by Steven James
With her.
Together.
And we made it by etching out a new family unit from the ruins of the one that had been torn apart by Christie’s death.
Tragedy can either send us spiraling off into our own private oblivion or it can draw us closer to other people. Either way, we rarely heal on our own. We Homo sapiens are a strange breed. Almost no one learns the lessons that matter the easy way. It’s almost always the hard way.
Distracted by my thoughts, I didn’t notice that it was already nearly three fifteen when my phone rang—Lien-hua’s ringtone.
I picked up. “Sorry. Time got away from me.”
“No problem. So, tell me—how did your meeting go, Agent Powers?”
“Powers. Great. So you’ve been talking to Ralph.”
“It’s possible.” There was the hint of a smile in her voice. “Actually, he called a few minutes ago asking if I knew where Brin was. I guess he’s been trying to reach her. She must have her phone turned off.”
“You know how she is, always leaving it somewhere.”
“Yeah. So, at the meeting, any tussles?”
“Not with Margaret.”
“But?”
“But this guy named Pierce Jennings,” I said, “he’s with the National Security Council. Let’s just say I doubt he’s going to invite me out with his buddies to grab drinks after work tonight.”
“Ralph mentioned the ice cubes on the table.”
“Seemed like a good idea at the time. Hey, did he tell you about our little conversation with Margaret afterward?”
“No.”
I summed it up.
“So,” Lien-hua said, “she actually called his commitment to the Bureau into question?”
“It sounded like it to me. He was not a happy camper.”
“I would guess not.”
It seemed like mentioning our exchange about the dilemma of giving a hundred percent to both your family and the Bureau when there was something as serious as this case at stake wouldn’t be a good idea, so I kept it to myself.
“Did your team come up with anything?” I asked her.
“Not so much. Now they’re looking into hate groups against Native Americans, antigovernment movements and militias . . . None of that really fits, though. From what I’ve heard, neither of the Islamist groups who’ve claimed responsibility were involved. They make claims like this all the time to try to recruit supporters.”
I told her about the Catawba tribe’s weaponry and the connection to the museum in Charlotte, and she considered that carefully.
“So, where does that leave us?”
“Well, we still need to find the connection between all of that and the numbers scribbled in the column of the book left at Cole’s house.”
“He’s taunting you, Pat.”
“Yeah.”
Typically killers fall into three camps: some simply run, some taunt, others do all they can to cover their tracks.
In order to hamper authorities in discovering the identity of victims, some killers will cut off the head, hands, and sometimes even the feet of their victims. Some murderers prefer to remove the teeth. That way, forensic odontologists can’t match dental records.
Once I apprehended a killer in New York who’d kept the teeth of his victims in a jar in his bedroom. All of them had tool indentations that matched a pair of pliers in his toolbox.
He later admitted to pulling his victims’ teeth, one every hour, while he kept the people restrained in his basement. He liked to hear their screams while he sat upstairs and wrote his science fiction novels. “They were my muse,” he said at the trial. “I did my best work during those hours.”
But our guy here, he wasn’t trying to hide anything.
He was laying it all out there for us.
Basque?
That didn’t seem to fit.
But if the book at the crime scene meant anything, we were looking for someone with a connection to me or my work.
Someone else from your past?
I didn’t know.
It would make sense, but no one popped to mind.
“He didn’t want me dead,” I told Lien-hua.
“What?”
“At the NCAVC, Ralph’s text, and the texts to the other people working there at the time, asked them to meet Jerome in the loading bay, but I received a text to go to the lobby.”
“Where the explosion wouldn’t have harmed you.”
“That’s right.”
“So that, taken into account with the book at the site of Jerome Cole’s homicide—you’re at the center of this, Pat.”
“Good,” I said. “Then it’ll make it easier for me to catch whoever’s behind it.”
She didn’t reply.
“Lien-hua?”
“I’ll see you tonight,” she said at last.
“Yes. I’ll see you then.”
17
The bard drove to the abandoned textile warehouse just off South Graham Street in Charlotte, North Carolina, and parked his van around back.
Opening the vehicle’s side door, he retrieved the things he would be needing.
For now he left Corrine inside the van.
He faced the building
The textile plant hadn’t been open in twenty years, but because of the chemicals that were used here leaching into the soil, the environmental cleanup would have been too costly to make it worthwhile to develop the land—even if a person planned to tear down the building and start from scratch.
So in the end, the EPA’s requirements made development financially unattractive and the property remained polluted as decades slipped by—the very thing the EPA didn’t want to happen.
The bard had made the purchase through a front company with money he’d hidden away before his arrest. Eventually, the authorities would be able to trace things back to him, but by the time anyone made the connection it would be too late.
