Convicted Innocent(45)

He couldn’t see them, and the air was hot around the wreck. It was very hard to breathe, but he waded into the twisted metal to reach them. There were so few rescuers.

Though he bloodied his hands and arms on the wreckage, David wasn’t quick or strong enough.

Of the four he’d put on the train, only little Annie got free of the crushed tangle.

Afterward, David had asked the doctor to explain what had happened. Why it had happened. The doctor’s blunt reply still resonated starkly, verbatim.

“I’m afraid there was nothing to be done for your mother or your brother-in-law, even if rescuers had broken through more quickly,” he’d said, his tone soft in a gruff attempt at condolence. “Your mother’s heart gave out; Mr. McNamara was standing when the crash occurred and his injuries were much too severe. They both would have perished almost instantly.

“Your sister, however: like your niece, she sustained no injuries in the crash. It was the smoke. Had she been pulled free more quickly…but no: the smoke was too much for her.”

* * * * *

“Good! You’re here. I believe the next visitors are nearly here as well – reasonably on schedule.”

The speaker was one David hadn’t heard before, and the man’s words broke through the horror replaying in the priest’s head.

Oh. They’d stopped moving.

“W-w-why d’ you ‘urt ‘im?”

Innocent’s indignation – in all its clarity and purity – drove back the choking blackness strangling David’s thoughts.

(The boy’s very presence was as comforting and as soothing to the priest’s troubled soul as an afternoon spent in his garden puffing on his pipe.)

David sensed the young man hurrying past him, presumably to Lew’s side. He moved unhindered by the heavies surrounding them.

The newcomer’s voice murmured commands to someone; the blonde replied; then several of the men departed back the way they’d come.

David heard footsteps come toward him, and then the new fellow spoke quite nearby, as though he were standing next to Innocent and Lewis.

“You speak out of turn.”

“‘E’s m-m-m-my frien’!”

There was a pause, a swishing sound, and then a single muted thump.

Lewis screamed, the sound broken.

“Do. As. You’re. Told.”

The words carried a casual yet emphatic menace that stilled and silenced everything and everyone in the room (except Lewis, whose panting had returned to a sawing rasp).

“…Y-y-y-yes s-s-sir.”

Innocent’s reply was scarcely more than a murmur; his uncle’s enjoinder (the new fellow had to be the uncle) had him cowed. The boy’s trembling was audible.

Blind and bound and frighteningly alone in the darkness, the last tendrils of hope in David’s heart vanished.

* * * * *

Horace Tipple had no expectations about what he’d find when he and his guide reached their destination.

They’d walked no more than a few minutes when the inspector noticed the tunnel brightening ahead of them, and then they turned a corner and stepped into a large, circular room.

“Stay ‘ere,” the blonde fellow said.

Horace did, and then another of the gang made a show of searching the old policeman, patting him down for weapons and the like. While he submitted to this minor indignity, the detective flicked his eyes about the place.

The room was taller than it was broad, but not so disproportionate that it felt like standing in a well. The center of the room was sunken: a pit about 10 feet deep and perhaps 15 across, with steep, smooth sides, a rusty handrail circling the drop, and no visible ladder or other means of entry. The wide ledge Horace stood on wrapped all the way around the pit – though its width varied a touch here and there; a balcony of similar proportions topped the ledge and overlooked the pit as well. Lamps fixed to the pillars supporting the balcony lit the pit brightly, but the ledge and its occupants were half shadowed.