knee and leg, unmistakably warm and slick. The texture of rough concrete on lacerated skin told me I'd torn the hell out of both my knee and my pants. The knee would heal; the pants wouldn't. And this was one pair I wouldn't be able to voucher. I'd never get Seattle P.D. to agree that tearing my pants in Linda Decker's treacherous basement ought to qualify as a line of duty mishap.
Had the lights been on, I'm sure I would have made quite a sight. The bloodied nose and the torn knee created a symmetry of sorts, the top and bottom halves of a matched set. An ugly matched set.
At last my fingers touched the far wall. I inched my way along it until I located the bottom of the stairs. They were made of roughhewn cobweb-covered planks open at the back end. My hands searched in vain for a handrail on the outside. There wasn't any. Running my hands up and down the wall I located a two-inch pipe that had been bolted to the wall as a make-do banister. Clutching it gratefully, I eased my body up the stairs, feeling my way one step at a time, clinging to the pipe with one hand while sharp wooden splinters from the steps bit into the palm of my other hand.
Being blind must be hell, but real blind people have canes and seeing-eye dogs. I only knew things were in my way after I ran into them. That's a little late.
On step number twelve I barked a knuckle against something metal-something round and metal and cool. It was another grill, more of the ornamental iron bars I had seen on the outside of the house. Beyond the bars was
