There was only one person Abby could think of who might be able to confirm that Ethan Black had demonstrated excessive, irrational violence before his death--one person who could effectively tie him to the other four cases--Dr. Graham DeShield. It was clear that Black Ezra blamed the therapist, at least in part, for his son's death. Considering Black's reputation, it wouldn't be surprising if he had already done something to make his displeasure with the psychiatrist known. If so, it was possible that a soothing feminine voice and a little pandering to DeShield's ego might get him to bend the laws of patient confidentiality just a bit. From what Abby remembered of the man, it was a distinct possibility.
It was just four and still raining when she reached home and swung into the driveway. The large sheet of plywood across her picture window was as obtrusive as missing front teeth. Mindful of her nocturnal visit from Lyle Quinn, she remained in her car for a minute until she sensed no one was about. As had been her habit since Josh moved out, she had left several lights on in the house. Against the dreary late afternoon the glow from the windows was comforting. She entered the kitchen and immediately checked around the house. There was no sign anyone had been there. Everything seemed to be in place.
She called information in San Francisco and got DeShield's office number. Then she left notice with his service that her call was an emergency regarding his patient Ethan Black, and that the operator should try to reach the doctor rather than wait for him to call in. Assuming he got her message, it was hard to imagine he wouldn't respond.
It was only then that she noticed the red light flashing on her answering machine. One message. Her first thought was, Josh.
"Abby, I'm assuming you recognize my voice," the tape said. In just the first few words Abby could feel Kelly Franklin's tension. "I'm calling from my car. I've left an envelope for you with the woman who gave you something from me yesterday. Please try to get it before this evening. If we miss connections, I'll be in touch."
Abby listened to the message a second time. Kelly's paranoia seemed to be building by the hour. But given her own experiences, first with Lyle Quinn, then with Joe Henderson, Abby was not surprised. The woman Kelly was referring to had to be Esther at the library. There was still half an hour before it closed. But what to do about DeShield? Clearly, she had to drive into town. The only thing she could think of was to change the greeting on her answering machine.
"This is Dr. Abby Dolan," she said. "I've had an emergency and will be away from my office until five. Dr. D., please leave a number where I can reach you then. It is very important. Thank you."
The repetition of her new message was still playing when she snatched up her windbreaker and hurried out to her car. She reached the library at exactly four-thirty, just as Esther was locking the front door.
"We closed at four today," the librarian explained as they huddled in the doorway against the continued steady rain. "Kelly came by at about two with an envelope for you. She said I was to destroy it if you didn't pick it up before we closed."
"Damn," Abby murmured.
"Fortunately," Esther went on, with a tiny smile, "I decided to do so after I got home."
She passed the white business-sized envelope over, and Abby thanked her.
"I know it's probably none of my business, Dr. Dolan," Esther said, "but is Kelly in some sort of trouble? This is all very cloak-and-dagger, and she's seemed very nervous these last couple of days. That's just not like her."
"She's under some stress at work," Abby ventured. "But I'd rather let her tell you about it."
"We're in a quilting group together. Every Thursday night. The Thimblefingers. We raffle the quilts off for charity. I sure hope she's okay."
The woman was stalling for more information. Surely her interest was just the concern of a friend, but suddenly Abby felt herself prickle with caution. There was no telling how tightly the Patience grapevine was coiled. She thanked Esther and hurried back to her car, wondering how people who were intrinsically mistrustful ever managed to function in the world. Then she drove to a deserted street a mile out of her way before she would chance opening Kelly's envelope.
Abby, forgive me for dragging you out here, but Lyle's been hanging around a lot more than usual, and I'm afraid to leave much of a message on your machine. I sense that he knows we've been in contact, but he hasn't said anything.
I think I've found the staircase that leads to the lower chambers of the mine. Second shift will be the best time to see. The truth is, my job allows me access to any part of this plant, so even if I get stopped, I should have a decent excuse.
There's a small, very secluded park just a few blocks from my house. Enclosed is a map of how to get there. Let's meet there at seven. I don't know what's going on here, but I am convinced something is. And I believe it's happening right under me. I'm angry, but I'm calmer than you might think. Wish me luck. See you at seven.
Abby read the letter until she had nearly memorized it, then tore it up and studied the hand-drawn map. Kelly had marked the park and her house. She included her home address and phone number, as well as a note at the bottom that the key to her house was beneath a large planter by the back door, and the phone number of her ex-husband was taped to the kitchen phone. Paranoid, frightened, or more likely both, Abby decided.
She hid the map beneath the repair records, owner's manual, and bag of corn chips in her glove compartment, and headed home. It was almost five. She would give Graham DeShield until six, and then would stop by the ER to bring Lew up to speed on all that had transpired. After three years of chipping away, he deserved to know that Colstar's facade was beginning to crumble.
