Chapter Thirty-Seven
Alice, with a ready-to-rumble Sebastian on her shoulder, followed Owen into another shadowy chamber. The door shut behind them. She heard the loud click of a lock and knew there would be no retreat into the ballroom.
The lights came up, illuminating a series of half-sized model rooms arranged in two facing rows. There were eight scenes in all. At the back of the room, six doors were installed in the wall. A sign on each read, Is This the Way Out?
“Only one of the doors will allow you to enter the third and final game,” the voice said. “Opening any of the others will result in the release of a poisonous vapor that will drive you mad and kill you within minutes. You have one chance to identify the winning door.”
“Why a display of perfect crimes?” Alice said.
“The Gamer was a perfectionist,” Owen explained.
“He believed he was invincible because his crimes were planned meticulously. But everyone makes mistakes, including him. He could not resist taking a trophy from each abduction scene, and in the end that was how they caught him. A brilliant para-psychologist—Dr. Anna Gordon—identified the type of souvenirs the killer was collecting and used that information to build a psi profile that proved to be extremely accurate. The task force picked him up in the middle of what was supposed to be his ninth perfect kidnapping and murder.”
“The intended victim must have been incredibly grateful as well as traumatized.”
“The final victim was supposed to be Dr. Gordon. The task force set a trap, using her as bait. But the plan went sideways. According to the transcript of the debriefing interview, when the agents crashed through the door of her office just as the Gamer was about to overpower her, Gordon’s first words were, ‘What the fuck took you so long?’ ”
“Sounds like an interesting woman. Unfortunately, I don’t think anyone is going to break down any doors for us.”
“No, we’re on our own.”
Owen walked toward the first model room.
“What are you doing?” she demanded.
“According to Gordon’s psi profile, Yardley was obsessed with having his so-called art admired. He probably constructed these models so that he could enjoy reliving scenes of his own handiwork. He must have intended them as his legacy. I don’t think he would have sabotaged them.”
“You’re the expert here, but don’t touch anything.”
“I won’t,” he promised.
She watched him stop at the first model and examine the scene. After a moment, Sebastian vaulted down to the floor and hustled across the space to join him. Together they studied the tableau.
“No souvenirs, Sebastian,” she said sternly.
“Hmm,” Owen said. “This is interesting.”
“No offense,” Alice said, “but this is not a great time to go into consultant mode.”
“I’m just gathering information. I studied the psi profile that Gordon did on Luxton Yardley, but it’s been a while.
The authorities obviously never discovered these rooms. They never even knew about the hotel.
There may be useful information here. The more we learn about the monster, the more likely we are to survive. ”
She could not think of a good argument to counter that observation, so she succumbed to the forces of her curiosity. She walked toward the model and stopped next to Owen and Sebastian.
She shivered when she saw the half-sized lifelike figure of a woman lying on a bed in what looked like an inexpensive motel room. The scene was furnished down to the smallest detail, including a notepad and a pen by the old-fashioned phone. A masked mannequin stood over the victim, syringe in hand.
“He sedated them for the kidnapping,” Owen explained.
“And then woke them when he was ready to watch them play his games. Afterward, he dumped the bodies in the Underworld, where he assumed they would never be found. Eight victims were recovered thanks to Dr. Gordon, but the task force never located Yardley’s killing ground. ”
“These rooms.”
“In the end, authorities believe he took his own life before they could get the truth out of him.”
“How?”
“A fast-acting poison.”
“Too bad it wasn’t slow-acting.” She paused, thinking about it. “I’m surprised he did it, though. From what you’ve told me, he sounds like the type who would have wanted the publicity he would have gotten if he’d gone to trial and been imprisoned.”
“That,” Owen said softly, “is a very good analysis. I agree with you. So did Dr. Gordon. Which is why she concluded that the Gamer was most likely murdered while he was under observation in the prison para-psych ward.”
She froze. “Do they think he had an accomplice?”
Owen shrugged. “Someone wanted him dead before he could talk.”
She caught her breath. “Rose Ash. His daughter. She wanted to marry Kelbrook, and she knew that if it got out that her father was a serial killer, he would run for the hills.”
“The timing fits.” Owen walked to the next model room and paused to examine it.
“But in the end Kelbrook found out anyway,” Alice mused.
She joined Owen at the next model, took one look at the macabre scene, and hastily turned away. She surveyed the doors in the rear wall.
“How do we choose the right one?” she asked.
Owen abandoned his study of the model and gave his full attention to the problem. “Let’s run a few tests before we make a choice.”
To her shock, he stepped into the model of the hotel room.
“What are you doing?” she gasped. “There could be any number of traps in that room.”
“I don’t think so. Like I said, Yardley intended these scenes to be a tribute to himself.” Owen emerged with a small slip of paper and a pen in one hand. “I found these on the nightstand.”
“Now what?” she asked.
“If one of those doors opens into another room, there should be a slight draft under the bottom edge.”
He crouched in front of the first door on the left and held the slip of paper near the narrow gap between the lower edge and the floor. Sebastian joined him.
They all watched the paper. It did not flutter.
Owen inserted the pen. It went less than a couple of inches before it met a solid obstruction.
He stood, moved to the next door and repeated the test. The pen went only a short distance before it stopped. The paper did not flutter.
Alice realized she was having trouble breathing. She made herself take a couple of steadying breaths.
Owen tested the remaining doors. There was no hint of airflow under any of them, but the pen slid all the way under the sixth door.
Sebastian hustled forward and sniffed under the door.
“What do you think, Sebastian?” Owen asked.
Sebastian chortled.
“I think we should take that as a Go for it,” Alice said.
“I agree, but we’ll take some precautions anyway.”
“How do we do that?”
“We open the door without opening the door. Get Sebastian out of the way.”
