Page 94 of To Have and to Hold

“Almost,” I replied, pushing back my blazer so I could rest my hands on my hips. If I didn’t contain them, I was afraid they’d break something.

“What are you thinking?” Knox stood beside me.

“That this is all too set up. There’s a reason Ed’s body was found over there.”

“Mm,” Knox said, looking to the stairs. “To keep our attention near the stairs and not farther into this room.”

“My inclination exactly.”

“So, what are we missing?” Knox indicated the empty floor at our feet, the workspace, the boxes. “This is your average homeowner’s basement. Tools, clutter, shit from the nineties, it’s all here. Only reason to come down and brave the world-renowned fear of basements is to retrieve items you never thought you needed. Or do laundry.”

What Knox said had me pausing. “Ed wasn’t much of a builder, was he?”

“Nothing to indicate he was.” Knox glanced at what held my attention. “But this is a rental place, remember. Maybe this stuff was held over from the previous tenants. We’ll ask the Abrams that and a helluva lot more. Or it was the Abrams’s themselves, I don’t know. I’ve diverted one of the patrol cars to go to Eugenie Abrams’s and bring her to the station so I can make sure we find that out. Why? What bit you?”

“For a guy who isn’t much of a handyman…” I crept closer, avoiding the yellow evidence placards on the ground. “He sure goes to his workbench a lot.”

Knox followed my stare to the number of footprints in the dust. They were light, and faded, but the crime scene techs before us had the wherewithal to mark the more prominent ones with a yellow evidence marker with a number. A couple were found at the stairs, then at the head of the workbench, before turning around back to the stairs.

“The place upstairs is almost pristine with its lack of furniture and dust. Ed Carver was a cleaner. Maybe he laid out all his supplies on this workbench before organizing them onto the shelves.” Knox said.

I grunted an acknowledgment but I couldn’t look away from those footsteps.

Thud.

My chin jerked up. “Did you hear that?”

Knox was already studying the ceiling. “Upstairs?”

“Levi?”

“No. He would’ve called the instant he drove up. Could be some of the other guys, though.”

Clang.

I whipped back to the workbench, realization dawning. “Knox! Help me move this.”

“Wh…okay. Okay!” he cried when I cannoned to one side and began pulling. He anchored his hands on the opposite side and we both heaved.

“Spence, wait. We’re going to tip it…” Too late.

“What the fuck are you two idiots doing?” The CSU tech scrambled out of the crawl space and hollered up the staircase for some help to remove the morons currently destroying a crime scene.

“I don’t care,” I said, but my voice sounded hollow, an echo of another being. My mind weaved in the direction of savagery. My body hummed with blood, heartbeats pounding at my temples.

“Holy fuck,” Knox said.

“Oh…shit,” the crime scene guy echoed.

Before us stood a blank metal wall, the kind that resembled a professional kitchen’s fridge. A matte steel, cold to the touch. There, at the center, protruded a lever.

All my weight went into pressing down that lever, but it didn’t budge. “No. NO! Emme!” I pounded at the door with my free fist, skin splitting and hot blood smearing onto the steel.

“Hang on!” Knox threw his body against mine. We both grunted, our palms getting wet, my blood landing on his skin. “Step back,” he said, except he had to be out of his head. There was no way I was moving away from this door. “I mean it, I’ve seen this kind of latch before. I know what to do.”

My dogged breathing had him pressing a palm gently to my chest. “I will have fire trucks, the police, sergeants, SWAT, the fucking army here in minutes, but in this second, right now, let me try. Okay?”

The nod he elicited from me had sound, a temperance of fear.

Knox moved so he was in front of me, left side on the door, and heaved the lever up until it was vertical. Something clicked and then he pushed it down. The door swung open and—

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