Kelly Franklin sat in her locked office, the blinds drawn. She had been hunched over blueprints and builder's notes for most of a day and now could feel the strain at the base of her neck. The drawings and blueprints were kept in an archive room, and she was one of the few who had a key. As environmental health and safety officer, she had to be expert on the heating and ventilation systems of the plant, as well as on the disposal route for all toxic materials.
There were records dating back to the 1920's when the first construction of the California Battery Company began, and literally hundreds of sets of drawings and blueprints, many of which were rolled, held with rubber bands, and carelessly piled in bins. The newer drawings, necessary for occupational health and safety, were quite carefully filed. Because so many years elapsed between the initial building and the massive reconstruction by Colstar, Kelly had never examined the original plant blueprints or the several additions that were completed before Colstar took over. But now she had spent much of the past night and all day scanning those earlier drawings, often beneath a magnifying lens, and comparing them to more recent ones. What she was looking for was a staircase or passageway of some sort that she knew nothing about. There were dozens of stairways leading down to the basement level where the power plant and some of the manufacturing units were housed. But the basement, she had been told, was built on solid rock.
Now, thanks to Abby Dolan's persistence and her own research, she knew better. There were huge, man-made caverns, two of them beneath the plant at depths of forty and one hundred feet. And somewhere in the massive factory there was access to them. At about one that afternoon she had found something in a drawing done in 1946--a staircase at the very back of what would one day become C Concourse. The area containing the stairway was eventually partitioned with eight-foot-high walls that were still four feet short of the ceiling. The dozen or so large rooms created by the partitioning were used for warehousing and storage. Kelly had patrolled the spaces on any number of occasions searching for safety violations or potential sources of trouble. She did not recall seeing a door or staircase in the spot depicted in this one drawing. It was possible the flight had been sealed off, but there was no such notation as there were for other stairways on other drawings. It was as if, sometime between 1946 and the next set of blueprints in 1968, the staircase had simply disappeared.
It seemed to her that other drawings containing the area around the staircase might actually be missing, but there was no way to tell for certain. The only way she would ever know would be to check out the area for herself.
She carefully put the blueprints back together and returned them to the archive room, keeping only the ones showing the warehouse area. Then she clipped a small, powerful flashlight onto her belt, locked her office, and slipped behind the wheel of her golf cart. If she couldn't find the staircase, it was back to the drawing board. But Kelly was betting it was still there.
For whatever reason, no one at Colstar had ever told her about the caverns left over from the Patience Mine--caverns that could have been the source of natural-gas leaks, collapse during earthquakes, or even collapse from the weight of the plant itself. As she rolled up A Concourse toward the reception area, careful to maintain a normal speed, she wondered who in the company might know. As far as she could tell, none of the officers had been there for more than ten years--none except Lyle. Was it possible that no one knew about the caverns or about the three ventilation shafts that had been sealed off? Not likely. As environmental health and safety officer, she reported directly to the president, a keen businessman named Roger Sealy. Together they had walked through every inch of the plant. If he knew there were subterranean spaces, she had to give him credit for being one hell of an actor. The same would go for Lyle Quinn.
Kelly felt her heart beating in her chest as she approached the mouth of C Concourse. She had never been foolhardy in any sense of the word, although she did have an adventurous streak that revealed itself in her love for scuba diving and rafting. Now she felt a bit frightened, but also keyed up and not a little angry. She had left a perfectly decent job with the Forestry Service to move to Patience and Colstar. What in the hell had she been doing here all these years? Had she really been just a shill--the frontman for a lie? Had her repeated, earnest denials of the allegations of the Alliance been just what Quinn or some of his cronies had brought her there to do? Soon she would have the answers.
Her plan was to drive along on a routine inspection tour, then to leave her golf cart inside one of the storage rooms at the end of C Concourse and make her way on foot to the rear of the area. Second shift was now well under way. Foot traffic was almost nil. Dan Gibson, a foreman Kelly knew well, passed by in a golf cart and waved cheerfully. Kelly hoped she looked more relaxed than she was feeling. There was no one around when she reached the first of the doorways to the warehouse area. They were all wide enough to fit a forklift and wooden pallet, and more than wide enough for the golf cart. She turned left through the second one, then immediately right into a room used to store cleaning supplies. She could hear men's voices coming over the top of the walls, but there was no one in sight. The blueprints with the partition walls drawn in did not include the staircase, so she was constantly forced to go from 1945 to 1968 to 1985 and back as she made her way through the maze of rooms toward the very rear of the factory.
"Can I help you?"
Kelly whirled, badly startled.
A young man in coveralls confronted her from about ten feet away. She had never seen him before. She took a moment to catch her breath and forced a smile. The man did not seem to recognize her, which was somewhat strange. There was a two-hour health-and-safety talk she gave to each shift every four months dealing with various topics including toxin containment, evacuation procedures, and even first aid. And although she had no way of knowing all the twenty-four hundred or so Colstar employees, they almost all had reason to know her. She moved close enough to see the man's ID badge and to give him a look at hers. Jeff Kidd, Warehouseman.