He’d bought the property a month ago and had spent quite a bit of time in it since then. And, no, he wasn’t interested in tearing down the building and putting up something else.
Instead, he was interested in what lay beneath that warehouse.
It’d taken dozens of hours of research in the UNC Charlotte library’s special collections room and the city’s public library, trying to pinpoint whether or not this building would serve his purposes and, at last, perhaps with a stroke of luck, he’d found the Southern Railway 1904 property map, and the 1906 map drawn by Charles G. Hubbel that showed the location of the Saint Catherine Mine and the others in this area of Charlotte.
Nitze and Hanna’s 1896 “North Carolina Geological Survey Bulletin” had helped, especially when he compared it to the 2005 geospatial map that had been drawn up to record the location of the shafts of the Rudisill–St. Catherine Mine system as a precaution for land developers in Third Ward and the Wilmore area.
Finally, there was even an October 29, 1960, article in The Charlotte News that outlined the location of some of the shafts.
When he had explored this property, everything had come together.
* * *
A rusted fence topped with razor wire encircled the old textile plant. He unlocked the padlocked chain on the swinging gate, and then locked it again behind him.
Once inside the warehouse, dirty sunlight oozed through the grime-encrusted windows that lined the walls of the three-story-tall, mostly empty building.
The floor throughout the plant had been broken up, and the uneven slabs of concrete lying at odd angles throughout it looked like rough, jagged teeth gnawing up through the ground. A medium-size backhoe sat in the corner.
When the textile plant closed it must have been hastily vacated, because there was still dusty and dead equipment scattered throughout the place. Tables, conveyor belts
, and folding machines were pushed up along the east wall.
Nine gaping holes, each about ten or twelve feet wide, had been dug into the earth. The maps weren’t quite as accurate as the bard had hoped, so he’d needed to poke around a little before he found what he was looking for.
The holes were of varying depths, but the largest one appeared to have no bottom.
That’s the one he was going to use today.
In fact, that’s the one he’d purchased the property for in the first place, the one he’d been trying so hard to find, first on the maps when he was looking for this property, then digging with the backhoe, trying to locate the shaft.
At first he’d thought he might want Corrine to be unconscious while he moved her to the place where she was going to die, down there in the dark, but in the end he’d opted for drugs—not enough to knock her out, just enough to make her submissive and controllable.
Still, it was going to be a chore getting her down the shaft.
But with the ropes and harnesses, it was doable.
He set the items down, returned to the van, unshackled her, and led her toward the building.
And she went with him. Silent. Compliant. Like a lamb to the slaughter.
18
All day, as Tessa sorted halfheartedly through her books, packing for college, she had been monitoring the news, but it hadn’t really been very informative.
The streaming-news Internet sites brought on an endless string of “experts” who each seemed to know less about what had happened than the previous ones did.
As the day wore on, she realized how thankful she was that she’d never met any of the people who died in the attack. It would have made things a lot harder if she knew them, as Lien-hua and Patrick had.
Just before three forty-five, Tessa heard the doorbell ring above the sound of her music.
In the living room, she peered out the peephole in the front door and saw a guy standing on the porch, holding up some credentials to identify himself as a federal agent. When she pushed the living-room window’s curtain aside and looked at the sedan, she saw just one person inside it.
Oh. So they were checking in on her. Great.
She swung the door open with one hand and slung her other hand to her hip. “Well?”
“Well?”
“What do you want?”
“Do you need anything, ma’am?” He pocketed his creds.
“No.”
“Okay.”
He was young, mid-twenties. Though he was dressed in immediately forgettable khakis and an overstarched oxford and wore a rather unfortunate tie, he somehow made it work. He had a ruffled look. Strong features. Slightly rakish. Breezy walnut hair.
“Aren’t you supposed to be keeping a low profile?” she said, a little less impatiently now that she’d had a moment to take him in.
“Well, with the burritos you had delivered to us, I figured you knew we were here.”
Burrito Express was the only Mexican place in the area that delivered. They had plenty of vegan options. She knew their number by heart.
“How were they?”
“Spicy.”
“I ordered double habaneros.” She couldn’t hold back the glimmer of a smile. She hadn’t ordered them any drinks. “Did you go with the black bean one or the pinto?”
“Pinto.”
She sized him up. “Not too spicy for you?”
“I like things spicy.”
“Really.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And your partner?”
“Not so much.”
She glanced at the sedan where the woman was sitting. “I think you two need to work on your spy craft. That, or maybe just stick a sign on the sedan that says, FEDERAL AGENTS INSIDE.”
