Read The Body in the Basement Online

Authors: Katherine Hall Page

The Body in the Basement (30 page)

It was almost 10:30. They had been at the cabin much longer than they had thought.
“Look, just drop me at the end of my road and go get Fred.”
“Are you sure?”
“So long as I have the flashlight, I'll be fine. I'd probably be fine without it, I've walked this road so many times.”
“All right, but I'm calling your house in a little while. I want to be sure.”
“That's very sweet, but be real. What's going to happen to me?”
“Do you want to take the knife?”
Samantha shuddered. “No thank you. And tell Fred that I think we should give it to Earl as soon as possible. Tonight. I think I should tell my mom about it, too.”
“Yeah. I'm sure he'll agree. Why do you suppose Duncan didn't come in and blast us for being there? The last time, he yelled his head off.”
“Maybe he planned to come back with his friends and ambush us. Or maybe he didn't know who or how many we were.”
This first alternative left Samantha feeling distinctly shaky.
They were at the end of the Miller's road. Arlene stopped the car.
“Good-bye. I hate to do this, except I'm late already—”
Samantha cut her off. “Don't be silly. Go! It was my idea. If Fred is nice enough to let us have the car, the least we can do is get it back to him on time. He's probably imagining all kinds of things, from crumpled fenders to dropped transmissions.”
Arlene laughed. “Talk to you later.”
The moon was waning yet still quite full and bright. Samantha switched the flashlight off and decided to jog home. It was beautiful and the familiar sight of the dark trees on the opposite shore as she passed the first inlet comforted her. But who would comfort Duncan? The trunk and the candles above it were a virtual shrine to his dead father. She imagined him slipping his skinny arms into the sleeves of that familiar jacket, trying to recapture some of the warmth and security those other arms had provided. She thought about her own father and what would evoke him most. His handkerchiefs, she decided.
Big white squares of the finest cotton. When she was sick with a cold, her nose raw from Kleenex, she used those. They smelled slightly of the drawer where he kept them—a drawer filled with years of Old Spice soap on a rope sets given to him by his kids. She felt tears pricking at her eyes and stopped to speak to herself sternly. “Your father's not dead, Miss Samantha Miller. Get a grip, girl.” She laughed when she realized she'd said it out loud. She started jogging again, her mood elevated as she brought her knees up and down. She was almost home.
She was almost home before she realized that she wasn't the only runner out that night. Someone dressed in black streaked by her and knocked her to the ground. She screamed, felt a sharp pain on the back of her head, and had time for just one impression before losing consciousness.
Lights. Small, red twinkling lights.
The phone was ringing. Pix swung her legs over the side of the bed, shoved her feet into her slippers, and ran downstairs. It must be Samantha needing a ride home.
“Hi, Mrs. Miller,” Arlene said cheerily. “I know it's a little late, but can I speak to Samantha?”
“Isn't she with you?” Pix's chest tightened and her heart began to pound.
“You mean she's not home yet! I left her off at the end of your road about half an hour ago.”
Pix dropped the phone and raced up to Samantha's room, calling her daughter's name. She had to be there. Pix hadn't heard her come in. Obviously, Samantha hadn't wanted to bother her and had gone straight to bed. Even as Pix opened the door, she knew none of this was true. The room was dark and the bed still neatly made.
Pausing only to grab her keys from the kitchen counter, she picked up the phone and told Arlene to call the police—and
the ambulance corps. Then she got in the car and started slowly down the road, searching on either side for Samantha.
The moon was bright; if it hadn't been, she would have missed her. Samantha was lying under a tree, partially concealed by a stand of large ferns. A few feet farther on, the ground dropped off to a ledge of jagged granite rocks, now nearly covered by the incoming tide.
She ran to her, calling, “Samantha! Samantha!” But there was no answer. She was sobbing as she reached her daughter, carefully putting her arms about her. She was warm and Pix could feel her soft breath on her mother's cheek. She was alive.
“Samantha! Oh dear God, please help us!” Pix had no idea what her child's injuries might be, so she dared not move her, but knelt next to her, cradling her, burying her face in her daughter's sweet-smelling hair. The night air was warm, yet Pix had never felt so cold.
She held her daughter's hand and felt for her pulse. It was steady. Samantha's eyelids fluttered.
“Samantha? Can you hear me?”
“Where am I, Mom? What's going on?” Samantha's voice started as a whisper, then got stronger. She looked about her in agitation. “My head hurts. It was Duncan. His shoes. I saw his shoes. Duncan hit me.” She reached her hand to the back of her head and pulled it quickly away.
“Mom, I'm bleeding! I'm scared! Do something!” She began to cry.
“The ambulance will be here soon. Try to stay still.” Pix had not seen the blood. She lay down next to her daughter, with her arm over Samantha's body to keep her calm. Where was the ambulance! With her other hand, she grasped Samantha's hand, wet with her own blood, tightly.
“Sssh, honey, don't worry. Everything's going to be all right.”
But it wasn't.
After what seemed like several hours, she heard the ambulance
siren and tears streamed down her face in relief. Earl was right behind them. He ran toward them.
“What happened?” he asked as the rescue workers rapidly assessed Samantha's injuries.
“I don't know! Arlene Prescott called and said she'd dropped Samantha off at the end of the road. When Samantha wasn't in the house, I came to look for her. She said it was Duncan. She saw his shoes!” The rescue workers were wrapping Samantha in a blanket and moving her onto a stretcher.
“She's had a concussion; we're treating her for shock,” one of the squad said. “And she has a scalp wound that's going to need some sutures, but nothing seems to be broken. You want to ride with her?”
Pix climbed in the back of the ambulance for the drive over the bridge to the mainland. Samantha seemed to be sleeping. Pix was on one side, a corps member, bless him, on the other.
