More Twisted

before she fell in, we’re figuring. But the cell company said it’s shut off. She probably can’t find it in the dark. Or maybe she can’t reach it.”
    “Might be broken,” Sandra offered.
    “No,” the chief explained. “The company can tell that. Phones still have some signal, even when they’re off. Has to be she just can’t get to it.”
    A fireman in a jumpsuit walked down the stairs, looked around, then cleared graphic arts supplies off an old drafting table. He spread out a map of the area aroundRon’s building. Two others rigged spotlights—one on the map, the other on a portion of the basement wall in the back of the building.
    Knoblock took a call on his own phone. “Yes, sir . . . yes. We’ll let you know.”
    The chief hung up. He shook his head and said in a low voice to Ron and his wife, “That was her father. Poor guy. He’s pretty upset. I was talking to his wife and it seems that he and Tonya’ve been having some problems lately. She banged up her car over the summer and he wouldn’t give her the money to fix it up. That’s why she had to walk to the bus stop.”
    “So,” Sandra said, “he thinks it’s his fault she had the accident.”
    “And, you ask me, it’s why he’s offering a reward like that. I mean, five hundred thousand dollars . . . I never heard of that before. Not ’round here.”
    A voice called down from the top of the stairs. “Langley just showed up. He’ll be down in a minute.”
    “Our rescue specialist,” the chief explained.
    “Who is he?” Ron asked.
    “The number-one search-and-rescue specialist in the country. Runs a company out of Texas. Greg Langley. You ever hear of him?”
    Sandra shook her head. But Ron lifted an eyebrow. “I think so. Yeah. He was on the Discovery Channel, or something.”
    “A and E,” the chief said. “He’s pretty good, from what I hear. His outfit rescues climbers and hikers who get stuck on mountains or in caves, workers trapped on oil rigs, avalanches, you name it. He’s got this sort of asixth sense, or something, for finding and saving people.”
    “He and his crew were in Ohio,” Detective Perillo said. “Drove all night to get here.”
    “You were lucky you could catch him when he was free,” Ron said.
    Chief Knoblock said, “Actually, he called us just after the story broke about midnight. I couldn’t figure out how he heard about it. But he said he’s got people listening to news stories all over the country and they let him know if it sounds like a job he could take on.” The chief added in a whisper, “Man seems a bit too interested in the reward for my taste. But as long as he saves that girl, that’s all I care about.”
    The firemen finished rigging the power lines and clicked the lights on, filling the space with brilliant white illumination, just as footsteps sounded on the stairs. A group of three men and two women arrived in the basement, carting ropes and hard hats, lights, radios, metal clamps and hooks and tools that looked to Ron like mountain climbing gear. They all wore yellow jumpsuits with the words stitched on the back Langley Services. Houston, TX.
    One of these men introduced himself as Greg Langley. He was in his forties, about five foot ten, slim but clearly strong. He had a round, freckled face, curly red hair and eyes brimming with self-assuredness.
    Introductions were made. Langley glanced at Ron and Sandra, but didn’t even acknowledge them. Ron felt a bit offended but gave no outward reaction to the snub.
    “What’s the situation?” Langley asked the officials.
    Knoblock described the accident and the girl’s locationin the tunnel, touching places on the map, and explained about the basements connecting Ron’s building with the collapsed factory.
    Langley asked, “She in immediate danger?”
    “We can probably get food and water to her somehow,” Knoblock said. “And in this weather she’s not going to die of exposure. But her voice is real weak. Makes us think she was pretty badly hurt in the fall. She could be bleeding, could have broken limbs. We just don’t know.”
    Another fireman added, “The big danger is another cave-in. The entire site’s real unstable.”
    “Where do we go in?” Langley asked, glancing at the cellar wall.
    A city engineer examined the map and then tapped a spot on the brick. “On the other side of this wall was an old building that was torn down years ago and paved over. But most of the sub-basement rooms’re