Monkeewrench

by P. J. Tracy

  She didn’t like the garage, although there was no reason she could find to feel that way. It was well lit, spotlessly clean, and completely devoid of shadowy nooks and crannies. She could see damn near every inch of it without taking a step, and there was no reason in the world to expect that anyone else was down there; but still, she felt uneasy.

  She held her breath for as long as she could and listened to the tomblike silence.

  Nothing.

  There were two cars parked near the back wall: a black Range Rover and a Mercedes, both silent, both dark. A mountain bike and a big Harley Hog leaned on their kick-stands nearby.

  She dropped to a crouch and peered beneath the cars, feeling a little silly for doing it. And when she stood up again, she did something even sillier. For the first time in her life outside of a target range, she unsnapped her holster, lifted out the big 9mm, and chambered a round. The unmistakable ratcheting echoed in the big empty space, and just the sound of it embarrassed her a little.

  Better safe than sorry, she rationalized, sweeping her gaze along the back wall as she started to walk toward it. There was a freight elevator in the center that had rumbled down as she entered, with interior lights that showed it was empty behind the wooden grate.

  In the back left corner was a man-sized door marked STAIRWAY. In the right corner was another door with a black-and-yellow high-voltage sign on the front.

  Cars first, she told herself, then the doors, and why the hell are my hands sweating?

  Grace was staring mindlessly at her computer screen, mesmerized into near stupor by the white blur of tracking information that was scrolling down her monitor.

  The Wisconsin deputy Magozzi had sent over had just called from downstairs. Grace had talked to her for a few minutes, then used the remote to key her in and send the elevator down.

  Mitch came out of his office, lugging his briefcase and laptop. His suitcoat was rolled up in a ball under his arm. He stopped at Grace’s desk and put his hand on her shoulder. “I’m going to take off. Are you okay?”

  She covered his hand with hers and smiled at him. “I’m going to be fine. You go home and take care of Diane.”

  Mitch looked at her for a long moment, giving her everything with his eyes, like he always did. “You know, Grace,” he said softly so he couldn’t be overheard, “if you change your mind about leaving, I’ll be right beside you. Nothing could keep me from that. Nothing.”

  It was always there between them, this remnant of a first love that men seemed to cling to for all of their lives. But usually, Mitch wasn’t this overt and it made Grace a little uncomfortable. “I know that. Go home, Mitch.”

  He looked at her for a moment longer, then turned for the elevator.

  “I sent it down for that deputy Magozzi sent over,” Grace remembered. “She should be up in a few minutes.”

  Mitch shook his head. “I’ll take the stairs. See you guys.” He waved to Roadrunner and Harley, who were so focused on their monitors they just lifted their hands in farewell without looking up.

  Down in the garage Sharon was hurrying now, rubber-soled shoes squeaking on the concrete as she walked past the open freight elevator.

  She figured she’d eaten up three minutes checking the cars and the padlocked door with the high-voltage sign on it, and she was starting to worry about Halloran calling out the National Guard before she could check the stairway and get upstairs, where she hoped the radio would work again.

  She still had her gun drawn, but by now her uneasiness was fading and her hands had stopped sweating. Any enclosed space would tell you if it was empty, if you just listened to your senses, and once she’d checked out the cars and banished the mental bugaboo of the only viable hiding places, all of her senses came through loud and clear, telling her she was absolutely alone down there.

  She was ten feet from the stairwell door when it opened suddenly and one of the Monkeewrench geeks bopped out, then froze comically at the sight of her gun. “Oh my God. Don’t shoot!”

  Sharon relaxed. “Sorry.” She smiled a little sheepishly and looked down to holster her gun. “I’m Deputy Sharon Mueller …” she started to say, and then she looked up and saw only eyes, and in that instant she knew she had just made the biggest mistake of her life.

