by Linda Moore
When we disembarked, O’Toole walked over to a pole and pulled down a large lever, turning on a system of bright overhead work lights. The wind was swirling snow and sleet down into the site; it was a cavernous place and bitter cold. If Sophie has been down here all this time, I thought, she could well have succumbed to hypothermia. I pulled my wool scarf up and shoved my gloved hands into the pockets of my down jacket and tried to hope for the best.
“First of all,” Arbuckle said, “let’s have a look at any enclosed spaces.”
The guard turned to O’Toole and suggested the access hatches along the tunnel.
“Good thinking,” said O’Toole. “This way.”
The team followed O’Toole through a maze of steel partitions and it seemed to me we were heading south, in the direction of downtown. The site narrowed into a three-metre-wide round tunnel located twenty-odd metres underground. I had heard about this tunnel on the radio—how it extended a full kilometre in length crossing the downtown area to Sackville Street, where it would eventually pick up the sewage that was carried down to that point from all over the city. While the sewage had always gone straight into the harbour, it would soon be diverted through the new tunnel to the treatment plant, where the “floatables” would be removed. There had been considerable controversy over the fact that the expensive and long overdue plant provided for “primary” treatment only. The several access areas the guard had referred to were located along the distance of the tunnel so it could be reached from external points if necessary. Each of these access points had a kind of hatch opening onto the tunnel; with O’Toole’s help in releasing the sealed doors, we began to look inside these hatches. About halfway along the tunnel, I turned back to speak to McBride, only to discover that he and Molly had broken off from the group and were no longer following us. I looked back along the tunnel but couldn’t see them. Typical McBride, I thought, but was relieved that our manpower was being spread out. Finally we inspected the last hatch near the end of the tunnel, which was blocked off at the point where it would be joining into the Sackville Street sewage pipe. We had found nothing. We began to retrace our steps, walking the kilometre back to the open site.
*
McBride, impatient with the hatch theory, decided to do a little investigating on his own. He quietly left the group. As he and Molly re-entered the open excavation site from the tunnel, he heard noise above. Looking up, he saw that the lift was rising—he could just see the top of the guard’s hat as it moved higher. He quickly looked around. Across from where he stood was the small makeshift office that the security staff used. The door was open and the light was on. He was sure it hadn’t been previously—he would have noticed the office if the light had been on. As the lift reached the top, about sixty feet over his head, there was a ruckus and at that instant something flew down from the lift platform into the site. Molly began to bark sharply and took off like a bullet, as though the object were a duck that had been shot out of the sky. She had some retriever blood in her for sure. Within moments, she brought her prize to McBride.
He stared in disbelief as he took the object from her. He immediately sprung over to the elevator controls, but discovered that the guard had locked it off at the top. McBride would need either the code or a key to bring it down. Looking around he spotted a steel ladder attached to the concrete wall on the far side of the excavation. It appeared to go all the way to the top.
“Molly! Take this to Roz,” he commanded, pointing in the direction of the tunnel. Molly barked sharply. “Go! Take it to Roz.” She took the item in her mouth and ran towards the tunnel while McBride sprinted to the ladder and began climbing upward as fast as he could.
*
The distant sound of Molly’s sharp bark echoed into the tunnel. Speed, the tracker dog, responded with a low woof and his hackles went up. He hauled on his leash and, as though we were suddenly one person, all of us began to run. We were just nearing the point where the tunnel widens into the excavation site when Molly appeared, clearly on a mission, racing towards me with something in her mouth. We stopped and I stepped forward.
“Drop it, Molly!” I commanded, reaching down. She let the object go into my hand.
It was a short, tan-coloured leather boot and I recognized it immediately. “Oh, my god, this is Sophie’s boot.” I looked with alarm at Arbuckle.
Everyone rushed past me into the excavation area while I just stood there staring at the boot in my hand. What did this mean? Suddenly I could hear their raised voices—“Up there! On the ladder. Somebody’s escaping.”
