The 7th Victim - Alan Jacobson [172]
A hidden room. His thoughts flashed back to the contents of the vanishing email Vail had received. The UNSUB mentioned “a hiding place . . . musty . . . small . . . dark.” Robby moved into the closet and knelt in front of the side wall. Putting the narrow flashlight into his mouth, he traced the seam up and around: it was approximately four feet high and nearly two and a half feet wide, the bottom of the rectangle being formed by the floorboards. He reached into his back pocket and removed a long, black handcuff key. He stuck it into the seam and pried outward. The section of wall moved.
Robby traced the edges with his fingertips and noted a roughened area along the left side: whoever had built the hideaway had pried against the same spot numerous times while using it as an entry point. On close examination, based on its texture, Robby figured a section of the wall had been replaced with a rectangle of painted plywood.
He looked up at Bledsoe and motioned him into the closet behind him. Robby extinguished his light and continued prying at the wall. When it was sufficiently loose and ready to be removed, he tapped Bledsoe twice on the leg. Bledsoe, nearly a foot shorter than Robby, would be the logical choice to enter first.
Bledsoe crouched and waited as Robby tapped his leg once, then twice, then three times. Robby yanked back on the wall and the rectangle popped into his hands. A musty odor wafted toward them. Bledsoe, weapon out in front of him, remained by the opening and waited. Listened. Then he climbed in.
ALTHOUGH ROBBY THOUGHT he had prepared himself for just about anything, he knew that whenever you crawled into a dark space in a house that belonged to a sexual offender, you could not possibly anticipate what you were going to encounter.
But the pained scream that emerged from Bledsoe’s mouth caught Robby off-guard. He flicked on his flashlight and held it against the side of his handgun. Bledsoe was facedown, sprawled across what appeared to be two small steps leading down into the crawl space beneath the house. Bledsoe was moaning, his body convulsing. Robby shined his light up and around, his Glock moving with the beam. He saw something, something that made his racing heart skip a beat.
A woman’s body, apparently hanging. But he could only see the dangling ankles and feet, as she was suspended below the staircase, and his view was blocked. Karen?
Bledsoe’s convulsing had slowed to intermittent twitching. What the hell had happened to him? A stun gun. It was the only thing that could incapacitate someone so rapidly and leave telltale signs of transient nervous system disruption.
Robby again ran his light around the small space. Was it safe to go in? Clearly not. To take out Bledsoe with a stun gun, the offender needed to touch him: he had to be nearby.
But he couldn’t retreat and wait for backup, either. If that was Karen a few feet away from him, and if she was still alive, he had to get to her. Now.
He reached forward and grabbed Bledsoe by his belt and yanked him back into the closet. He was heavy and he banged up Bledsoe’s face on the rough edge of the cutout, but Robby’s concern was getting to Vail.
Glock firmly in hand, he squeezed through the opening feet first. If he was going to get zapped, this would be the time. But he made it in and quickly swung his light and pistol around the space. Nothing. Swiveled it toward the woman’s body.
My God.
He stood face to face with Vail. Shined his light: eyes at half-mast. He moved behind her to keep as much of the area in his view as possible, stuck the small flashlight in his mouth, then fumbled for his key. He unlocked the handcuffs and gently lowered her to the packed dirt ground in a sitting position against the side wall of the stairwell. A spasmodic tic rattled her body.
A voice in the darkness: “So good of you to drop in.