Cellar Full of Cole: A Cole Sage Mystery #2 Read online

  Cole turned and bent to pick up his cell phone; in that instant, Terry grabbed the handle of a shovel in the back of the truck and struck Cole a thunderous blow to the back of his head.

  SEVENTEEN

  As his eyelids slowly parted, Cole saw nothing. The pain in his head brought an instant wave of nausea, and the slightest movement blasted white sparkling stars across his vision. Everything was black. Cole fell back into a swirling darkness.

  How long was he out? When Cole woke again, he was aware of a hard surface against his cheek. He rolled ever so slowly and put his hand on the back of his head. There was a lump the size of a hardboiled egg. Slowly, he opened his eyes and for a moment was gripped in panic. Was he blind? He blinked several times. Still there was nothing but blackness.

  He closed his eyes and felt his head a second time and gently ran his fingers over the lump. His hair was crusted with what he assumed was dried blood. The wound still oozed, and his fingers were wet with warm, sticky fluid. As he felt about, the surface around him was cold and damp. Cole turned his head slowly and saw a small slit of light above him. Then it was gone.

  What he thought was blindness was a total darkness. Feeling around him, he decided he was lying on a concrete floor. Cole carefully tried to stand. Slowly he brought himself up to his hands and knees. The pain in his head was excruciating, but he needed to stand up. First in a crouching position, then he stretched out his arms. He reached above his head; he felt nothing. With his hands still stretched above his head, he stood straight. He stretched his arms side to side and slowly turned. He didn’t come in contact with anything, so he took a small step forward, again nothing. Slowly and carefully, he moved in the direction where he thought he had seen the light.

  Then, there it was again. He shuffled at a snail’s pace toward the sliver of light. His head pounded. The surface below his feet was rough, and twice he felt an uneven change in the floor. Cole froze when his foot hit something and it clattered in front of him. His breathing was quick and shallow. He kicked an empty beer or soda can. He continued forward. As he moved closer, the light widened. If I am in a room, he thought, the light must be near the ceiling.

  With each step, he became more confident. With his right foot, he reached out and determined the path was clear, then in a shuffling step, moved ahead. He judged it to be about six to eight feet when his shins hit something hard. Cole bent and waved his hands in front of him until he hit something. It was wood. He felt the width of the surface, a little over three feet. He reached up and his hand struck another hard surface. He leaned forward, in front and above him was a third flat wooden surface. It was a staircase.

  There was a handrail to his left and a wall on the right side of the steps. With handrail firmly in hand, Cole took the first step up. As he moved forward, it was clear that the light was coming from under a door. The stairs creaked and he moved slowly. In an effort to stop the creaking, Cole moved closer to the handrail and placed his hip firmly against it. As he moved up the stairs, he counted silently.

  There were eleven steps to the door. The light was indeed coming from under the door. Cole leaned close and could see under the door into what he believed must be the kitchen. He could see yellowed beige linoleum and the bottoms of cupboards. To the left of the door, he could see the chrome legs of a table and chairs. The light seemed to be coming through a window. It was still daytime. Cole strained to hear something, anything, coming from the house, but there was nothing but the whirring of the refrigerator compressor.

  He was in a basement or storm cellar. Kosciuszko knocked him out. He didn’t see it coming, and he couldn’t remember how he got down here. He had to get out. Cole took the doorknob firmly in hand and turned. Nothing, it didn’t move at all. He pulled and the door gave about an eighth of an inch. The surface of the door was smooth and cool. This was no ordinary interior door. It was solid, and as Cole ran his hand under the crack, he could feel that it was at least two inches thick.

  The frame on the door was a rough wood, unpainted and thick. Cole felt on either side of the door for a light switch but found nothing. There was no window or other light source below him, confirming his suspicion that he was underground.

  The bending and straining his eyes in the darkness made his headache worse. He turned and slowly lowered himself onto the top step. Elbows on knees, Cole rested his face against his palms. He closed his eyes and rocked gently with the throbbing of his head. He tried to think, tried to plan. He must come up with a way of getting out of the basement, but his head hurt so badly, his thoughts were scattered and he lost focus.