He scratched at the side of his jaw. “Yes, ma’am.”
She waited. “Well?”
“Well, we’re here if you need anything.”
“Yeah, I think I’m getting ahold of that. How old are you?”
“Excuse me, ma’am?”
“I asked how old you are and you can stop calling me ma’am. It makes me feel like I’m old enough to be your mother. Just call me Tessa.”
“Alright, Tessa.”
“So?”
“So?”
“How old are you?”
“I’m twenty-four.”
“Fresh out of the Academy, huh?”
“Well. Eight months.”
“That counts as fresh. Do you have a name?”
“Beck.”
“That first or last?”
“First. Beck Danner. Special Agent Beck Danner.”
“So, what do you want me to call you? Is that what I’m supposed to call you? If I need something, I mean? Special Agent Beck Danner?”
“First names will be fine. Just call me Beck.”
“Alright, Beck. Now go back out there and keep me safe.”
“Yes, ma—”
She held up a finger.
“Tessa.”
“Better.”
She closed the door, but watched through that peephole as he ambled down the driveway back to the sedan.
+ + +
Brin was fine.
Half an hour ago Ralph had been worried about her and had left Headquarters to go check on her. He called to let me know she’d only misplaced her phone again.
One small mystery solved.
That was always nice.
But it wasn’t much, considering all that we had on our plate.
After finishing up at HQ and battling my way through rush-hour traffic, I arrived home at six thirty, a little later than I expected. Lien-hua was already there, having skipped yoga in favor of working on the case here at home.
She’d released the two agents who were watching the house this morning. However, I called in to make sure there hadn’t been any problems. A young man answered. “This is Agent Danner.”
“Patrick Bowers. I was wondering how things went today.”
“Yes, sir. Your daughter never left the house.”
“Thanks.”
A slight pause. “She ordered lunch for us.”
“Yeah, she told me. So, no problems, though?”
“No problems at all.”
“Good.”
We hung up.
Tessa was quiet as we ate supper. There was nothing particularly unusual about that, but when I’d left this morning she’d been upset that I’d asked for a detail to be assigned here to keep an eye on things and I guessed that my decision to do that might still be bothering her.
When she finished her meal she didn’t leave the table. “So, when you’re at work tomorrow, are they gonna be back?”
“Who?”
“The agents outside.”
Ah, so she was thinking about them after all. I braced myself for an argument. “Yes, and I don’t want this to be—”
“The same ones?”
“I would imagine so. Probably. Why?”
She shrugged. “At least now I know what kind of burritos they like.”
“Oh.”
“Or at least one of ’em.”
“Well, don’t use that card that you’re not supposed to know about. And what did you do, fake my signature?”
“When the guy delivered the food he just had a swipey-swipe—one of those little white box thingies on his phone.”
“A swipey-swipe little white box thingy? And this from a girl who aced her ACT?”
She shrugged. “It works. I signed it ‘Pat’ for you—good thing you have such an androgynous name.”
“Right. So you’re cool with me calling them in?”
“I mean, if you have to.”
It was nice to know that she was finally starting to l
isten to me without me having to put my foot down.
“I’ll be in my room,” she said on her way to the hallway. “Text me if you need me.”
19
When Corrine Davis opened her eyes, she noticed nothing different from when they had been closed.
“Hello?” she called.
The word reverberated around her, a hollow, vacant echo.
She heard no reply, just the faint drip of water somewhere in the thick, pitch-black darkness surrounding her.
Water on water.
Every few seconds, another drop.
She blinked again, trying to discern the difference between the blackness of having her eyes closed to the blackness of having them open, but noticed nothing.
“Is anybody there?”
No response.
She was seated, leaning against a hard surface. She felt behind her—cool and unforgiving and damp. A rock wall.
Somewhat hesitantly, she passed both hands in front of her and found nothing there.
One more time, she tried closing her eyes and then opening them, tried looking in each direction, but there wasn’t even the slightest amount of light to help her discern where she might be.
Now she yelled louder, “Hello?”
The word came back at her as if it were mocking her: “Hello . . . Hello . . . Hello . . .”
Corrine reached her hands in front of her again, then to each side.
Nothing.
She felt a growing pang of anxiety.
Okay, okay, okay.
Calm down now.
Figure this out.
The last thing she remembered was that man leading her from the van.
That man.
The one who’d been waiting for her in her bedroom. The one who’d tied her to the bed, who’d photographed her there like that, who’d laid that blade against her throat and told her that he would end her life if she made a sound.
The one who’d slept next to her, one arm under her head, the other draped across her chest, holding her as a lover might, while she was helpless to get away, too terrified to scream—too terrified to sleep.