Chương 4
“Baby.”
His face was wet with tears.
“Baby down.”
Rachel held him tighter.
I looked toward the ceiling.
The hidden passage ran downward.
Not upward.
I went to the basement door and opened it.
Cold air touched my face.
Behind me, Rachel said, “Daniel, don’t.”
I switched on the basement light.
At the bottom of the stairs, directly beneath Ethan’s room, a narrow line of dust drifted from behind a shelving unit I had never moved.
Something knocked once from the other side.
Then a woman’s voice, weak but unmistakably alive, said, “Please.”
I froze with one hand on the basement doorframe.
Rachel whispered, “You heard that too.”
The voice came again.
“Please.”
It was not coming from a speaker.
It was not thin or distant enough to belong to a recording.
Someone was behind the shelving unit.
I took one step down.
Rachel caught the back of my shirt.
“Call the police.”
“If somebody’s hurt—”
“Call them while we go.”
Her voice had changed into the clipped tone she used when panic threatened to become useless.
I pulled out my phone.
The dispatcher kept me on the line while I moved down the basement stairs.
Rachel stayed near the top with Ethan pressed against her chest.
The basement smelled of concrete, cardboard, and the detergent I bought in bulk because single parenting had turned every purchase into arithmetic.
The shelving unit stood against the north wall, loaded with paint cans, old tax folders, and three boxes I had never unpacked after moving in.
A faint line of disturbed dust ran along the floor behind its right leg.
“Can you hear me?” I called.
There was a pause.
Then, “Yes.”
A woman.
Young, maybe.
Her voice was rough.
“Are you injured?”
Another pause.
“I don’t know.”
The answer frightened me more than a scream would have.
The dispatcher told me not to move anything until officers arrived unless there was immediate danger.
Rachel said, “Tell her there’s a child down there.”
I relayed it.
The dispatcher’s questions became faster.
I stepped closer to the shelves.
“Who are you?”
Silence.
Then, “Melissa.”
Everything in me seemed to contract.
Behind me, Rachel said, “What?”
I lifted a hand without turning around.
“Melissa?”
“Yes.”
The shelves blurred for a second.
The babysitter who had quit six days earlier was behind my basement wall.
The woman Ethan had started crying around was trapped inside my house.
I thought of every hour I had spent checking pipes and drafts while someone might have been ten feet below us.
“How long have you been there?”
“I don’t know.”
Her voice broke.
“Please get me out.”
The dispatcher told me officers were less than four minutes away.
Four minutes suddenly sounded obscene.
I put the phone on speaker and began taking boxes off the shelving unit.
“Daniel,” Rachel said.
“I’m not leaving her there.”
The first box contained Christmas decorations.
The second held Claire’s maternity clothes because I had never managed to donate them.
I shoved both aside.
Rachel came down two steps.
“Stay with Ethan.”
“I am with Ethan.”
“Upstairs.”
“No.”
The argument ended because the woman behind the wall started coughing.
It was a deep, ugly cough.
I pulled two paint cans away and found four bolts securing the shelving unit to the studs.
I grabbed a wrench from the toolbox.
The dispatcher told me again to wait.
I said, “She can barely talk.”
Rachel said, “Just do it.”
The first bolt came loose.
The second had rusted.
My hand slipped and struck the concrete wall.
Pain shot through my knuckles.
I swore.
Ethan began crying again.
Rachel bounced him.
“You’re okay.”
He was not looking at her.
He was staring at the shelving unit.
“Baby.”
The word came through his tears.
I stopped turning the wrench.
Rachel and I looked at each other.
Then someone began pounding on the front door upstairs.
“Police,” the dispatcher said.
Rachel ran up.
I kept working.
Footsteps moved across the kitchen.
Two officers came down with Rachel, one already speaking into a shoulder radio.
The older officer took one look at what I was doing.
“Sir, step back.”
“There’s a woman behind it.”
“We understand.”
“She says she’s Melissa.”
The younger officer stared at me.
“Melissa who?”
I gave her full name.
He wrote it down.
The older officer crouched near the shelving unit.
“Ma’am, can you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“Police department.”
She began crying.
Not loudly.
The sound seeped through the wall in short, exhausted breaths.
The officer asked whether she could move.
“I think so.”
“Are you restrained?”
“No.”
“Is anyone else with you?”
A long silence followed.
Then she said, “Not now.”
The younger officer’s head came up.
“What does that mean?”
Melissa did not answer.
The older officer stood.
He told us to go upstairs.
I refused.
He did not argue.
He simply looked at Ethan in Rachel’s arms.
“This may become a crime scene.”
That worked.
I followed Rachel.
Another cruiser had arrived outside.
Blue light moved across the living room windows and flashed over Ethan’s toys.
Our neighbor in the red cap stood on his lawn with his hose still running into the gutter.
He pretended not to stare.
Rachel lowered Ethan into the playpen.
He immediately reached for me.
I picked him up.
His body felt hot against mine.
“What happened to her?” Rachel whispered.
“I don’t know.”
“You hired her.”
“I know.”
“How does somebody end up inside your wall?”
“I don’t know.”
She pressed her lips together.
I could see the next question forming.
How does somebody end up inside your wall without you knowing?
I had no answer for that either.
The basement filled with heavy movements.
Metal scraped against concrete.
A third officer arrived with a pry bar.
Ten minutes passed.
Then fifteen.
The front door remained open because people kept entering.
One of them was a paramedic.
Another carried a medical bag.
Ethan grew quiet.
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At 6:02, the paramedics went downstairs.
At 6:07, one of them came back up and asked for a stretcher.