  Both her hands jerked automatically, one toward the useless radio on her shoulder, the other to her holster, and all the time she was thinking crazily, See, Halloran? I told you I might be able to see something. I told you I was good at this …

  … and her hands were still moving, too fast to see, too slow to do any good, and then she heard a soft popping sound and felt a bite on her throat above the vest, goddamn it, above the fucking useless vest, and then there was a gush of something warm and wet running down her shirt and her right finger moved spasmodically against nothing but air, trying to pull a trigger that wasn’t there again and again and again.

  Magozzi hurried down the hall toward Tommy’s office, took a step inside the door, and skidded on an empty Cheetos bag. “Jesus Christ, Tommy, this place is like a minefield. What have you got?”

  Tommy stabbed a finger at the monitor in front of him. “I got a name. D. Emanuel. That’s your boy.”

  “That’s Bradford?”

  Tommy grinned and rubbed his Buddha belly. “You bet your ass. First I checked the county Saint Peter’s School is in, and then I was going alphabetically until I figured a high-school kid wouldn’t travel too far, so I did the adjacent counties and got a hit on the second one. Livingston County. Brian Bradford changed his name to D. Emanuel the day after his eighteenth birthday.”

  Magozzi grabbed the phone and punched the extension for Homicide. “No first name?”

  “Nope. Just D.” He gestured at another monitor. “I’m running a New York and Georgia search on D. Emanuel now, see if anything pops.”

  “Gino!” Magozzi barked into the phone. “The kid changed his name to D. Emanuel. Check it on the lists.” He was just hanging up the phone when Tommy frowned at one of the monitors.

  “Well, that’s weird.”

  “What?”

  “I got a marriage certificate for D. Emanuel in Georgia. But this can’t be right.” He leaned closer to the monitor as if that would make the information more clear. “This D. Emanuel married James Mitchell … It’s got to be a different one.”

  Magozzi was tense, almost rigid. “No it doesn’t.”

  “Same-sex marriages in Georgia? I don’t think so.”

  “Brian Bradford is a hermaphrodite.”

  Tommy’s jaw dropped. “You’re shitting me. Why didn’t you tell me that before?”

  “We didn’t tell anyone.”

  Tommy was looking at the screen, shaking his head. “James Mitchell. I’ve seen that name.”

  “It’s about as common as dirt.”

  “No, I mean recently. Give me a minute. Christ, it had to be in the FBI file. That’s the only thing I’ve been working on.” He slid over to another keyboard and started typing frantically.

  The phone rang and Magozzi snatched it off the hook.

  “That’s it, Leo. D. Emanuel was on the registration list, but not the admissions list. He’s the guy. Is Tommy running it?”

  “Yeah, we’re working on it. I’ll let you know.”

  Chapter 45

  “Roadrunner, Harley?” Grace said quietly. “I just got another message.”

  Harley and Roadrunner tore over to her desk and hovered over either shoulder to look at her monitor.

  “Open it, Grace,” Harley said.

  Grace clicked the mouse and a single message line appeared on the screen:

  I DIDN’T WANT TO HAVE TO DO THIS

  “Jesus,” Roadrunner whispered. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Suddenly the lights in the office snapped out and the monitor flickered. The e-mail disappeared and was replaced by a blue screen. A few seconds later, the monitor started drawing a power grid schematic.

  “Power failure warning.” Roadru
nner stated the obvious.

  “Lot of good that does,” Harley said. “We already know the power failed.”

  “Says the main isn’t receiving power,” Grace said. “What exactly does that mean?”

  “Means there’s probably a big trunk line outage somewhere,” Harley said. “Shit. It could be a while.”

  He walked over to the windows and opened the louvered blinds, for all the good it did. The sun was behind a black wall of clouds that looked like they weren’t going anywhere soon. “Darkest goddamned day of the year and we lose power.”

  “Why isn’t the generator kicking in?” Grace asked. “I thought we had it set up to take over automatically.”

  Harley shrugged. “Who knows? We’ve probably never had the thing running or serviced since we got it. It’s like a car battery—use it or lose it. I’ll go down and take a look. Roadrunner, how much battery time do we have on the computers?”