“This is a warning. Stop now!” I heard Arbuckle shout.
I turned and bolted into the open site. Looking far up on the opposite side, I could see what they were all focused on. The German shepherd was at the bottom of the metal ladder barking loudly.
“For god’s sake!” I screamed at Arbuckle who had taken out his revolver. “It’s McBride. He must be following someone.” Arbuckle lowered his gun and the wrangler shouted a command at Speed, who immediately dropped away from the ladder. McBride disappeared over the top as the wind whistled down into the cold chasm where we all stood shivering and staring upwards.
O’Toole was at the elevator controls now. “It’s bloody locked off up there. This makes no sense,” he said. “I need the damn security guard. I need the code for this. Where the hell is the fucking guard?”
At that moment Speed began barking sharply. “He’s got the scent!” the wrangler said to Arbuckle. Turning to the sound we saw that the tracker dog was in the little security office.
Led by O’Toole we hurried across and entered the office.
“Christ Almighty! What’s this?” O’Toole exclaimed.
Screwed into the side of the desk were two lengths of chain. A padlock was lying on the floor by a small electric heater, and the cement floor was splotched with what appeared to be vomit. Arbuckle knelt down and reached under the corner of the desk— another torn piece of Sophie’s skirt. Possibly she had used it to wipe her mouth or perhaps she’d left it behind on purpose. Clearly this was where she had been confined and probably interrogated.
As I stared at the disturbing evidence in the security office, I suddenly realized who the night guard really was. He was the one who had followed me in the dark blue Dodge—the one I had named Matrix-man because of his fancy sunglasses and the one who was at the wheel the night McBride was knocked out. McBride had indeed recognized him, but hadn’t been able to place him because his heavy winter coat and the security guard hat with fur flaps that covered much of his face had proved an excellent disguise. No wonder Sophie had been brought here. Spiegle, in his position as supervising planner on the sewage treatment projects, would have control over security on the site, and since no one was working here on the weekend it would make for a handy little torture chamber. This guy must be on Spiegle’s payroll—his lackey, his bodyguard, his thug.
“The guard has taken her,” I said to Arbuckle. “He was keeping her down here, and now he’s on the run. I think he and the thug who attacked me tonight are working together.” I felt the panic rising. I knew that things could now take a turn for the worse. Matrix-man was fleeing with Sophie and she would be a burden, not an advantage.
Arbuckle immediately tried his cellphone, but there was no signal at this depth. There was a land line on the desk and O’Toole—confused and angry, but now compliant—shoved it towards him. Arbuckle had the station put out an all-points bulletin.
“He’s possibly driving a dark blue Dodge Shadow. The plate has ‘CSV’ in it,” I said quickly to Arbuckle, who added this information to the bulletin.
When he hung up, he said, “O’Toole, get us out of here. Now!”
As O’Toole got on the phone to Elevator Emergency Services, Arbuckle looked at me with disconcerting intensity and pulled me aside. “You always seem to know more than you’ve let on. If you want to save your friend, you have to tell me absolutely everything!”
“I’m just putting it all tog
ether now,” I said. “Believe me, I’m not holding back.”
“You’re not holding back but suddenly you know what he drives. Give me a break!”
“Look, I now realize that this guard is actually the same guy who was tailing me last Thursday. I didn’t recognize him when we arrived here because the day he followed me he was wearing sunglasses and a leather jacket. He’s also the same one who was driving the car the night McBride was roughed up, the night his cellphone was taken. McBride was on an assignation that night to meet up with an anonymous caller—whom we think was Aziz—to obtain some information on the murder that I referred to earlier. That meeting was hijacked—probably by this guy and the other one we sent to the hospital tonight. I’m convinced they’re both working for someone else, and I believe I’ve got evidence pointing to who that is, but I’m not prepared to talk about that here.” I glanced meaningfully towards O’Toole, who was still on the phone with his back to us. I was reluctant to discuss our suspicions of Carl Spiegle in front of O’Toole.
