“Boss, he pulled a Houdini on us,” Skye said. “Uhhh, Susan, you there?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Susan said. She stood and joined the throng of people surrounding me and making me feel uncomfortable.
I took another swig of the water and laid the tablet flat so everyone could see, even if it was upside down and backwards.
“Watch this, then I can say I showed everyone at once.” Skye’s voice quivered. Nervous?
“Go ahead,” I told her.
The video quality was worse than I would have expected, but it showed Colten Banks heading down the selfsame hallway and then heading into the boiler room.
“Is that all?” I asked when Skye’s face filled the screen once more.
“Yeah, I watched it until I could see Susan come into view. He didn’t come out of the boiler room.”
“He wasn’t in the boiler room,” Susan said, all traces of mirth gone out of her voice.
“Yeah, the rest of you caught up to the two of us,” I said, trying to spread the blame around before she got angry. “So there’s no way he got past us.”
“Boss, I gotta go. They’re going to run my brother in for a test to see what it was that Mephisto gave him…”
“Go ahead, Skye,” I told her. “Keep him safe, and you stay out of trouble.”
I didn’t mean that to be funny, but Jo snorted and Susan chuckled. Pete laughed, and soon I was the only serious-faced one in the room.
“See what I have to put up with?” I asked her, exasperated at not understanding.
“You be careful, boss,” Skye said, closing the connection.
Everyone but me was standing now, and they backed up a step to give me room to stand. They were still chuckling and smiling.
“We have to go back to the boiler room and have a look around,” Susan said.
“While you guys were playing around, I had Landon’s office call us in a warrant,” Pete said. “I’m heading to the front to pick it up. I think it’ll be here in just about….”
He smiled as his phone rang. “Hello? Got it? I’ll be right there.”
I don’t know how he did it, but the timing worked out perfectly. So perfect that I was expecting Murphy of Murphy’s law to rear his ugly head soon. Pete took off at a fast walk, leaving me with Susan and Johanna.
“Do we call Sorenson?” Johanna asked Susan.
“I’ll call him, but we’re going to walk and talk. Let’s go.”
I thumbed a quick message to Sorenson, probably repetitive considering Susan and Pete had both been doing their cop routines, but I wanted everything to look like it was aboveboard.
Headed to boiler room. Mephisto went in and never came out. Pete has a warrant… - Jarek
Quick and to the point. Told him where, what, and why. I almost got smacked in the face by the door as the ladies were about ready to leave me behind.
“I don’t want to go inside though,” I told Johanna.
“Suck it up, big boy. We can watch the next two films of A Nightmare on Elm Street later on, if you’d like.”
“No, I would not like…besides, don’t I have some sort of date set up with Rita?” I asked her, not sure how things stood.
I knew, but I was getting overwhelmed and I was having a hard time focusing on more than just the present.
“Wuss. But yeah, I want your eyes in there. He somehow got out of the room, and if the po-po’s and feds couldn’t figure it out…”
“Hey, you were in there too, both of you,” Susan said.
She was right, I was there, but I hadn’t really been looking. The disturbing images of the slasher movie were all I could think of. I’d been too busy trying to block them out of my mind.
“Another look probably wouldn’t kill me,” I admitted. “But if I pass out, catch me,” I told Johanna.
She hesitated in her step and looked over her shoulder. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think it was affecting you like that.”
“This week has been a lot to process,” I admitted, but I kept silent on how disturbing her favorite genre of movies were.
We could always go back to Orange is the New Black…
“Ok, I’ll go first. I just need your brilliant powers of observation to be ready, Sherlock.”
“If I’m Sherlock, doesn’t that make you Watson?” I asked her, feeling that she was going to be setting me up for a joke.
“Something like that, come on.”