"I'm Kelly Franklin, environmental health and safety," she said, steadying herself with one hand against a wall until the rubberiness in her knees firmed up. "Just doing a routine walk-through of this section."
No glimmer of recognition from Kidd. But he did read her badge and nodded.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I've only been here a couple of months, and I've never seen you before."
Kelly tried unsuccessfully to remember when she had last given her talk to the second shift.
"No problem," she replied. "I'll be giving a talk to your shift real soon. You'll get to know me then. I'm going to be wandering around here for the next half hour or so. I don't need anything, so you might as well go on about your business."
The man met her gaze levelly--perhaps more self-assuredly than she might have expected from a relatively new warehouseman confronting a company VP.
"If you need anything or you get lost, Ms. Franklin, just holler. I'll probably hear you over these walls."
"I'll do that."
Kelly moved slowly toward the next area, inspecting the overhead ventilation ducts. She sensed that Jeff Kidd was still watching her. And, in fact, only when she risked a glance in his direction did he finally turn and head off. Unsettled by the encounter, she came close to going back to her office. Instead, she wandered slowly from room to room, feigning an inspection. Except for Jeff Kidd, no one seemed to be around, although from somewhere she could hear a forklift whine. She checked the blueprints again. Just one more doorway to get through. Again, she glanced about. No one. She rolled up the blueprints and stepped into the last room. It was large--perhaps forty feet square--broken up by a network of floor-to-ceiling shelves containing boxes of nonflammable chemicals, packaging supplies, and paint.
Listening carefully for footsteps, Kelly worked her way to the west wall. According to the drawings, the staircase should have been almost at the midpoint. Right where she expected the door to be, there was a forklift, facing the wall, piled high with empty pallets. The ignition key was in place. Kelly had to peer between the adjacent shelves to see beyond the pallets, but the door was there--metal, unlabeled, not unlike hundreds of other doors throughout the plant, except that every one of those other doors had been opened by her at one time or another. If it was locked, she ought to have the key. She backed away to where she could view the entire room and separated the appropriate master from the other keys on her ring. Then she turned on the forklift and backed it away from the wall just far enough for her to squeeze in past the pallets. If anybody needed to come through that door, they would have to call someone in the warehouse to move the pallets. Was that someone Jeff Kidd?
The master key turned easily, and she pulled the door open an inch. Beyond it she could see only darkness. There was no way to get the pallets back in place. If anyone checked, they would know someone had gone down the stairs. The part of her that was urging a retreat until she could return with someone--perhaps Abby--who could stand guard, was outflanked by the part that was desperate to know what lay beyond the door. With a final check of the room, Kelly slipped inside, stepped onto the first of a flight of stairs, and closed the door behind her.
The darkness and the silence were total. The air was musty and damp. Kelly leaned against the wall, which seemed to be a mix of solid stone and cement. She felt air hungry. Her pulse refused to slow. It was the same panicky sensation she had experienced one hundred feet down on her first deep dive. Finally, a few slow, deep breaths helped her regain control. She clicked on her flashlight and panned down the concrete steps. There were thirty or more of them, steep and straight, ending at another door. Almost certainly they went beyond the basement floor of the factory.
Kelly walked halfway down the narrow flight, then shone her light back up at the door. There was still a chance to retreat--to try another time with more preparation and some help. She hesitated for a few anxious seconds, then headed down to the lower door.
The lower door was unlocked. She opened it a crack. Beyond it, as with the other, was only stygian darkness. But there was also a waft of cool, damp air. She opened the door a foot, slipped inside, and let it close silently behind her. Even in the dark she knew she was in a vast, open space--the uppermost cavern of the Patience Mine.
Cautiously, she panned her beam about. The space was rectangular, about 50 f
eet wide by 150 long, and only 7 feet or so from floor to ceiling. The walls were irregular rock as far as she could see. Ancient timber pilings, the size and shape of railroad ties, gave some added strength to the ceiling. Engineers must have determined that the rock could hold the massive weight of the factory, forty feet above. There were lightbulbs connected by metal tubing spaced out all along the ceiling, but nothing else that she could see.
Immediately Kelly began searching for the stairway to the deeper level. It took just a few minutes to find it--an open doorway, about twenty yards in the direction of the cliff face. The staircase, narrow and circular, seemed to be hewn into the rock. It was much longer than the upper flight and reminded her one moment of the stairways in medieval castles, and the next of a childhood trip she had taken up and down the stairs of the Statue of Liberty. But this stairway was pitch-black. Reluctant to switch on the flashlight, she kept one hand on the damp rock wall and cautiously worked her way down.
The air coming up from below seemed cool now, and clean. There was a hum that she at first thought was the response of her ears to the dense silence. Now, she realized, it was a machinery noise. Once again her pulse began to accelerate, this time as much from the excitement of imminent discovery as from any sense of danger. The machinery drone grew louder, and she knew she was reaching the lower cavern. According to the drawings in the Patience Mine book, she was nearly one hundred feet beneath the factory--level with the floor of Patience Valley, or even a bit below that.
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