“Anyway,” I concluded, “the important thing is I was right about Sophie, wasn’t I? She was here. We are on the trail.”
“But still one step behind. Don’t you realize that if you’d let me in on your suspicions about the guard we might have found her before he pulled her out of that office?”
“You’re right,” I said. “I wish I’d recognized him earlier. He got away with sending us a kilometre down the tunnel so he could get her out of here. Thank god McBride left the group and came back here in time to see them escaping. With any luck, he’s on to him now.”
“Let’s hope we’re not too late—and that the boot came off a girl who was still alive and kicking.”
O’Toole hung up the phone, having finally gotten the code. He went over to the controls, punched some keys and, to our great relief, the lift began to descend. We all got on the elevator—O’Toole, Arbuckle and the duty sergeant who had accompanied him, Speed and his wrangler, Molly and me. We ascended in dead silence.
There was a car waiting for Arbuckle and a van for Speed, the wrangler and the sergeant. I got into the car with Arbuckle, who was already on the phone to the station.
“Anything?” he asked. I looked at him as he nodded. “So our boy’s coming ’round, is he? Good, I’m on my way to the hospital.”
“I’ll drop you off,” he said to me as he snapped his cellphone shut.
“No you won’t. I’m coming too. You’re stuck with me.”
Chapter Sixteen
When McBride got to the top of the ladder he was sorely winded from the rapid climb in the severe cold. Fortunately he’d had gloves, or it would have been an impossible feat.
He quickly got his bearings and realized he would have to take a different exit out of the site than Sophie and the security guard would, because the elevator platform was on the other side of the huge dig. Near him, a wide-gated entrance for trucks was barricaded with chains and a “Keep Out” sign. He had no problem scurrying under the metal gate. Finding himself just at the bottom of Cornwallis Street, he moved up the hill to the corner of Barrington and tried to assess the situation.
He had a good overview but there wasn’t a soul anywhere. Just then, cross corner from where he stood, a car squealed onto Lower Water Street. It was a dark sedan, but it was not quite light enough outside to see anything more. The curious thing was that the car turned the wrong way on the one-way access road, convincing McBride that it must be the guard and Sophie. They were headed south into the city and apparently in a hurry.
Standing at Cornwallis and Barrington, McBride spotted a lone vehicle coming towards him. It was a Casino taxi heading south. He hailed the cab, jogged across Barrington and jumped in.
“Quiet morning,” the driver said.
“Stay left,” McBride ordered. “Go Hollis. And fast.”
“Whatever you say, buddy. Where you off to in such a hurry?”
“I’m looking for someone in a car. We might be too late to spot them.”
“Fellow steal your girl?”
“You must be psychic.”
They were coming to the stoplight on Hollis at Duke. Ahead of them were very few vehicles, but the lone car that had turned right a couple of blocks ahead could be the one. In the increasing dawn light McBride could see that it was a familiar dark blue Dodge.
“I’m an idiot!” he blurted out as it struck him hard who the night guard really was.
“Got it bad, eh buddy.”
“Just turn right at Prince.”
The driver moved into the right lane and turned. McBride caught sight of the car. It was still climbing—going all the way up to Citadel Hill. It turned left at Brunswick.
Luck was with them and they just made the light at the top of Prince in time to see the Dodge taking the right turning lane onto Sackville.
“Take Sackville,” McBride said.
The Dodge was stopped at a red light at South Park. As the light changed it took a left, heading along the Public Gardens towards Spring Garden Road.
“Left at—”
“I’m on him,” the driver said.
They stayed behind the Dodge all the way down South Park, and followed when it took a right. McBride stopped the taxi when they reached the Robie Street intersection, paid the driver, then stood looking up the empty street to the house where the car had turned in.
“Well I’ll be damned,” he said aloud.