  As he sat in the silence, fragments of images flashed in front of him. He remembered fighting with Terry Kosciuszko. For a while, he couldn’t remember why. Then he remembered Sophie’s call. What about his flight? He would surely have missed it by now, but it was still light outside. How long had he been in the cellar? He could not come up with how Terry could have hit him. Cole worried that his wound was serious. He was sure he was concussed, but his concern was the internal damage. His head ached deep inside, not just the lump on the back of his head. He knew that a blow to the head could easily cause swelling of the brain, and he also knew no medical care would be forthcoming.

  The floor was cool, almost cold to the touch. Perhaps, he thought, laying my head against the cold cement will help the swelling. As he made his way back down the stairs, the sliver of light faded behind him. Within a few steps, he was cast back into complete darkness, but thankful with each step that the blackness was for want of light and not blindness as he first thought. When he reached the last step, Cole decided to explore his surroundings. With his right hand against the wall and his left moving from side to side in front of him, he began his way around the cellar.

  Within a few feet of the stairs, he felt door hinges. Small hinges on what seemed to be plywood doors. His best guess was cabinets. He used both hands to trace the edge and soon came to a latch with a padlock. As he moved along the wall, he came to two more sets of doors. He was so focused on the last door that he ran into the opposing wall, striking his forehead.

  Moving slowly and more carefully to his left, he discovered shelves. Twelve inches wide and about eight feet in length, the shelves were supported every three feet with metal brackets. Like a blind man at a market, Cole let his fingers explore the contents of the shelves. There were lots of boxes and cans. He smelled the cans and determined they were paint. The boxes were mostly filled with cups and glassware wrapped in newspaper. While unwrapping a feather light, fist-sized wad of newspaper, he dropped its contents. The popping sound it made hitting the floor identified it as a Christmas tree ornament.

  Cole’s heart skipped a beat when he reached a large, flat, smooth surface; he identified it as a workbench. He searched frantically for tools. A hammer, wrench, screwdriver, anything he could use as a weapon. He searched the wall behind for anything hanging. Cole ran his hand over the wall behind the bench, feeling dozens of little holes. It was a pegboard, but there were no hooks or anything on it. He searched the shelves below; nothing but an oily rag. He pulled the leg of the workbench, thinking he found a club, but the four large lag bolts he found on each of the corners prevented its removal.

  As he passed the workbench, Cole felt something loose and cloth-like at his feet. Kneeling, he felt the rough texture of burlap. He lifted part of the pile and counted as he dropped burlap bags to the workbench. A sharp pain in his hand was followed by a high-pitched squealing. As his hand made contact with a long boney sack of fur, a rat sunk its teeth into the fleshy part of his hand just below his wrist. He squeezed down hard on the rat’s neck, but it wouldn’t let go. Harder and harder he squeezed until he felt bones crack and its body go limp.

  Cole cursed under his breath and threw the animal hard against the wall. Without thinking, he began sucking at the wound. Suddenly the fear of infection, rabies, or worse raced through Cole’s mind, and he began to spit and wretch. He kicked at the stack of bags and heard a faint squea
king sound. The bags were a nest. Cole kicked and stomped the bags. He felt the soft squish of the squeaking baby rats under his feet.

  The first batch of bags he picked up were safely on the work bench, but the bigger pile of sacks on the floor were no doubt covered in rat feces and the bloody remains of the nest he had stomped. The idea to use the large bags for warmth and to soften the hard cold floor now repulsed him. Perhaps later he would return to the five or six he had placed on the bench. For now, he moved on.

  The wall opposite the staircase was bare except for a cabinet in the center. Again, Cole traced the doors until he found the latch; this time there was no padlock. The hinges squealed as he pulled one door open, then the other. The cabinet was about four feet wide and housed five shelves. Starting at the top, Cole examined each shelf. On the first shelf there was a metallic tool or machine of some kind. He turned it in his hands and ran his fingers over the surface. There were perforations and ridges on the surface. A small knob on a short shaft that rotated was at one end. Cole couldn’t figure out what it was. The second shelf was nearly full of jars.

