I don’t know how long I squatted, staring into the hole, unwilling to dig any further, but I heard footsteps overhead, men’s voices. I thought it might be Basier, made bold by company, and got to my feet.
I started up the stairs, but my leg muscles had cramped up. As I stood on the bottom step, massaging my hamstrings, I heard a man say, “It’s not here. I left it right here.”
A second man said, “Look under the sofa, maybe it fell out.”
There was a scraping noise and a thud as they tossed Julius’s couch to one side. I’d heard the voices before but I couldn’t place them. I stuck up a hand and turned off the flex lamp so it wouldn’t cast my shadow. Crept up the stairs one at a time.
“The girl over at the house said a detective was here yesterday, a female. That bitch Warshawski more than likely.”
The second man grunted.
I slithered through the opening I’d made in the trapdoor. A piece of wood broke loose and clunked down the stairs.
The two men crossed into the kitchen. Rory Durdon. Glenn Davilats, the Palfry County deputy. I was so startled that Davilats pulled his gun before I could react. I dropped behind a bag of birdseed at the last second. He fired but the shots went into the bag. Seed started pouring out around my feet.
“Damn it, man, don’t shoot in here, you’ll bring in the whole goddamn neighborhood. Use your Taser!”
I picked up the bag and flung it wildly at the men. One swore as the bag got him in the face, but the other was over the side of the cabinet before I could get my gun out of my tuck holster. Durdon.
I kicked his kneecap with my work boot. He grunted and punched at my head. I ducked, grabbed his foot, slipped in the loose birdseed and sprawled across another bag. He lost his balance but I still couldn’t get at my gun. I flung my flashlight at his head, grazed his temple, but Davilats had recovered. He aimed his Taser at me. I tried to vault over the back of the cabinet, but he fired. Every nerve in my body felt as though I’d been seared by a hot iron. I slumped over the cabinet side, unable to move.
The two men picked me up and bundled me into the basement. One of them stuck his hands in my pockets, came away with my papers. I couldn’t lift a hand to fight them.
They shone a flashlight on the papers and saw the copy of the BREENIAC sketch. “So you did steal the drawing, bitch!” Durdon said.
Underneath the burning pain from the Taser, I felt very cold. The graduate student who minded the Basier kids said there’d been a cop at Julius’s door yesterday. Not someone from the CPD, checking on Julius, but Glenn Davilats, planting the sketch. And last night, when Julius died while a cop was questioning him, that had been Davilats, finishing the job for Cordell Breen. Tuesday night, when Alison was driving us home, a squad car had turned onto the street leading to the Breen house. Tan with brown markings. The colors of the Palfry County sheriff’s cars. Davilats driving out to Breen’s house to get his orders, or get paid.
“What did you do with the drawing?” Davilats demanded.
“What, you planted it here, and Cordell sent you down to get it back before the Chicago cops or the Basiers found it?” My words came out like shapeless gravel; I wasn’t sure they could even be understood, but the effort to speak left me short of breath.
Davilats kicked me in the stomach, fingering his Taser. “Where is the fucking drawing?”
“In my office,” I said as quickly as my heavy lips would move. “In my big safe in the back. Combination 09-19-06-08-07-27.”
“Say it again,” Durdon ordered, pulling out a notebook.
I’d used my parents’ and my birth dates. I repeated them slowly. Davilats kicked me again, just for emphasis. The two men climbed back upstairs. When they’d scrambled over the side of the cabinet, they pulled the top back on. I lay helpless as they hammered the top back into place.
46
THE PIT AND THE SKELETON
I WAS FINALLY ABLE to move my hands. I sat up, slowly, painfully, massaging my fingers, which tingled, as if I’d bathed them in acid. My side ached where Davilats had kicked me. I could feel the darts, one in my left pectoral, the other in my thigh. I pulled the one from my thigh; my jeans had kept it from going in very deeply. The dart in my pec took some doing, first to grab the tiny protruding end in the dark, and then to yank it out. I blacked out briefly, but when I came to, I felt better.
My poor body craved sleep, but I couldn’t rest, trapped in a root cellar with a skeleton next to me. I crawled up the stairs and pushed against the cabinet top, hoping I’d been mistaken about the hammering. The top didn’t budge.
I’d thrown my flashlight in the struggle, but I couldn’t find it when I felt around the floor near the trapdoor opening. I thought I felt furry feet crawling across my hand and let out a stifled shriek. My fingers closed on the cord to the flex lamp. I held my breath, fumbling up the cord to the switch. The light didn’t turn on: my assailants had yanked out the plug on their way out.