* * *
Everyone was in the room, and yet I stood at the doorway. It wasn’t only my fear, it was a lingering suspicion that something was wrong. The brick hallway ended about two feet past the doorway to the boiler room. Immediately behind the brickwork was the old stairwell running to the sub-basement. It’d been effectively shut down because of asbestos, and the cost of cleanup was more than the hospital could afford. Being a city-owned hospital, I could only imagine the costs involved.
Walking into the boiler room, I looked to my right, noting the room extended well past the brick wall to the stairwell. He came in and didn’t come out.
“Jarek, are you ok?” Johanna called softly.
“So far,” I mumbled.
They had set out looking for some way of egress to the sub-basement, the only thing that made any sort of logical sense of the situation. The hospital administrator and even the head of security were in on the fun and had joined our search group once the warrant came through. Apparently they lived in mortal fear of HIPPA violations and lawsuits, so that’s the reason they were so upset with me. Now they had their get-out-of-jail-free card and…
I looked up. Unlike the hallway that seemed to have a concrete roof that doubled as the floor for the story above, this room had drop ceiling grid work and ceiling tiles. I followed the plumbing going to and from the boiler and saw where it came through some of the ceiling grid with insulated collars around the pipe and tiles. So maybe the ceiling…
“Guys,” I said, my voice shaking.
“Yeah?” Agent Sorenson asked, the closest to me.
“The ceiling?” I said, not sure if it was a statement or a question.
“What about it?” Pete asked, looking up as Johanna came walking over to me.
“It occurred to me that the blueprints said that the brick wall was put in during the cleanup and renovations and—”
“The blueprints? How did you get the blueprints?” Mr. Johns, the head of security, asked.
“They’re on public file with the county. As I was saying, the brick wall starts about here.” I pointed two feet past the entryway door. “But…the ceilings in here are higher than in the hallways if you pop the grid tiles out, yes?”
“Yeah, they would have to be,” the administrator said, though I never got his name. “The utilities run up and then into a series of maintenance shafts that connect to every level of the hospital.”
His words trailed off as the dawning realization hit him.
“Get maintenance down here. I need somebody who’s familiar with the systems and where it all runs,” Sorenson barked.
“I’ll call for some backup,” Susan announced and then frowned at her phone when she realized she had no signal.
“He’s just a skinny punk computer geek, how much trouble could he be?” Pete asked and then looked at me. “No pun intended, Jarek.”
“I’m not a skinny punk computer geek. I work out. I can do about three hours on an elliptical and lift my own body weight on the bench press multiple times. I’m not sure how Colton Banks could even be used as a comparison to what you’re—”
“Jarek!” Susan and Johanna interrupted.
“Where would he have gone up?” Johns said, looking around.
I did as well, not wanting the others to see how their shout had made me feel. I studied the wall nearest the door. The pipes ran along the wall tight, often times horizontally to fit into what looked like a manifold of sorts. Overall, the boiler was as large as two men standing, but the spaghetti-like maze of steel and cast iron piping gave me an idea.
I studied the tops of the three- and four-inch pipes, finding them mostly dust free with several spots plainly clean.
“How often does this room get cleaned and dusted?” I asked them.
“Uh…never?” the administrator said with a shrug.
I walked across the explosively hot room and looked at a twin of the boiler on the other side. The pipes came into a manifold similar to the one across the room. The pipes were covered in dust. Bingo. I walked back to the other side and tapped the pipe quickly, pulling my hand back in case it was boiling hot. It wasn’t, merely warm. I did the same with the rest.
“Jarek, what are you doing?” Jo asked as I started to climb the pipes like a ladder.
Holding on with one hand, I was able to pop the ceiling tile out of the way easily and move it aside, showing a gaping hole and almost four feet of space before the actual ceiling intersected.
“Hold on,” I told everyone.
I pulled myself higher, ready to be disgusted with all of the dust and grime, but it was surprisingly clean, and I could see right over the wall that separated the boiler room from the stairwell to the sub-basement. A folding ladder was sitting on the other side of the wall. I smiled and went over.
“Jarek!” Jo yelled in frustration.