  As a boy, Cole often went to the basement of his aunt’s house to get jars of canned peaches, apricots, and pears. It took only a moment for Cole to recognize the smooth flat lid and ridged screw-on rings atop one of the large glass jars. Without thinking, he unscrewed the ring and set it on the shelf. Just like when he was a kid and used to swipe jars of peaches from the basement and eat them with his cousin in the tree fort in the back yard, Cole slipped his fingernails under the lid and with slow even pressure, popped it up.

  He raised the jar to his nose and sniffed. The smell was sweet and cool. He stuck the tip of his finger in the jar and tasted. The sugary syrup was smooth and refreshing on his tongue. Cole suddenly realized how thirsty he was. He put the jar to his lips and sipped.

  Inside the jar were fat slices of peaches. The soft sweet flesh of the peaches felt cool and welcome in Cole’s stomach. Again, he wondered how long he had been in the cellar. He put the lid and twist ring back on the jar and placed it on the right side of the shelf. He would finish it later. The rest of the shelves also contained canning jars. Cole nodded as he closed the cabinet doors, knowing there was food.

  He was three-quarters of the way around the cellar walls. As he rounded the last corner, his foot hit something against the wall. Shoved tight into the corner were two boxes. The bottom box was heavy and sealed with what felt like duct tape. A smaller box sat on top, and as Cole felt the box and lifted gently, a lid slipped up and off the bottom section. Inside were five or six tubes, about an inch around and about a foot long. It was hard to tell what they weighed, but they were not hollow. Cole’s first thought was that they were dynamite.

  He tried to remember what he knew about explosives. He seemed to remember seeing dynamite packed in wooden boxes, not cardboard, and it was in layers of sawdust. Was his information from an old movie? Or did he read it? It just didn’t seem to figure that someone even as demented as Terry would just store dynamite in a box in the cellar. Cole carefully ran his fingers over the tube in his hand. At one end there seemed to be a cap or lid. He gently turned the cap and it turned easily. It was a flare!

  Cole quickly pulled the duct tape from the other box. Inside were chains, snow chains, no doubt he was right about the other box containing flares. He could have light. He removed the cap from the flare and felt for the striking surface. It only took two attempts until the cellar filled with the bright red phosphorus-fueled light from the flare. Cole could see the workbench, the cabinets, the stairs, and to the right of the stairs was the furnace and hot water heater.

  He quickly returned to the cabinet with the canned peaches. Aside from the peaches, the shelves were stocked with berries, green beans, lima beans, and a tomato-based sauce of some kind. He wouldn’t starve. He crossed to the burlap bags and quickly sorted the matted, chewed, bloody bags from the clean and stacked the clean bags on the workbench.

  The heat from the flare was beginning to burn his hand. In the few moments left before he would have to drop the flare, he found an old rusty bucket beneath the water heater and dropped the flare into it. He could use the pail’s handle to carry the flare’s light around the cellar.

  The center of the floor was mostly clear except for a pile of shelving boards and an old set of kitchen cabinet drawers and doors. Near the base of the stairs was a stain on the floor. It was his blood. On the wall opposite the workbench, an old table leaned against the wall. As the flare burned down, Cole searched frantically for something that could be used as a weapon, but it was no use. It was as though someone had cleared the room of anything that could be used or made into a weapon.

  The flare sparked and sputtered as it began to burn out. Cole glanced around quickly making sure there was nothing he missed. As the flare flashed its dying light, he saw a bare light bulb above his head.

  EIGHTEEN

  Tom Harris was the picture of comfort. His wife went upstairs to the bedroom to watch Desperate Housewives, and left him alone in peace to watch Die Hard on one of the “free this weekend” cable movie channels. He changed into an old pair of Kankakee Community College sweatpants he babied and protected since the days when he had played on the baseball team. Carefully balanced on the arm of his chair were a half bottle of Miller High Lite and a bag of thick-cut potato chips. Between his legs was a bowl of his special Cottage cheese, ranch and shrimp dip. He was totally in his element and savoring every moment of the last hours of the weekend. Then the phone rang.

