“Hang around, Detective Lieutenant Jackson. You may get all the answers you ever wanted.”
Julie nodded toward the cameraman and he gave her a quick thumbs up. The scene had been filmed, and during the next commercial break he would feed it quietly to the control van for broadcast at the appropriate time.
Both men were being set up by Julie Reilly.
George Cordero followed John Lonetree and Jennifer Tilden down the steep basement stairs with the use of low power penlights. The camera and soundmen were taking up the rear of the line and were still in the kitchen as the group slowly made their way down the steps. George hadn’t mentioned anything to either Jennifer or John, but since they had opened the door to the basement, he’d had a feeling that something was down there. He corrected himself — something had been down there. Deep down, he felt as if they had missed an opportunity by delaying their movement to the cellar and the subbasement. He stopped on the third step down, causing the camera man to almost bump into him. They were currently going out live, which was the only thing that stopped the cameraman from complaining that Cordero had almost killed them all with his sudden stop.
Jennifer and John continued down. It took a nudge from the large man behind George to get him moving again before the two lead team members hit the bend in the staircase. As George started downward, he smelled the dank cement floor below, and possibly beyond that the loamy smell of the subbasement. He shook his head, wanting to catch up with Lonetree and tell him that something wasn’t right. In his earpiece, Dalton extolled them to step up the pace.
As John and Jennifer hit the turn in the stairs, they heard a loud thump from the floor twenty-five feet below, as if something had hit the concrete floor. John picked up the pace as Jennifer communicated quietly into her microphone. The crewmen wanted to push George out of the way so they could catch up with the two lead investigators. Finally the cameraman, the same large ex-Marine who had run that night two weeks before — a man wanting to regain some of the dignity he lost that night — finally hissed into his microphone that Cordero was slowing them up too much for them to get a visual on Lonetree and Tilden. Everyone heard the complaint and John and Jennifer slowed their pace, not wanting to get George into further trouble with Dalton. As they came to a stop only ten feet from the darkened floor, they heard a loud moan coming from the recesses of the basement.
“Okay, did everyone hear that?” John called out softly.
Cordero heard it. Instead of slowing, he started moving faster down the stairs. As the two technicians hurriedly followed, taking the steps one at a time, they heard Cordero mumbling, “This isn’t right, this isn’t right,” over and over.
“Our colleague George Cordero is voicing an opinion.” Jennifer positioned herself to assist George as he came stumbling down the stairs. She held both hands out to the darkness, keeping George from continuing past when he caught up with them.
“Whoa there,” John said. “What are you feeling, George? Is it something to do with the moan we just heard?” John spoke for the benefit of the microphone clipped to his collar.
“Something’s not right down here,” George said, catching his breath. “Something’s going to happen.”
In the darkness, the camera and soundmen focused the lowlight lens on the team.
“I’m not following,” John said as Jennifer looked nervously from one dark face to the other. “I’m not picking up anything. No cold spots, nothing.”
“I don’t know what it is. Something has been here and was waiting for us.”
“Waiting for us?” Jennifer asked.
“Well, we won’t know what it is until we move down the rest of the way.”
As the tension became palpable, the three investigators moved down the stairs and finally onto the concrete floor of the cool basement. Around them, something grew in power and everyone watching the show could feel it.
“Damn. Now this may get good,” Harris said. He remembered the lost little boy feelings he’d had during the broadcast test two weeks before. He could only hope that his visuals were relating those same feelings to the viewers watching from the safety of their warm homes.
Was it possible Summer Place was finally coming alive?
Inside the production van, Kelly Delaphoy smiled over at Lionel Peterson and Wallace Lindemann. She knew Summer Place wouldn’t let her down. The two men kept their eyes on the many monitors and acted as though they didn’t know she was looking at them.
“About goddamned time,” Harris said. He leaned over and patted the sound tech on the shoulder. “I need more gain; I want to hear their steps. That’ll add tension. And you tell visual to keep on Cordero; he seems to be the star of this thing.”
The technician nodded her head and passed the instructions along.
Kelly watched the monitors as the basement team hit the floor and stood their ground momentarily. Another loud moan came through the speakers, clear as day. Chills ran through Kelly. This was far better than any sexual encounter she had ever had. She was about to be proved right to her network and forty million television viewers. Her eyes settled on the team that stood on the third floor landing. Professor Kennedy and the others couldn’t see what was happening in the basement, but they were following the audio progress of Lonetree’s team far below them. In the low light camera angle, Gabriel looked concerned about something. Kelly thought that he may have been wishing he were with the basement team as they proved to the world that Summer Place was haunted.
In New York, Abe Feinstein nodded his head and took a drink from his glass of whiskey. Things were finally happening, and even the board members were riveted to the large television at the front of the room. The man whom he knew Peterson was closest to turned and looked at the CEO. His smile was faltering as he nodded. Feuerstein nodded back, enjoying the advance surrender of the board and the first of many humiliating congratulations from his detractors.
For the first time in three hours, Abe was feeling his oats. He was tasting his drink for the first time that night. He turned the glass up, draining it, and held it out for his assistant to refill. Yes, this was going to be sweet — from being on the verge of having to pull the plug on the rest of the special, to getting the greatest ratings coup in history. Yes, the whiskey tasted just fine.
The basement was dark. To the many viewers still watching, it was scary enough to make children hug their mothers. Fathers made silly, teasing noises to cover their own Halloween night chills.
John held the small penlight up and examined the basement. The old kitchen appliances, from the ancient wood burning stove to the bathroom fixtures lined against the walls, helped to lend the room an eerie feeling. It was like the history of the house was a time capsule stored in the basement and the viewing audience was seeing it for the first time.
The team spread out with John in the lead, all heading toward the center of the basement. The camera adjusted the green tinted picture to show the detritus from over a hundred years — accumulated appliances and a family’s boxed-up life. There were boxes and boxes of antique children’s toys. Though worth a fortune on the open market, in the dark of the basement they seemed forlorn and lost. At the top of a pile in a box that had split open after years in the damp cellar, Jenny spotted just what the viewing public would want to focus on. She held the toy up so the camera could zoom in. The ancient Jack and the Box was wooden and old fashioned, its handle overly large and its lid thick with dust and rotted with age. Jenny turned the box over. On the side, a child’s name was written in gold paint — Garrett. As Jenny turned the box back over, the clown suddenly sprang out. Everyone, with the exception of John Lonetree, let out an exclamation of surprise. Even the cameraman jolted the camera.