The Vanishing Stair (Truly Devious, #2)(39)

He shone his light along the wall for a moment, then felt along with his hand until he located what he was after. He pressed hard into one of the bricks, and there was a dull sprong. He pushed against a bit of wall, and it gave way, revealing a narrow doorway on a hinge. Stevie instantly made a move for the opening, but he blocked her with his arm. “You can look in, not that there is much to see.”

Stevie craned her head into the pitch-black opening. Here, the stench of dust and mold was truly terrible and she immediately sneezed. She got out her phone and shone it into the darkness. She could faintly make out a passageway, barely two feet wide, with a set of stairs at the end.

“That’s how Ellie got out?” Stevie asked. “She took a hidden door from the office?”

“That’s how she got out. She came down the steps, out through this doorway. Over here . . .”

He indicated the window. There were a few boxes shoved up against the wall.

“There were boxes just under the window. It was partially propped open.”

Stevie stood for a moment, looking at the tiny window, caked in old dirt and cobwebs. It was covered by a grate on the outside.

“How?” she said. “How did she know?”

“I don’t know,” Larry said. “We’ve had people get into the basement, but no one, to my knowledge, ever found this passage before.”

“So she got out the window,” Stevie said, looking up. “How did she get through that grate?”

“They’re hooked closed down here,” he said, pointing to a latch. “You undo the latch, push up. That’s how we found it.”

“So she gets through the passage, comes downstairs, stacks some stuff, opens the window and the grate, and climbs out. She did this all in, what, five minutes?”

“Something like that.”

“So she had a five-minute lead on you. And all of this must have taken a few minutes, so she only had a minute or two to run from the building before you went after her.”

“Give or take,” Larry said. “We went to the basement first, we had to scramble people. So yes, she had about a five-minute head start.”

“Where do you think she went?” Stevie said. “She didn’t have anything with her. I mean, she had her coat. But she had no money. I guess she had her phone?”

“No calls were made, and there’s no trace of the phone. She turned it off or ditched it somewhere.”

“What do you think she did?” Stevie asked.

“Best guess, she made her way down to the road. We went down there right away, but she must have cut through the woods. The police looked at the rest stops on the highway, had eyes on the buses. Somehow, she got past. I think she knows people in Burlington. Maybe one of them came and got her. That’s my guess.”

“Not eaten by a bear?” Stevie asked.

“It’s not impossible that she ran into a bear, but bear fatalities are rare, and we would have found some remains, most likely.”

He said that a little too nonchalantly for Stevie’s comfort.

“I think she’ll turn up,” he said. “Element’s family had a history of living in communes. I think there are ways she could have gotten to one of those places and she’s lying low. Loads of places like that up and around here. But eventually, people come out. No one wants to stay hidden forever. It’s not human nature.”

No one wants to stay hidden forever.

“Can I ask you something?” she said.

Larry indicated that she had been doing this all along and might as well just keep going.

“How do guilty people act?” Stevie asked.

“They lie, generally,” Larry said. “Some fall apart right away, but some can keep lying to your face, cold as ice, and never stop.”

“But is there something they do? Is there some kind of tell?”

“Yes and no,” Larry said. “It’s not them. It’s you. Once you’re around it enough, you learn how to spot it. But you can’t rely on that. You have to go on the evidence. Even if you have the best instinct in the world, it’s the facts that matter.”

“You can’t rely on your gut,” she said.

“Not in determining guilt. But your gut can help you in other ways. It can keep you from getting hurt.”

There was something just a little bit pointed in how he said it.

“Did Ellie seem guilty to you?” she asked.

“She seemed . . . scared,” he said. “But she would have been.”

A silence fell between them for a moment, filled with the remains of Ellie’s fear.

“Look,” Larry said. “We don’t know what happened. But I tend to believe it was an accident, a prank gone wrong, or something like that. For all I know, they worked on it together, got the dry ice together. I think Element and Hayes were both kids who got into things they shouldn’t. Whatever she did, whatever happened, I don’t think she meant to do it. If she did it. She doesn’t strike me as a dangerous person. You don’t have to be afraid. And this place is wired now. There are perimeter lights, cameras. All the stuff I’ve been wanting for years. She’s not going to come near you. I won’t let her.”

Stevie looked at Larry now and felt the sudden urge to cry. Something in her melted a bit. Was it gratitude? Pent-up fear? She balled her hands and turned back toward the dark side of the room, back at the dank basement labyrinth she was in. There were so many places to get lost in here, up here. In life. So many dark corners.