I climbed down the ladder and waited, brushing the odd bits of dirt and what looked like sheetrock dust off of my suit pants and waited. I didn’t have words. I couldn’t tell them what it was or why my heart was beating so fast, I just hoped they hurried. I made sure I was alone at the stairwell and turned to face the wall and silently counted. This was so much worse than the movie, the boiler room. This was something so secret and hidden that…
I heard a noise behind me and turned to find Susan poking her head over the wall.
“You’re ok. Hey, he found a way over,” she said softly as she swung a leg over the wall and got a foot on the ladder firmly.
“Why isn’t he talking?” Jo almost yelled.
“It’s kind of… spooky here. He’s got his eyes peeled for Mephisto,” Susan lied, but for whose benefit, I had no idea.
I was close to shutting down, falling. I knew why she was talking softly, and everyone else must have understood as well. Here there could be monsters, and the monster might not be too far ahead. I knew he was wanted by the FBI for still-undisclosed reasons, one of which included kidnapping, according to the detectives…I had no clue what was ahead.
“Oh, ok. Jarek, you all right?” Jo asked.
“Yes,” I lied. “It’s a little dirty coming over the wall, but other than that…” I moved away from the corner as I heard someone else.
It was Sorenson, followed by Pete. I heard some soft cursing and then Jo growling softly at the administrator or the head of security. I moved to hold the ladder as the guys descended, and then it was Jo whose head I saw next. Her hair was in her face, and she pulled some loose strands away from her mouth and glared at me.
“Don’t go silent on me,” she whispered. “You made me worry.”
She stepped on the ladder with one foot at an angle and then slipped. I put my arms up and mostly caught her as she flattened me to the tiled stairwell floor. The landing was made soft for her by use of my stomach and head, which cushioned her fall.
“Oh God, you ok?” Susan asked loudly, rushing over, her hands out.
Jo put hers out gratefully and took her weight off of me. It had hurt, but not badly, and I hadn’t had my wind knocked out of me completely, just slightly.
“I’m ok,” I said, sitting up and catching my breath.
“My foot slipped; it’s these damned dress shoes,” Jo said, holding her hand to me.
She helped me to my feet and then brushed me down, knowing how much I hated the dirt and the grime and—
“Oh, and what I said before still holds true.”
“What’s that?” Jo asked me.
“Even though your body weight knocked the air out of me momentarily, your butt landed on my stomach. You don’t need the Stairmaster, so please don’t hold it against me when you thought I was insinuating that you had a flabby bottom or—”
“Jarek!”
Susan let out a feminine-sounding giggle and then clamped her mouth shut as another head poked up over the wall. It was Mr. Johns. Sorenson put the ladder back in place and held it as the man climbed over.
“The administrator is going to wait on the other side; he said he’d send word to the maintenance man to let your people know to watch the utilities entrance and exit.”
“Why didn’t we all go in through there?” Susan asked, her smile still on her lips.
“Because Jarek here had to figure out how he got over and then make cracks about my ass…”
“It’s Mephisto’s ingress and egress,” I said. “I wasn’t sure until I saw the ladder on the other side. I sort of realized that brick walls were separating me from you guys, and that if something would have come up the stairwells, I’d be screwed—”
“You’ve been making him watch scary movies again, haven’t you?” Pete asked, looking down at Jo, who turned red.
“He’s an adult,” Jo shot back.
“It wasn’t scary until I got down here. I just…listen, we’re wasting time,” I told everyone now looking at me.
“What did you and Miss Erickson find out about him?” Sorenson asked.
We hadn’t had a lot of time to catch him up, and I really didn’t like the man that much. He used his size and bulk to intimidate people, and his position of authority to steamroll investigations. I’d worked with him before, and it was nice not to be on the wrong end of his anger for once.
“He’s a hacker with Anonymous. He somehow got embarrassing topless pictures of Skye off her phone and was wanting to blackmail her and me into working for them. Something about voting machines and the GOP presidential debates.”
