TARA WESTON'S GUARDIAN (2025 Edit)

Aaron breaks into a mansion expecting treasures, but only finds corpses everywhere

Richie Travers carefully removed the picklock from the keyhole of the French windows of the Glen Iris estate, then looked up at the pale blue alarm box above the windows.

Fingers crossed! thought Richie, mindful of his first stay in prison, half his lifetime ago, after the “carefully de-activated” alarm decided to go off anyway, despite his best efforts to bypass it. But since then, Richie had spent nearly a decade of his young life in the pen and had learnt lock picking from the experts. So, with any luck, this time the alarm would not shriek as he opened the door.

He placed the picklock back into a small, plastic wallet, returned the wallet to an inner pocket of his vest, and then reached out for the door handle with his right hand. Holding the handle, he breathed deeply for a second or two to steel himself. Then, carefully easing the French windows open, he eased around the side to glide inside catlike, rather than risk opening the windows wide.

Inside at last, he stopped to carefully ease shut the windows, then reached into his outer breast pocket to remove a small penlight. He pressed the small switch on the torch, and nothing happened. Cursing to himself, Richie pressed the switch a little harder, and a pinprick of yellowy light shot out to illuminate a tiny area. Doing his best not to trip or bump into furniture, Richie slowly made his way around the small sitting hall.

A careful examination of the ground floor revealed nothing of interest, since it was mainly entrance halls. So, he crept up one of two wide staircases to the first floor, where he located a large sitting room.

Well, one of them, anyway, thought Richie. Although Laura and Stephen Weston weren't quite in the same financial bracket as the Packers or the Murdocks, as Australia’s third-wealthiest family, the Westons were still well-moneyed. So this must be only one of their sitting rooms, he reasoned. Before entering the Westons’ home, Richie had acquired a copy of the blueprints of the manor and had established that it was a six-storey mansion with an average of twelve rooms per floor.

Still half expecting to hear the outside alarm go off (and fearing that it might be a silent alarm linked directly to Russell Street, Melbourne), Richie started slowly around the sitting room.

Apart from a few silver trinkets, the only things of interest to the burglar were two Aboriginal Dream-Time paintings by celebrated Australian artist Ainslie Roberts: “The Burgin Gin” (which showed a full-sized Aboriginal warrior being attacked by half-metre-tall Aboriginal warriors wielding shining golden spears taller than themselves. And “Liru and Kunia”, which depicted two large serpents fighting in the red sands of the Simpson Desert.

“These should fetch a nice commission,” said Richie in a whisper. He knew at least two or three private collectors who were desperate for Ainslie Roberts' works and were not concerned about how they acquired them.

After carefully checking for alarm presses on the wall behind the paintings (for fear that they might be separate to the main alarm that he had already deactivated), Richie carefully removed the first painting. Instead of cutting the painting from the frame and damaging it (thus reducing its value), he carefully removed the painting from the frame, then reached into the sack that he was carrying and removed a long postal cylinder. He carefully rolled up the painting and slid it into the cylinder, then placed the cylinder into his sack. Then he removed the second painting and repeated the procedure.

Although not usually nervous, Richie had been on edge ever since entering the French windows. Feeling a cold chill run down his spine, he considered departing with the two paintings. Though not worth a fortune, they would each fetch a few thousand dollars each. And maybe I can come back in a few months ... once I’ve got my nerves back! But logic told him that it would be ten times harder to enter the manor house next time. Once they find the paintings gone, the security system will be revamped to blazes!

So, with icy fingers playing his spine like a xylophone, Richie started across to the door to the corridor.

Outside, he lingered for a moment. His eyes had adjusted to the feeble beam thrown by the penlight. So that there was less chance of him stumbling into furniture. Still, logic (and icy tendrils of fear gripping his heart) told him that it was best to take no chances. So, he started slowly down the wide corridor, stopping at the next door.

Gripping the doorknob in his left hand this time, Richie steeled himself for a few moments, then swung the door inward. He had half expected the door to be locked. But even in a security-conscious district like Glen Iris, there was no reason to lock inner doors. And the sitting room had not been locked. So, as he had expected, the door swung wide easily. Too easily, and for a nervous second, he feared that he would lose control of the door to have it crash into the inside wall. Just in time, he managed to control his nerves and the door and stepped silently inside. And found himself standing face to face with a Doberman Pinscher.

His first instinct was to race back out into the corridor, trying to pull the door closed in time to keep the guard dog at bay. He eased back into the hallway and started to slowly ease the door shut.

He had shut the door firmly when he realised that the dog had made no move toward him. It must have seen me! he realised: And even if it didn’t, Dobermans have a sense of smell twenty thousand times as strong as ours. So it can’t have failed to notice me!

Logic told him to head back toward the ground floor and exit the manor through the French windows. But determined not to be so easily spooked, Richie forced himself to pull open the door and step back into the darkened room.

Trying his best to control his racing heart and panting breath, Richie stepped up to the tallish, black dog and shone the penlight directly into its eyes. Expecting the dog to whine and flinch (or attack!), Richie kept within a quick step of the hallway door. However, the Doberman neither whined, flinched, nor attacked. So, hesitantly, Richie reached out one hand to tap the beast gently upon the muzzle.

The cold, enamel muzzle.

Richie sighed audibly as he realised that it was only a plaster dog. Then he looked round nervously again, hoping that no one in an adjoining room had heard the loud outrush of breath.

For one crazy instant, Richie thought of taking the plaster Doberman to punish the Westons for the anxiety that it had caused him. But logic dictated that it was too bulky to fit into his sack, and much too heavy for its value to waste time on it anyway.

So, ignoring the faux Doberman, Richie started around the room, carefully evaluating each item in turn by the beam of the penlight, before deciding whether it was worth taking or not.

The room was filled with plaster or jade statues and statuettes from pocket-size up to need-a-forklift-to-move-it size. In the end, Richie took just two small jade vases, which he carefully wrapped in newspaper, both to protect them and to stop them clinking in his sack.

Then, after one last look around the room, he returned to the wide corridor and started toward the next room to the left, deciding to do all the rooms on one side first, then return to investigate the right-hand rooms later.

After more than an hour, he had finished the first floor rooms and had only picked up three paintings, although all three would pick up a few thousand dollars each, half a dozen small silver knickknacks, and the two jade vases.

“A small haul for the third wealthiest family in Australia,” said Richie, feeling vexed. Although normally an easy-going bloke, he couldn’t help feeling a little cheated at all the work he had had to do, for the little that he had to show for it.

Not a man of violence, Richie was reluctant to check the upper floors, knowing that the Westons and their domestics were asleep up there. I should have waited till they went on their holidays in a few months, he thought. But just out of prison, he needed cash urgently, and the Weston manor house seemed a surprisingly easy tickle. So far, though, it had hardly been a tickle at all.

Still, the second floor might be safe enough, he decided. He knew that the Westons themselves lived on the fifth floor, which had been converted to a private penthouse. So, stay well clear of the fifth floor, and I ought to be relatively safe, he hoped. Of course, the domestics could live on any of the remaining floors for all that his blueprints showed. However, he was prepared to gamble that any occupied bedrooms would be locked at night. So, as long as he was careful trying the doorknobs, he should be safe.

After a moment’s indecision, he started across to the wide, carpeted staircases in the centre of the building. One of two that led up to the next floor. Just past the twin staircases was a small, wire-framed elevator. But having been caught twice previously for burglary, he was not careless enough to risk using the elevator. If the rattles and crashes did not awaken the entire household, the shrieking of the cables and antiquated motor starting and stopping undoubtedly would.

Besides, I’m not going any further than the second floor, Richie decided: So who needs an elevator?

Half an hour later, he had completed the second floor. On the plus side, he had only encountered one locked door and had managed to slip away unnoticed by anyone sleeping within. On the negative side, he had found little worth lifting. An original Norman Lindsay painting would fetch notably more than the two Ainslie Robertses combined, so he had taken the time to liberate it. But nothing else had been worth adding to his meagre stash.

After much soul-searching, he reluctantly went up to the third floor. In the first room, he found a handful of small silver cups in what was the games room. There was also a $50,000 full-sized pool table, which he had no possible hope of moving. So he was forced to settle for the silver trophies.

Returning to the corridor, he paused for a second, tempted to leave now. When from overhead came a sudden shriek, then a female voice crying, “No, oh God no!” Then a muffled, half-choking sound, followed by silence.

Startled, Richie looked up as though possessing X-ray vision, hoping to see the crier through the ceiling. “Nightmares, I guess,” he said, knowing that the Westons had a twelve-year-old daughter, Tara: I guess even rich kids can have nightmares, he thought: I suppose their bad dreams are about stock market crashes; governments of the world getting serious about taxing the rich; about the United States no longer functioning as a haven for billion-dollar tax-avoiders from other countries ...?

Despite his fear of being caught by the Westons, Richie reluctantly continued hunting through the rooms on the third floor. He would not dare try rifling through the fourth-floor or the fifth-floor suites with the Westons sleeping up there. But he decided that it was worth risking a bleary-eyed valet or maid.

The next room was a large den, with bookcases lining three walls, and a large oaken table taking up nearly half of the floor space. At first, Richie considered leafing through the books in the hope of finding rare first editions. But then, as a cry came from the fifth floor again, he decided against it.

Besides, he had already noticed what to the untrained eye looked like a fireplace. But which instinct and prison training told him was a false front covering a wall safe.

He resisted the urge to race across to the fireplace and probably fall in the dark. Instead, he stepped across slowly, knelt, and began carefully feeling around the white frontispiece, which was wood moulded and painted to look like ironwork. After a few moments, he found a small button on one side of the fireplace.

Half expecting alarms to go off, he pressed the button. With an (he hoped) almost inaudible whirring of gears, the fireplace slid up the wall to reveal a fairly standard-looking small metal wall safe.

Richie removed the glove from his right hand, then took a small piece of emery board from his sack to sensitise his fingertips. If only I had one of those electronic gizmos to clip onto the safe, so it could spin the tumblers and crack the safe in two minutes while I stood back and watched, he thought. Then, looking at the unimpressive safe, he decided, I can probably open it in two minutes anyway.

In reality, it took nearly five minutes to crack the safe. However, to his dismay, no bounty lay within.

“Damn!” said Richie, taking out the contents: a small automatic pistol (minus the clip), a faded travel brochure, which looked old enough to be for the maiden voyage of the Titanic, a small portion of at least a week-old meat pie on a lilac saucer, and three green plastic $100 bills.

“Oh well, this is something, at least,” said Richie, pocketing the $300. He returned the other things to the safe and quickly departed the room.

In the next few rooms, he found other trinkets, but still nothing of great value. “They must keep all their loot in a walk-in safe on the fifth floor,” he had begun to realise, wondering if he dared to try up there after all.

As he stepped into the corridor, once more cries rang out from the floor above. But this time it was the voice of a mature man. Bad dreams must be contagious, thought Richie as he pulled open the door to the final room, stepped into the room and stared in disbelief at the sight before him:

A middle-aged man and woman were sitting up in bed, both seemingly staring toward Richie. Except that both had had their eyes plucked out.

Thinking that it must be an illusion of the poor light from the penlight, Richie risked turning on the overhead light and stared in horror. The man and woman had not only been blinded but had been all but boned by whoever had killed them. Entrails hung like bloody spaghetti across a double bed stained red with blood.

Realising that his fingers were sticky, Richie took out a handkerchief and began to rub down his fingers as he stared in amazement at the room. The walls, floor and ceiling looked like something Jackson Pollock might have produced on a bad day. The walls seemed to have been painted in gallons of red paint, except that Richie did not need to be told that it was not red paint.

What the hell happened to my glove? he wondered, staring at his bare right hand. He silently cursed his carelessness as he realised that he had removed it to crack the safe earlier, then had left the glove behind.

Looking away from the blood-soaked bed, Richie cursed his stupidity as he saw the perfect fingerprints that he had left in blood when he had turned on the bedroom light.

Striding across to the light, he hurriedly wiped away the prints with the handkerchief. Then, staring at the now sopping red hanky, he wondered if he was making things worse rather than better. Seeing two more fingerprints on the wall near the switch, he hurriedly rubbed them away, before realising: They could have belonged to the murderer, not me. He considered returning to the den to collect his glove, but had to think: Was it on this floor? Or one floor down?

He had already returned to the corridor when he heard another muffled cry from upstairs, followed by the sound of cascading water. For a moment, he thought that it had started to rain outside and looked around toward a bay window at the other end of the corridor.

Then he realised: The shower! Someone is taking a shower up on the fifth floor! Looking at his wristwatch, he saw that it was a little before 1:00 AM.

Who the hell takes a shower at this time? he wondered. Then he realised there was only one possible answer.

His first instinct was to flee. His second was to continue up one more floor to start searching the fourth-floor rooms in the hope of locating valuables. However, the recollection of the eviscerated couple in the room he had just vacated made searching for valuables no longer attractive.

Without even realising it, Richie started up the wide staircase past the fourth landing and onto the fifth. It was only as he started down the left-hand corridor that he suddenly came to his senses: What the hell am I doing? It has to be the murderer washing the blood off before leaving!

As the muffled cry came again, he realised that both showerer and crier were in rooms at the other end of the hallway. “The logical thing to do is call the police, then make a hasty exit before they get here,” Richie decided.

He looked down the corridor in the hope of seeing a phone on a stand. Then, reluctantly, he tried the knob of the nearest door, careful to use his left hand, which still had on its protective glove.

Inside the master bedroom, he found two telephones, both with the cables cut. On the bed lay a beautiful blonde of at least fifty, whom he knew from the society pages must be Laura Weston. The man beside her was probably half a decade younger and resembled Stephen Weston. As far as he could recall.

For one crazy moment, Richie thought the Westons had decided to take a bath, wearing pyjamas, in their blood. Then he realised that the gentle bobbing of the corpses was caused by the torn waterbed that they lay upon.

