Disembodied Bones, page 37
“Yeah. An accident.” Roosevelt said it reflectively. “He got beat up out back of a juke joint. Broke his legs and his arms. Collarbone too. I think there was a skull fracture and one of his eyes had been popped out. I didn’t think a fella could be injured like that and still live. His spleen was ruptured, too. When he woke up a month later, he said he didn’t remember what happened, that maybe he got hit by a car, and he left town. I mean, he left town in his casts, too. He hauled ass like the devil was biting it.”
“You said he was pretty annoying,” Gideon said.
“He was one very annoying little peckerwood, didn’t know how to keep his trap shut. He could have pissed off Mother Teresa and Gandhi within five minutes of meeting them.”
“So he pissed off the wrong person,” Gideon added.
“Yeah, well, thinking about what you’re saying, maybe it was just coincidental. Maybe it wasn’t. It might have been the same wrong person who’s pissed at you and Leonie. This guy was asking a lot of heavy duty questions about Whitechapel that maybe someone didn’t want answered. This guy who said he reputedly had all kinds of secrets about the man that hadn’t been publicized before. This guy up and left as soon as he could crawl out of the hospital, and that says a lot about how afraid he was.” Roosevelt made a noise. “Got you, you sonuvabitch. George P. Ogden. This number is years old, Gid. Don’t know if that’s going to be a problem. He was from Florida. Dayton Beach area, I think. Call him. He knows all about Whitechapel, but it’ll be interesting to see how much he’ll tell you.”
Gideon took the number down and said, “Thanks, Rosy.”
“Gid,” Roosevelt said warningly. “Haskell doesn’t sound like such a bad guy. A little straight laced, but if he finds out you didn’t do it, then he’ll make sure you’re cleared.”
“Maybe so, but I can’t wait for him to clear the smoke by waving his hands around.” Gideon added quickly, “Talk to you later, Rosy,” and hung up before Roosevelt could say anything else.
He didn’t waste any time. Dialing the number with a look at his aching left hand, Gideon waited impatiently for an answer. On the tenth ring, when he was about to give up when the line clicked, and an irritated voice said, “If this isn’t Pamela Anderson or Julia Roberts I don’t want to talk to you.”
Gideon made an instantaneous decision. He was guessing that George Ogden wouldn’t be the kind to want to speak with a law enforcement officer. Inside sources would be friends to Mr. Ogden, but had probably caused him more problems than not. They would especially be bothersome to him concerning what had happened to him in a dingy alley in Shreveport while he was trying to work a lucrative angle. “This is Douglas Trent. Is this George Ogden?”
Silence.
“I need to speak to George Ogden and it’s an emergency.” Gideon tried again.
“I’m hanging up,” said the prickly voice. “You ain’t Pamela or Julia and I don’t know any Douglas Trent.”
“A ten year old boy kidnapped by Monroe Whitechapel twenty years ago. A thirteen year old girl named Leonie Simoneaud rescued him by using what was called an interesting form of psychic powers. You were going to do a book about Whitechapel. But something happened.” Gideon rushed through. Every second that passed that the man on the other end didn’t hang up only meant that he had the correct number. “Something that scared you off.”
There was more silence.
“Prove it,” said the voice softly.
“I changed my name when I turned twenty-one. Bet you know what it is. Do you know why I picked the names I did?” Gideon almost sighed with relief. He had the right guy. Now all he had to do was convince George he was serious.
“I know the names and I know why. Do you?” The barbed voice was patently interested.
“My name is Gideon Lily now. No middle name. Gideon was one of my middle names on my birth certificate. Lily was my mother’s maiden name. Is that good enough?”
More silence, then, “I got to get up in ten minutes anyway to go catch the tide. There’s a marlin out there with my name on it, so I guess you got about ten minutes to say what it is that’s bothering you.” There was a slight hesitation. “And yes, this is George Ogden.”
“I got your number from Roosevelt Hemstreet.”
“A big black guy from the Shreveport PD, right?” George snorted. “I thought he would have torn my card in little pieces.”
