She copied the GPS data and plugged it into Google Maps. The app immediately lifted off Ashland and went northwest to what looked like an old industrial factory on the east bank of the Potomac River, several miles north of Berkeley Springs, West Virginia.
Alex said, “Can you get two helicopters? That’s a four-hour drive.”
Mahoney said, “We’ve got a man convicted of raping an underage girl six blocks from the twins’ last known location. Call the sheriff’s office first. See if they responded.”
Bree did and talked to a Deputy Janet Cafaro, who said that after getting the 911 call, she ran out to the location, an old silica-processing plant south of the current modern facility, but found the place buttoned up tight.
“It’s been condemned for two years now,” the deputy said. “They’re going to raze the place this fall to make way for an expansion.”
“How big is it?”
“Oh, covers forty acres, easy.”
“Buildings?”
“Four. But like I said, I checked the locks on the main gate and on every one of those buildings and I talked to security at the new plant. They haven’t seen any suspicious activity down there, and they go through the area twice a day.”
After she thanked the deputy, Bree hung up.
Mahoney said, “I’m leaving for Ashland.”
“I’m with you,” Sampson said.
“I think we should split up,” Bree said. “Alex and I will use a Metro helicopter to fly to Berkeley Springs while you go to Ashland.”
“You’re sure?”
“Do you want to tell Dee’s mother we ignored it?”
“Point taken,” Mahoney said. “Let’s stay in close touch.”
CHAPTER 100
TWO HOURS LATER, BREE AND I landed in a field outside Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, a rural, heavily wooded, unincorpo-rated area no more than a mile and a half from the Potomac and two miles from the silica-processing plant. Mahoney and Sampson had already arrived in Ashland, and with FBI agents from the Richmond office, they were on their way to the last known location of the Christopher twins’ phones.
Morgan County Sheriff’s Deputy Janet Cafaro was waiting for us outside her Chevy Suburban patrol vehicle. Beside it was a Chevy Tahoe rental Bree had arranged to have delivered from Hancock, about twenty miles north.
Deputy Cafaro was a big woman who’d played basketball at Pitt University. It was beastly hot, and she was in her body armor, sweating, so she was unhappy with us at first.
“I checked that old plant,” she said briskly after shaking our hands. “I think this was a waste of a trip for you.”
“Probably,” Bree said. “But we have two mothers with missing girls back in DC and I’d like to be able to tell them we did everything we could to find their daughters before he tires of them and decides to kill and dump them.”
That softened the deputy. “Not much time left for the first one, Dee?”
I shook my head. “Twelve to twenty-four hours if he sticks to his MO.”
“Okay,” Deputy Cafaro said, holding her palms up. “I get it now and I’m sorry for the attitude. Let’s go.”
“No worries on the attitude,” Bree said. “No one likes being second-guessed.”
The helicopter lifted off to refuel in Roanoke; the pilot would be back in an hour and wait for us. Bree and I got in the rental, listened to the country station the radio was tuned to, and followed Deputy Cafaro in her cruiser north on the road to Hancock. After a few miles, a high chain-link fence appeared on our left. Beyond it, to the west, the trees gave way to open ground and then a hill that had been cleaved by a pale white open-pit mine running north for almost a mile. At the other end of the pit, machines were boring and extracting tons of raw silica.
The old processing plant on the east side of the street was surrounded by a tall chain-link fence with razor wire on top. The gate was barred, chained, and locked with three padlocks. A condemnation and demolition notice hung on the gate beside a No Trespassing sign.
Before we arrived, Deputy Cafaro had gone to get keys from the plant security manager, who wanted to be there but had to leave to see his mother in a hospital in Pittsburgh. Cafaro fiddled with the keys and finally got the gate unlocked and opened it.
We drove in and parked, then walked across cracked and busted pavement toward railroad tracks that ran by a large complex of old, abandoned factory buildings. A pair of them were two-story, steel-sided, steel-roofed, and rusting badly.
The other two buildings were much larger. They sat parallel to each other and were built of crumbling brick, three stories high at the near end and a good hundred yards long before the roof jumped another four stories to two tower-like structures.
Deputy Cafaro said the silica plant had been around for close to a century and produced fine sands and clays from its mine on the hill across the street. The modern facility had been built a few years ago and had double production.
“They’re thinking they can double it again once they’ve built the second plant on this site,” she said. She gestured at the buildings. “In the meantime, take your pick. I’ve got keys for all of them.”
“The small ones first,” Bree said.
CHAPTER 101
HEADING TOWARD THE CLOSER OF the two small, rusting buildings, we crossed the railroad track.
“This still used?” I asked.
Deputy Cafaro nodded. “Four, five times a day, north and south. There’s a spur off the main line that goes to the current plant and rejoins it on the other side. The processed sand is loaded into hopper cars and off it goes.”
I looked down the tracks south toward Berkeley Springs and a road the rails crossed. There were houses beyond. In the other direction, I could see past the old towers to the newer plant. We crossed more busted pavement and places where it was gone completely and down to sand and weeds.
I let my eyes move back and forth across the ground, trying to spot any indication of recent vehicle traffic. But there was no evidence of it that I could see.