Got to get out of here now! thought Richie. Despite having spent nearly a third of his thirty-something years in prison, Richie Travers was not a violent man. He knew that he would fare no better than the Westons or their domestics if he came face to face with whoever else had broken into the Weston estate that night before him.

As he returned to the corridor again, the muffled cry rang out again, from the next room down the hallway. And he realised that it could only be the Westons’ twelve-year-old daughter, Tara.

Why has he kept the girl alive after killing everyone else? wondered Richie as he started down the corridor to the next door. Then he blushed as he realised the only possible reason. With both parents dead, it’s unlikely to be for ransom! he reasoned, blushing again.

Although he could hear the shower still running, he knew that it could not continue much longer. Got to get on with it then, he thought as he tentatively gripped the doorknob and swung the bedroom door inward.

Not quite knowing what to expect, Richie stepped into the bedroom, which belonged to a young girl: posters of Kanye West and other teen heartthrobs lined the wall, along with two bookcases of Barbie dolls and a seemingly near-infinite array of Barbie companion dolls and accessories.

Of more interest, though, was the painfully beautiful silver-blonde girl in the centre of the bed. Unlike her parents, Tara Weston seemed to be unharmed, her pale blue eyes staring up at Richie in terror as he stepped into the room.

At first, other than the strange posture, hunched in the middle of the bed, Tara Weston seemed untouched. Then, even in the dark, Richie could see the strong masking tape circling her head three or four times to gag her, and the gleaming, near-new-looking chains that held her spread-eagled to the bed.

“Mmmmmm!” murmured Tara, blue eyes wide in terror, staring at Richie.

Heartsick at the look of absolute terror in the eyes of one so young, Richie wondered if the fiend who had killed her parents had already told her of the “fate worse than death” that awaited the young girl.

Unless I, Richie Travers, burglar extraordinaire, can rescue her, he thought. Then seeing his gloveless right hand in the pale beam of his penlight, he thought, Extraordinarily inept that is.

As he approached the bed, Richie was startled to hear singing from a metre or so beyond the bed. And for the first time, he realised that the murderer of Laura and Stephen Weston was showering in the en suite of their daughter’s bedroom.

“Don’t worry, honey,” said Richie as he leant across Tara Weston, “I’m here to help you.” Reaching into his vest pocket, he removed the plastic wallet holding his picklocks and just hoped and prayed that he could pick the heavy Yale locks holding the girl chained to the bed, before the murderer finished cleaning up.


Roderick Voss was taking a shower in the small en suite of Tara Weston’s bedroom when he heard the clanking of chains. He grinned a broad shit-eater grin, looking forward to the fun that he was going to have with the twelve-year-old girl soon. It’s hardly worth showering, only to get dirty again,” he thought, delighted at the thought of how violently he would abuse the virginal girl before killing her.

Of course, he could take her with him. Keep her chained to his bed as a personal sex slave, as others before him had done. But he realises that this would be suicidally dangerous. Others before him have also served decades in prison when their love captives have managed to escape, or get found still alive. No, better to have her violently for a few hours till just before dawn, then kill her before leaving the estate, he thought: After all, dead girls tell no tales!

“Still, she is gorgeous.” Most parents liked to believe that their little girl was the most beautiful in the world. In the Westons’ case, they just might have been right. But she will be a gorgeous corpse soon, he decides: After I’ve had a few hours of pleasure with her.

Hearing the chains clinking in the next room, Roderick Voss smiles, knowing that there is no way that Tara Weston could escape the four Yale locks. Yet he is pleased in a way that she is a fighter and will not stop trying. Her parents had not even pleaded for their lives. They had just stared at him with big cow-eyes, too afraid to even try to run as he slaughtered first Laura, then Stephen. But young Tara had kicked and scratched like a wildcat.

Voss had had fun subduing the silver-haired minx. He smirks like a village idiot as he thinks of the still greater pleasure that he is going to take from her nubile young body, before killing her.

Excitement mounting, Voss reaches up to turn off the shower, then steps out of the cubicle and reaches for a towel.


In the bedroom, Richie Travers had picked the locks, holding Tara Weston’s hands in place. He had just started to pick the lock, holding her left foot to the bed, when the shower in the en suite suddenly went off.

“Oh no!” said Tara, having painstakingly removed the four rolls of masking tape around her head, doing her best not to cry out at the pain as the tape tore at her blonde hair and the delicate flesh of her face.

“Don’t worry, honey, I’ll get you out of here in time,” said Richie. Only hoping that he was not making promises that he could not keep.

Richie almost cried aloud in delight as the third Yale popped open. But he realised that he only had seconds to pick the fourth lock and get the girl onto her feet before the murderer came looking for her.

“Please hurry,” whispered the girl, in a terrified voice that made her sound half of her twelve years.


In the en suite, Roderick Voss was slowly towelling himself off. He almost started dressing, but realised that there was no point, since he would be naked again soon anyway. He snickers as he thinks of the sexual agony that he is about to inflict upon the young girl. From experience, he knows that he will enjoy the girl’s pain and terror even more than the physical act of sex.

“Well, as much,” he said, laughing sadistically.

Draping his clothes carefully over his left shoulder, Voss started across toward the door to the bedroom, calling, “Coming, ready or not!”

He hears a terrified whimper from Tara Weston and is thrilled by her fear.


“Don’t worry, honey, nearly there,” whispered Richie Travers. And to his relief, he heard a loud click as the fourth Yale lock sprang open.

As the en suite door began to swing open, Richie grabbed the young girl by the shoulders and all but threw her off the bed. For a few seconds, the chains tangled, and it looked as though they might not get away in time before the door swung open.

But seeing the look of absolute terror in the girl’s pale blue eyes, Richie grabbed her arms with both hands and tugged with all his might. No point being gentle with her, if it means leaving her in the grip of that pervert! thought Richie as he strained to tug the girl loose from the bed.

Finally, the tangled chains pulled loose, and Richie stumbled backwards, almost falling to the floor with the twelve-year-old girl on top of him.

Staggering a little, he just managed to keep his footing. And hearing the girl’s startled yelp, Richie flashed her a broad smile, only hoping that she could see it in the dark.

“Can you walk, honey?” he asked, placing the girl gently on her feet.

“Yes ... yes, I think so,” she said hesitantly, clinging to Richie Travers for support.

“Okay, then let’s get going,” he said, half leading, half carrying the twelve-year-old girl toward the corridor.


Grinning his broadest shit-eater grin, Roderick Voss pushes the en suite door open, almost laughing aloud in delight at the brutality (both sexual and otherwise) that he intends inflicting upon the gorgeous silver-blonde girl before killing her.

“Okay, baby, the fun is ready to begin,” calls Voss, stopping in shock as he stares at the empty bed. He sees the chains still in place, the four Yale locks, now mysteriously open, and long strands of brown masking tape with tufts of silver-blonde hair attached. But no sign of Tara Weston.

“Where the Hell?” says Voss. Then, hearing shuffling movement, he looked across just in time to see the bedroom door swing shut.

“How in the hell?” he asks no one in particular. He hurriedly pulls on his slacks, shoes and vest, not bothering with his undergarments, then leaps across the bed, unconcerned by the clinking of the chains as he heads toward the door to the corridor. “This place is like a fortress,” he thinks aloud. “It could take days to track her down if she gets out of hearing range.”

As he races toward the door, he wonders if Tara Weston is game enough to head toward the wide staircase to try to reach ground level to go for help. Then it really will be a race! he thinks, confident that with four hours of gym work a week for the last twenty years, he is fitter and faster than the young girl and will easily overtake her.


Doing his best not to pull the young girl off her feet, Richie started to drag her down the corridor in the direction where he hoped the twin staircases were. Let’s just hope I haven’t got myself turned about in the dark! he thought, hoping he wasn’t leading them both deeper into danger, away from the stairs, not toward them.

“No, no,” cried Tara, pulling back against him as he started toward the stairs. “Not that way.”

“But we have to make a run for it,” said Richie, thinking that the girl was still confused from her recent ordeal.

“No, he’ll catch us on the stairs,” said the girl, thinking more clearly than the man. “The lift. We can take it down to the ground floor while he’s still on the third or fourth floor.”

“Good thinking,” said Richie, beaming at the beautiful girl.


In the corridor, Roderick Voss stops to get his bearings and allows his eyes to adjust to the dark. Hearing footsteps to the left, he smiles a broad shit-eater grin, thinking that Tara Weston is heading for the stairs after all.

“Here I come, Tara baby!” calls the killer. “I hope you’ve got your running shoes on, if you think you can beat me to the ground floor.”

At first, he is greeted by only silence, and Voss fears that the girl has gone into hiding instead. Then he hears the metallic screech of the elevator door being pulled open, and he grins broadly again.

“I’ve got you now, little one!” he calls after the fleeing girl as he starts at an easy trot toward the elevator. “You won’t believe all of the exquisitely painful things that I’m going to do with you, before sending you on to heaven to join your Mummy and Daddy.”

Hearing the girl whimper in terror, Voss chuckles aloud, confident that he has as good as recaptured her.

“Running away wasn’t very nice, baby. I’m going to have to punish you for that!” he calls. This time, he is a little disappointed to hear no answering whimper from the girl.


“This way, this way,” called Tara Weston, pointing. Although she was still a little unsteady on her feet after being in the cramped position, chained to her bed.

Well, I’m glad you know the way, thought Richie, having got himself more than a little turned about in the dark. His eyes had already adjusted as much as possible to the dark. However, on the fifth floor of an unlit building, with all the drapes drawn, there was a limit to how much his eyes could adjust. So, despite his best attempts at stealth, Richie was barely able to avoid collisions with stationary objects lining both sides of the corridor: fancy jade or plaster knickknacks on individual small stands. Knickknacks, which must have seemed a good buy to one of the Westons when they had purchased them, but were now just a nuisance, turning the unlit corridor into an obstacle course.

At her insistence, Richie led Tara past the first staircase and was relieved to see the elevator cage just past the stairs. I guess it doesn’t matter how much clanking and grinding it makes now. Only that bastard behind us will hear it. And with a little luck, he’ll never be able to run down five flights of stairs as quickly as the lift can travel.

By the time that they had reached the elevator, to Richie’s relief, Tara seemed to be able to stand on her own feet. However, that was the least of their worries, as they soon discovered.

Pulling the wire door open, they raced inside. Tara pressed the ground-floor button while Richie pulled the door shut again.

Then nothing happened!

“What’s wrong?” asked Richie as the elevator refused to budge. Although he had never been particularly claustrophobic before, Richie felt a little giddy in the cramped cage, wondering if it was only because it reminded him of the years of his life that he had wasted in prison.

“I don’t know,” said Tara, frantically trying to get the elevator to start.

“Let’s get out of here,” said Richie, pulling the door open again.

“No, we’ll never outrun him.”

“It doesn’t matter, we’ll find some place to hide,” said Richie. He pulled the girl out of the elevator and toward the second flight of stairs. Anything would be better than being trapped in that cage. Even trying to outrun a homicidal maniac, thought Richie as they fled the iron-sided elevator.

“Come on, we can hide on the fourth floor,” he insisted, as the girl continued to pull against him, reluctant to leave the imagined safety of the private elevator.

To Richie’s relief, after a few seconds, the young girl stopped tugging against him, and they began to run hand in hand down the wide staircase, doing their best not to thunder down the stairs and give away their position to the pursuing maniac.

“Try to step lightly, even when running,” Richie whispered. Then he had to fight not to fall down the stairs after almost tripping as he turned to glance back at the blonde girl.

He somehow resisted the inclination to scream out, knowing that it would alert the murderer. Instead, he reached for the rounded wooden banister, grateful that he was running near the handrail, not down the centre of the staircase. For a few seconds, his gloveless right hand slid along the shiny banner rail, his fear-slickened fingers failing to find a grip. But just in time, as he seemed certain to somersault into darkness, his hand began to grip. And, with a little help from the near-frantic twelve-year-old girl pulling on his other arm, he managed to steady himself, find his balance and stop himself from falling.

Unable to resist the temptation to at least heave a sigh of relief, Richie tried to keep his voice even as he said, “All right, let’s go.” And a little more carefully now, they started back down the stairs toward the fourth floor.

As they reached the landing on the fourth floor, Richie was tempted to keep dragging the girl down the stairs, thinking: Only four more flights to go. But logic told him that the girl was right; they could never race the maniac to the ground floor. Much better to hide in the spacious mansion and hope to find a working phone. Or at least, if they could elude the maniac until dawn, he was bound to flee then.

Thankfully, we don’t know who he is and can’t identify him. So catching us shouldn’t be as big a priority as getting away, thought Richie. Only wondering if a maniac could think logically enough to reason that out.


Roderick Voss is smiling in delight as he pulls up at the stationary elevator. Of course, the girl couldn’t get it started downward to escape. Voss had been careful to disable the elevator before even entering the fifth-floor suites.

The smile is soon wiped off his face, though, when he realises that the girl has abandoned the elevator.

“Damn!” he curses, wondering if the little brat is hiding somewhere on this floor? Or whether she is foolish enough to try racing him to the ground floor after all?

He looks about the darkened corridor, tempted to start turning on the lights. But he wonders whether this might help the troublesome twelve-year-old more than him?

“I’m coming to get you, baby! I know exactly where you are!” he calls, hoping to draw at least a whimper from Tara Weston to lead him in her direction. At first, he is disappointed, thinking his ruse has failed. Then he hears a sound like someone stumbling on the second staircase, just past the elevator and realises that she is foolish enough to try racing him down to the ground level after all.

“Here I come, baby,” he calls, as he starts to run toward the staircase. “I can see you!”

He chuckles at the lie, hoping that it has unnerved the girl. He is a little disconcerted that the girl has managed to escape from the four Yale locks. He wonders if that is where she has suddenly got this courage from? Or whether he was careless and failed to lock them properly.

But I can’t have failed to snap shut all four locks! he thinks. He starts to wonder if the girl is a little too cunning for him. He wonders whether he should simply abandon the girl and flee to safety before dawn breaks. But his libido is afire, and he is determined to have the girl as violently as possible before leaving the Weston estate. I’ll fuck her to death! he thinks, grinning like a loon at the thought of how much he is going to hurt the twelve-year-old girl before killing her.