  “Around two hours.”

  “I’ll report it to the power company and start making backups of our drives,” Grace said. “You guys go see if you can’t get the generator running.”

  “Where the hell is the generator, anyhow?” Roadrunner asked.

  “It’s in the power room in the garage.”

  Roadrunner looked confused.

  Harley rolled his eyes. “Didn’t you ever notice the door with the big yellow high-voltage sign on it … never mind. You’re hopeless. Come on, let’s go.”

  “But the elevator runs on electricity.”

  Harley sighed impatiently. “The stairs, Roadrunner.”

  “Oh yeah.”

  Roadrunner had reluctantly taken the lead down the dark stairwell, carefully mincing a slow side step to accommodate his size-fourteen feet. But the farther down they descended, the darker and more tomblike the stairwell became and the more nervous he got.

  “Damn it,” Harley barked suddenly, his voice reverberating in the concrete sarcophagus and nearly sending Roadrunner into the next world.

  “WHAT?” Roadrunner shrieked.

  Harley paused to peel a big, sticky cobweb out of his beard. “Spiders. Sorry, buddy, didn’t mean to scare you. It’s just hard to remember all your phobias.”

  “You’re telling me you’re not creeped out by this?” he asked angrily.

  “Oh, I’m plenty creeped out, don’t you worry.”

  “Well, I can’t see a damn thing,” Roadrunner complained. He reached up and smacked one of the dark, wall-mounted light fixtures as if his ire could produce light. “And what about these? Aren’t they the glowy things that are supposed to stay on all the time?”

  “Yes, but the glowy things operate on battery and if you don’t change the batteries, they stop glowing eventually,” Harley said in a tone more suitable for a toddler.

  “We need a flashlight. Why didn’t we bring a flashlight?”

  “Because we’re stupid. And don’t even think of asking me to run up and get one. Just keep moving. There’s a deputy down here somewhere and cops always carry those big-ass five-trillion-candlepower flashlights.”

  Roadrunner was suddenly seized by a volley of sneezes that could have qualified him for the Guinness record book.

  “Jesus, you okay?” Harley asked when he’d finally finished.

  Roadrunner sniffled, then moved forward again. “Yeah. But somebody needs to clean this place out,” he said in a nasal voice. “There’s enough dust in here to plant a garden.”

  Harley grunted as one of his lug-soled motorcycle boots caught on a concrete riser. When he reached out to grab the railing for support he made contact with something furry. “Fuck!” he squealed, snatching his hand back and holding it close to his chest. “Don’t touch anything. I think I just felt up a rodent.”

  Roadrunner sneezed again. “This place is hermetically sealed. If a rodent ever managed to get in here, it’d be dead by now.”

  “Oh yeah? So what else is furry, the size of Rhode Island, and has a heartbeat?”

  “Probably just a spore cluster.”

  “What the fuck’s a spore cluster?”

  “I don’t know. The stuff that’s making me sneeze.”

  “You just keep telling yourself that, Roadrunner.”

  “We should have brought a flashlight.”

  “Shut up. Where the fuck is the door?”

  “You say ‘fuck’ a lot when you’re nervous.”

  “Who’s nervous?”

  There was a hollow thunk as Roadrunner collided with the steel door. “Ouch.”

  “Good job. You found the door.”

  Roadrunner pushed on the steel bar and the door swung open onto the garage, which was even darker than the stairwell had been.

  “Deputy Mueller?” Harley called out. The only answer was his own echo. “Deputy? Are you down here?” More silence.

  “If she were here, she wouldn’t be sitting quietly in the dark waiting to ambush us,” Roadrunner said.

  “Good point. So she’s not down here. Probably took off when the lights went out. We’re going to have to do this without light.” He paused, imagining the layout of the garage in his mind. “Okay, the generator room is directly across from us, on the other side of the garage,” Harley said. “Grab on to my shirt and we’ll grope our way down the wall.”