Duncan Cowley had attacked her daughter. Intending what?
At the hospital, Samantha was taken away before Pix could get out of the ambulance. Earl had been following and gave her a hand.
“I've been in touch with the state police and they're going down to the island to question the boy and his parents. You know she's going to get the best care possible here. I know how hard it is, but she's young and healthy. Everything's going to be fine, Pix.”
Pix did not trust herself to do more than nod and let him lead her into the waiting room, where a nurse promptly put a cup of coffee loaded with sugar into her hand. Arlene and Fred were already there. For a moment, Pix was in the peculiar position of having to comfort Arlene when what she was feeling was anger. Why hadn't she driven Samantha to the door!
“I shouldn't have let her walk home,” Arlene wailed.
Fred looked at Pix and told his girlfriend to be quiet. “No
one's blaming you. Now stop bothering Mrs. Miller.” Arlene took a mighty gulp and calmed down.
Then they waited.
Someone at the nurse's station offered them more coffee, but Pix didn't want any. The cup she had drunk was making her feel jangly. She had called Sam soon after they'd arrived and he was waiting by the phone. She wanted him by her side. Hospital waiting rooms. She thought of all the hours she had spent in them: her father's last illness, a friend's mastectomy, Sam's ulcer, Danny's broken arm. No one talked except in occasional hushed voices. Each was totally absorbed in the thoughts being directed toward the room you weren't allowed to be in.
She knew, as Earl had said, that Samantha was going to be okay, but the nature of the attack—and all that blood—was taking her down these dark corridors in her mind.
Then, as it happened in hospitals, the time stretched out beyond anxiety into boredom, and finally numb fatigue.
Arlene suddenly got up. “The knife! I forgot all about the knife. It's in the car.”
“What knife?” Fred asked.
“The one in Duncan's trunk. Thank God he didn't have it with him.”
Earl tuned into the conversation. He'd been off with Jill on the long white sandy beach out at the Point.
He came over to them and said, “You better tell me all about it—and keep your voices down. We don't want to worry Mrs. Miller.”
If Pix noticed that Earl and Fred left soon after, it didn't really register, nor did Fred's return alone. Earl walked in later. What did capture her immediate attention was the entry of a man in a white coat.
“Mrs. Miller?” Pix jumped up, for once unaware of the picture she presented. It was an odd one in these wee hours of
the morning—she was in her pajamas, with Earl's jacket over them.
It was a young doctor, as most of them seemed to be these days. “Your daughter would like to see you.” He was smiling.
“She's going to be all right?” Her tears flowed freely. Earl, Arlene, and Fred gathered close.
“Yes, though she's going to have a very large lump on her head and we had to do a little embroidery on her scalp—not much. The ambulance crew said from the way she was lying, she struck a tree root or a rock when she fell, which knocked her out cold. Samantha says someone pushed her and it must have been with some force. We also did a CAT scan and I don't see anything to be concerned about. We do want to keep her over night to be sure, but she's a very healthy specimen and should be just fine.”
The news was overwhelming.
“When can I have a few words with her, Doctor?” Earl asked. “There seems to be an assault involved and we need all the information she can give us.”
“If you keep it very brief, I don't see why you can't do it now. But”—he looked back at Arlene and Fred—“that's all. The best thing for her now is rest. She was pretty shaken up.”
They nodded solemnly.
“Tell her … well, tell her I'm sorry and give her my love. And I'll be here as soon as she can have visitors.”
Pix gave Arlene a hug, her recent anger totally vanished. Samantha had been dropped off at the end of the road, as had all of them day and night, hundreds of times.
The sight of her daughter in a hospital bed threatened to unhinge her, but Pix took a firm hold of herself—and Samantha.
“I have to call Daddy right away. He's waiting. Then I'll be right back. Earl wants to talk to you about what happened. Do you feel up to it?”
“They gave me something to make my head stop hurting
and I feel a little dopey, but I can tell him what happened. It was so quick, Mom.” Samantha gave a little sob. “Duncan must really hate me!”
“Don't think about it, sweetheart. He's a very, very troubled boy.”
As Pix was leaving to get Earl, the nurse came in. “You have a phone call, Mrs. Miller. You can take it out here.”
Pix followed her and soon heard her husband's familiar voice. She told him what the doctor had said. “I just wish you were here, even though she's fine.”
“Well, I will be in about three and a half hours tops.”
“What!”
“I couldn't simply sit home. I'm a little south of Portland and will be at the hospital as soon as I can. Nobody's too concerned about speed limits at this time of night. If I do get stopped, I'll have them call Earl.”
“Please be careful, darling.” Pix was thrilled that he was on his way, but one Miller in the hospital was more than enough.
“Don't worry, I will.”
She hung up and went back to Samantha's room, where she intended to spend the night.
Earl had finished questioning her.
“We'll let you know what happens with the Athertons. Duncan must have been upset that they were in his cabin and he blamed Samantha. But why he didn't confront her, I don't know. Usually, he just yells. I never expected violence.” Earl's lips were tight. “He's been trouble since he arrived and we've been too soft with him. Not this time.”
“In his cabin?” Pix had missed the story so far.
“I'll let Samantha tell you. The doctor told me I had five minutes and they're up. Take care of yourself, Pix. I'll be by in the morning.” He gave her a quick hug and left. Before the door closed, she ran over and told him, “Sam is on his way.” Earl nodded. “I'm sorry this happened. Samantha's a terrific kid. Now you get some rest, too.”
Samantha was barely conscious, but for different reasons than earlier. She had heard the last part of their conversation, though.
“Daddy's coming?”
“Yes, he'll be here in a couple of hours.”
“Good. I bet he wants to beat the shit out of Duncan.”
Pix did not deny it. She wanted to do it herself.
 