Resisting the urge to keep racing down the wide staircase, Richie Travers and Tara Weston raced out onto the fourth-floor landing, still trying to be as quiet as possible. Although they had heard the maniac shouting at them and sensed as much as heard the killer start down the stairs after them.

“In here,” said Richie at a whisper, guiding the girl into the nearest room. Looking about, even in the dark, Richie could see that it was a dining room. More like a banqueting hall, he thought, looking over at the long blackwood table, which looked as though it would not be out of place in the dining room in the Lodge in Canberra. Or even Buckingham Palace! he decided. Of course, he knew from studiously reading the society pages that the Westons had always liked to dine on a grand scale.

As they crouched at one end of the behemoth of a table, Tara Weston suddenly leant across to whisper in Richie’s left ear, “Are you my guardian angel?”

“What ...? No ... I’m just a burglar who picked the wrong house to burgle,” explained Richie, startled by the beautiful girl’s faith in him. Smiling to himself, he thought: Guardian angel? Hell, I’m not even much of a burglar. I’ve already served two stretches in the pen, and I’ve only been out of high school fifteen years or so.

Hearing footsteps on their level, Tara and Richie both ducked. But, to their relief, instead of stopping on the fourth floor, the footsteps began to retreat down toward the third-floor landing.

“He thinks we’re racing down to the ground floor!” said Tara, sounding ecstatic. But Richie soon brought her back to Earth:

“For now,” he said, looking around for some other exit from the landing. “But it won’t take him long to realise that he can’t hear our footsteps on the stairs ahead of him.”

Looking across at the wide bay windows, Richie wondered if he could get them open without setting off any alarms. Then he realised, Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing; it might scare off the maniac. If he’s got any sense of self-preservation at all, he’ll know the alarm will bring neighbours and police post haste.

After a second’s hesitation, he headed toward the window.

For a moment, Tara Weston crouched by the table, watching her new guardian angel. Then, deciding that it was safest to stay near him, she padded after him and watched, puzzled, as Richie Travers approached the large window.

“Are we going to climb down to ground level out the window?” Tara asked, obviously thinking that there was little that her new protector could not do.

“No, with any luck, we won’t need to,” said Richie, reaching for the window handle. “Here goes,” he said, throwing the window open wide.

Instead of the shrill alarms that he had expected, Richie was greeted with only silence.

“Damn! He must have shut off the alarm system along with the lift mechanism,” said Richie. He heaved a depressed sigh, hoping that he wasn’t going to get the girl raped and killed after all. Hoping that the man who had murdered Laura and Stephen Weston was not too smart for him. That’s why I didn’t set off any alarms when I entered through the French windows on the ground floor. Because he’d already shut down the alarm system. Not because of any lock-picking skills I had learnt in prison.

Looking out the fourth-floor window, he realised that there was no escape for them that way either. Unlike the thriller movies where there is always a conveniently situated tree or water pipe that can be climbed down to ground level, in real life, there was nothing. Only smooth fawn-coloured bricks. Which a skilled rock-climber might have been able to descend, using the mortar courses as footholds. But Richie was no human fly. And even if he had been desperate enough to risk his own life, he knew that he could never risk Tara Weston’s life that way. After all, I’m her new guardian angel, he thought, smiling at the irony.


Roderick Voss has started to hum the ABBA hit, “Waterloo”, as he races down the wide staircase toward the third floor. It is only as he reaches the third-floor landing that he realises that he can no longer hear the twelve-year-old girl’s frightened footsteps ahead of him on the stairs. Are you going to be my Waterloo, young Tara Weston? he thinks. Over the last twelve years, Voss has killed nearly fifty people, raped and/or maimed countless others. And in all of that time, he has never faltered. Never felt uncertain about his ability to avoid capture and imprisonment, or worse. No one has ever been smart enough to elude his clutches. Until now!

Now he thinks, Waterloo! Are you going to be my Waterloo, young Tara?

He hesitates on the third-floor landing, looking about, not hoping to see Tara’s presence in the dark. More likely sense it. He takes a deep breath, then sticks out his tongue, like a snake smelling the air, in the hope of obtaining some kind of instinct about the girl’s presence.

“Okay, so you’re not ahead of me on the stairs,” he says aloud softly, “but which way did you go, beautiful Tara? Down here to the third floor? Or did you stop up on the fourth floor?”

He looks up toward the fourth-floor landing as though some evil instinct has warned him that he has gone too far. But then, as though not believing in instinct, refusing to believe he could have run down too far, he steps out onto the third floor and starts down the corridor toward the first doorway.


Turning away from the fourth-floor window, Richie Travers looked back into the dining room. There must be some way to get past that maniac to reach the ground floor, thought Richie. He had parked his Corolla half a block from the Weston estate and thought: If I could only get her to the car!

He half considered trying to hide in the dining room until dawn. But looking at the phosphorescent face of his wristwatch, he realised that dawn was still five hours away. Too long! We could never stay hidden in here for five hours!

“I think he’s stopped running,” said Tara Weston.

“What?” asked Richie, turning toward the beautiful blonde girl.

“That ....” She gulped, looking as though she were about to cry for a moment. “That man. I think he stopped on the next floor. If ... if we’re quiet on the stairs, maybe we can sneak past him and get down to the ground floor.”

“No, it’s too risky. If he heard us, he’d catch us before we got ten metres.”

“But we could go down the back staircase. It leads down to the garage. We’ve got five cars ...” she said, suddenly stopping.

Richie looked at her in the dark, wondering if she had suddenly realised that having five cars didn’t mean anything if you’re only twelve and you don’t have a mother or father.

“That’s okay, honey,” said Richie. He reached out to the young girl, who came willingly into his arms. At first, she didn’t cry, merely pressed her silver-blonde head against his chest. Then, after almost a minute, the sobbing finally came.

“That’s all right,” said Richie, slowly stroking her long hair. He was more determined than ever now to get the child out of the mansion alive. But wondered: How? It’s one thing wanting to get her out ...?

In mid-thought, he stopped as something on the side wall caught his attention. Half a metre tall, and a metre and a half long, Richie had at first taken it to be a painting. Half a dozen or more paintings graced each wall in the banqueting hall. So that it had been a natural mistake in the dark.

Richie didn’t want to be insensitive and break in on the young girl’s grief. But he realised that saving her life was more important than providing her with a shoulder to cry on. Gently pushing her away a few centimetres, Richie pointed toward the long black oblong and asked, “Honey, what is that?”

For a few seconds, Tara stood rubbing at her eyes with her knuckles. Then, looking where he was pointing, she squinted for a moment, trying to see in the dark. Finally, she said, “That’s the dumbwaiter. For bringing food up from the second floor, where the main kitchen is located.”

Allowing the girl to collapse against him again, Richie gently walked her backwards toward the dumbwaiter. Almost as though they were dancing in the dark.

“I wonder,” said Richie, thinking aloud. “Could we take this down to the ground floor?”

“No, it only goes to the second floor.”

“Still, if he’s stopped on the third floor, it would get us past him,” said Richie. “Does it stop on the third floor?”

Tara had to think for a moment, but finally she shook her head emphatically. “No, only the second floor and this one.”

“Then he can’t open it on the third floor to get to us,” said Richie, his hopes rapidly growing. He smiled to himself in the dark, thinking, Don’t worry, beautiful Tara, I’ll get you out of this alive yet.

Aloud, he said, “Do you know how to work this thing, honey?”

“I think it has up and down buttons like a lift.”

Reaching into his vest pocket, Richie removed the small penlight which he had used earlier. He had had to pocket it to unchain the girl, then had not dared to use it when fleeing, for fear that the maniac would follow the bobbing light to catch them.

Clicking on the penlight, he quickly scanned the wall around the dumbwaiter and saw a small control bank on the right-hand side. As Tara had suggested, there were up and down pointing arrow buttons to send the dumbwaiter down to the second floor or call it back up to the fourth floor. Half a dozen black, circular buttons regulated the speed and angle of descent (in case anything went wrong).

Opening the sliding doors, Richie was pleased to see that the dumbwaiter was there waiting for them. “All right, honey, climb in and I’ll send you down to the second floor first.”

Shaking her head emphatically, Tara clung to her new guardian angel for dear life. “No, I want to stay with you.”

“But we can’t go down together. It’ll never hold our combined weight,” explained Richie. Although looking at the frail contraption, little more than three thin planks on each side, he was dubious that it could hold either one of them. Let alone both together.

If I’m her guardian angel, I guess I have to take the risk and test it for her, thought Richie. Aloud, he said, “Okay, what if I go first to make sure he’s not waiting down there?”

“Well ... okay,” said the twelve-year-old girl, clearly still far from convinced.

“Is there a control panel like this one down there, too?” asked Richie, tapping the console gently.

“I ... I think so. Why?”

“So, I can bring the dumbwaiter down again when you get inside,” explained Richie. “You can work these controls to send me down to the second floor. But it could be dangerous if you have to lean out to operate the dumbwaiter when you’re inside it.”

Hoping that the girl would not send him crashing to his death two floors below, Richie climbed into the dumbwaiter with great difficulty. Again, he had to resist the pangs of claustrophobia as soon as Tara closed the doors on him. But knowing that he had to take the risk to protect her, he called out, “Okay, start it up.”

Tara Weston pressed the down button, and with a grinding of gears, the small elevator started slowly downward. Just be grateful it’s only two floors, thought Richie, doing his best to ignore the alarming creaking of wood and groaning of gears as the dumbwaiter struggled not to fall apart under a far greater weight than it had been designed to carry.


Roderick Voss is almost finished checking through the rooms on the right-hand side of the corridor on the third floor. He has failed to find the Weston girl and is starting to think that she has outsmarted him. Either stopping on the fourth floor, or by tiptoeing past the third floor so that he did not hear her tread.

“She’d have to be very clever to tiptoe quietly enough so that I thought she’d left the staircase,” Voss says aloud. But he has to concede that the silver-blonde girl is a lot smarter than he has given her credit for. Waterloo, couldn’t escape if I wanted to, he thinks. Again, he wonders if Tara Weston will be his undoing.

He is in the billiard room when he hears the grinding of mechanisms starting up above him.

“The lift!” he says, wondering how the girl could have started it again after he had disabled the mechanisms earlier.

Almost colliding with the cue rack in his haste to get to Tara Weston, Roderick Voss grabs a hefty billiard cue to use to finish off the pesky girl, having decided that she is too cunning to waste time playing with first. “Just kill her, then get the hell out of here!” he tells himself, racing out into the corridor.

He half expects to see the elevator approaching the third-floor landing as he reaches the elevator bay. However, there is no sign of the contraption, which is still clanking away loudly overhead. On instinct, he presses the down button to stop the elevator when it reaches the third floor.

Then he jogs up the staircase to the fourth floor. Where, to his astonishment, there still is no sign of the elevator.

“The little bitch has got the mechanism clanking somehow, but she hasn’t got it moving yet,” Voss tells himself. He is grinning a broad shit-eater grin as he jogs up to the fifth floor, half hoping to find the clever pest has trapped herself inside the elevator.

When he reaches the elevator bay on the fifth floor, though, the doors are wide open and there is no sign of Tara Weston. And most surprisingly of all, the clanking sound is not coming from the elevator.

“Then what is it, for God’s sake?” he says aloud, starting to hate Tara Weston. Until now, there has been nothing personal in his desire to rape and murder her. He has picked the Weston family almost at random from the society pages. But now he must kill the twelve-year-old girl. It is as though killing Tara Weston has become the centre of his universe; the star that his very existence orbits around.

Resisting the urge to scream in rage at being outsmarted by the young girl again, Voss reverses direction. After one last baneful look at the jammed elevator, he jogs back toward the staircase.

Ignoring the desire to race madly down the stairs and flee the Weston manor, Voss starts slowly down the stairs again. Determined to kill Tara Weston with the billiard cue that he still carries, Voss no longer even cares whether or not he is captured by the police.

Just so long as I smash that cunning little bitch’s head to paste first, he thinks, gripping the cue so hard with both hands that his knuckles are glowing white.


Inside the dumbwaiter, Richie Travers had started to sweat as though it were 50 Degrees Celsius, although it was quite a chilly night. He had almost got over the claustrophobic terror of being inside the tiny elevator. But as it continued to squeak and groan beneath his weight, he could not escape the inexorable knowledge that it could collapse beneath him at any second.

Still, it’s only two floors, he said to himself. He only wished that the dumbwaiter had some kind of indicator inside to let him know how far he had to travel still, like a full-sized elevator. But, of course, a full-sized elevator was intended to carry live passengers. The dumbwaiter was only designed to carry food and crockery. So that there was no need or point in it having either lights or indicators on the inside.

Richie was still expecting to crash to his death, or at least severe maiming, when the dumbwaiter suddenly ground to a screeching halt.

Oh God, what has gone wrong now? thought Richie, wondering how long he could resist the claustrophobic urge to have a major breakdown if he was stuck between floors in the cramped food elevator?


Standing alone outside the dumbwaiter shaft on the fourth floor, Tara Weston heaved a sigh of relief when she heard the small elevator stop safely on the second floor. However, to her surprise, she did not hear the doors open on the second floor. Although she could have brought the elevator back up, she decided against it until receiving the A-OK on the small intercom attached to the control console.

Instead, she pressed the small button marked “Press to speak” and asked into the intercom, “Are you okay?”

She released the button so she could hear any answer, then leant down to listen intently.


Inside the dumbwaiter, Richie knew that he had to keep a calm head for Tara, if not for himself. “But how the hell do I get out of here if the lift mechanism has seized up?”

Then, to his astonishment, Richie suddenly heard Tara Weston’s voice whispering, “Are you okay?”

At first, he thought that the blonde girl was calling down the elevator shaft after him. Then he realised that the voice was coming from outside the elevator.

