Play Dead (32 page)

I furrowed my eyebrows, and she shrugged
in an unspoken apology for her lame analogy. Greg must have made some remark to
her over the earphones as well, for she made an obscene gesture to him through
the window of the control booth.

“My fine-feathered producer here has just
notified me that we have another caller.” She pressed a button. “Hello, Mr.
Caller person. I understand you didn’t want to give your name to my producer.
Is there a reason for that?”

In an ominous, low whisper, a male’s voice
said, “Just wanted to ask Allida there if she’s checked her basement lately.”

My heart leapt to my throat. “What do you
mean?”

“You know how easily these basements
around Colorado can flood. Especially when you leave a tap outside running.”

“Bring Sage back! Now!”

He hung up.

Tracy’s face had gone completely white.
She signaled to Greg. “Let’s go to commercial break. Be right back with more on
this breaking story.” Greg must have said something in her earphones, for she
said, “Of course I know we don’t have any sponsors! I don’t care if you put on
elevator music! I need a minute!”

“Oh my God,” Tracy said, her face
immediately damp with perspiration. “That was the guy, wasn’t it?”

I nodded.

“Tell me everything you know about him,”
Tracy said, not meeting my eyes.

“He met both Beth and Hannah through a
vegetarian cooking class. He was trying to market a totally vegetarian dog
food, and was...”

I let my voice fade. Tracy had risen and
was shaking her head.

“We gotta get out of here!” she said.

She’d once said she never forgot a voice. “You
know who it is, don’t you?” I asked.

She flipped a switch and pushed the
earphone tighter against her head. She waved at Greg, who was rapt with
something else and ignored her. Rolling her eyes in frustration she said into
the mike, “Hey, there, Boulder. If mister Greg-head would help me out for a
moment here, I was just about to suggest we put on a little appropriate music,
such as, ‘Help Me Make It Through the Night,’ or ‘How Much Is That Doggy in the
Window?’” Again she flipped a couple of switches, and said, “Greg?” into the
mike.

Greg was apparently speaking to somebody
on the phone and couldn’t hear a word Tracy was saying. Suddenly, his jaw
dropped. He tore off his headphones and left the control booth.

I glanced at Tracy. “Christ,” she
muttered, starting to cry. “Greg can’t hear us. He’s got the whole thing
rigged. We’re toast!”

My heart started to pound. There was only
one person, other than Greg, who could have “rigged” anything at the station.

Dear God!
Joel must be planning to kill us all and
frame Greg! I headed toward the door and asked over my shoulder, “Why did you
lie to me about his alibi?” I tried to push the solid door open. It didn’t
budge. I whirled around and tried the nearby door to the control room. Locked. “We’re
locked in here!”

“What do you mean it’s locked? The door to
the hallway can’t be locked!”

“It’s bolted from the outside!”

The lights went out. Tracy let out an ear piercing
scream. Pavlov barked wildly. A moment later a male voice cried in a singsong
voice over the room’s loudspeakers, “And Bingo was his name-oh!”

The blackness was all but absolute. The
sound booth, hallway, and control room were all inner rooms, with no exterior
windows. I stumbled back toward my chair. Across the table from me, Tracy
Truett was making terrified whimpers. In the vicinity of the locked doors
behind me, Pavlov was still barking.

“Pavlov, cease!”

She instantly stopped, but let out a low
growl.

“Why did you bring that big German
shepherd with you, Allida?” the voice asked. “Do you think I’m going to let a
little thing like a dog stop me from killing you?”

He laughed. The disembodied and amplified
voice in the blackness was terrifying. Pavlov was likely all that was
preventing Joel’s immediate attack. Did Joel know how much better dogs can find
their way through the dark than humans can? Maybe there was a way to use that
to my advantage.

I felt around the butcher block table for
the phone. I grabbed the handset. There was no dial tone. I dropped it in
disgust and said under my breath to Tracy, “You told me Joel was with you all
afternoon. I believed you!”