The next morning, things were not so clear. Duncan Cowley had been at the nine o'clock movie that did not get out until past eleven. Two friends swore to it and Wendell Marshall, who manned the ticket booth, distinctly remembered selling him a ticket.
“It's hard to forget a kid with a hoop in his ear and green hair,” he'd told Earl. Duncan had apparently streaked his locks with some sort of dye for the evening out. Now in the hard light of day, it looked pretty pathetic as he sat in Earl's office uneasily flanked by his parents. The state police had come to the house the night before and Jim had still not shaken off his indignation at his stepson for being the cause of their visit.
“In all my years on Sanpere Island, the police have never had to come to my house for any reason whatsoever. Now we want some answers here and we want them fast.”
Earl thought this was his line, but he let it lie.
“Duncan,” he said to the boy in a milder tone. The kid looked like he'd been through the mill. “We just want to know what happened. No one's accusing you of anything.”
“Be real,” the boy shouted. “You're never going to believe a fucking word I say, so why don't you go ahead and lock me up!” Earl wondered where Duncan had found the energy. Since he'd come in with Valerie and Jim, he'd sat slumped over in the chair, dressed as usual in black and smelling of stale beer and cigarettes. He was probably hungover from the night before. When the police had not found him at home, they'd driven around the island, turning their flashlight
beams into a number of cars and soon locating Duncan in the backseat of one, trying to hide a six-pack under his scrawny frame.

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