“Rosy doesn’t work like that.” Gideon was gambling. “He thinks that maybe what happened to you is connected to what’s happening to me now.”
“I heard about that. Some of my buddies like to keep me up to date.” George’s voice became neutral and almost disinterested, but Gideon was pretty sure it was a ploy. “That girl, Leonie, sure likes to have her name in the papers. But hell, so did I.”
“I need to know who did that to you,” Gideon said it quickly. “I don’t have a lot of time.”
“Well, I guess not, considering that they arrested you for kidnapping your nephew and the other little girl. What, did you get bail?”
“My version of bail, anyway.” Gideon was getting irritated with George. The man was a master of evasion. “Someone wants to hurt me. Someone wants to hurt Leonie, too. If I don’t figure out who, Keefe and Leonie are going to be murdered.”
“And if you figure out who, then maybe you might put him away?”
“That’s the plan,” Gideon swore.
“I’m thinking about it.”
-
Tom gave his brother John a box.
About it there were many locks.
The box was not with key supplied,
But caused two lids to open wide.
What kind of box was it?
It was a slap upside the head.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Monday, July 29th
What has six eyes,
Six arms,
Six legs,
Three heads,
And a very short life?
Leonie stared down at what she’d done to herself. Perhaps Elan’s hands hadn’t been slender enough, even as a fourteen year old child. Perhaps it simply hadn’t occurred to him to break the bones in his thumb. It had been a calculated risk. She wasn’t sure if a single blow with the heavy porcelain lid would do it. But bracing her hand on top of the sink with the thumb extended did the trick. Aiming for the second joint of the thumb wouldn’t have worked either. She needed to break the bone where the base of the thumb bones met the hand, nearly at the wrist where the handcuff was so tightly embedded.
Gray faced, Leonie surveyed her dreadful work and grudgingly admitted that she had been successful. The bone was broken and she had to work quickly before the flesh began to swell. Her head was drowning with pain and she reached over with her right hand and swiftly moved the thumb’s bones out of the way, pushing it under her hand. The agonizing movement brought up a throat full of bile accompanied by a tormented groan.
She made her fingers on her right hand force the handcuff over the wrist bones and scrape over where the broken bones were located. There was an instant of doubt, that she might have broken her own thumb for no reason at all, when all of a sudden the cuff slid over the thickest part of her hand. The force of her insistent fingers scraped skin off both sides of her hand and moved the excruciatingly painful thumb again. She was panting with the effort now. The blood roared in her ears and she knew she would pass out if she didn’t finish quickly. She pushed again and the handcuff and chain clattered noisily to the floor.
Leonie fumbled for the strip of green blanket and looked around for something to splint her hand with. But there was only the plastic arm that went inside the toilet tank from the valve to the trip handle. Stumbling to her feet, she fished for the mechanism and broke it off with a loud crack as the plastic gave way. Bracing herself again, she looked at her hand. The flesh around her hand was beginning to swell up now, looking like a tennis ball at the base of her hand. She jerked the thumb back into position and gasped again as the world became awash with twirling black sheets of darkness. The plastic arm was gently placed along her broken thumb and the blanket strip wound around repeatedly to hold it in place. It wasn’t something a doctor would approve of, but it would have to do. She hesitated and snatched up a sliver of razor sharp porcelain that balanced on the edge of the sink, tucking it into the green blanket around her hand.
Leonie? Leonie! It came like a distant whisper, a mere whimper of concerned emotion. Leonie’s head shot up. But she was alone. Then there was something else. I can feel her pain.
Gideon?
But there was more pain in her head and she doubled over with the heavy weight of it. The fear had let him through for just a moment. The fear at what she was forced to do seemed to open her mind up no matter what kind of drugs Elan had fed her. And she had no doubt that they would eventually wear off, because he had no reason to give her more. He didn’t have to worry about her finding Keefe now. She knew exactly where he was. Elan didn’t know about her special connection with Gideon. If she could live long enough to let it wear off, then she might be able to tell Gideon what was happening. As the headache began to recede again she straightened up and tried to find a reserve of strength.