“Tara?” he called, wondering how she could have got down to the second floor ahead of him.

When he heard the voice calling a second time, he hesitantly reached out and opened the small doors. Heaving a sigh of relief to find himself stopped on the second-floor kitchen, he all but fell out of the dumbwaiter in his desire to get out of the cramped space.

“Are you okay?” called Tara Weston again, through the intercom attached to the control panel.

Using the feeble beam of the penlight, Richie hunted around the control console of the dumbwaiter until he worked out how to use the intercom system. Depressing the send button with his thumb, he said, “Yes, I’m fine. Stand by, and I’ll send the lift back up for you.”


Roderick Voss has crept past the fourth-floor landing when he realises that the mechanical clanking has stopped. He halts half a dozen paces below the landing, clutching the billiard cue so hard that his knuckles now hurt. He looks about himself slowly, trying to sense where the sound has come from, hoping that the silence does not mean that the girl has somehow escaped the manor house; has somehow escaped the vengeance of Roderick Voss. Vengeance, he decides, is now the right term for it.

“After all you’ve put me through, you little bitch, I have a right to wreak vengeance upon you!”

He starts to head back down toward the third floor. But then the clatter-crashing starts up again. And he realises that it is just above him. On the fourth floor.

Puzzled, not understanding what could be on the fourth floor making such a clatter, when he knows that the elevator is still locked in its cage on the fifth floor, he heads back up the staircase toward the fourth floor.

Stepping out into the corridor, he pads as quietly as a jungle cat across toward the first door on the left-hand side. He gently grips the doorknob and, as quietly as possible, opens the door.


Standing by the dumbwaiter, Tara Weston hesitated a little. Although the tiny elevator had not collapsed when her guardian angel went down, she feared that it would collapse beneath her weight. Although she knew that her guardian weighed two or three times what she did.

“Step into the lift, honey, and I’ll bring you down here,” said the voice of Richie Travers. Yet still, the silver-blonde girl hesitated to step into the dumbwaiter. Afraid that it would collapse under her weight.

“Step into the lift, honey, and shut the doors,” came the voice of Richie, as suddenly the banqueting hall was bathed in light.

Starting to climb into the tiny elevator, Tara Weston was blinded by the sudden burst of brightness. Stumbling as she reached up to rub at her eyes, she almost fell to a heap on the floor.


“You little bitch!” shrieks Roderick Voss, standing in the doorway at the other end of the large dining room. “I’m going to bash your fucking head in for all the trouble you’ve caused me! I’m not even going to bother fucking you first!”

Then, with an almost animalistic roar of victory, Voss begins to race across the dining hall, still wielding the billiard cue like a club. Holding the thin end in his hands, so that when he brings the thick end down on Tara Weston’s head, it will hopefully smash it open in a single blow, taking the smart bitch’s life, and punishing her for the aggravation that she has caused him.


Shrieking in terror, Tara Weston stood where she was, too frightened to step into the dumbwaiter. Although still partly blinded by the fluorescent lighting, she had heard Roderick Voss’s threats. Shivering at his bestial roaring and hearing his thundering footsteps, she knew that he would reach her in ten seconds or so, and carry out his threat to bash in her head.

“Step into the lift, honey, and shut the doors,” came the voice of Richie Travers over the intercom, “and I’ll bring you down here.”


On the second floor, Richie heard Tara’s shrieks of terror down the dumbwaiter shaft, but could only guess what was causing them.

“Step into the lift, honey, and shut the doors, and I’ll bring you down here,” he said for the half a dozenth time into the control console. And this time, to his relief, he heard the dumbwaiter creak as something heavy got into it.

“Thank God,” said Richie. He pressed the down button. However, to his dismay, the elevator did not start down the shaft toward the second floor.


Roderick Voss is shrieking now in ecstasy as much as rage as he nears the terrified girl. She is gorgeous, and he regrets not having the chance to rape her before killing her. But having been so close to being his Waterloo, he knows that he must just smash her head in with the billiard cue, then get the hell out of there before dawn. Before, nosy neighbours might spot him leaving and decide to call the police.

“I’m going to kill you! Kill you! Kill you!” he starts shrieking in rage, and is delighted as the girl starts to cry in terror.


Too terrified to even move now, Tara Weston stood just outside the dumbwaiter as death roared down on her, wielding a wooden billiard cue.

“Step into the lift, honey, and shut the doors, and I’ll bring you down here,” said the voice of Richie Travers for the dozenth time through the intercom on the control panel.

Finally hearing the voice, Tara looked toward the console. And as the voice repeated its lifesaving message, Tara slowly began to climb into the dumbwaiter. But her movements were arthritically slow, so that she almost seemed to be moving in slow motion as the man who had slaughtered her parents roared across the banqueting hall like an express train.

“Step into the lift, honey, and shut the doors, and I’ll bring you down here,” said the voice of Richie. But now Tara was “safely” inside the tiny food elevator.

“I’m in,” said Tara, forgetting that Richie could not hear her unless she depressed the send button on the console outside the dumbwaiter.

“I’m going to kill you! Kill you! Kill you!” shrieked Roderick Voss, now only three or four metres from where the beautiful girl lay bunched up, quivering in terror within the constricting space of the dumbwaiter.


On the second floor, Richie Travers listened in horror to the shrieking of the maniac. Which he could now hear echoing down the shaft of the dumbwaiter.

Richie frantically pressed the console controls, unable to fathom why the tiny elevator would not start downward. Then realisation suddenly hit him. Holding down the send button on the intercom controls, he shouted, “Shut the lift doors, honey. The dumbwaiter won’t start with the doors open.”


“I’m going to kill you! Kill you! Kill you!” shrieks Roderick Voss, as he charges toward the dumbwaiter. As he runs, vaguely he hears a voice talking through the intercom speaker, but pays no attention to it, mistaking it for a pre-recorded message.

“I’m going to kill you! Kill you! Kill you!” shrieks Voss, eyes gleaming insanely as he raises the billiard cue back over his left shoulder to swing toward the beautiful girl cowering inside the immobile dumbwaiter.

At the last instant, Tara Weston reaches out and slams shut the doors to the small elevator.

Crash! The billiard cue thunders against the wooden doors of the dumbwaiter, making the girl inside squeal in terror.

Roderick Voss laughs out loud at her terror, delighted by the sound of the scream.

Then he hears another sound. One that does not delight him.

“Noooooooo!” shrieks Voss in dismay as the dumbwaiter suddenly starts up with the clanking and grinding of gears that he had heard earlier.

“No! No! No!” shrieks the maniac, slamming the butt end of the billiard cue repeatedly into the blackwood doors of the dumbwaiter.


Inside the dumbwaiter, Tara Weston heard the voice of her guardian angel over the intercom and reached out to pull shut the dumbwaiter doors as instructed.

Just in time as the billiard cue descended toward her head.

“Eeeeeeeeeiiii!” shrilled Tara in terror as the butt of the cue crashed into the elevator doors. Then, with a grinding of gears, the dumbwaiter started downward on its slow, steady trip from the fourth floor to the second.

“No! No! No!” came the voice of the madman in the fourth-floor banqueting hall. Then “Crash! Crash! Crash! Crash!” the billiard cue slammed again and again into the wooden doors, making them creak as though about to split apart.

What happens then? wondered Tara, not knowing whether the dumbwaiter would grind to a halt instantly. Only hoping that she would not be stranded midway between the fourth and second floors.


“Crash! Crash! Crash! Crash!” Roderick Voss swings the billiard cue repeatedly against the doors of the dumbwaiter. Initially, from frustration at the missed opportunity to punish the clever bitch for having outsmarted him in a way that none of his numerous other victims have ever done. But then, as the wooden doors of the small elevator begin to splinter beneath the repeated blows of the billiard cue, another hope springs into the mind of Voss:

If I can smash the lift doors open, it will stop midway between floors. It wouldn’t go until the recorded message told the little bitch to shut the doors. So if I smash them open, it should stop again, he thinks: Then I can reach into the shaft and pull the lift back up!

With this thought in mind, he starts to smile, all wasteful anger gone. Yet he keeps hitting the dumbwaiter with increasingly greater force. Until he is rewarded for his efforts.

“Yes!” cries Voss in almost sexual delight as one of the small doors shatters in half. The first half falls into the elevator shaft and crashes down onto the descending dumbwaiter. The second half hangs onto the hinges for a few seconds. But two more hard crashes with the billiard cue is enough to make it fall onto the floor in the banqueting hall.

Then, to the joy of Roderick Voss, the cranking of mechanisms grinds to a halt as the small elevator stops.

Two or three sharp whacks with the billiard cue are enough to smash away the second door. Then Voss peers down into the dumbwaiter shaft.

He grins his broadest shit-eater grin at the sight of the food elevator trapped between floors below him. He only wishes that there was a glass top, so that he could see into the dumbwaiter to see Tara Weston cringing inside. But he is pleased to hear her sobbing and decides that will have to do. For now!

Laughing aloud at the young girl’s sobbing, Roderick Voss reaches out with both hands. Grabbing the dumbwaiter cable firmly, he begins tugging upon it, trying to pull the elevator back up to the fourth floor.


At first, Tara felt safe within the cramped confines of the dumbwaiter. The “Crash! Crash! Crash!” of the billiard cue still made her jump a little. But then the crashing started to become little more than a dim echo receding into the distance as the dumbwaiter slowly rattled and clanked on its cable down from the fourth floor to the third. Then, slowly, on toward the safety of the second floor, where her new guardian angel was waiting to take her to safety.

“Then, I’ll be safe,” said Tara. At twelve, she knew that she should not trust any older man too implicitly. But her guardian had kept her from the vile hands of the fiend who had murdered her parents, so she knew that he was one man whom she could trust. And so far, he had vindicated that implicit trust.

“Soon, I’ll be down to the second ...” said Tara. But then she shrieked in terror as something crashed down onto the roof of the dumbwaiter.

“Oh my God!” cried Tara. She tried to sit up, but was unable to move about enough in the cramped space of the small elevator. “What in the world ...?”

Putting her left ear as close to the ceiling of the dumbwaiter as she dared, Tara listened, trying to discern what was going on.

“Crash! Crash! Crash! Crash!” The hammering of the billiard cue came from the floor above, now much louder than before. As though the maniac had managed to open the dumbwaiter doors, even though they were designed not to open once the small elevator was in motion.

“Not much longer, now. Soon I’ll be safely with my guardian angel,” said Tara at barely a whisper. Then the crashing came louder than before.

Tara crouched as far from the ceiling of the dumbwaiter as the cramped quarters allowed, expecting to hear something else crash down onto the roof of the elevator.

Instead, the elevator began to whine strangely, to jerk from side to side a little, as though the cable were about to break. Although Tara knew that the dumbwaiter could only plummet another metre or so to the second floor, she began to whimper in fear. Not quite crying yet, but knowing, despite her resolution to be brave for her new guardian angel, that she would not be able to keep the tears at bay for much longer.

Then, after one last shudder, the food elevator came to a halt between floors. And despite her best intentions, Tara Weston began to cry from terror.


On the second floor, Richie Travers had been waiting beside the dumbwaiter console for what seemed like an æon. “That's a girl!” he had congratulated her on the console intercom once the elevator finally started moving downwards. And he knew that she had finally dared to shut the doors and confine herself within the claustrophobic dumbwaiter.

“Good girl!” he said. Although he knew that she could not hear him any longer, as with rattles and crashes aplenty, the food elevator began to slowly grind its way down from the fourth floor toward the second.

“Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump!” The crashing of the billiard cue came to Richie only dimly from two flights up. Although not knowing what it was, logic told him it was the maniac coming after him. After Tara. Or after both of them. And he was just grateful that the dumbwaiter was in motion at last.

“There’s no way that he can get her now till she gets down here,” said Richie. He heaved a sigh of relief, grateful that the dumbwaiter could not stop on the third floor.

What could I have done then? he wondered: We could never have both fitted into the thing at once. So which would have been more dangerous? To send her down alone first? Or second? Knowing that the maniac could have grabbed her in either case without any interference from me.

Still, everything is going smoothly now. Yet even as he thought it, the rattle-crashing of the small elevator increased to manic proportions. And became an almost buzz saw grinding, which had Richie wondering whether the cable was about to break.

Still, it can’t be far overhead now, thought Richie. Even before the whining had begun, the rattle-crashing had been getting louder and louder, and he realised: It must be well past the third floor now. Even if it fell, it would be only three metres or so. No one ever dies falling two or three metres, do they?

Yet somehow he could not convince himself. The thought of the beautiful silver-blonde girl trapped inside that claustrophobic box as it crashed two or three metres to his level was enough to make his belly grip with worry like a fist tightly clenching around his entrails.

Only another two metres now at most, though, thought Richie. Then, mysteriously, the rattle-crashing and whining all stopped, and he realised that the dumbwaiter had stopped just short of the second floor.

“Come on, come on,” pleaded Richie, feeling helpless. He wished that it was him trapped inside the small wooden box, rather than the beautiful child.


Roderick Voss grins his best shit-eater grin as he reaches toward the dumbwaiter cable with both hands.

Taking hold of the cable, he heaves with all of his strength, trying to manually raise the elevator back up toward the fourth floor. However, the metallic cable is slippery with grease and impossible to grip well enough. Even if it were possible to pull the dumbwaiter manually up the vertical shaft with the twelve-year-old girl trapped inside.

Cursing, Voss looks around the banqueting hall for anything that he could use to pull up the cable.

Or to cut it! he suddenly realises. He looks around the banqueting hall, hoping to see a knife of some kind on the long blackwood table. But, of course, the knives are kept down in the Westons’ main kitchen, sent up to the dining room (along with meals) via the dumbwaiter.

What did I do with my knife? he wonders. He had wrought great bloodshed tonight; eight dead: three shot, the others hacked to pieces. But now the only weapon that he has is the billiard cue.

“Where did I ...?” he begins. Then he realises that he had left the handgun and filleting knife in the young girl’s bedroom. He had placed them on a cabinet in her bedroom while taking his shower. So they should still be there upon the fifth floor.

