Fire and Bones (Temperance Brennan #23)

Chapter 6

CHAPTER 6

A million questions ricocheted in my brain.

Had I imagined it? Was the light playing tricks? Did I glance away at the precise moment Hickey stepped sideways?

No. The man had disappeared.

“Captain Hickey!” My shout muted by my mask.

No answer.

“I need help here!” Upping the volume.

Fearing Hickey could be hurt, I grabbed a penlight from my kit and scrambled to my feet.

“Anybody!” I screamed as I crept toward the spot where I’d last seen the fireman.

No one appeared or shouted back.

I felt the electric current of fear race up my spine.

“Officer down!” Did one say that about a firefighter?

Still nothing.

I called out again.

Zilch.

Where the hell were all the Galahads so recently worried about my safety?

Twenty wary steps brought me to the edge of a gaping hole.

In the first split second, my mind logged the following facts.

The basement was floored by hard-packed clay. That clay had overlain and disguised a hinged wooden door. That door had broken under the pressure of Hickey’s weight.

I aimed my light down into the opening.

Hickey lay prone at the base of a weathered staircase, maybe eight feet below me.

I watched for signs of life. Movement. Breathing. Saw no indication of either.

“Hickey!”

Zero response.

My stomach went into free fall.

I was gripping the penlight with my teeth, preparing to descend, when Hickey’s left elbow re-angled and his palm pressed the ground. His upper torso arced up and he pivoted to his back. Groaning, he rose to a sitting position and drew his knees to his chest.

Relief flooded through me. Not wanting to blind him, I pointed my beam at his boots and shouted. “Are you okay?”

Hickey glanced up, a puzzled look on his face.

“Shall I call for the medics?”

“No. No. I’m cool.”

“You’re sure?”

“Just embarrassed.” Hickey’s chuckle had a brittle edge to it. “What happened?”

“You pulled an Alice and tumbled down a secret passage. Could be they’ll charge you for damage to the trap door.”

“I’m a firefighter. Property damage is our forte.”

“Uh-huh.” I was happy the guy hadn’t lost his sense of humor. “What do you see?”

“Nothing. It’s a black hole down here.”

“Probably a subcellar.”

“It being below the main cellar.”

I ignored the sarcasm.

“Is it big?”

“Hard to tell.”

“Are you alone?” Joking.

“I goddam sure hope so.”

I watched Hickey get to his very large feet. Lighted a path as he climbed up the treads.

“Shall we explore?” Hickey asked when topside.

“Once I’m done with this guy.” Hooking a thumb at the corpse with the popcorned innards.

Hickey nodded. “I’ll shed some of my gear and score some headlamps. Let me know when you’re ready.”

“Roger that.” I saluted.

Cringed inwardly, wishing I hadn’t.

While I’d finished with the fourth victim, a member of Hickey’s team had determined that the subcellar had been negligibly impacted by the fire. Some buckling of the staircase and warping of its banister. Significant smoke damage to the overhead timbers and support beams.

The guy hadn’t mentioned the smell.

While I was following Hickey down the steps, paranoically testing each, the stench almost made me gag. Rotten wood. Damp earth. The acrid reek of burning. The occasional glob of fire suppressant foam dripping onto my head did nothing to settle me. Or improve the look of the hair escaping my hard hat.

Nearing the last tread, I peeled my eyes from my boots and glanced up. My headlamp glinted off a pair of bare bulbs dangling by fuzzy dark cords. They were the old-fashioned clear glass kind and, despite the shroud of ash coating the outer surface of each, I could see the delicate filaments inside.

Hickey and I spread out at the bottom, groping the walls to locate a switch. I found one first, beside an opening in the east wall, embedded in an upright of dubious reliability.

I flipped the little lever, expecting nothing. To my surprise, one of the ancient bulbs fired to life. Not exactly the Vegas Luxor Lamp, but the amber glow provided sufficient illumination to allow a sense of our surroundings.

Hickey and I were in a room measuring approximately ten by ten. Low ceiling. Flagstone floor. Earthen walls.

Five barrels stood directly opposite the stairs we’d crept down, arranged in a semi-orderly row. We crossed to them.

Up close I could see that the barrels weren’t round, but oddly ovoid. Their wood was weathered, their iron banding rusty as hell. Each had a metal spigot down low and a round hole plugged with a wooden peg on top.