There was a hint of realization that came with her resolve. The headache wasn’t as severe. The drugs are really beginning to wear off. It won’t be long.
Casting a look at the sink, Leonie realized she had burst one of the pipes. Her feet were splashed in a growing puddle of water. The bottom of the pit was covered by an inch and rising. Bits of the pipe were collapsing under the rushing weight of the water, increasing the flow. She would have stuck her injured hand under the streaming water but she didn’t know how much time she really had. She shook her head, casting out the shadows and lurched toward Keefe.
The child must have weighed next to nothing and would have normally not bothered Leonie at all. She was used to lifting heavy antiques, but she was also weakened from the pain and the drugs. She staggered under Keefe’s weight and fought to remain upright. He couldn’t stay in the pit, even if the water wasn’t rising. She had to protect him from Elan.
“C’mon, cher,” Leonie murmured, déjà vu almost frightening her as much as the pain. “We’ll find some way of escaping this hell.”
Keefe muttered under his breath and shifted in her arms. Leonie stared down at his flaccid features and decided the drugs must be wearing off the child as well. She managed to push his limp body onto the edge of the pit and then pulled herself awkwardly up. It wasn’t easy because her left hand was all but useless. But she managed to grasp the edge of the concrete lid and use it for leverage. The lid teetered dangerously as she went up and she gasped for breath.
The single light bulb that had so dimly helped her assess her situation was attached to a block and tackle. It was a large steel arm that could be swung out from a plain concrete block wall, in order to attach to the lid and seal the pit in. The block and tackle was welded to the arm so that it couldn’t be separated. Elan had built it to show Leonie what it had been like. He wanted her to know what it felt like to be sealed into the earth.
So why didn’t he do that?
Because he wanted me to cut off my hand first, Leonie answered herself. He left the lid open so I would do what he wanted me to do. If the lid was shut and I had no hope for escape, then why mangle my hand, risking bleeding to death?
It was a room twice again as large as the pit. The pit’s opening was in the middle. It wasn’t in the garage like Elan had told her the original had been. But then Elan had been thinking about improvements on Monroe Whitechapel’s arrangements for twenty years. Cement blocks made up the composition of the walls. The floor was roughly laid cement. The ceiling was made of unfinished wooden beams and knot-laden planks. It all had the feeling of being made by hand, perhaps by Elan.
There was a single doorway. It didn’t have a door. But her eyes finally discerned a camera in the high upper corner of the room. The little red light was on and it was a giveaway that he was watching her. Leonie couldn’t prevent the glance down at her left wrist. Bound heavily with the green blanket, it was entirely concealed. He wouldn’t be able to tell if her hand was gone. Would it make a difference if he knew that she hadn’t had to go to the extremes that he had? She decided that it would and carefully shifted her body so that the hand was obscured.
Leonie returned to Keefe and gently picked the child up in her arms, resting his frame against hers. His head felt a little hot as it pressed against the flesh of her arm and she looked into his face. The boy was running a fever now. A little one, but a fever all the same. Had he been unconscious the entire time? Lying on his back, unable to walk or take care of himself? Basically Keefe was clean, his clothes were only rumpled, not filthy, and even the bandaged arm was devoid of dirt. Elan wanted to make sure his victim lasted until he didn’t need him anymore. As he didn’t need Keefe anymore now. He had his prize and she was trapped in this place.
Walking slowly to the door, Leonie looked out. It was dark, but dark was tinged by a row of bluish lights along the ceilings. More concrete block walls lined the passages. The ceilings were the same as the room she was standing in. Wood beams and planks. If she’d had the strength she might try to pull one down to see what was above. But as she stared upward there was a little something that sifted through the planks and hit her on the cheek. She shifted Keefe in her arms and felt at her cheek. On her fingers was a black smudge of dirt.
Underground. This place is underground. Hidden from prying eyes.