“I thought he was,” Tracy sobbed. “But I
nodded out for a couple of hours. He claimed he did, too, but he must have
drugged me.”

At least this meant there was a slim
chance Sage was
still alive.
Joel had had very little time to snatch Sage, ditch the white rental car, and
get back to his house with no blood on his clothing in time for Tracy to be his
alibi. Plus, Greg had said that Joel arrived almost the same time he did...and
again, no blood on Joel’s clothing.

Tracy’s whimpers turned to halting sobs. “I
can’t stand the dark! You know that! Don’t do this to me!”

“Turn the lights on, Joel,” I shouted to
no avail. Tracy made sputtering, raspy noises. She was losing it. That there
were two of us in addition to Pavlov was our only real advantage. I had to help
Tracy keep her wits.

I fumbled my way around the table to stand
beside her. I grabbed her arm and said into her ear, “He must be in the control
room. Can you control the lighting to this room from there?”

No answer, just quiet sobbing.

“Tracy!” I cried in as loud a whisper as I
dared. “You have to hold yourself together!”

She took a noisy breath. “That room’s the
brains for the entire building.”

I had to get in there, somehow. I had to
turn the broadcast back on and notify the police that the killer had us
trapped. “Can Joel hear us?” I whispered.

“If he wants to. He can hear us through
the mikes. His control panel for the microphones works the same as mine.”

“Sorry I had to cut your broadcast short,”
Joel said. “I’m broadcasting a nice little tape I spliced together this
afternoon, and I just needed to air enough of the live broadcast to con the police.
I’ve got Greg’s fingerprints on the tape and everything. It’ll take the police
a good half hour to figure out what’s going on. By that time, it’ll look as
though I killed Greg in self defense after he killed the two of you.”

My eyes adjusted to what minuscule
incidental lighting there was. I could make out Tracy’s and Pavlov’s
silhouettes. Pavlov was pacing in front of the doors to the hallway and the
control room where Joel Meyer had enthroned himself. “We need to disconnect all
but one microphone.”

“I can hea-r-r you,” Joel taunted. “Don’t
think you can outsmart me, ladies. Let’s not forget, I’m the one with the
switchblade that’s going to slit your throats! Allida, if you want to save your
shepherd’s life, tie her up! Now!”

Tracy still took rasping breaths as if she
were suffocating, but rapidly pulled microphone jacks out from the control
panel in front of her. In the meantime, I blindly disconnected two microphones
and pushed them and then heavy stands to one side of the table. We now had a
couple of makeshift weapons to defend ourselves. Also, we could now control
what Joel could or could not hear us say.

I grabbed this last live mike, covered it
with my hand, and whispered into Tracy’s ear, “Take this mike. Keep him
talking. When I say ‘Now,’ turn the volume all the way up and scream into the
mike as loud as you can.”

“Plotting something, girls? I wouldn’t
bother. Your only exits are bolted shut. I control every piece of electronic
equipment from in here. So let me tell you my demands. If you do what I say, I’ll
turn the lights back on, okay, Trace?”

“You tell him no deal or we’ll never get
out of here alive,” I whispered.

“I want the lights on!” she whispered back
angrily.

“The darkness is our only advantage,” I
retorted.

“Well? I’m waiting,” he taunted.

“What do I need to do?” Tracy asked him.

“Use one of the cables to the microphones
you just disconnected, and tie up that dog. As soon as it’s done, I’ll turn on
the lights.”

“No way,” I answered for her. “Pavlov,
come.” She trotted over, and I unbuckled her collar. Now Joel wouldn’t have an
easy means to grab hold of her and control her.

He chuckled. “Al, you haven’t seen how
Tracy gets when she’s caught in the dark, have you? Let me put it this way. If
I were you, I’d be more afraid of being trapped in a small, dark room with her
than I would be of what I’m going to do to you. At least that part will be
quick and painless.”