“Looks like oak.” Hickey ran a gloved finger through the layer of grime and soot darkening the nearest of the casks. “With brass taps.”

“What do you suppose they held? Hold?” I asked.

Hickey hiked both shoulders. Beats me.

The movement sent a shadow dancing across the brass triangle forming the barrel’s tap handle.

“Look at the spigot,” I said.

“You think it’s a spigot?” He leaned close. “It’s lettering.”

“Can you read it?”

Some serious squinting. Then, “Albany.”

“As in, the capital of New York?”

Hickey shrugged again, one shoulder this time.

“That’s underwhelming,” I said.

“You were hoping for what? Russian crude oil?”

“I don’t know. Whiskey? Wine? Maple syrup?”

“Could be anything. The house is old.”

“How old?” I asked, growing more intrigued.

Hickey gave another of his trademark shrugs. The guy could have taught a master’s class on the nuances of the gesture.

I turned and shone my headlamp through the opening in the east wall.

“Looks like there are rooms beyond this one. Shall we search the rest of this level?”

“Hell, yeah. Let’s search the bejeezus out of her.”

I led. Hickey covered my six, as he put it.

The place was a labyrinth of tunnels and crannies and chambers, often with one room dead-ending into another. Reminded me of a scene in a Stephen King novel.

As did the fact that I had absolutely no phone signal that deep underground.

There were a few overhead bulbs along the way. Unlike the one by the stairs, none worked.

Not surprising. Still. No light. No means of communication. Not good.

Maybe it was my imagination gone haywire, but the passageway seemed to grow darker and danker the farther we went. Hickey didn’t always keep up but lingered now and then to toe or poke at something of interest.

We traversed nine rooms in all. Some showed blackening due to smoke infiltration from above. Three were empty. Four held barrels. Two were furnished with cots, chairs, small tables, and lantern-style oil lamps. The meager furnishings suggested use as a short-term hideaway or safe house.

Beyond the ninth room, the narrow passageway split. By then I was certain we’d completed a bejeezus-grade search. I was cold and hungry, and my headlamp was showing signs of betrayal. Still, I refused to be the one to pull the plug.

I took the left branch, Hickey went right.

Ten reluctant steps. Then my wavering beam fell on an unopened door.

I glanced over my shoulder to call out to Hickey. He was nowhere to be seen.

I strode forward and turned the knob.

The door swung in with an overly theatrical B-grade horror movie squeak.

The darkness beyond was tomb-like, barely penetrated by the faltering beam from my headlamp. My eyes detected no shadowy shape. No silhouette denser than the surrounding blackness. Nothing.

I took a cautious step forward.

The air smelled different from that in the corridor. Mothy, like old wool. Organic, like seaweed baked on a beach. Dry and papery like mummified flesh at the morgue.

Sweetly fetid.

Like putrefying flesh at the morgue.

Swiveling my head slowly, I swept my headlamp around the small space. Saw nothing along the right-hand wall. Nothing in the right back corner. Nothing along the opposite wall.

In the left back corner, the lower edge of my beam reshaped in the shadows where the wall met the floor. I dipped my chin to angle the light downward.

It took a moment for my brain to process the message my eyes were sending its way.

A large burlap sack lay on the flagstones, the kind that might have held potatoes or grain. A rope secured one end, triple looped and loosely tied.

A bulge inside the sack suggested a body. A slender braid snaking from a gap in the coiled rope suggested that body was human. Both the sack and the hair were caked with a mildewy crust darkened by soot.

Had I found a fifth fire victim? A survivor who’d fled to this level to escape the flames?

Seriously, Brennan? And crawled into a bag and tied off the opening?

My headlamp was now cutting on and off and flickering badly. I couldn’t tell if the person in the bag was breathing.

Not wishing to frighten him or her, should they be alive, I called out from the doorway.

“Hello?”

The person didn’t flinch. Didn’t respond.

I tried again.

“Are you okay?”

Nothing.

Pulling surgical gloves from a back pocket, I donned them and took a tentative step forward.

Saw no movement. No signs of life.

Another step.

Another.

Drawing close, I circled the sack, braced a hand on the wall, and squatted. Using one finger, I loosened the knot and dragged the edge of the burlap downward a few inches.

One look told me the person inside was dead. And that it was probably a female. Her eyes were half open, her shriveled and clouded pupils mid-dilated and fixed in the cadaveric position.

I aimed my erratic beam down into the opening I’d created.

My heart threw in a few extra beats.