'What tapes?' I asked.
'And if anything happens to me…'
She was interrupted by a frantic pounding on the outside door leading into the kitchen. 'Mommie, Mommie. Open the door quick. Somebody's coming.'
Linda Decker leaped to her feet. She was wearing a loose-fitting sweatshirt and Levis. She stuffed the gun under her shirt and raced to the kitchen door, frantically unlocking a series of dead bolts and pushing open the grill to let the breathless children inside just as the doorbell rang at the front of the house.
'Who is it, Jason?' she hissed as she closed both the grill and the door and fastened all the locks.
'It's a policeman,' Jason answered, his voice a high-pitched squeak. 'With blue lights on top of the car and everything.'
My first reaction was one of relief. A policeman. An ally. Someone who would make Linda Decker listen to me, someone who would help me out of my predicament.
The doorbell rang again, insistently. Wavering, Linda Decker glanced over her shoulder in the direction of the front door and then down at her two frightened children. Last of all she turned to me. Her face hardened. She reached under her shirt and tentatively touched the gun. For a moment I was afraid she was going to give it to Jason, but she evidently changed her mind. Quickly she retrieved my Smith and Wesson and shoved it under her shirt as well.
Then she came over to the barred basement door, close enough for me to hear her harsh whisper, but far enough away to remain safely out of reach.
'If you so much as make a sound, so help me God I'll kill you!'
With that, she slammed the door shut. The light went out. I was once more left in darkness, sitting almost naked on the wooden steps in Linda Decker's damp basement, smelling the mouse crap and feeling like a load of shit.
I didn't doubt for one minute that she'd do exactly what she said. I couldn't afford to doubt it. I was convinced she had balls enough and then some.
She also had the gun.
I waited. For a long time. I heard the sound of voices, and then the creak of footsteps as someone walked across a room, then the murmur of someone's voice, only one voice this time-Linda talking, but no one answering. She must have been on the phone. Again there was the creak of footsteps followed by voices again and then a whole flurry of footsteps, but no one came near the kitchen. No one opened the door to the basement for probably ten minutes or maybe longer. I'm not sure.
When the door did finally open, it was Linda Decker herself who flung it wide and hard, banging the doorknob into something metal, probably a stove.
She was different, totally different. Something had happened. Something had changed, and not for the better.
Before that, despite the trembling gun, she had been relatively calm, calculating, working a plan that she had laid out and rehearsed well in advance. Now as she stood staring at me through the barred door there was an icy fury behind her dangerously pale face. Her lips were pulled tight over clenched teeth.
Thankfully, she wasn't holding the gun. If she had been, I think she would have shot me on sight.
'You son of a bitch!' She barely whispered the words, her voice shaking with rage while ragged tremors raced through her whole body. 'You goddamned son of a bitch!'
Jason hurried into the room, dragging the whimpering Allison with him. He stopped near his mother and looked up at her. What he saw must have frightened him. 'Are you all right, Mommie?' he asked. The grave concern written on his face was far older than his years.
She tore her eyes from me and glanced down at her son. For a brief moment, her face softened. Her throat worked furiously as she tried three times to choke out an answer. Finally she nodded.
'I'm all right, Jason. Take Allison out to the car and fasten her seat belt. I'll be out in a minute.'
'But the door is locked,' he said.
Without a word, she walked to the door and unlocked the series of locks. I watched her hands. They were shaking so badly it was all she could do to control them. What had happened? What had made the difference? And where was the cop Jason had said was there?
When the outside door closed behind the children, she swung around to face me again. For a moment, she leaned heavily against the door as though every bit of strength had been drained from her body, as though she needed the door to hold her up.
'I'm sorry…' she began, then stopped as another violent tremor shook her body. By force of will she drew herself away from the door and started toward me.
She had begun with the words 'I'm sorry,' but there was no hint of apology in her body language. The gun was out of sight, but at that point she didn't need a gun. She was a menacing cat ready to spring at my face and claw me apart. For the first time, I was grateful for the bars that separated us.
'I'm sorry I didn't shoot you when I had a chance,' she finished. She stopped only inches from the iron grill. Maybe I could have grabbed her through the bars, but I didn't try it. I don't believe in tackling wildcats with bare hands.
'It's up to them now,' she added, 'but if they don't take care of you, I will. That's a promise!'
With that she stepped back and slammed the wooden door shut. Once more Linda Decker's basement was plunged into total darkness. I didn't know I had been holding my breath until I let it out.
I felt a sudden rush of gratitude. I was the lucky man who is aware of seeing a rattlesnake only after he's already pulled his foot out of harm's way.
Linda Decker was gone, but in those last seconds before she turned away and slammed the door I looked into her eyes and knew what was different.
Before she left the kitchen to answer the doorbell, she had been undecided about what to do with me. Now she wasn't. Her mind was made up. And when I looked into her eyes, they were empty of everything but cold hatred. Hatred and a naked desire to kill me. I've seen it before. I know the danger.
In that moment, my life had hung in the balance, and yet, inexplicably, she had closed the door and walked away. Someone or something had stayed her hand, had kept her from killing me. I had been reprieved.
Almost sick with relief, I took a deep breath and settled down to wait.
I suppose my mother would have been proud of me. At least I was wearing clean shorts.
CHAPTER 13
I have no idea how long I waited. A half hour? Longer? It seemed forever, sitting there in the dark. There was no sound in the house. I knew Linda Decker had driven away. I had heard the door slam and the engine of a car turn over. What about the cop? Had he left along with them?
If I was really alone, I knew I should crawl back down the stairs and try to find some kind of tool that might help me break out of my prison, but I was understandably reluctant to search around in the dark. My knee still hurt. So did my nose.
I had started picking my way down the steps when I heard the distant wail of a siren. It was coming closer.
Cops don't believe in coincidences. They can't afford to. If there was a siren outside the house, it was because of me, because I was locked up in Linda Decker's basement.
The siren came almost to the house and then wound down to silence as I listened. Several car doors slammed shut and I heard a series of shouted commands. I should have felt relief. Here were the reinforcements I had wanted riding to the rescue, but now that they were outside, I didn't feel better. And I didn't call out to them. Some instinctive warning system told me that although they were cops and I was a cop, this time we weren't on the same side.
Heavy footsteps mounted the outside steps and entered the kitchen, accompanied by a series of barked commands. 'She's got him locked up in the basement,' someone said. 'That's his car out there in the driveway. The red Porsche.'
