On the road to Trapdoor they passed the tumbledown trailer that had once belonged to Carson Borders. The headlights caught a glimmer of police tape. Ridley hit the brakes so hard that the truck fishtailed and what was left of the tires was put to shrieking work. They held on to the road, but just barely.
The truck was across both lanes when it stopped but Ridley didn’t care to move it. He kept his foot on the brake and stared at the trailer. The snow all around it was mashed down and trampled by tire tracks and boot prints. A perimeter had been cordoned off with tape.
“What is this?” he said, but of course Julianne was unable to answer. He thought she might know and he was tempted to remove the tape to ask but afraid of the result. The point was to make it into Trapdoor, and it was more than logical that the surface world would try to prevent him. Perhaps the scene at the trailer was not even real.
“Do you see that?” he asked Julianne.
She was eyeing him warily but she nodded.
“I don’t mean the building. I mean the rest.”
Again she nodded. He thought she was being sincere. “Okay,” he said. “All right, that’s very good.”
He took his foot off the brake, but he was shaking now.
“The thing to remember,” he said, “is that this doesn’t matter. All of this, what we see up here? It doesn’t mean a thing. What matters happened down there. We can’t see any of what matters. Not yet. That is what we must remember!”
He had started to shout and he didn’t like that, because it suggested a lack of control. He concentrated on his breathing until they reached Trapdoor. Just beyond the closed gate, he pulled off the road and into the snow and killed the engine. He took the sapphire necklace down from the rearview mirror and put it in his pocket and then he got out of the truck and took both backpacks out of the bed. He opened Julianne’s door, took her hand, and helped her out of the cab. He would never have admitted it but the touch of her hand was comforting. He doubted that she felt the same about his.
“There’s a garage up ahead and to the left,” he said. “That’s the caretaker’s quarters. We’ll walk there. Don’t run.”
She didn’t run. He put one of the backpacks over her shoulders, and she moved to cooperate, no sign of resistance. They walked on the other side of the tree line and parallel to the drive, went as far as the back corner of the garage, and then Ridley whispered, “Hands, please. Only for a little while.”
She offered them reluctantly, and he tied them without ever having to take his eyes off the house. This was why you practiced. You never knew what would be asked of you.
“All right,” he said. “Quietly ahead. Quietly. And, Julianne, you might see some things that will suggest that all of your efforts have been wasted. That I’ve lost control again. Don’t be fooled. I’m in control.” He extended his hands, palms down, like a child waiting to play a slap game. They showed no more movement than the ice over the creek.
He nudged her forward and they walked around the garage and up the exterior stairs that led to the apartment above. He was entranced by her movement. He’d anticipated that she would struggle to walk, that fear would make her clumsy. Instead, she glided along in perfect step, matching his energy and joining it, like a dance partner.
Maybe you’re wrong about her. You don’t know what she really said to Novak. You’ve made assumptions.
No, no, no. He had trusted once and would not again. The surface world was false and she had come from it.
At the base of the steps that led to Cecil Buckner’s apartment, Ridley paused and studied the windows, looking for any indication that Cecil was up and moving. He wasn’t at the window, but Ridley could see his socked feet resting on a coffee table, a can of beer beside them. He was clueless and unprepared, as he should be. Despite his proximity to Trapdoor, Cecil had never learned to listen to what she might tell him, the warnings she might whisper. The very notion that he was entrusted to be the cave’s caretaker was offensive.
Ridley positioned Julianne in front of him, withdrew his knife, flicked the blade open, put it to her throat, and shoved her forward. He walked with his chest pressed to her back and guided her up the stairs. He reached around her then and knocked on the door with his free hand.
The beer had vanished from sight but now it returned to the coffee table and Cecil’s socked feet went into motion and the door was opened. His eyes took in the scene fast.
“Ridley,” he said. “What in the hell... Ridley, no, don’t—”
“Let us in.”
Cecil took a step back, too willingly, and Ridley saw that his eyes were drifting right, and so he released Julianne and stepped around her and punched Cecil once in the face and kicked him once in the groin, and the bigger man fell to the floor in gasping pain without ever reaching the shotgun leaning against the wall just to the right of the door.
“Your choice, Cecil,” Ridley said. He guided Julianne inside and closed the door behind them. Cecil was writhing on the floor.
“I know this is not the way it is supposed to go,” Ridley said, “but I’m going to need to get in to see her tonight. There simply is no other choice at this point. It has to be done.”
For a time Cecil didn’t answer, just gasped his way back to breath, a string of spit hanging from his lips. He got slowly to his hands and knees, looked up at Ridley, and said, “You stupid son of a bitch. You’ll end up in prison. Ten years free, and you’ll still end up in prison.”
“There’s a lot left to play out before that,” Ridley said, “though I acknowledge the possibility. I always have.”
Cecil breathed through his mouth, his eyes flicking around the room in search of options.
“Keep your attention on me,” Ridley said. “There’s no need to delay. I just need the keys.”
“All you had to do was wait, you freak,” Cecil said.
Ridley nodded with sorrow. “I tried to. You know that. But it was easier for you. You never had any questions. And if you did, they were about me. Now, imagine being me and having those same questions.”
“You’ll end up in Terre Haute waiting on the electric chair.”
“The keys,” Ridley said, beckoning with his hand. “Otherwise, you’ll watch everything that happens to her and it will happen in your home and before your eyes. And you will know that you made a choice that might have stopped it. You’ll live with that.”
Cecil rose unsteadily.
“I’ll give you the damn keys, though if you were only smart enough to wait, they’d have been yours anyhow. Now that will never happen. You understand that, don’t you?”
“Where are the keys?”
“Right behind your head. Hanging on the peg.”
“Get them for me.”
“They’re only a foot away from you.”
“Get them for me.”
Cecil shuffled forward, walking in pain, and extended his arm to reach around Ridley for the keys. When he made his next move, it was with speed that Ridley hadn’t anticipated. Cecil had been a fine athlete in his day, his name still in the Garrison High record books for tackles, and his muscle memory had lasted through the years — he got both arms around Ridley and drove him back into the wall. Julianne was trapped between them, in danger from Ridley’s knife, which was the reason he hadn’t been prepared for the assault. He’d expected Cecil would value her life more than this.