Alice moved forward, grabbed Sebastian, and hugged him close.
Owen took the mag-rez out of his jacket and fired two shots into the center of door number six.
Wood cracked and splintered. Sebastian chortled enthusiastically, wriggled free of Alice’s grasp, and bounced down to the floor.
Alice looked at the holes that had appeared in the lower portion of the door panel. “Well, the good news is that no poison vapor seems to have been released.”
“Maybe because we didn’t open the door,” Owen said.
“Right.” She cleared her throat. “You just shot a couple of holes in it instead. Does that come under the heading of a calculated risk?”
“More like the heading of no other options. Let’s see what we’ve got.”
He went forward and used the handle of the mag-rez to knock out a large chunk of the lower half of the door panel and then paused to aim his phone flashlight into the opening.
“Looks like a tool shed,” he announced.
“Really? I suppose it makes sense the Gamer would have his construction tools handy rather than hauling them back and forth.”
“We might be able to use the tools, but I don’t want to risk touching the doorknob.”
Alice moved closer, looked into the opening, and saw an array of precisely arranged saws, hammers, drills, and other assorted construction gear.
“None of the doors open into a third game, do they?” she said, suddenly understanding.
“Yardley never intended for his victims to get out of this room, assuming they got this far. We won’t escape by opening a door, so we might as well try going through a wall.”
“Using Yardley’s tools. Brilliant.”
“More like another calculated risk,” Owen said. “What do you think?”
It dawned on her that he was asking for her opinion. Partners, she thought. They were in this together.
“I’m not much good with a gun,” she said, “but I do know how to use basic tools. Cadence Ballantine considered that kind of knowledge important for a truly balanced life.” She surveyed the room. “Where do we start?”
“We’ll need a hammer.”
She eyed the partially destroyed door. “We’re going to need a bigger hole to crawl through to get to the tools.”
Owen looked at Sebastian. “I think a hole the size of a dust bunny will be large enough.”
“You want Sebastian to bring out a hammer? He won’t understand.”
“You can guide him.”
“I’ll try,” she said.
“If it doesn’t work, we’ll have to make a much bigger hole in this door, and I’d rather not risk it.”
Sebastian grasped the object of the new game almost immediately. Chortling with triumph, he passed a screwdriver, a wrench, and, after a bit more coaching from Alice, a hammer.
“Good work, buddy,” Owen said.
Sebastian preened.
Owen picked up the hammer. Alice took the wrench.
“Yardley had to hang the doors on something,” Owen said. “With luck, the walls will be standard stud-and-drywall framing.”
He raised the hammer and slammed it into the bare wall between two doors. The drywall shattered, revealing a wooden stud and drywall on the other side.
“We may have just gotten very lucky,” Owen said quietly.
“There’s no such thing as luck,” Alice said. “We took a calculated risk.”
“We’re not in the clear yet. There may be nothing but bricks on the other side of the wall.”
“Think positive.”
“Right. Positive.”
He slammed the hammer into the second sheet of drywall. The board shattered. Alice was thrilled when she realized there were no bricks on the other side, but some of her enthusiasm evaporated when she saw a darkened chamber.
“The third game room,” she said. “Damn. I was hoping for an entrance into the tunnels.”
“I don’t think it’s an escape game room,” Owen said. He aimed his flashlight through the opening he had made in the drywall. “I see glassware and metal instruments and workbenches. Pretty sure it’s a lab. A real one, not a model.”
Alice peered past his shoulder. “You’re right. I can smell chemicals and herbs. This must be where Rose Ash formulates the sedative and the hallucinogenic vapors in the hotel escape games.”
“Looks like it,” Owen said. “Stand back.”
She got out of the way and watched him use the hammer to remove enough drywall for them to move through.
Sebastian went first, fluttering into the other room without any hesitation. Alice and Owen followed. On the other side they paused to have a look around with their flashlights.
The light glinted on glass and metal and cabinets filled with bottles of chemicals.
“This is a working lab,” Alice said. “You were right, there never was a third game room.”
“The Gamer didn’t intend for any of his victims to escape his museum, so there was no reason to build one. He just used that line as a lie to encourage his victims to open one of the doors.”
“So that he could watch them die a slow, agonizing death.” She shuddered. “It’s hard to believe that such evil exists.”
“Believe it,” Owen said.
He spoke with the cold conviction of a man who had witnessed too much of the dark side of human nature.
She heard a chortle in the shadows and swept the room with her flashlight again, searching for the source. The beam landed on Sebastian. He was bouncing up and down in front of a door.
“He looks as eager to get out of here as we are,” Owen said.
He started down an aisle created by two workbenches, heading toward Sebastian. “That’s a good sign that whatever is on the other side of the door, it won’t kill us.”
Alice hurried after him. Halfway down the aisle, her flashlight skimmed over a leather-bound volume. Her intuition stirred. She stopped and took a closer look.
“What is it?” Owen asked.
“A logbook, I think.” She slid it across the bench. “Probably formulas for Rose’s hallucinogenic vapors and her poisons.” She flipped open the cover to take a quick look, recoiled in horror, and dropped the book. “It’s a record of the Gamer’s murders.”
“Grab it. Maybe it will help the authorities confirm that they found all of the bodies.”
It might give some grieving individual closure, she thought. Still, she had to brace herself to touch the logbook again.
Gingerly she picked it up, holding it as if it was the head of a viper, and went quickly toward the door. It was locked, but Owen used the lockpick and it opened readily.
She saw the glow of a green quartz staircase. Sebastian chortled happily and bustled toward it.
“I don’t know about you,” Alice said, “but personally, I can suddenly breathe a lot more easily.”
“You are not alone, trust me. Never thought I’d see the day when the Underworld felt like home sweet home,” Owen said.