Unless the little bitch picked them up on her way out, he wonders. But he realises that this is unlikely. However, she had picked the four Yale locks; it must have taken time. She could not have had time to hunt around in the dark for weapons before fleeing the darkened bedroom only seconds before he returned.

“That means that they’re still up there?” says Roderick Voss aloud. He looks down into the shaft of the stranded dumbwaiter and smiles mischievously. He knows that the twelve-year-old girl is not going anywhere in a hurry.

“So I’ve got time to go and fetch the knife,” he says as he turns and starts jogging across toward the door to the corridor. “And the revolver.”

He pats his left hip pocket and smiles broadly as he feels two speed loaders still ready, knowing that he still has at least a dozen rounds for the gun. “Just in case the knife doesn’t do the trick.”


Standing by the dumbwaiter doors on the second floor, Richie Travers examined the console controls. “There must be something to push to unjam the damn lift,” he muttered to himself, trying to read the buttons in the feeble beam of the penlight.

“Clear!” he reads below one small button. Finding nothing else even vaguely likely, he decided to risk pressing the button.

There was a hellish roaring of gears for a few seconds. But other than a terrified squeal from Tara Weston, there was no result.

He risked pushing the button a second time. But when it did not budge the dumbwaiter, Richie did not dare to risk it a third time.

Then, what else can I do? For all I know, that maniac might be climbing down the elevator shaft to attack her from above? Or leaning down to shoot her through the roof of the dumbwaiter! thought Richie.

Knowing that there was no time to waste, Richie reached for the doors to the dumbwaiter. But will they open? he wondered.

Pulling the handles, he opened the doors easily enough and pointed the penlight beam into the shaft.

“Holy ...?” he said, peering down into a seemingly bottomless pit. Tara had told him that the dumbwaiter only travelled from the main kitchen on the second floor to the banqueting hall on the fourth floor. But peering down into the abyss, Richie realised that she was wrong. It also went down to a basement or subbasement. Possibly a provisions store.

God help her if the cable snaps, thought Richie, looking down the shaft again. Or if that maniac manages to cut the cable somehow! he suddenly realised, wondering if that was the mysterious thumping that he had heard a while back.

My God, there’s no time to waste, he realised, turning to peer up the shaft this time.

To Richie’s relief, he could see the bottom of the dumbwaiter only half a metre or so above his head. “But the question is, how do I get her out of there?” he wondered aloud.

He looked around the well-provisioned kitchen, looking for something, anything that might help him to lower the food elevator, so that the girl could crawl out. Along one whole wall of the kitchen was a rack containing seemingly hundreds of carving knives, bread knives, cleavers, and meat tenderising tools of every possible persuasion.

“Maybe I could use one of the meat cleavers to cut the bottom out of the lift?” he considered. But then he wondered if he could catch the twelve-year-old girl in time as the bottom fell out of the dumbwaiter. In time to stop her from plummeting to her death down that near-bottomless pit!

He shone the penlight beam down the shaft again and still could not make out any bottom. “Still, the light of this thing is so feeble,” he told himself, trying to convince himself that the silver-blonde girl might be able to survive falling down the shaft without serious trauma.

Yet he knew in his heart that it probably was not true. Maybe I can lean into the shaft to try to deflect her onto the second floor if she falls? thought Richie. But looking down the abyss again, he was not convinced that he was big enough a hero to take a fall like that himself to save the girl’s life: Even if I am her guardian angel.

Looking up toward where the base of the dumbwaiter was so close, yet so far overhead, Richie heard Tara Weston crying and felt like a bastard for his cowardice.

After a moment, he wondered, Can I reach up and pull the lift slowly down? Remembering his abortive attempts to move the elevator with the “Clear” button, he hesitated. But he knew that every second’s procrastination could cost young Tara her life. So, doing his best not to think of the bottomless depths below, Richie leant out into the dumbwaiter shaft and reached up until his fingers were touching the rough-hewn wooden base of the food elevator.


Tara hadn’t wanted to cry. But she had been unable to prevent herself when the dumbwaiter had ground to a halt between floors.

Overhead, she heard the murderer cursing and felt the cable shake, making the dumbwaiter rock a little within the shaft. For a moment, Tara stopped crying as she looked up, puzzled. Then, hearing the maniac’s voice echoing down the shaft, she began to cry again, thinking: Oh no, he’s climbing down the shaft after me!

Then, with a great mechanical screeching, the dumbwaiter began to shake from side to side, and Tara heard the madman cursing overhead again.

After a few seconds, the roaring stopped, and the dumbwaiter stopped shaking. Then, a few seconds later, the shrieking started up again, and Tara began to sob louder as she thought the elevator was going to be shaken apart. Leaving her to fall to the meat larder in the subbasement. She remembered telling her guardian angel that the dumbwaiter only travelled between the second and fourth floors. But she now recalled that she had been wrong. It also went express to the subbasement.

After a few seconds, the hellish shaking stopped, and Tara felt the cable swaying overhead and heard the murderer cursing again.

Oh no, he’s climbing down the cable to get to me! thought Tara, more afraid of the man above her head than of any possible injury from crashing down to the subbasement.

Tara tried shifting her weight in her cramped confines in the desperate hope of escaping the maniac, who she was now certain was climbing down the dumbwaiter shaft to attack her from above. Or shoot me straight through the roof! she realised, still crying, no longer believing that her guardian angel could keep her from the clutches of the fiend stalking her.

“Eeeeeeeeeiiii!” shrieked Tara as the dumbwaiter shuddered suddenly. “Oh my God, he’s just above me!”

Then she shrieked, “Eeeeeeeeeiiii!” again as a man’s hand suddenly reached into the bottom of the food elevator and touched her leg.

“Get away! Get away!” shrieked Tara Weston, kicking out wildly at the hand. Though unable to get much leverage, she squealed in delight as her left foot descended with a bone-crunching crack against the probing hand.


“Jesus!” cried Richie Travers as Tara’s foot crashed down onto his right hand. “It’s only me, honey,” he called up to her, shaking his hand to relieve the stinging. He resisted the temptation to shout at the girl. Recalling his mounting claustrophobia travelling in the tiny elevator earlier, he knew that it must be almost unbearable for the beautiful girl trapped inside the food elevator between floors.

“Sorry,” called young Tara, sounding both genuinely contrite and very relieved to hear Richie’s voice so close below her.

“Hold on, I’m going to try to pull the lift down to my level,” Richie called up to the trapped girl.

“Okay,” she called back.

Reaching up into the crevice between the base of the elevator and the shaft wall, Richie took hold of the wooden base and tugged as hard as possible without falling down the elevator shaft.

“It’s not working,” called Tara, sounding as though she was ready to start crying again.

“Hold on, honey, give it a chance,” called Richie, trying to tug harder, despite having to lean further out into the shaft.

Trying his best to forget the danger of falling down the elevator shaft to the subbasement, Richie tugged on the base of the dumbwaiter until his knuckles glowed white. Straining beyond breaking point, Richie’s face flushed red, and sweat began to run like rainwater down across his face. Why can’t I have muscles like a young Arnie? wondered Richie Travers in frustration. His muscles began to ache from the exertion of trying to pull the dumbwaiter down the half metre or less necessary to allow the twelve-year-old girl to slide out into the second-floor master kitchen. And frankly, he began to doubt that even Arnold Schwarzenegger could have pulled the elevator down that last half a metre without snapping the cable and possibly sending Tara Weston plummeting to her death.


No longer bothering to waste time with stealth, Roderick Voss races down the corridor to the staircase, turning on lights as he goes. Might as well be able to see where I’m going now, he thinks. Besides, he hasn’t got time to allow his eyes to readjust to the darkness, then back to the light when he returns to the banqueting hall.

At the fifth-floor landing, he stops at Laura and Stephen Weston’s master bedroom for just a second to smirk at his handiwork. But he hasn’t got time to spare, so he hurries on toward Tara’s bedroom.

Clicking on the light, he sneers in disgust at the rows of Barbie dolls, posters of Kanye West and other rappers, signalling that this is a young girl’s room.

“Girls!” he says in disgust, deciding that girls are only good for one thing. But unfortunately, he doesn’t have time with Tara Weston. He knows now that the blonde girl will be his Waterloo: Unless I kill her quickly and get out of here fast. He had planned to take some souvenirs of the Westons: paintings and a few trinkets to remind him of the fear and chaos that he had perpetrated tonight. But now he realises that there is no time. I’ve wasted too much time already with this damn brat. I just have to kill her. Then get the hell out of Glen Iris before the cops arrive.

Seeing the filleting knife and revolver on the dressing cabinet beside Tara Weston’s bed, he races over to grab them, then turns and races back out into the corridor.

Just kill her, then get out of here! he thinks again, as he races down the beige-carpeted stairs toward the fourth-floor banqueting hall.

“Now, let’s get it over with,” he says aloud as he runs across to the open dumbwaiter shaft.

Holding the revolver in his left hand, Voss is tempted to just lean down into the shaft and fire round after round into the dumbwaiter. Checking, he sees that there are still three cartridges in the gun. Plus, the two spare reloaders mean fifteen bullets in all. Fifteen .38 cartridges should be enough to kill anyone, he thinks. But leaning down to peer into the elevator shaft, he realises that the dumbwaiter is at least one and possibly two floors below him.

At this distance, I might miss altogether! he thinks, seeing that there is spare space all around the small elevator. Or hit the walls of the shaft. It would only take one or two bullets in the brain to kill her. But what if none of them hit a vital organ? Even with half a dozen or more bullets in her, she might not bleed to death before help arrives. As it soon will once I start firing this thing! He has brought a silencer with him, but has used it too much already. After six or eight shots, most silencers make no difference to the volume of a shot, and he has already fired his eight shots in killing the Westons’ domestics. That was why he had picked up the filleting knife on his search through the house earlier.

No! he realises: Cutting the cable is the only sure way to kill her. Holding up the filleting knife, he wishes that he had something better. Recalling the rows upon rows of knives and cleavers in the second-floor kitchen, from where he had taken the filleting knife, he now wishes that he had selected a stronger-bladed weapon.

Perhaps I still can? he thinks. He turns to start back toward the staircase to race down to the second-floor kitchen.

“No!” he says aloud. “Don’t waste time. Just kill the little bitch, then get away before the cops stick their noses in!”

Placing the gun in an inner pocket of his vest, he reaches out to grab the elevator cable with his left hand. Then he leans right into the dumbwaiter shaft to start sawing at the metallic cable with the filleting knife.


Tara Weston was doing her best not to cry or whimper in terror as the overhead mechanisms of the dumbwaiter rattled and screeched from time to time. Below her, she could hear her guardian angel straining to near breaking point in a bid to pull the elevator down the half a metre needed to allow her to slide out. Tara’s faith in her new guardian angel was fully restored. She was now almost smiling as she realised that all would be well. Richie Travers, guardian angel to Tara Weston, would get her out of her temporary prison alive and unharmed.

“Screeech! Screeech! Screeech!” came the sound from above her, and Tara looked up in amazed horror as she realised what it was.

“Oh no! He’s cutting the overhead cable!” she said in a whisper. Then, crouching down to get her mouth as close to the floor of the elevator as possible, Tara called to Richie, “He’s cutting the cable! That man is cutting the overhead cable!”


Straining until his eyes were almost bugging out of his head, Richie Travers heard the screeching protests of the elevator and hoped that it meant that he was succeeding. He had managed to pull the dumbwaiter down a few centimetres. But there was still a long way to go.

Then she heard the other sound. A much louder screeching of metal, followed by Tara’s voice calling to him, “He’s cutting the cable! That man is cutting the overhead cable!”

“Oh God!” said Richie.

He knew that he could never pull the elevator down faster than the maniac could cut the cable to send it plummeting down to the subbasement. He frantically looked about the racks of knives and kitchen utensils for something, anything to help him. Realising that he had no time for finesse, Richie raced across to grab a large meat cleaver and the largest wooden meat tenderiser he could see.

“Hold on, honey, I’m coming,” Richie called up to Tara Weston. Then he placed the metal cleaver against the base of the dumbwaiter. Then, using the meat tenderiser as a hammer, he began to hammer against the cleaver like a manic carpenter, in a bid to cut the base out of the dumbwaiter before the madman on the fourth floor could cut the overhead cable.


Above the dumbwaiter, Roderick Voss stops, looking puzzled. He can hear the hammering from below and wonders: What the hell can it be? Perhaps the little bitch is trying to kick the bottom out of the elevator?

He realises that she has stopped crying, as though her courage has found its second wind. And once more, he thinks: Will you be my Waterloo, young Tara Weston?

After a few seconds, he shrugs and starts sawing at the metal cable with the filleting knife again.


Richie heard the silence from above and realised that the maniac had stopped attacking the cable for a moment. Although puzzled, Richie kept hammering at the meat cleaver with the wooden tenderising mallet and was heartened when, with a loud rending of wood, a large chunk fell out of the base of the elevator and plummeted down the elevator shaft below him, narrowly missing his left eye as it span past his head.

“Come on! Come on!” Richie urged the wood, trying to keep his voice down so that the girl trapped inside the dumbwaiter would not hear and be affected by any trace of desperation.


Roderick Voss stops again, puzzled by the sound of hammering from below the food elevator. Maybe the little bitch has got something in there with her, he thinks: A hammer or a knife of some kind?

Again, he wonders if the silver-blonde girl is going to be his downfall? In all the time that he has spent chasing her through the house, it had never occurred to him that she had stopped to pick up a weapon. Looking at the filleting knife, he thinks, I’m lucky that she didn’t think to take this or the gun from the dressing cabinet in her room. Luckily, the little bitch didn’t have time with me showering next door!

He wonders if it is now worth the effort to kill the twelve-year-old girl. Or should I just get the Hell out of here, while I still can?

Looking at the thin steel-banded cable holding the dumbwaiter up, he sees that it is shorn more than halfway through. What the Hell? he thinks with a lopsided grin: Never leave a job half finished.