The first building was roughly six thousand square feet and had processed specialty clays back in the day. Cafaro opened it, revealing the interior of the shell and little else. It had been stripped of all its machinery nearly a decade before.
“They all like this?” I asked. “Empty?”
“Pretty much,” she said. “Like I said over the phone.”
“What’s not empty?” Bree asked.
The deputy gestured north toward the larger buildings. “There’s still big pieces of the old conveyors and lifts in the towers to reclaim. But everything else is long gone.”
I was about to suggest we go in the big buildings when my cell phone and Bree’s went off together.
“Mahoney,” I said.
“And Sampson,” Bree said.
We got onto a four-way call with terrible, crackling reception.
“We’ve got nothing,” Ned said. “Phones are not there and Boone has an airtight alibi. He’s a telemarketer in town and worked the late shift. His supervisor confirmed it.”
“We’re still looking,” I said. “We’ll let you know.”
“We’re heading for the helicopter,” Sampson said.
We hung up and told Deputy Cafaro that we needed to search the entire complex. You could tell she wasn’t thrilled, but she got out a key and unlocked a chain wrapped around double doors at the near end of the farthest long building. We pushed them open, flushing pigeons and revealing a long, lofty space with rusting conveyor systems and cables hanging from the girders that supported the roof.
“You go down to that tower when you were in here?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Look at the floor. That’s a quarter of an inch of dust and pigeon poo; don’t you think we’d see tracks?”
“Any other way into the tower?” Bree asked.
“Where the railcars used to come in,” she said. “But we’ll have to go around. They’re chained shut too.”
She locked the doubl
e doors and led us around the side, and we started down an overgrown walkway between the two buildings, which Cafaro said had been used to screen and wash the sand. The towers had compartment-like rooms that held the sand and there’d been a complex of lifts and chutes that drained it into the hopper cars.
“How do you know all this?” Bree asked.
“My father worked here. Grandfather too.”
There were narrow horizontal slits in the sides of the towers where pigeons were fluttering in and out. She said they were ventilation windows that had let the plant workers control the humidity and allow in light on those rare occasions when the storage rooms were empty.
Then her radio squawked.
“Janet Cafaro?” the dispatcher said. “You by the radio?”
“Right here, Imogene,” the deputy said.
“We got a motorcycle wreck south of town, mile marker two. Fire and ambulance responding. I need traffic control.”
“On my way,” she said, and she looked at us. “We good?”
I hesitated, then said, “Give us the keys to the two towers. We’ll finish and bring the keys to you.”
Cafaro didn’t like that but shrugged and handed us the keys on the ring. “Just don’t sue the company if something collapses on you,” she said. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
CHAPTER 102
RUSTY TRAIN TRACKS LED THROUGH double doors on the east and west sides of both towers. The lock to the rear tower’s west door was rusted and it took us three or four tries to get it open. The double doors screeched when we pushed and dragged them back to reveal a yawning space, one hundred feet long and forty feet wide, with multiple chutes coming out of the high ceiling above the tracks.
“I suppose they loaded the hopper cars here?” Bree asked.
“Good guess,” I said. “I’m not exactly an expert on aging silica plants.”
She turned on a flashlight and shone it on the trash-strewn ground and toward the back of the space, where there was a steep, narrow steel staircase next to a big industrial lift with stout steel cables descending out of a gaping open shaft in the ceiling. Somewhere above us, we could hear birds rustling around.
“Doesn’t look like there has been anyone in here in years,” Bree said.
“Let’s call it, go find some shade, and wait for Cafaro to come back.”
She nodded. We closed the double doors, locked them, and walked around the back of the tower closest to the road.
A train was coming from the south. It rumbled into the old silica yard and went right by us, so loud I had to cover my ears. The engineer waved and we saw the hopper cars Deputy Cafaro had described. The train went onto the spur that led to the newer plant and stopped with fifteen hopper cars still on the old plant’s grounds, cutting us off from the gate and the main road.
“Think we can climb over the couplings?” I said.
“What if the train moves?”
“We’ll wait,” I said, looking down at the old spur rails where they left the main tracks and went toward the first tower.
I saw something and squatted down to be sure.
“What?” Bree said, stepping up beside me.
I stood and lowered my voice to a murmur. “Look down at the spur rails. They are nowhere as rusty as the rails going into the far tower. See where the rust has been rubbed off? Almost buffed to a brown versus the orange-red over there?”
Bree looked down for several seconds and then nodded. I scanned the area around the rails, seeing broken weeds and a small chunk of black. I bent down, picked it up, squeezed it.
“Tire tread,” I whispered, feeling my heart beat a little faster. “I think someone’s been driving a car on these tracks.”
We both turned and looked at where the rails disappeared beneath the double doors into the near tower.
CHAPTER 103
THE TRAIN GROANED INTO MOTION as we went to the double doors. I put the key in the lock. It turned easily and popped open with a soft snap, not like the lock on the other tower at all.
Bree understood, bobbed her head at me, and drew her service weapon. I did the same. We each got a free hand on one of the doors and hid behind them, shielding our bodies as we tugged them open. They slid back easily and quietly, as if the tracks the old doors ran on had recently been oiled.