The only alternative was to get to the riddle, to try to see if Elan would follow through with his promise. Leonie didn’t think he would, but there might be some opportunity to escape that he’d somehow overlooked. The man she’d dated for six months and didn’t really know anything about was a monster, plain and simple, but perhaps there was compassion left in him.
My mother warned me about outsiders, she thought wryly. Like Lisette and Varden…
She took a step into the passageway and garnered her remaining strength for the terrible journey she was being forced to make. Her eyes adjusted to the muted light of the corridor. The height was only a foot or so taller than she was. The width was no more than an average door’s girth. The floor was dirty concrete.
Pressing forward for a few feet, Leonie stopped abruptly. Two things made her tremble anew. One was another one of those dreaded security cameras with its little insidious red light on and staring at her relentlessly. The other was that the passage split into three directions. She could go straight, left, or right.
All the passages looked the same. Leonie couldn’t help a semi-hysterical laugh. Another kind of riddle sat right in front of her, a maze for her to decipher. Elan had created a maze for her, an earthen maze that would undeniably test her resolve. It isn’t a field of corn, so how complicated can it be? she asked herself. It certainly isn’t a field of corn, so that if I get tired of the game I can cut through the rows. The harsh concrete blocks gave her a severe disadvantage.
Leonie decided to keep it simple and turned to the right. She would make right turns until she couldn’t turn anymore. Then she remembered the taut piano wire strung out over the top stair of the staircase and the razor blades in the computer case. “This house has fangs and will bite.” So too will the underground trap he’s laid for me.
After twenty or thirty feet of slow progress she turned right and nearly fell into another pit. Leonie pulled back with a gasp of horror, teetering on the brink of a black hole. She clasped the child to her and tried desperately to balance herself. Her toes felt the tickling cold breath of air underneath them. She bent forward and shifted her legs back, trying to hold onto Keefe with all of her might. There was a moment of intense fear where she knew she would fall. She would fall into the pit and probably crush the boy in the process, and how horrible would that be?
Abruptly she found that inner strength that had gotten her this far and shoved herself back with a keening groan. There was another noise, the sound of Elan’s icy laughter resonating on one of the multiple hidden speakers. Landing awkwardly on her hip, she took a tattered breath as the floor hit her broken thumb and caused a blinding resurrection of throbbing pain.
Leonie fought to deny the pain and opened her eyes up. The weak light showed the outline of the pit. She moved Keefe off her lap and crept to the edge to look downward. After a moment she realized the pit’s floor was littered with broken glass and rusted nails. Perhaps six feet down she would have been sliced to ribbons. Perhaps it wouldn’t have been enough to kill her outright, but the suffering that Elan wanted would have been present in spades. There was no way across the pit, even if the other side hadn’t been a dead end of concrete bricks.
After another moment, she realized that she didn’t dare take Keefe with her. She crawled to her feet, retrieved the little boy, and slowly returned him to the original room. She could hear the hiss of water as it sprayed inside the pit inside the room. Leonie placed Keefe in the corner underneath the camera so Elan couldn’t see the boy and returned to the hallway. She took a right again, but then ten feet down the passage she took a left. The corridor went immediately to the right again and then to the left.
One foot placed in front of her gingerly at a time. The other would follow, and she wondered to herself what trap would come next, when would Elan tire of these deadly games and simply have done with her? Leonie was concentrating on making her tired aching limbs work that she almost missed the cue that would save her a nasty fall. There was an eerie sound that echoed down the narrow corridor and froze her for a moment. Then the floor began to crumple beneath her feet. She felt it give a little and she yanked herself back with a cry.
In front of her the floor collapsed in a rippling sheet of thinly disguised cement. Dirt and wood screamed as it tore apart and hit a distant floor below with a crack. She hadn’t noticed the change in texture but as she’d put her weight on the thin sheets of plywood that concealed the next pit, she’d felt the give just in the nick of time. Leonie stared downward and saw a cavernous pit, twice as deep as the others. There was nothing down there except darkness and without assistance, no way out. And like the first pit there was no way past.