Leaning out into the elevator shaft, he begins to saw at the cable with the filleting knife at double time.


Tara Weston huddled toward the bottom of the dumbwaiter, doing her best to ignore the frantic sawing overhead. She tried to take heart instead from the chopping sounds below.

Her faith had been restored in her guardian angel, and she wanted to believe that she was perfectly safe as long as he was just a few centimetres away, on the other side of the elevator base. But the hellish sawing overhead and occasional twangs of rending metal made it increasingly difficult for her to believe that he could free her from the small elevator in time.

“Please hurry,” Tara begged in a whisper, trying her best not to break down into tears again.


Richie cursed as chips of wood kept hitting him in the face. Hearing Tara Weston’s pleas, he knew that he had no time to waste. But as he hammered away once too often, the wooden meat tenderiser suddenly shattered.

“Damn!” cursed Richie as the barrel-shaped head of the tenderising mallet split in two and fell down the elevator shaft.

After what seemed like minutes, but could not have been, Richie heard the faintest of sounds, barely more than twin pops, from the subbasement as the two halves of the tenderiser hit bottom. Jesus, that’s deep! he thought, as he leant out further to attack the base of the dumbwaiter like a madman now with the cleaver.


On the fourth floor, Roderick Voss is leaning so far into the elevator shaft that there is a danger of his falling down the shaft to crash on top of the stranded dumbwaiter.

“Which wouldn’t be a very good idea at the moment!” says Voss, grinning evilly as he sees that the cable is now held by a single metallic strand.

“Here you go, you meddling little bitch!” he says, tempted to shout the words down to Tara Weston, as he starts sawing at the last strand with the rapidly blunting filleting knife.


“Watch out, honey!” called Richie Travers.

Without the meat tenderiser to hammer against the cleaver, he was forced to hold the cleaver in both hands and wield it like a hatchet, furiously hacking and cutting at the base of the small food elevator.


Hearing her new guardian angel’s warning, Tara Weston tried her best to keep out of the way of the meat cleaver as it began to break through the wooden base of the dumbwaiter. But there was only so much space to move around in inside the small elevator, and it was impossible to avoid being nicked by the cleaver from time to time.


“Yes!” cries Roderick Voss in delight as he finally cuts through the last strand and the dumbwaiter begins plummeting down the narrow tunnel.


“Look out, honey!” called Richie Travers as the bottom of the dumbwaiter finally fell out.

“Aaaaaaaaaah!” shrieked Tara Weston as she fell into space, expecting to plummet down the elevator shaft.

Instead, she crashed into Richie’s chest, almost knocking him down the shaft, then fell onto his lap, where he was sitting on the edge of the dumbwaiter opening.

“Okay, honey, climb out into the kitchen,” Richie said at barely a whisper, winded by the twelve-year-old girl suddenly crashing down onto him.

“All right,” said Tara.

She quickly scooted out of the elevator shaft onto the safety of solid ground again.

“Now grab my legs and pull me out ...” said Richie.

He stopped in mid-sentence, horrified as he saw the dumbwaiter suddenly start plummeting toward him.

“Okay,” agreed Tara.

Dropping to her knees, she grabbed her guardian angel by the legs and began to pull.

Richie Travers started to slide out of the elevator shaft feet first. Then suddenly he screamed, and there was a hellish crash.

Startled, Tara fell over onto her backside on the kitchen floor.

“Oh no!” she said as she stared up in horror at the dumbwaiter chute. Which was now filled with the dumbwaiter. “Oh no! He’s fallen down the tunnel!”


On the fourth floor, Roderick Voss sees the dumbwaiter plummet, then suddenly stop again. He hears a scream followed by silence and concludes that the troublesome girl has died in the fall.

Then he hears sobbing and curses and realises that she has only been injured. “Damn, she's more trouble than she’s worth!” he curses.

Racing across the banqueting hall, Voss half-wonders whether Tara Weston has a guardian angel. But then he puts the nonsensical thought out of his head and races out into the corridor, determined to kill her with his bare hands now. I’ll choke the life out of the little bitch! he thinks in delight. I’d like to see her survive that!


“Oh God! Oh God, no!” cried Tara Weston. Leaping up to her feet, she began trying to pull the busted dumbwaiter off of Richie Travers.

“Oh God, please don’t let him die!” begged Tara, hoping that saving her life would not cost the life of her new guardian angel.

The moaning from under the busted elevator told her that Richie was still alive. But she had no way of knowing how badly hurt he was until she found a way to free him from the wreckage of the dumbwaiter.

“Try to lift it off me,” said Richie very feebly.

Relieved to hear his voice, Tara grabbed the sides of the dumbwaiter and attempted to do as he had requested.


Reaching the wide staircase, Roderick Voss races down toward the third floor. Unable to see in the darkened shaft how many floors down the dumbwaiter has gone, he has no choice but to check them one by one.

Still, I’m pretty sure it’s either this one or the next one down, he thinks as he races out onto the landing on the third floor. But at least he does not have to search every room one at a time, as he had to do earlier while hunting for the little bitch. Knowing that the dumbwaiter can only travel straight down like the elevator, which it is, he knows that he only has to check the room directly beneath the banqueting hall on each floor.

He races down the corridor toward the left-hand door near the very end of the hallway. Pulling the door open impatiently, he flicks on the light switch and looks inside. Seeing a full-sized billiard table and heads of a lion, tiger, and Canadian moose on the wall, he realises that this is the games room that he has seen earlier.

Staring at the animal heads, Voss shakes his head in disgust.

“How could anyone do something so senseless to such beautiful creatures,” he says, almost crying. “It’s one thing to slaughter people. People are scum at the best of times. But these beautiful, free spirits ....”

Turning away before he starts blubbering, he races out into the corridor and heads toward the staircase to start down toward the second floor.


When Tara turned out to be too weak to lift the shattered dumbwaiter off him, Richie Travers decided to try reversing their roles. “Honey, go back to pulling on my legs, while I try lifting it off me.”

“O ... okay,” said Tara, almost crying again, distressed at her inability to lift the food elevator off her guardian angel.

“All right,” said Richie.

He tried to ignore the blood streaming down his face and a wrenching pain that made him think that his collarbone could be broken. Just concentrate on moving your arms and lifting the stupid thing off yourself, he thought.

He could feel the girl gently tugging on his knees, obviously afraid of hurting him. So, trying his best not to cry out as shards of agony lanced through his upper body, Richie began pushing at the sides of the busted dumbwaiter with both hands.

With the base of the small elevator already gone, cut away to free Tara Weston, it was difficult to find a handhold. But taking one corner near the base in each hand, he began to push with what little strength he had remaining.

Tara tugged as hard as she dared on the legs of her guardian angel. Although she knew that it was imperative to free him as quickly as possible, she was reluctant to pull too hard, for fear of increasing his injuries.

“Oh God!” she heard Richie grunt in despair. But looking up, she saw that he had managed to push the dumbwaiter a few centimetres off himself. “Try to pull me out now!”

Trying her best to ignore his continuing moans of agony, Tara began to tug on Richie’s legs with all of her strength. At first, to no avail. But just when she was on the brink of tears again, Richie suddenly slid toward her and the two of them went crashing to the floor of the master kitchen. In the shaft, the shattered remains of the dumbwaiter finally plummeted down to the subbasement.

Although pleased to have freed her guardian angel, Tara was shocked by the amount of blood that ran in rivulets down across his face from his forehead. One eye was black and swollen shut, his black shirt was sticky from blood from his face, and she realised possible injuries to his chest as well.

Tara did her best to try to stand him up. However, bleeding profusely from his forehead and chest, Richie was too weak to help her much, so he stayed in a heap on the kitchen floor.

“Oh no!” cried Tara, staring in shock at the mangled heap that was her new guardian angel. At first, she thought that Richie was dead, and she started to cry again. But then hearing him groaning, she knew that he was alive, but barely conscious.

If she had had time, she might have let Richie stay where he was while she went to get help; rather than risk moving him. But knowing that the maniac must be racing down the two flights of stairs toward them, Tara realised that she had no choice: I can’t leave you here in case he finds you and kills you. Not after what you’ve already done for me.

Kneeling on the cold, tiled floor, Tara placed Richie’s right arm around her shoulders and tried to pull him to his feet. At first, Richie offered no assistance, and strain as she might, Tara was not strong enough to budge him from the floor.

“Come on, please,” begged Tara. “We have to get out before he gets down here.”

At first, there was nothing to indicate that Richie Travers had even heard her. Then, slowly, he turned his head to stare at her with distant, rheumy eyes barely able to focus, like a wino after a heavy binge.

For a moment, Tara thought that he did not understand her. Then, despite obviously still being very groggy, Richie began to try pushing his way up the kitchen wall, using the wall for support. Tara tugged on his arm, holding it with both hands to stop it from slipping from her shoulders. And with a lot of straining, they managed painfully slowly to drag Richie up the wall, until he was sitting in the dumbwaiter opening.

“Please ... we have to get out of here,” begged Tara.

“Let ... let me get my strength back first,” said Richie at barely more than a whisper.

“We don’t have time!” insisted Tara. And, perhaps responding as much to the desperation in her voice as the young girl’s words, Richie did his best to help as Tara guided him along the kitchen wall, deeper into the room, knowing that she could never hold him up by herself if Richie’s strength gave out again.

Almost like sleepwalkers, Tara and Richie staggered around the edge of the room. From time to time, they stopped as Richie’s strength flagged, or it seemed as though he was about to slide down the wall again.

“No, please, you have to stay on your feet,” begged Tara as Richie almost collapsed again when they were only a metre or so from one of the two doors leading from the master kitchen into the second-floor corridor.

Richie grunted, tried to say, “Okay,” but then decided it was better to save his strength for trying to stay upon his feet as the brave young girl did her best to guide him through the darkened room toward the nearest door to the corridor.

As they approached the door, they could hear frantic footsteps in the corridor just outside the door at the other end of the kitchen.

“Oh no, he’s almost here,” said Tara. She almost pushed Richie over again in her anxiety to get him out of the first door before the maniac ran into the kitchen through the other door and saw them. “Come on, we have to get out into the corridor as fast as possible.”

Hearing the panic in the young girl’s voice, Richie tried desperately not to pass out. He tried to concentrate upon keeping his footing and heading for the imagined safety of the corridor outside the kitchen. But even as Tara Weston reached out for the knob to the first door, the running footsteps stopped at the second door. And the second door began to open inwards as the maniac charged into the kitchen.


Panting aloud from all the running that he has been doing, Roderick Voss races into the master kitchen, allowing the door to crash into the kitchen wall. Not wasting time letting his eyes adjust to the dark, he flips the switch to illuminate the main kitchen, then starts racing down to the opposite end of the room.

“Yes!” he says aloud in satisfaction at the sight of the dumbwaiter chute. But as he approaches it, he is puzzled.

He had expected to find Tara Weston trapped inside the wreckage. Instead, the chute is empty. There is no sign of Tara Weston. And no sign of the dumbwaiter.

Racing across to the food elevator, he leans right out into the elevator shaft and tries to peer down into the darkness. But, of course, he cannot make out any wreckage three or four floors below.

“But it must have crashed down there after I cut the cable!” he rationalises. “But was the little bitch still trapped inside it? Or did she manage to crawl out onto this floor before the dumbwaiter plummeted to oblivion?”


As the second kitchen door swung open with a crash, Tara Weston just managed to half lead, half carry Richie Travers out into the corridor in time. A second or two before Roderick Voss ran into the kitchen and switched on the fluorescent lights.

Looking down the corridor, they saw that the maniac had been switching on lights as he looked for them. So half of the upstairs rooms were now lit up.

Now we’re in trouble, thought Richie as Tara led him down the corridor toward the two staircases at the opposite end of the hallway. If we switch them off again, he’s bound to notice immediately. If we don’t, he’ll see us lit up like a Christmas tree.

“Come on,” whispered Tara. She strained beneath the weight of her guardian angel, who was shuffling along like a wino, taking baby steps. Each step he took, he seemed to be leaning more and more on Tara. Until the twelve-year-old girl almost had to carry the adult to keep him on his feet.

“Come on, please, not much further to the stairs,” said Tara, as they finally reached the second door to the kitchen. Only two or three metres away were the two staircases. And freedom, thought Tara: But first we have to get past this door unseen.

She tried to force Richie past the doorway quickly, almost pushing him over in her haste. But the burglar had other ideas.

“No, hold on,” insisted Richie.

Holding onto the door frame for support, he leant into the kitchen and peered around the room. At the other end, he saw Roderick Voss sitting on the chute opening, peering down into the dumbwaiter.

“What’s he doing?” whispered Tara.

“Looking for you,” explained Richie.

“Why can’t he just fall and leave us alone?”

“Maybe we can help him do that,” suggested Richie.

Reaching up to the light switches, he placed a finger against both switches to flip them over and plunged the large banqueting hall into darkness.


“Holy shit!” cries Roderick Voss as the kitchen is plunged into darkness while he is leaning into the dumbwaiter shaft.

Instantly blinded, he is temporarily disoriented, not sure which way is up, which way is down. Not sure which way to reach to save himself from falling headfirst down to the meat storage unit in the subbasement. He feels himself falling down the chute and desperately tries to clutch for the overhead cable. Only to realise that it is no longer there. He has seen through it on the fourth floor.


“Come on,” said Richie, leaning on Tara Weston’s shoulders again as they started back along the corridor toward the stairs.

“Do you think he fell down the elevator chute?” asked Tara hopefully.

“No,” said Richie emphatically, deciding against getting the girl’s hopes up only to have them dashed again. “We couldn’t be that lucky. But hopefully it’s thrown the fear of death into him. And depending on how big a fruit loop he is, he might decide to abandon us and get out of this place now, instead of risking staying until almost dawn.”

Despite the extent of Richie’s injuries, they hobbled past the first set of stairs toward the second staircase. Holding the banner rail in one hand, Tara started to head down to the ground floor, but Richie stopped her.