  Roadrunner clamped onto Harley with a death grip and shuffled behind him blindly. “Ick. The floor is sticky. Is your hog leaking oil again?”

  “My hog has never leaked oil. Okay, we’re here.” He dug in his jacket pocket, pulled out his key ring, and started feeling each one, searching for the small padlock key. “What I’d like to know is why we have a padlock on the generator room. It’s not like anyone is going to steal a two-thousand-pound chunk of metal.”

  He finally found the right key, popped the padlock, and opened the door.

  The power room was even blacker than the rest of the garage, if such a thing were possible. It took a moment for their eyes to find the hulking form of the generator in the corner. They clambered over to it, trying to decipher its parts with their hands.

  “So what am I feeling for?” Roadrunner asked.

  Harley scratched his beard. “Check the cords, connections, and let me know if you find any buttons. I think this thing is supposed to have a reset switch on it somewhere.”

  Roadrunner reached out blindly and found a dangling cable that seemed like it should be connected to something, but what did he know? He’d failed shop class in high school two years in a row before the frustrated teacher had finally given him a passing grade in exchange for help with what had then been a state-of-the-art Kay-Pro computer.

  As he maneuvered around the generator to get a better grip on the cable, his head connected painfully with a very sharp metal object attached to the wall. “Ooowww!” he squawked, stumbling back and holding his head.

  “God, you’re a klutz. You’re going to end up killing yourself one day.”

  “Hey, it’s dark, okay?”

  “What did you run into?”

  Roadrunner reached out and felt the offending piece of metal. “It’s … a metal box. On the wall.”

  “That’s the breaker box. Hey, good idea. Maybe we just tripped something.”

  “Yeah. That’s what I was thinking. That’s why I just gashed my head on it,” Roadrunner grumbled.

  Harley squeezed next to Roadrunner and felt around for the box. “Okay. I found it.” He pulled open the cover and started feeling around inside. “I can’t see shit, but one of the switches is facing a different direction.”

  There was a click and suddenly the lights blazed on. “YES!” Harley shouted victoriously.

  “Thank God …”

  And then the door to the room slammed shut on them with a deafening metallic thud.

  “Oh shit!” Roadrunner panicked.

  “Don’t worry, buddy. Door doesn’t lock automatically. Against code. Here, I’ll show you.” He walked over and reached for the handle.

  Outside the generator room, a pair of
gloved hands slipped the padlock through the hasp and snapped it shut.

  Chapter 46

  Magozzi was hunched over Tommy’s shoulder, breathing down his neck. “Why is this taking so long?”

  “It’s a seven-hundred-page file. I just started …”

  One of Tommy’s other computers chirped. He nudged Leo back and rolled his chair over to a computer on a side table. “Monkeewrench just got another message.” He squinted at the monitor and read aloud: “‘I didn’t want to have to do this.’ Man, what do you suppose that means?”

  “Who knows?” Magozzi started to say, but then a shrill alarm started to sound. “What the hell is that?”

  Tommy was rigid, unblinking, totally focused on the monitor as a line of numbers and letters flashed on and off beneath the message. “Goddamn it,” he whispered, then turned to Leo, his eyes wide. “Goddamn it, Leo, there are no firewalls. It’s a direct line. This message came from the Monkeewrench computers.”

  Magozzi froze for a second and heard a roaring in his ears. “What are you saying?”

  “The guy’s there, Leo. Right now.”

  Harley was using his shoulder as a battering ram. The door rattled in its metal frame, but it wasn’t going to give anytime this century. “God-damn-it!”

  “I thought you said it didn’t lock from the inside.”

  Harley took another run at the door. “It’s not supposed to.”

  “Harley, give it up. You’re not going to break down a metal door.”

  “Any better ideas?”

  “You have your cell?”

  “Roadrunner, we’re in a concrete room inside another concrete room underground. A cell phone is not going to work.”