“Give us a minute. We need to discuss
this,” I said into the mike, then covered it with my hand. I remembered from
before that the tiled ceiling was unusually low hanging. “Can I get out and
into the hall by crawling above the tiles in the ceiling?”

“No, there is a really small crawl space
up there, but it’s only between this room and the control booth. It’s there so
they can run wires.”

“Time’s up, campers! What’s it gonna be?”

“I can’t do this, Allida,” Tracy whined.

“Yes, you can,” I whispered back harshly
to her. “No deal,” I said into the microphone. “Pavlov is the only protection
we’ve got, and we’re not tying her up!”

“You need to reconsider that decision,”
Joel said, his voice taking on an angry edge. “Remember, I’ve got a big, sharp
knife in here, and your precious dog will be my first victim. If you tie her, I
won’t harm her.”

As he was talking, I whispered to Tracy to
cover the mike, then I climbed onto the thick, heavy table and fumbled blindly
till I sensed that I’d lifted one of the acoustic ceiling tiles. The ceiling
tiles couldn’t support my weight, but I reached around until I felt a joist,
then swung myself up. At long last those gymnastic classes my REC teachers were
always trying to force me to take instead of basketball had paid off.

The air was stagnant—hot and musty.
I fought like hell
not to
cough, which would let Joel know my location. There was just enough room for me
to move on hands and knees, and yet the crawl space had been built with a
long-limbed person in mind. Two four-inch ledges were wide enough for my hands
and knees, but straddled a two-foot wide strip of ceiling tiles that ran down
the center of the sound booth and control room. It was all I could do to keep
my knees on the inner edges of the wood. This would make for slow going, but it
was our only chance.

“What do you want from us, Joel?” Tracy
asked. “Did you kill those women?”

“I had no choice, Trace. If Hannah would’ve
just backed me financially and helped me with the recipe, I’d have been set for
life. Only she catches on to how I’d spoiled her dog’s food. She starts waving
this gun at me. The damn thing went off as I was trying to wrench it away. Then
I bumped into Beth Gleason accidentally. I was just on my way to meet Allida
for the first time and see what the deal was with the damned collie, and I run
into Beth walking him. She recognized me from class...and Sage starts barking
at me. She would have gone straight to the police. It was crazy. She yells at
the dog to run, and she pulls this switchblade out. What was I supposed to do?
It was self defense.”

It was hard to orient myself. As best I
could tell from the sound of Joel’s voice, I was roughly halfway there. But
what was the point? Joel was twice my size and muscular. I couldn’t out-battle
him for the controls.

To kill either of us, he would have to
leave the control room and go into the sound booth. I could drop down, lock the
door behind him, and get at the controls to broadcast a plea for help. That
left just Pavlov to protect Tracy from Joel, but I saw no better alternative.

“Where’s Greg?” Tracy asked. “Did you kill
him, too?”

“Not yet. He’s tied up in the back office.
I’m giving
you gals sixty more
seconds to tie up that dog then I’m coming in, either way. It’s up to you,
Allida. You tie up your dog, she lives. You keep her loose, she’s the first
victim.”

“Okay, okay,” Tracy said. “You win. Allida’s
tying her up right now.”

Something was running down my
face—tears or sweat. Probably both.
Sixty seconds! I had to move
faster!
Tracy was making noises that sounded as if a cable were being
dragged across the table. She was trying to fake out Joel; she was too smart to
tie up Pavlov.

“Want to know something funny?” Joel asked
with an anguished chuckle. “This was where I stashed Sage so I could get back
home before you woke up. That’s what caused this whole bloody mess! Figured
nobody was going to be in here, and it was the last place anyone would connect
me to or think to look for the dog. Then you, Miss Bossy Bitch Truett, sent
Greg out here! I couldn’t get the dog out of the building without Greg seeing.
Now he’s going to have to take the fall for all of this. You just cost three
human lives to try and save one stupid collie!”

“Let us go, Joel. It’s too late. You’ll
never get away with this.”