“No,” he protested, “not down. Up.”

“What?’ asked Tara, wondering if her guardian angel was getting confused from blood loss?

“We can’t possibly outrun him with me in this condition,” explained Richie. “But he’ll be expecting us to go down to the ground floor to escape. So, if we go back up to the third floor, where he’s already searched for us, we might be able to hide in one of the rooms. Then with any luck, he’ll search the lower floors till dawn, then give up and leave.”

“Well ... okay,” said Tara Weston, looking decidedly dubious as she started to lead her rapidly weakening guardian angel up the stairs toward the third floor.


For what seems a lifetime, Roderick Voss flounders in the dumbwaiter chute, almost believing that the twelve-year-old has managed to get revenge for the deaths of her parents by killing him. But always cool under pressure, he does not panic, but reaches out into the shaft with both hands. Knowing it is only half a metre or so deep in the wall, he finds the inner wall and presses both hands against it to stop himself from falling down the elevator tunnel.

Then slowly, motivated by anger, not fear, he pushes himself back into the kitchen until he drops out of the dumbwaiter shaft and lands on his backside on the tiled floor.

Breathing deeply to calm himself, Voss is more determined than ever to kill Tara Weston before leaving the mansion.

Even if I’m caught or killed, it’ll be worth it for the satisfaction of crushing that little bitch’s neck in my bare hands first. Smiling at the thought of Tara Weston’s death at his hands, Voss climbs back to his feet and hurries across to turn back on the kitchen light. Then, running out into the corridor, he heads toward the first staircase.

If he looks up as he reaches the staircase, he will see Richie and Tara on the opposite staircase, not far from the third-floor landing. But, of course, Roderick Voss is looking down, expecting the twelve-year-old girl to be running downstairs toward ground level.


Tara and Richie had barely started up the second staircase, toward the third floor, when the kitchen light went back on.

“Damn!” said Tara, knowing that it meant that the maniac had not fallen down the dumbwaiter chute.

“Don’t worry, honey, it will have rattled him a little at least,” said Richie, only hoping that it was true.

Trying his best not to make a noise, Richie held onto the banister with one arm to take some of his weight off Tara as the young girl half-led, half-carried him up the staircase.

From time to time, they had to stop to allow Richie to collect his breath, although they both knew that they had no time to waste.

They were almost up to the next landing when, with a roaring like a jungle beast, Roderick Voss raced out of the corridor toward the twin staircases.

“Oh!” said Tara in alarm as the murderer raced straight toward them.

“Shush,” warned Richie, trying not to fall on his face as he and Tara crouched on the wide staircase, hoping that the banister would conceal them. “He won’t be looking up. He’ll expect us to run down to the ground floor.”

And as Richie predicted, Voss did not even glance at the second staircase. He raced down the first staircase, roaring like a bull in anger and threatening rape, murder, and miscellaneous mayhem against the person of young Tara Weston.

Tara and Richie continued to crouch on the staircase for a few moments, watching Voss thundering down toward the first floor. Then, as the maniac raced past the first-floor landing and headed toward the ground floor, they finally stood again.

“Help me up to the third floor now,” said Richie.

Taking his right arm across both shoulders, Tara began dragging her guardian angel up the last few steps toward the third-floor landing.

“Now where?” asked Tara.

“Toward the nearest bedroom.”

“But there’ll be dead bodies in there.”

“Sooner them than us, honey,” said Richie. “Just be brave, and try not to look at them.”


Still roaring in rage at almost falling down the dumbwaiter chute, Roderick Voss races past the first-floor landing, almost falling down the stairs in his haste to beat Tara Weston to the front door of the manor house.

Panting a little from all the running that he has already done, Voss races across the tiled lobby floor toward the mullioned front door. Expecting the latch to be already sprung, he tries to pull the door open and curses as his fingers slip on the knob.

Seeing that the chain is still on the hook, he realises: They didn’t come this way. Turning, he races across the foyer to the back door, where he finds the tall French windows shut, but unlatched.

Did she leave this way? he wonders: Or did they just forget to latch the window when going to bed?

Knowing that the alarms have been deactivated, he opens the French windows and looks out at the lush lawns leading more than a kilometre to the tall, spiked fence at the rear of the estate. Did she go this way? he wonders. He knows that the Westons’ garage is out this way, behind the house, having already slaughtered the chauffeur: But the little bitch is only twelve, too young to be able to drive, even if she could get into the garage.

He stands there a moment longer. His instincts tell him that Tara Weston has not left this way, but he is wary of trusting them. This is where my instincts either help me catch her or get me killed! he thinks.

He looks out into the vast lawns for a few seconds longer. Then, shutting the French windows again, he turns and starts back inside to search the rooms on the ground floor. Which he does quickly, before starting back up the stairs to search through the rooms on the first floor.


Stepping into the nearest bedroom on the third floor, Tara Weston stopped and gasped in horror at the sight of the disembowelled butler and maid on the bed.

“Don’t look at them, honey,” advised Richie Travers, leaning heavily on the girl for support. Reaching across with his left hand, he took the girl’s chin into his hand to physically turn her head away from the bed and repeated, “Don’t look at them.”

Stopping to allow his eyes to adjust again to the darkness, Richie slowly looked around the room for somewhere to hide. He did his best to follow his own advice and not look at the disembowelled couple on the bed.

“Does this room have an en suite, like yours?” he asked.

Tara had to think for a while, but finally said, “I don’t think so. Only the rooms on the fifth floor have en suites. This floor has two bathrooms, which the servants have to share.”

Looking about the sparsely furnished room, Richie realised that there was virtually nowhere to hide. Forcing himself to look at the double bed, he realised that it was too low to the ground to hide under. Besides, that’s the first place any self-respecting psychopath would look, thought Richie: And with my injuries, once I was on the floor, I could never get up again in time to escape.

Looking at Tara, he realised that the girl was already close to hysteria again at being in the room with the dead couple. I doubt if she could hide under the bed to save her life, he thought. Then he realised that it still might be a life and death decision where to hide next.

With any luck, he’s already raced out through the front doors to hunt for us in the gardens outside, thought Richie, looking down at his wristwatch. Seeing that there were still a few hours to dawn, he wondered if they could rely on the killer hunting outside for that long. Or will he quickly realise that we didn’t go outside and come back looking for us?

Turning away from the bed, he thought, Maybe we should get out of here while he’s still outside. If we can take one of the estate’s cars, maybe we can outrace him. Or even run him down on the way out.

Turning to Tara, he asked, “Honey, you said this house has more than one car, didn’t you?”

“Yes, we have a six-car garage, although we only have five cars.” The girl stopped and blushed, obviously embarrassed, not having meant to boast about her parents’ wealth.

“Well, if we could start one of them ...?”

“But could you drive it in your current state?”

“Of course,” insisted Richie, trying to sound more confident than he felt. “Sitting down and driving is no problem. It’s standing up and walking around that hurts.”

“But what if he comes back and catches us trying to leave?”

“He’s not likely to return for a long while yet.” But even as Richie spoke, they heard crashing and swearing beneath their feet.

“He’s searching one of the floors below us,” whispered Tara, almost crying again. “Your plan didn’t work.”

Richie flinched at the young girl’s words, although he realised that she probably had not meant it as an accusation.

Shining the penlight around the room, he saw the louvre wall against one side of the room and asked, “Is that a walk-in wardrobe?”

“Yes,” said Tara.

“Can it be locked from the inside?”

“I don’t think so. But he’s got a gun anyway. He could easily shoot us through the louvres. Or quickly smash his way through them to get to us.”

“Maybe, but there’s nowhere else to hide in here,” insisted Richie. So, reluctantly, Tara led him across to the walk-in wardrobe. There was a key in the lock of the door at each end of the wardrobe, but Richie quickly saw that Tara was right: the doors could only be locked from the outside. Still, it’s better than nothing, thought Richie as he pulled the right-hand door open and started to shuffle inside the wardrobe.

After a moment’s indecision, Tara Weston slid into the wardrobe beside her guardian angel and carefully slid the louvre door shut again.

“Now what?” she asked.

“Now we hide here till dawn and hope he doesn’t find us first.”


Roderick Voss thunders through the first-floor rooms like an express train, no longer worrying about how much noise he makes. Turning on all the lights as he goes, he slams doors in rage, rips open wardrobes, and throws around any piece of furniture which Tara Weston might be able to hide in or under. So that by the time that he has thoroughly searched the first floor, he is also thoroughly exhausted.

“That cunning little bitch! Where is she?” he says aloud, half wondering whether his instincts have failed him this time. Wondering whether Tara has run out through the French windows after all? Or has gone out through the underground garage -- the way that he had entered the estate, what now seems like a lifetime ago.

“No! No, I can’t be wrong!” he says. Now panting like a horse, he hurries across to the staircase and races up to the second floor, thinking: She can’t be hiding on this floor. This is where the dumbwaiter took her. Where the cunning little bitch almost sent me plummeting to my death! She can’t still be hiding on this floor! He had heard her footsteps stumbling toward the staircases. But now he wonders: Was it all a cunning ploy? Did the clever little bitch stay hidden on this floor while I was racing madly down to ground level?

It seems unlikely. But over the last few hours, he has developed a grudging respect for the twelve-year-old girl. So, he slowly starts searching through the master kitchen and other rooms, mainly storage rooms for cutlery and crockery, as well as stores for non-perishable foodstuffs.

After half an hour, Voss has exhaustively searched the second floor and still hasn’t located the young girl.

Then where did she go? he wonders as he returns to the staircases. He has started back down the stairs to the ground floor, when the answer comes to him: “The cunning little bitch!” he says aloud, eyes glowing from rage as he realises how adroitly she has outsmarted him. “While I was charging downstairs to the ground level, she crept back upstairs! She may have even been on the stairs just a few metres up when I charged out like a mad bull and unthinkingly raced downstairs, assuming she’d go that way!”

Livid with rage at being made to look a fool by the young girl, Roderick Voss starts up toward the third floor. His hands are both clenching and unclenching from rage as he climbs the stairs. And he is more determined than ever to kill Tara Weston before leaving the estate.


Tara and Richie waited for what seemed like hours in the wardrobe, trying their best not to choke on the slightly caustic stench of mothballs, which lined the floor of the walk-in wardrobe.

From downstairs, they could hear crashing and swearing as though the maniac was tearing the rooms apart board by board. Then after more than an hour, the crashing and swearing mysteriously stopped.

“Do you think he’s gone away?” asked Tara Weston, doing her best not to slip over on the layer of mothballs lining the wardrobe floor.

“No, he’s probably just worn himself out and stopped for a breather,” guessed Richie correctly.

They waited in the cramped wardrobe for another forty minutes. Then a door slammed in the corridor outside the room.

“He’s on this floor now,” said Tara, almost crying as she spoke.

Wondering if he had made a fatal mistake by going back upstairs, Richie reached out to take Tara’s right hand and give it a reassuring squeeze.

After a few minutes, the door to the bedroom suddenly swung open and the light flickered on.


Roderick Voss is convinced now that Tara Weston has to be on the third floor of the Weston estate. But he is increasingly annoyed by his inability to locate the twelve-year-old.

How can the little bitch have eluded me for so long? he wonders as he steps into the room. Looking about the room slowly, he sees the butler and his wife on the bed, awash in their own blood. He smiles as he remembers raping the woman while her husband watched on, then killing them both with the filleting knife.

He steps slowly into the centre of the room and creeps across to the double bed. Although it is too low for anyone to hide under, he kneels, points the revolver under the bed and fires two quick shots.

Disappointed not to hear a cry, he kneels and looks under the bed, hoping to see Tara Weston’s corpse.

“Shit!” he says, seeing only an enamel chamber pot and mountains of dust bunnies.

Standing again, he starts back toward the door to the corridor, then stops and looks back. “Of course,” he says, starting across the room toward the walk-in wardrobe.


Hiding in the louvre-doored wardrobe, Tara and Richie watched as Voss hunted around the room. Richie clamped a hand over Tara’s mouth to prevent her from crying out when Voss fired the handgun under the bed. Then, to their delight, the maniac turned away and started back toward the outside corridor.

“He’s going away,” whispered Tara in relief, having pulled Richie’s hand away from her mouth.

Then, as though hearing the young girl’s whisper, the murderer turned back and started across the room, seemingly looking right at them.

“He’s seen us!” whispered Tara.

Covering her mouth again with one hand, Richie pulled the twelve-year-old girl closer to himself, trying not to make a sound despite the mothballs lining the wardrobe floor.

As the maniac strode across toward the right-hand door of the walk-in wardrobe, Richie tried his best to lead Tara Weston across toward the left-hand door. Shuffling, taking baby steps to minimise any noise, they had almost reached the left-hand door when Roderick Voss reached the right-hand door.

“Ah ha!” cried the maniac, pulling the door open wide with his right hand. As the door swung open wide, he aimed the revolver with his left hand and fired a single shot into the clothing. “All right, where are you? I know you’re in there!”


At the other end of the wardrobe, Tara and Richie crouched down so that the maniac would not see them over the tops of the clothing.


Where the Hell is the little bitch! wonders Roderick Voss as he hunts through the wardrobe. He almost gives up when he catches sight of Tara Weston’s left arm and realises that she is crouching at the other end of the wardrobe.

“Got you now, you little bitch!” cries Voss, leaping right into the wardrobe.

“Eeeeeeeeeiiii!” shrieks Tara Weston as Voss grabs her left elbow and begins squeezing it brutally.


Richie Travers thought at first that the maniac had not seen them. Then, hearing Tara scream, he realised that Voss had touched her.

“Got you now, you little bitch!” cried the maniac.

“Not if I can help it,” whispered Richie, more determined than ever to save the silver-blonde girl’s life.

He pushed open the left-hand door of the wardrobe, grabbed Tara’s hand and yanked her out of the maniac’s grip.

Tara screamed again in shock as her guardian angel almost brutally ripped her out of the maniac’s grasp and all but tossed her out of the walk-in wardrobe.

