I sat there trying to get my breath, waiting for the fire to burn itself out. It took a minute or two, and at the end of that time I could think clearly again: I was back in control.
The first time I tried to stand, my left leg wouldn’t support me and I collapsed. I’d cut the knee up with the board; my pant leg was torn and there was a bloody gash that ran two inches down from the kneecap. No swelling though. Sweat stung my eyes, in a bleeding cut on my forehead, in the furrows left by Nedra’s nails; the hand I swiped across my face came away smeared with a mixture of water and blood. I rested for a minute or so, massaging the knee, before I shoved upright for another try. This time, when I put weight on the leg, it held me.
Agony on the first few steps. Then that pain began to fade as I slow-paced back and forth between the pantry and the end of the cellar. Eight, nine, ten times I retraced my steps, until I could walk more or less normally again.
By then I was aware of every inch of that damned cell, of everything in it. Evil place... but it wasn’t escape-proof. It was not an isolated cabin in the wilderness, I was not chained to a wall, that locked door was not impregnable. There were tools at my disposal. I could get out of here. I would get out of here — and soon, long before any of my own private demons came raging back.
I bent to examine the door. I’d left the key in the lock on the kitchen side; all he’d had to do was turn it. Had he thrown the eyebolt too? I yanked on the knob, up and down, back and forth. Maybe not. There was some give, more than there would be if the door were double-locked into the jamb. Good, fine. I had my Swiss Army knife, with its multitude of blades and gadgets; and the wood of the jamb was old and relatively soft, scarred by deep gouges where Nedra Merchant had dug at it with some kind of makeshift tool. I could work on it until I exposed the bolt, then pry or break it loose. But that would take hours, possibly even a full day, and I did not have that much time to spare; I’d come apart for sure.
Had to be another way, a quicker way...
I pawed among the cans on the shelves. Cans were all there was... no help there. I walked back into the cellar; except for a faint dull ache, my knee gave me no trouble. Nothing I could do with the toilet or fan or TV set or rocking chair. The table? As a battering ram? It looked solid, but when I swept off the artist’s supplies and picked it up, I saw that it wasn’t solid at all. One good bang against a hard surface and it would break up into kindling.
The bed?
I got down on my good knee next to it for a close look. It wasn’t new and it didn’t appear to be very sturdy; I remembered creaking sounds when Nedra moved on it. But the two long and two short sections of the frame were made of forged steel. Seeing that gave me an idea, one that might work if I could get the frame apart.
I stripped off the mattress and box spring, then lifted the frame up onto its side so I could tell how the corners had been joined. Riveted and spot-welded, the stubby castered feet attached the same way. Cheaply made, too; rust spots speckled the metal and I could feel the give when I put pressure on one corner. I took a tight grip on the thing and banged it down hard on the bottom corner, driving it into the bare rock where the cellar floor met the wall.
But getting the rivets and weld to snap wasn’t as easy as I had hoped. There wasn’t much room to maneuver and I kept having to stop and dry my slick hands. The exertion, combined with the heat and the stink, brought back the sick, dizzy feeling. I remembered the fan and moved it over to where it would blow on my face. That helped a little. Helped keep my hands drier too.
I worked in a steady, mindless rhythm: any kind of thinking would only have gotten in the way. It might have been ten minutes and it might have been half an hour before the one joint finally broke apart. I tried standing on one of the longer sections and using brute force to tear it free at the other corner. The strain weakened the joining but didn’t snap it. To do that I had to turn the frame over and continually beat the corner against rock, as I had the opposite one.
Another ten or fifteen or twenty minutes... and the frame split into a pair of uneven right angles. I took one of them to the door, wedged the short piece under the knob against the casing, with the long piece angled down to the floor. Fulcrum, pry bar. Bent forward at the waist, with my legs spread, I locked hands under the lower end, lifted, then heaved upward against the knob with all the strength in my upper body. Once, twice, three times. The effort left me panting. I wiped my face, dried my hands, took another grip and tried again.
This time the wood above the knob began to wrinkle.
Lift, heave. Lift, heave... driving upward with my legs, grunting like Hulk Hogan. Blood-pound in my ears, tearing sensation across my shoulders. And lift, heave—
The knob bent, the wood around it splintered.
One more heave and the knob snapped, throwing me off-balance. I lost my grip on the section of bed frame and it dropped clattering, barked one of my shins on the rebound.
I righted myself against the shelves. Picked up the frame, backed off, drove the short piece against the casing. The eyebolt hadn’t been thrown; the door popped open as soon as the Schlage dead bolt tore loose on my second thrust. I threw the frame away behind me, kicked the door the rest of the way open, and staggered out into the kitchen.
There was so much blood and sweat in my eyes I was nearly blind. I groped across to the sink, ran cold water, and put my head under the stream until my vision was clear and the heat flush on my face eased. I dried off with a towel from a wall rack; the still-bleeding cut on my forehead stained the towel red. Then I leaned on the drainboard to wait for my pulse rate to slow, some of the tension and the last vestiges of the claustrophobia to drain away.
I’d banged my watch a few times while I was working in there, but the second hand still rotated on the dial. Good old Timex — takes a licking and keeps on ticking. The time surprised me: not even four o’clock yet. As impossible as it seemed, I had been trapped less than an hour.
Through the window I could see my car parked in front of the garage — the only car out there. They were long gone. But I did not feel any real urgency, not anymore.
I knew who Baby was; I’d known it from the moment I laid eyes on Nedra Merchant in her prison.
And I knew where he would take her from here.
Chapter 22
On the way out of nice I had a wrangle with myself. Call the county sheriff? Baby and Nedra would be out of Lake County by now, and the law up here was not going to put out a pickup order on my say-so, not unless I came in and showed ID and told my story in person. Call the SFPD? Branislaus had had weekend duty, which meant he wouldn’t be working today; I’d have to talk to another inspector, fill him in, try to convince him to make this a priority matter — and by the time they acted, Baby and Nedra would be at their destination. So would I, probably. Besides, if the cops came bulling in on them, there was no telling what he might do. He hadn’t harmed her directly and he wouldn’t as long as there was no provocation, but if officers with guns and bullhorns showed up... No, this was a situation better handled by me alone, one on one. Time was on my side too: I was only about an hour behind them, and if I got lucky, drove faster than he did, I might be able to cut the gap down to half an hour or so.
I got half lucky. Traffic heading west on Highway 20 was fairly light once I passed Upper Lake, and I was able to make pretty good time except for a two-mile snag behind a slow-moving camper. It was just five o’clock when I reached the junction with 101 above Ukiah. On the freeway I opened up to seventy, to seventy-five on the straighter stretches; I was afraid to risk any higher speeds. If a highway patrolman stopped me, I would have to sit still for questions and maybe some hassle. Before leaving the Thornapple house I’d taken an antiseptic bandage from the first-aid kit in the trunk and covered the cut on my forehead, but my face was still beat-up and my neck bore the marks of Nedra’s nails. Any cop would take one close look at me and become suspicious as hell.