“Here we go, Alex,” Sampson called to me. “The door’s over here. There’s some kind of door, anyway.”
Running through the high thick weeds was like wading in water. The trapdoor was hidden in honeysuckle and waist-high grass, where Sampson had been searching. The door had been covered over with an extra layer of sod and a thick blanket of pine needles. The door wasn’t likely to be found by a search party, or anyone else hiking through the woods.
“I’ll go down first,” I told Sampson. Blood roared and echoed in my ears. Usually he would have argued. Not this time.
I hurried, rumbling down a steep, narrow wooden stairway that looked as if it had been there for a hundred years. Sampson followed close behind. The good twins.
Stop! I told myself. Slow it down. At the bottom of the stairs, there was a second doorway. The heavy oak plank door looked new, as if it had been installed recently, possibly in the past year or two. I slowly turned the handle. The door was locked.
“I’m coming in,” I shouted to anyone who might be behind the door. Then I fired two rounds into the lock and it disintegrated. The wooden door heaved open with a hard shove from my shoulder.
I was finally inside the house of horror. What I saw made me retch. A woman’s body was laid out on a couch in what appeared to be a well-appointed living room. The corpse had begun to decompose. The features were unrecognizable. Maggots were swarming all over the victim.
Move, I had to tell myself. Go! Go now.
“I’m right behind you,” Sampson whispered in his deep, homicide-scene voice. “Watch yourself now, Alex.”
“This is the police!” I called out. My voice was shaky and getting hoarse. I was afraid of what else we might find in the hideaway. Was Naomi still here? Was she alive?
“We’re down here!” a woman called out. “Can anybody hear me?”
“We hear you! We’re coming!” I shouted again.
“Please help us!” A second voice sounded farther away in the underground house. “Be careful. He’s tricky.”
“See. He’s tricky,” Sampson whispered. Never at a loss.
“He’s in the house! He’s in here now!” one of the women shouted a warning to us.
Sampson was still standing behind me, keeping close. “You want to keep the point, partner? Walk on the ridge line?”
“I want to be the one to find her,” I told him. “I have to find Scootchie.”
He didn’t argue. “You think loverboy is down here someplace? Casanova?” he whispered.
“That’s the rumor going around,” I said and moved forward slowly. Both of us had our guns drawn and ready. We had no idea what to expect next. Was loverboy waiting for us?
Move! Move! Move those legs!
I led
the way out of the deserted living room. There were high-tech lamps in the ceiling of the adjoining hallway. How was he able to get electricity in here? A transformer? A generator? What should that tell me? That he was handy? That he had connections with the local electric company?
How long had it taken to get the underground cellar in this condition? I wondered. To fix it up like this? To make this fantasy come true?
The space was extensive. We entered a long hallway that snaked off the living room to the right. There were doors on either side, and they were bolt-locked from the outside, like prison cells.
“Watch our backs,” I said to Sampson. “I’m going in door number one.”
“I always watch your back,” he whispered.
“Watch your back, too.”
I went up to the first door. “This is the police,” I called out. “I’m Detective Alex Cross. Everything’s going to be all right.”
I yanked open the first door and peered inside. I wanted it to be Naomi. I prayed that it was.
CHAPTER 107