*
I wasn’t eager to stare into Scarface’s piggy eyes again, but more than anything I wanted him to spew out information about where Sophie might have been taken. On the drive to the hospital I filled Arbuckle in on the evidence that implicated Carl Spiegle in the death of Peter King. I explained how there were direct references to him in the material that Aziz had gathered at King’s office—all of which was in a file that Sophie had received from Aziz and which, I admitted, I now possessed; how McBride would be seeking a permit to exhume Peter’s body to establish poisoning; and how I had a pretty good theory on the substance that was used. What we needed was proof that these two, Scarface and Matrix-man, were Spiegle’s boys. And we needed real motive—proof that King’s unrelenting interference with Spiegle’s money-grabbing schemes had led to murder.
I knew I owed these details to Arbuckle now. I was serious and succinct, and he listened carefully. Everything that had happened during the last day—starting with the cellphone landing in my hall, the ransacking of Sophie’s apartment, her disappearance, the violent attack on Aziz, the attack on me, and the startling occurrences at the sewage treatment site—all corroborated what I was saying. I respected him for not admonishing me any further about withholding facts or holding me responsible for Sophie’s involvement. He could see I was already wracked with guilt and apprehension.
When we arrived at the hospital, we left Molly in Arbuckle’s car and went directly to Outpatients to see if Harvie was still waiting for someone to look at him. He was nowhere in sight and I hoped he’d been attended to and was home in bed. We went up to the fifth floor where they were treating Scarface.
We stepped off the elevator and turned the corner, looking for B14. There, sitting on a bench outside Scarface’s room, his right cheek bandaged, was Harvie. My heart gave a funny little leap when I saw him, and I smiled. He stood as we appeared.
“Good, oh good,” he said. “I was pretty certain you would show up here eventually. Is everything okay? What happened at the site?”
“Oh my god, Harvie, too much has happened.” I spoke quietly. “And we still don’t have Sophie. She was there, but the site’s security guard turned out to be Scarface’s partner in crime, and he managed to get her out before we realized who he was. McBride’s on the trail, I hope.”
“How are you, Greenblatt?” Arbuckle was undoubtedly experiencing his own pangs of self-reproach about Scarface getting back into my house in the midst of the grand search his team conducted in my backyard, while he himself was sitting in my kitchen drinking tea.
�
��I’m good,” Harvie replied, patting him on the back, “oh yeah, no worries—just fine. They stitched me up pronto. Okay, so now what’s happening?”
“I’m going in to see if we can get some information from buddy-boy here,” Arbuckle said, and with that he opened the door and entered the room. There was a constable in the room who rose when Arbuckle entered.
“Let’s go in,” I said to Harvie.
“How are you doing?” he asked.
“Your friend Arbuckle’s a good guy, Harvie, and we’re getting closer to solving the case, but I’m frantic about Sophie and Aziz. I’m very relieved that you’re okay, though. As you said earlier, too many people are getting hurt.”
“Keep the faith,” he said, and pushed open the door for me.
Scarface was propped up, a bandage on his head, looking like a circus-mirror image of McBride the day Sophie and I had visited him in the hospital. He was staring straight ahead, mute. It seemed Arbuckle hadn’t gotten anywhere. He gestured for me to go ahead and say something.
I looked at him and rallied my nerve. “So the tables have turned. You thought you had me, and you thought you had your hands on the information, but life is full of surprises.”
“Shut up,” he shot back.
“Charming as always,” I said.
Arbuckle picked up the interview. “You can talk after all. Well, we have another surprise for you. We know that your partner was holding Sophie in the treatment plant site. Were you in on that part of the scheme?”
He stared out.
“I hope not for your sake,” Arbuckle continued, “because now that the girl’s dead and your buddy’s on the run, things are going to get very serious for you.”
He twitched. “She’s not dead.”
“I’m afraid she is. Your buddy got carried away, just as you did with the boy in the railway cut. How many murders will you be taking the rap for, while your partner skips town?”
“She’s not dead. He was taking her to the house for a meeting. That was the deal.”
“What house?” I interjected.