More Twisted: Collected Stories, Vol. II

Detective Perillo asked, “One thing I was thinking, Chief. Did she have a cell phone? Maybe you could call her. She could tell you how bad she’s hurt or maybe something about how we could get to her.”

“Oh, she’s got a phone,” the chief said. “We checked the records. She made a couple of calls last night as she was leaving school — just before she fell in, we’re figuring. But the cell company said it’s shut off. She probably can’t find it in the dark. Or maybe she can’t reach it.”

“Might be broken,” Sandra offered.

“No,” the chief explained. “The company can tell that. Phones still have some signal, even when they’re off. Has to be she just can’t get to it.”

A fireman in a jumpsuit walked down the stairs, looked around, then cleared graphic arts supplies off an old drafting table. He spread out a map of the area around Ron’s building. Two others rigged spotlights — one on the map, the other on a portion of the basement wall in the back of the building.

Knoblock took a call on his own phone. “Yes, sir… yes. We’ll let you know.”

The chief hung up. He shook his head and said in a low voice to Ron and his wife, “That was her father. Poor guy. He’s pretty upset. I was talking to his wife and it seems that he and Tonya’ve been having some problems lately. She banged up her car over the summer and he wouldn’t give her the money to fix it up. That’s why she had to walk to the bus stop.”

“So,” Sandra said, “he thinks it’s his fault she had the accident.”

“And, you ask me, it’s why he’s offering a reward like that. I mean, five hundred thousand dollars… I never heard of that before. Not ’round here.”

A voice called down from the top of the stairs. “Langley just showed up. He’ll be down in a minute.”

“Our rescue specialist,” the chief explained.

“Who is he?” Ron asked.

“The number-one search-and-rescue specialist in the country. Runs a company out of Texas. Greg Langley. You ever hear of him?”

Sandra shook her head. But Ron lifted an eyebrow. “I think so. Yeah. He was on the Discovery Channel, or something.”

“A and E,” the chief said. “He’s pretty good, from what I hear. His outfit rescues climbers and hikers who get stuck on mountains or in caves, workers trapped on oil rigs, avalanches, you name it. He’s got this sort of a sixth sense, or something, for finding and saving people.”

“He and his crew were in Ohio,” Detective Perillo said. “Drove all night to get here.”

“You were lucky you could catch him when he was free,” Ron said.

Chief Knoblock said, “Actually, he called us just after the story broke about midnight. I couldn’t figure out how he heard about it. But he said he’s got people listening to news stories all over the country and they let him know if it sounds like a job he could take on.” The chief added in a whisper, “Man seems a bit too interested in the reward for my taste. But as long as he saves that girl, that’s all I care about.”

The firemen finished rigging the power lines and clicked the lights on, filling the space with brilliant white illumination, just as footsteps sounded on the stairs. A group of three men and two women arrived in the basement, carting ropes and hard hats, lights, radios, metal clamps and hooks and tools that looked to Ron like mountain climbing gear. They all wore yellow jumpsuits with the words stitched on the back Langley Services. Houston, TX.

One of these men introduced himself as Greg Langley. He was in his forties, about five foot ten, slim but clearly strong. He had a round, freckled face, curly red hair and eyes brimming with self-assuredness.

Introductions were made. Langley glanced at Ron and Sandra, but didn’t even acknowledge them. Ron felt a bit offended but gave no outward reaction to the snub.

“What’s the situation?” Langley asked the officials.

Knoblock described the accident and the girl’s location in the tunnel, touching places on the map, and explained about the basements connecting Ron’s building with the collapsed factory.

Langley asked, “She in immediate danger?”

“We can probably get food and water to her somehow,” Knoblock said. “And in this weather she’s not going to die of exposure. But her voice is real weak. Makes us think she was pretty badly hurt in the fall. She could be bleeding, could have broken limbs. We just don’t know.”

Another fireman added, “The big danger is another cave-in. The entire site’s real unstable.”

“Where do we go in?” Langley asked, glancing at the cellar wall.

A city engineer examined the map and then tapped a spot on the brick. “On the other side of this wall was an old building that was torn down years ago and paved over. But most of the sub-basement rooms’re intact. We think you can pick your way through them to a wooden doorway… about here.” He touched the map. “That’ll get you into this delivery tunnel.” He traced along the map to an adjoining tunnel. “The girl’s in the one next to it.”

It was then that a faint rumbling filled the basement.

“My God,” Sandra said, grabbing Ron’s arm.

Knoblock lifted his radio. “What was that?” he called into the microphone.

Some static, an indiscernible word or two. Then a voice, “Another cave-in, chief.”

“Oh, damn… is she okay?”

“Hold on…. We can’t hear anything. Hold on.”

No one in the basement spoke for a moment.

“Please,” Ron whispered.

Then the chief’s radio clattered again and they heard: “Okay, okay — we can hear her. Can’t make out much, but it sounds like she’s saying, ‘Please help me.’”

“Okay,” Langley snapped. “Let’s get moving. I want that wall down in five minutes.”

“Yessir,” Knoblock said and lifted his radio again.

“No,” the rescue specialist barked. “My people’ll do it. It’s got to be done just right. Can’t leave it to… “His voice faded, and Ron wondered what sort of unwitting insult he’d been about to deliver. He turned to another assistant, a young woman. “Oh, here, call her father. Tell him this’s the account I want the money wired to as soon as she’s safe.”

The woman took the slip of paper and scurried upstairs to make a call. There was silence for a moment, as the fire department and police officials looked at one another uneasily. Langley caught their eye. His glance said simply, I’m a professional. I expect to get paid for producing results. You got a problem with that, go hire somebody else.

Knoblock, Perillo and the others seemed to get the message and they turned back to the chart. The chief asked, “You want one of our people to go with you?”

“No, I’ll go in alone,” Langley said and began to assemble his gear.

“Got a question,” Ron said. Langley ignored him. Knoblock raised an eyebrow. The graphic designer pointed down at the map. “What’s this?” He traced his finger along what seemed to be a shaft leading from a street nearby to the tunnel adjacent to the one the girl was in.

One of the firemen said, “It’s an old sluice. Before they put the levee in, there was a lot of flooding in those tunnels when the river overflowed. They needed serious drainage.”

“How big is it?”

“I don’t know… I’d guess three feet across.”

“Could somebody get through it?”

Langley glanced up and finally spoke to him, “Who’re you again?”

“I own this building.”

The rescue specialist turned back to the map. “Only an idiot’d go that way. Can’t you see? It goes right underneath the unstable portion of the building. It’s probably already sealed off after the first collapse. Even if it wasn’t, you bump one support, you breathe wrong, and it all comes down on top of you. Then I’d have two people to rescue.” He gave a grim laugh. “Tunnel Girl and Tunnel Asshole.”

“Sounds like you’ve checked it out already,” Ron said pointedly, irritated at the man’s haughtiness. “You work fast.”

“I’ve been in this business a long time. I have a sense of what’s a reasonable risk and what isn’t. That drain