  “Yeah,” Harris said, forewarning the caller he was not pleased with being disturbed.

  “I’m trying to reach Tom Harris.”

  “I don’t want any.” Harris said, nearly hanging up.

  “Wait! I’m not a salesman!” The voice pleaded.

  “So?”

  “This is Ben Mitchell in California, Cole Sage’s son-in-law.”

  Harris grabbed the bowl of dip, took his legs off the ottoman, and sat up.

  “Sorry, Ben. Usually Sunday evening calls are telemarketers. Anything wrong?”

  “Probably not, but I can’t seem to reach Cole. We were going to surprise him at the airport and take him out to dinner. He wasn’t on the flight he gave us, and he won’t answer his cell phone. I hate to bother you, but yours is the only number I have in Chicago. Cole gave it to Erin in case of an emergency.”

  Harris cleared his throat. “I spoke with him on Friday morning, said he was killing time before his flight. Tell you what; I’ll make some calls on this end, see what’s up. He probably—” Harris paused. “He called me about an assault on a woman out in Will County. The guy walked, long story, maybe Cole stuck around to follow up. I’ll do some checking.”

  “I’d appreciate it, my wife is really worried. Cole’s usually pretty good about keeping in touch.” Ben took a long breath. “You don’t think—”

  “Hey, Cole’s a big boy. He probably put his phone in his carry-on and has forgotten all about it.” Harris forced a laugh. He knew as well as Ben that one of Cole’s biggest gripes in life was people who stood you up and didn’t bother to call. “I’ll call you in the morning. Where can I reach you?”

  The son-in-law and the detective exchanged phone numbers and shallow reassurances that nothing was wrong. They both hung up dreading their next call.

  * * *

  Cole awoke to the sound of footsteps overhead. For a moment he lay perfectly still, not breathing, straining to hear what was happening above him. He recognized the clanging of pots and pans and the sliding in and out of the drawer below a stove. The footsteps back and forth above him must have been Kosciuszko’s trips from the stove to the refrigerator and back. Cole rolled from his side to his back and winced at the pain and stiffness in his back and shoulders. He tried to stretch, and the movement awakened his full bladder.

  Cole felt his way to the far corner of the cellar and peed in the pail with the extinguished flare. His body ached from standing and sitting on hard surfac
es. He had fashioned a bed from burlap bags, but the cold damp concrete worked its way through the burlap, making sleep difficult.

  In the darkness, time was a clock with no hands. Cole ran his hand across his chin and then his cheek. From the growth of the stubble, he estimated it to be least three days since he awoke in the cellar. By the activity above him, he knew it was morning. The footsteps were the first noise Kosciuszko had made since he had thrown Cole in the cellar.

  After exploring the cellar, Cole sat in the darkness and tried to think of ways of using the items he had found as weapons, tools, or any purpose that would help him escape. The wood was too clumsy to use as a weapon. There were no sharp objects that would allow him to shape or cut the shelving boards. He thought of breaking a jar, but the size and shape of the canning jars would make them difficult, if not impossible, to break and use as weapons. To use them as a tool was equally impractical. The fear of cutting himself outweighed the limited use that broken glass would be on the inch thick lumber.

  The flares provided the greatest potential, but his eyes would never adjust quickly enough for the element of surprise to make them effective in an attack. If and when Terry Kosciuszko ever opened the door, his eyes would be well adjusted to light. Cole figured Terry would turn on the cellar light so the darkness would not work to his disadvantage. It was then Cole decided to remove the light bulb. The darkness was going to be his weapon.

  Kosciuszko made no contact with Cole. The variables in his situation kept Cole’s mind occupied and gave him focus and purpose as the hours rolled by. He played out dozens of scenarios, none of which worked to his benefit. He would simply have to wait until his captor communicated in some way. Terry, knowingly or not, prepared the perfect cell. There was nothing that could be used for any aggressive purpose and there was a supply of food that required no preparation or delivery to the prisoner.