“Fits the MO,” Sorenson muttered. “What was he using against you? It couldn’t have been the girl; you and Jo are a thing, right?”
Johanna turned a furious shade of red and shot me a glare.
“I can’t tell you what he was trying to blackmail me about,” I told him flatly.
“Can’t, or won’t? Because it’ll all come out in trial anyways.”
“It’s over your head, Sorenson. You won’t have clearance,” I told him.
Johanna sputtered and then said, “You think Jarek and I are together? Like…”
“Sure, you are, aren’t you?” Pete asked.
I didn’t know who was more surprised, but Pete had to know that for a while I’d been a bit of a playboy, making up for lost time.
“No…” Jo said simply.
“Oh well…uh—” I started.
“Jarek, I’m a federal agent. There’s nothing a civilian can hide from me, and this is a part of an ongoing federal investigation. It will come out now or in trial, believe me,” Sorenson interrupted.
“Not unless you have top secret clearance with the NSA,” I told him, making everyone’s neck pop as they spun and stared at me openmouthed.
“You two can measure your dicks later on,” Susan said. “We’re still looking for the perp, who we have to catch before there ever is a trial.”
Feeling chastised, I just nodded. Sorenson grunted and then started down the staircase, pulling his gun. Pete and Susan followed suit, and then it was Johns. Jo hesitated with me, lingering.
“You didn’t know what to say?” she asked me, poking me in the side.
I backed up till I was near the wall again.
“That’s often the case. I don’t want to make you upset or angry. I tend to choose my words more carefully now that I’m in the public more. Take that instance with the bikers…I can’t run around telling guys that their wives or girlfriends have bad teeth and it ruins their looks because I missed out on the body language aspect and am only getting half the picture—”
Jo leaned in and kissed me on the cheek, startling me.
“You’re very kind, Jarek. But you and I? We ca
n’t be a thing. You know that, right?”
I nodded. It’s what I’d been saying forever. “Of course, you just became a little weird after the first time you got drunk and spent the night with me. It was only compounded by that time Skye passed out and we had to get her someplace safe to sleep. We both swore it’d be the last time, although I got the feeling that in Aruba you were a bit jealous. Weird.”
“I became a little weird? Me?” She let out a laugh. “You should check the mirror sometimes.”
“Well, I mean, it’s weirder than normal for you then,” I told her.
“And for the record, you brought Sasha with you to Aruba, so please don’t bring that weekend up again or I’ll—” She raised a finger, pointing at me.
“You’ll end me, I know. Let’s catch up,” I said.
We’d started down the staircase when we heard glass breaking, a crash, some muffled curses, and then coughing. Both Jo and I hurried down, and immediately my eyes and lungs burned. I could strongly smell ammonia and something else. I made it down the landing half a step ahead of Jo to find Pete and Susan coughing and dragging Agent Sorenson backwards. I held my breath and rushed to help.
He appeared to be unconscious, though his body was wracked by coughs. Parts of his immaculately tailored suit were splattered with some sort of liquid, and it was already starting to turn colors where the liquid had hit. The second smell then registered in my brain, and I dropped Pete and swung the door shut with my breath held.
Jo finished helping them drag Landon to the landing above as the coughs got to me.
“What is that,” Jo said, coughing.
“Chlorine gas. Bleach and ammonia,” I said, gasping.
“We go over the wall?” Susan asked.
“Most of it should be contained now, that door had weather stripping.”
“It still smells strong,” Pete complained.
I looked down at Sorenson’s legs and saw that parts of the fabric were eaten through. Acid. That was the other thing those two chemicals made, acid and chlorine gas.
“He’s got to lose the pants if you don’t want him to get chemical burns,” I told Susan.
“Come help me strip them off,” Pete grunted.
Framed: A Jarek Grayson Private Detective Novel (Grayson Investigative Services Book 2) Page 15