Behind us the train stopped again. We both got out flashlights, held them beneath our pistols, and, on the count of three, eased inside. The base of this tower was set up exactly the same way as the other, with chutes coming down from the ceiling, a narrow metal staircase in the far corner, and an industrial lift beside it. Except the lift itself was not there, nor were there any cables hanging from the large hole in the ceiling.
Bree pointed at the concrete floor to either side of the rails and whispered in my ear, “It’s been swept and then trash thrown on it.”
I saw the brush marks beneath a piece of yellowed newspaper and nodded. We crept across the floor to the staircase and slowly climbed the steep, narrow stairs, trying to stay to the outsides of the risers to keep squeaking to a minimum as we eased up to where the staircase went through the ceiling.
We stopped below the first ceiling, listening and hearing nothing except the train starting to squeal again. Finally, I took a step up, peeked over into the space. Empty.
Like the ground floor, the floor of the upper room was heavy plank wood that looked swept. The third floor was empty and filthy, no signs of sweeping.
The fourth floor was infested with pigeons. So were floors five through seven. Nothing but pigeons.
Deeply discouraged, we went back down the staircase and looked at the broom marks in the dirt on the second floor and the first.
“Dee was here hours ago,” Bree said. “She dialed 911 in here. I can feel it.”
“I’m feeling it too,” I said, hearing the train start up yet again.
By the time we got outside and were chaining and locking the double doors, the train had left the old silica processing yard. The caboose was now well up the track toward the new plant. We sweated as we trudged toward the Tahoe.
Bree sighed, said, “I guess we’re back to square one.”
“On borrowed time,” I said and checked my watch, feeling anxiety and frustration build inside me.
Wanting to punch something, I jerked open the driver’s side of the Tahoe and climbed into the SUV. Bree got in, slammed her door, and threw her head back against the rest in frustration.
“He’s good,” she said.
“I am good, aren’t I?” said a male voice behind us in the back seat. “The best.”
My hand started toward my pistol before I felt the muzzle of a gun against the back of my head.
“Don’t even think about it, Dr. Cross. Or you, Chief Stone,” he said, and I finally glanced in the rearview and saw the homely face of Ronald Peters smirking back at me.
CHAPTER 104
BREE TWISTED HER HEAD AROUND and saw the bodega owner grinning at her, his eyes shiny with excitement as he pressed the muzzle of a nickel-plated Colt revolver to the back of Alex’s head.
“Chief Stone, remove your weapon and drop it out the window. Backup too.”
“As a matter of policy, high-ranking officers in Metro PD cannot carry a backup.”
“Prove it,” Peters said. “But dump your pistol first.”
Bree rolled down the window, removed her Glock from her belt holster, and dropped it to the pavement. Then she tugged up her slacks and showed Peters her ankles. She shrugged her jacket off her shoulders to show no holster, then rocked forward and raised the back of her jacket to show nothing at the small of her back.
“Good,” Peters said. “Now you, Dr. Cross. Slowly.”
As Alex reached into his shoulder holster, Bree let go of her jacket and sat back, her hands in her lap, palms up. She forced herself to breathe as Alex removed his Glock with his thumb and index finger, rolled down the window, and tossed it out.
Then Alex bent over and removed his backup nine-millime
ter from its ankle holster and tossed it as well.
“Cell phones,” Peters said.
They both reached for their phones and dropped them to the broken pavement.
“Windows up,” Peters said, still pressing the gun against Alex’s head.
“Where are the girls?” Alex said.
“In airless places,” Peters said, sitting back. “Where they won’t be found until I want them found. Now start the car. Put it in drive. Go out the gates. Turn right.”
Alex started the car. Country music came on. He put the Tahoe in reverse, saying, “You killed them, Kay Willingham and Randall Christopher, didn’t you?”
“Randall wouldn’t let it go and he got too close for comfort,” Peters said. “The vice president’s ex was collateral damage.”
“Did you doctor the security footage you gave Detective Sampson?” Alex asked, braking to a stop and turning the wheels toward the gate.
“Having an associate’s degree in film helps.”
“What about the gun?”
He smirked again as Alex put the car back in drive. “I own the little company that cleans Elaine Paulson’s house. She mentioned she and her husband were separating when I happened to stop by to inspect my workers’ job. The rest was sheer creativity.”
The fingers of Bree’s right hand crawled up her jacket’s left sleeve and found the Bond derringer in its clever holster snugly beneath her upper forearm. She released the simple stretch band that wrapped around the hammer and kept the gun in place.
Alex drove toward the gate, slowing to avoid potholes, and said, “Don’t you want to know what got us here?”
Peters chuckled and pressed the pistol barrel harder against Alex’s head. “I figured Dee got out a 911. Not that it really matters to either of you now. You won’t be around to do anything about them. Speed it up!”
That sealed it in Bree’s mind. She shifted her upper body toward Peters, hoping the sound and the country music would be enough to cover the rustle of jacket fabric as she drew the derringer and the soft click when she cocked the hammer.
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