The young girl slid on a blood-slickened floor and fell onto her backside on the lushly carpeted bedroom floor.

A second later, Richie Travers, looking as though he was about to die, with blood still streaming down his face, staggered out of the wardrobe, barely able to stand up without Tara Weston’s shoulders to lean across for support.

“Hurry, we’ve got to hurry,” called Tara, struggling back to her feet.

“Not so fast,” said Richie between gasps for breath. “We’ve got a few seconds.”

So saying, he swung shut the left-hand door of the wardrobe and turned the key in the lock. Then, staggering across to the right-hand door, he locked it also.

“That won’t hold him for long,” pointed out Tara as she took Richie’s right hand across her shoulders again to lead him hurriedly out of the bedroom.

“Maybe not,” agreed Richie as they started down the corridor toward the stairs. “But it gives us a few seconds to establish a head start again. To help us get down to the ground floor.”

“But you said we couldn’t go downstairs; we’d never outrun him?” pointed out the blonde girl.

“Yes, but I was wrong, we’ll have to try. We’ll never be able to hide long enough inside the house.”


Roderick Voss grips Tara Weston’s elbow and goes to pull her toward him. When, suddenly, she pulls away from him hard. Caught off guard, he falls face down into the wardrobe, then struggles to regain his footing as the mothballs slide around like marbles beneath his feet. He reaches up to grab the hanging clothing only to start a cascade of dresses, blouses and men’s clothing all falling on top of him.

“Little bitch!” he curses as he hears first one door to the wardrobe lock, then the other. Still struggling to find his footing, he hurriedly pulls himself to his feet and looks out through the louvre walls of the wardrobe.

Seeing Tara Weston stumbling out of the doorway into the corridor, he aims the revolver at her head and says, “You’ve caused me a lot of trouble, you little bitch. But now it’s all over!”

He pulls the trigger, and the hammer clicks on empty chambers.

“Shit!” he curses, hurriedly patting himself down to find the two spare speed loaders. He locates the two reloaders, but curses again as he drops one in the dark wardrobe.

He hurriedly loads the final six cartridges into the revolver, then looks down in the hope of locating the dropped speed loader on the wardrobe floor. But realising that it is hopeless with the floor already swimming in mothballs, he decides: Okay, so I’ve got six shots left to get the little bitch. Or I really will have to strangle her with my bare hands.

Hearing the sound of footsteps on the staircase outside, Voss realises that the young girl is starting to put a serious lead between them again.

Cursing her perspicacity and cunning, Voss puts the gun away carefully in his vest, so that he won’t drop it in the wardrobe also. Then, trying his best not to fall on the layer of mothballs lining the wardrobe floor, he backs up to take what little running start he can and lunges forward at the louvre door.

Designed only to hide clothing from view, not to restrain anyone, the louvres are weak and bend almost to breaking point at the first charge. A second charge has some of the louvres breaking audibly. And on the third leap forward, Roderick Voss suddenly tumbles out into the bedroom as the frail louvres shatter against his latest charge.

He curses again as he tumbles into a heap on the bedroom carpet. Then, patting himself down to make sure that he has not dropped the revolver, Voss climbs a little unsteadily to his feet again and starts across the room toward the corridor. Like Tara Weston, he slides in the blood slick on the blood-slickened floor, but manages to keep his feet, although he slows his pace a little till reaching the surer footing of the hallway.


Hobbling as fast as they could with Richie Travers’s injuries, Tara and Richie had just passed the first-floor landing when they heard the crashing of louvres above, which signalled Roderick Voss’s escape from the walk-in wardrobe.

“Come on,” said Richie. And, trying to ignore the increasing agony of every movement, he took the lead, almost dragging Tara down the stairs after him.

As they reached the ground floor at last, Tara headed toward the front door, but Richie held onto her to stop her. “No!” he said.

“But we have to go outside.”

“What for?”

“To get help.”

“And how far is it from your front door to the street? About a kilometre, if I remember rightly.”

“Half a kilometre,” corrected Tara Weston.

“Even so, it’s too far for me in this condition. These big estates might seem like a good idea when you buy them. But it’s a long way to run if you need help in a hurry.”

“Then what?”

“You said earlier you have a six-car garage?”

“Yes,” said Tara, pointing. “But it’s around the other side of the house.”

“Is there any way to get to it from inside the house?”

Tara had to think for a moment: “Yes,” she said, pointing back behind Richie. “Through the basement.”

“All right, let’s go,” said Richie, almost collapsing from fatigue and blood loss as they started down one last flight of stairs.

In the basement, even in the dark, they could see the windowed door leading to the garage and started toward it. But then Richie stopped and stared at something at the other end of the basement.

“My God, so that’s why I didn’t find many valuables upstairs,” he said, staring at the walk-in safe that took up most of one wall.

“Yes. Apart from a few paintings, we keep everything locked up in here.” So saying, Tara tried to lead him toward the door to the garage. However, he stopped her.

“No, wait, I want to see if I can crack this thing,” said Richie. And to the astonishment of Tara, he hobbled over to the safe, then reached into his vest pocket and removed the plastic case with his picklocks.

“We ... we have to get out of here,” insisted Tara, hearing Roderick Voss’s heavy tread on the floorboards overhead.

“Don’t worry, this’ll only take a minute or two.”

Tara hesitated, tempted to abandon Richie and run toward the garage alone. But she knew that she could never drive one of her parents’ cars without his help. So, reluctantly, she returned to watch him as he began to probe at the safe with a series of long metal picklocks.

What is he doing? wondered the young girl, no longer certain if she could trust her guardian angel’s judgment to get her out of the mansion alive.

Hearing footsteps on the stairs, Tara looked around as Roderick Voss started down the basement steps toward them.


Roderick Voss clenches the revolver in his right hand now as he races down the staircase after the twelve-year-old girl. Although he cannot see Tara two or three floors below him in the dark, he can make out a blur of movement and knows which way she is going. He sees that she is staggering a little and wonders if she is injured. He is tempted to fire a shot at her, but has only six cartridges left and knows that he would miss her at that distance in the dark.

As he expects, the blur moves toward the front door. But instead of exiting, it suddenly reverses direction and heads back behind the staircase.

Now, where the Hell is the little bitch going? he wonders, heading down the stairs after her. He resists the urge to charge madly headlong down the stairs to reach the silver-blonde girl, or at least to get into range to take a shot at her. Instead, he runs down the stairs as stealthily as possible. Even if the little bitch gets a substantial lead on me, I can easily run her down across the back lawn.

Yet his instinct tells him that she is not heading toward the back door.

When he reaches the ground floor, there is no sign of Tara Weston, and he has not heard her footsteps running toward the back door.

Then where has the little bitch got to? he thinks, starting to wonder if she is distantly related to Harry Houdini.

He has already started down the wide corridor toward the back of the building when he spots the door to the basement steps. He grins his broadest shit-eater grin, recalling again how he had entered the building this way many hours ago after slaughtering the chauffeur.

That’s where the little bitch has gone! He recalls seeing a large board holding the keys to the Westons’ five cars, plus spare keys for the house. The little bitch thinks she can just drive off! Well, she’s got another thing coming to her!

Then, wondering if she really can escape from him that easily, Voss pulls open the basement door and peers inside. Even without turning on the overhead light, he sees the blonde girl standing at the opposite end of the room near a large wall safe. Grinning his broadest shit-eater grin, Voss thinks: I’ve got the little bitch now!

Aiming the revolver in her direction, he reaches out to flip on the light switch with his other hand. But then, to his astonishment, the wall safe suddenly springs open and Tara Weston races inside.


“Come on, please?” says Tara, having heard Roderick Voss’s footsteps even before she saw him standing at the top of the basement steps. As the maniac switched on the basement light, Tara turned to run toward the garage, knowing it was too late now to try outrunning him.

Just in time, Richie Travers grabbed the beautiful blonde girl’s arm and pulled her toward the safe.

“No, in here,” he whispered, dragging Tara into the walk-in safe. “Now help me to pull the door closed.”

With difficulty, allowing for the safe door’s immense weight and Richie’s injuries, they managed to pull the door inward.


Roderick Voss watches in amazement as the twelve-year-old girl races into the walk-in safe, then actually pulls the door shut on herself.

“Stupid bitch!” he shouts, racing down the stairs, then across the basement floor to reach the safe.

He carefully checks the door all around and confirms that the safe is undoubtedly locked.

“She’s done it to me again!” he says in astonishment. “How did she know the combination to this thing? Surely the Westons didn’t entrust the combination to a twelve-year-old brat?” But over the last few hours, he had acquired a grudging respect for Tara Weston and now had to concede that she was no ordinary brat.

So what now? he wonders: I’ll never open this thing in a million years. But there’s no need, surely? In twelve hours or so, the little bitch will die of oxygen starvation in there.


“Now we’re safe from that bastard,” said Richie, lying against a row of security boxes along one wall of the walk-in safe.

“But we’ll die from asphyxiation in here in a few hours,” insisted Tara, wondering if Richie Travers was a false guardian angel after all.

“No,” said Richie. Reaching into his inner vest pocket, he pulled out the small penlight. “That’s a myth. Like me, you’ve probably seen dozens of murder mysteries where someone is murdered by being locked in a walk-in safe and dying when the air runs out. But that’s all crap.”

“How come?” asked Tara.

Richie shone the beam of the penlight on a small red button near the right-hand wall beside the door. “Because all walk-in safes have an emergency release button inside, in case you do lock yourself inside. I noticed this one near the door when it first opened. Press that button and it will override all other locking mechanisms, timers, and so on and swing the door open in a few seconds.”

“But the maniac is just outside the door.”

“Yes,” agreed Richie, sounding weaker than ever from his injuries. “So we have to resort to Plan B.”

“Plan B?” asked Tara, puzzled.

“Walk-in safes also always have a built-in telephone. Separate from the house’s other phones. So even if he’s cut the phone lines out there, the phone in here should still work.”

Pointing the beam of the small torch into the safe, he said, “Help me down the back, that’s where they usually put the phones.”

“But who do we ring? Will there be a current phone book?”

“In an expensive safe like this, the phone is usually linked directly to either a security company or to the nearest cop station,” explained Richie as they located the small phone on the wall at the back of the safe. “So with any luck, we won’t even have to dial.”

Picking up the receiver, Richie said, “Weston estate. There have been several murders. We need the police and at least two ambulances.”

As Tara watched on, fascinated, Richie Travers hurriedly summarised what had happened that night at the estate, then hung up.

“See, that wasn’t so ...” Richie said, before finally collapsing from his injuries.

Squealing in shock, Tara Weston raced across to attempt to revive him.


Outside in the basement, Roderick Voss is still debating the best course of action when he hears sirens outside and the sound of a helicopter overhead.

He looks toward the door to the underground garage, wondering if he can make a break for it that way. But hearing footsteps behind him, he spins round as three police officers run down the basement stairs.

Voss knows that surrender isn’t an option. Despite Australia’s lame justice system, notorious for giving brutal mass-murderers the lightest possible sentence, he knows that, having killed the third richest billionaire in the country, he will be locked away in solitary confinement for the rest of his life. One law for killing the rich, and another for killing the poor! he thinks.

So, grabbing the revolver from his vest pocket, he quickly fires off the remaining six shots, killing the three police who crash down the stairs to lie in a heap on the concrete floor in the basement.

“Jesus!” cries a fourth cop. He and two more police leap through the doorway and open fire in the general direction of the wall safe, where Roderick Voss is standing.

Cursing the parentage of all police, Voss goes to throw his empty revolver at them. However, half a dozen or more rounds slam into him and toss his corpse backwards against the walk-in safe.


Inside the safe, Tara Weston was cradling Richie Travers’s head in her lap, crying from helplessness. When, to her surprise, the phone on the wall above her head suddenly rang.

Gently lowering Richie’s head to the floor of the safe, Tara stood up, lifted the receiver, and said, “Hello.”

“Is that Tara Weston?” asked a middle-aged, female voice.

“Yes,” she replied hesitantly.

“You can press the emergency release button now, honey,” said the woman. “The police have taken care of the bad man.”

Hanging up the receiver, Tara hesitated, wondering if it was a trick. If the woman was really in cahoots with the murderer? But hearing Richie moaning, she realised that he needed help desperately. So, almost whimpering in terror, she crawled to the front of the walk-in safe, then felt around the wall till finding the emergency release button.

With a whirring of gears, the door swung open, and Tara looked out at nearly a dozen police and emergency services officers.

“Are you all right, honey?” asked a police lieutenant, Elaine Maylor.

“Yes. But my friend needs help badly,” said Tara, pointing into the safe.

Two ambulance officers raced into the walk-in safe, and after a minute or so, they returned with Richie Travers on a collapsible stretcher.


Five minutes later, the stretcher was being loaded into the back of an ambulance at the front door of the Weston estate.

As they placed Richie Travers gently into the ambulance, two police officers, Lieutenant Elaine Maylor and Senior Sergeant Aaron Powell discussed Tara Weston’s immediate future: “In the long run she can live with her relatives in New South Wales,” said Elaine, “but in the short run she might well have to go into care.”

“Perhaps we should take her round to Community Services Victoria,” suggested Aaron Powell as dawn finally began to break.

“No, I want to go with Richie!” insisted Tara. “He saved my life!”

Then, before the two police officers could stop her, the twelve-year-old climbed into the back of the ambulance.

“Ready to go?” asked the ambulance driver, a grey-haired man of at least sixty.

“Just about,” said Elaine Maylor, climbing into the rear of the ambulance with Tara.

Aaron Powell locked the rear door of the vehicle, then patted the side of the van and said, “Okay, take ’er away.”

Despite the objections of Elaine Maylor and others in officialdom, Tara Weston waited in the Royal Melbourne Hospital while they operated on Richie Travers. Then, even after the surgeon’s verdict that Richie would recover, Tara sat beside his hospital bed for forty-eight hours, until he finally awakened.

THE END
© Copyright 2025 Philip Roberts
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia