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He shrieked and his voice sounded strange, amplified but at the same time muted. He couldn’t quite figure out what was—
By now you’ve figured out that you’re in a coffin. The time is now midnight. You have perhaps four or five hours of air left before you asphyxiate to death.
William froze, eyes wide. At least they felt like they were opened wide. He still couldn’t see, and now he knew why.
He was in a coffin. He had been buried alive. Just like that movie where that one actor was buried in a coffin and had only a little while to get out before he ran out of air and…
Asphyxiated to death.
That’s what the voice had said. Oh God. Oh God, oh God, oh God, he was in afucking coffin!
Panic started to set in, and he drew in a breath to scream, but never released it, because as though it could read his mind, the voice said,There’s still hope. There’s a string somewhere in the coffin. That string is connected to a bell at the surface of the grave. If you sound the bell, there’s a chance the night watchman will hear it and know that you’ve been buried alive. Don’t panic. The more you panic, the more you use your available oxygen and the less time you have to summon rescue. Keep in control and look for the string. It’s youronlychance.
Hope flooded him, buoyed by desperation.
He could get out of this. He could survive. The actor in that movie had survived, after all. Whoever had done this was some crazy guy who wanted to see if he could figure it out, right? He had left Billy Boy one chance, and as long as he could take advantage of that chance, he would be okay.
In his fear, he didn’t notice his use of the nickname. He began scrambling madly for the string, feeling along the sides and top of theoh my God, it’s a coffin, I’m in a goddamn coffin!
Look carefully.Time moves quickly in the dark.
Fear slithered up his navel and coiled tightly around his heart. His chest felt tight, and his breaths came in short, rapid gasps. He tried to calm himself, but when he took a breath, he couldn’t seem to draw in enough oxygen. He just gasped and gasped and—
Good evening,the voice began again.By now, you’ve figured out that you’re in a coffin.
William’s strength melted away. He listened numbly as the voice repeated its message.
Its recorded message.
You have perhaps four or five hours of air left before you asphyxiate to death.
Four or five hours. How many of those hours had passed? As he gasped instinctively for air, the last clear thought he had was the realization that most of that time was likely gone.
He was too late.
That realization drove away all rationality. He screamed and scrambled madly for a string.
He found it eventually. He may even have managed to ring the bell a few times before he slipped away, but if so, he never realized it. The last sensation he felt was his fingers closing around the string. There was a soft buzzing in his ears that could have been static from the recording or the neurons in his brain firing a final time.
Then there was nothing.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Danny? No, we haven’t seen him.”
Sarah Walsh, Daniel’s neighbor, kept one hand on her doorknob and peeked warily through the small crack in the door which was all the chain lock allowed. Michael and Faith stood a respectful two yards from the door and Turk sat politely, but Sarah, who appeared to be in her mid-fifties, gazed at them with narrow and distrustful eyes. Faith thought the odds even that if Sarah had seen Daniel Campanelli, she wouldn’t let on.
She looked back down at Turk. The dog watched Sarah but showed no sign of suspicion. In the time they’d worked together, Faith had come to respect the dog’s intuition. It wasn’t perfect, but in Faith’s experience, it was sharper than that of most agents. If they had any reason to suspect Sarah Walsh of being involved in the murders, Faith might have pressed the issue, but since she was only a neighbor, Faith decided to trust Turk’s intuition and avoid wasting her time. She pulled a card from her pocket, handed it to Sarah, and said, “If you see him, please give us a call. We’d really appreciate it.”
Sarah took the card with the hand not gripping the doorknob like a lifeline and pushed it into her back pocket. She nodded and without ceremony, closed the door in their face.
“Polite neighborhood,” Michael remarked drily.
Sarah Walsh was the fourth door they had knocked on, and her reception was reflective of the attitude of the rest of the neighborhood. It was clear now that they were wasting their time looking for help here. The neighbors either didn’t know each other well or knew each other well enough to feel obligated to clam up if one of them had attracted the interest of the law. Either way, they had to change course.
“Should we try the workplace again?” Michael asked. “Maybe someone there knows where we can find him.”
“If they did, they wouldn’t say anything over the phone,” Faith replied. “We’d have to go visit.”
