Hot Case

by Patricia Rosemoor

  The day’s heat had remained trapped between buildings, and coming out into it was like opening a furnace door. Either that or my rising adrenaline level was roasting me from the inside out. Fear slid down my spine as I set off, my gaze continually roaming as I searched in vain for other signs of life.

  A moment later I was on Lake Street, where I crossed under the elevated tracks and approached the boarded-up meat market in question. The place looked deserted. I took a deep breath to center myself and checked around me to make certain I hadn’t missed anything. I was alone. I circled the building and checked for an alarm system—there was none—and for any easy entry.

  The windows were nailed down tight and the doors were bolted, including the one on the shipping dock. In frustration, I struck out at it and the bolt swung out slightly, making me realize it was hanging from its latch without actually being engaged.

  The door opened easily. I clicked on the flashlight and entered quietly. The space was open and empty and smelled slightly of old, dried blood.

  Of course…a meat market.

  My stomach lurched anyway, and I swallowed hard to settle it.

  I half held my breath and walked around the large open area, finding nothing of interest. Then I swept my intense beam across the floor that was thick with dust…all except for what looked like a pathway to a far door.

  My pulse raced along my veins as I made my way across the room, all the time concentrating on picking up the slightest sound.

  No way was I going to be ambushed again.

  I slowly opened the inner door and saw a set of steps. I followed them down to a basement that looked as if it had been used for storage. At the far end of the room was an old wood elevator cordoned off with a heavy chain-link barrier.

  Apparently, someone hadn’t wanted anyone using the elevator. Perhaps the structure had grown dangerous with age.

  I flashed the light along the elevator. Swinging the flashlight’s beam to the floor, I found the lock had been smashed, and further inspection of the area in front of the doors revealed more dust had been disturbed.

  Someone had been using the elevator.

  My pulse picked up. Had I found it, then? Would this lead me to the lair that Sheena had been so anxious to see?

  I thought to stop right then. To return to the bar and get backup. But a noise from below made me hesitate. I listened hard and swore I heard what I thought was a cry cut short.

  I should call for backup. I flipped open my phone and saw I had no signal. Damn!

  What if someone was in danger? I listened hard but heard no further sound. Maybe what I’d heard was an animal. Rats?

  Even so, I slipped through the chain-link barrier. I had to check it out, just in case….

  My hand shook slightly as I slid open the doors and quickly swept the inside of the car with the beam. Empty. I walked in and closed the door behind me, then cocked a rotating handle to power the elevator down. The rest of me shook inside when the groan of the old machinery bellowed around me. Not that it was really that loud. Every sound seemed magnified, starting with the blood that rushed through my head.

  I had my gun on me, which calmed me a bit.

  When the car stopped and the doors opened, I shone my light into the dark hole before me and listened hard. But if there was a woman in pain down here, she was quiet now. This wasn’t a subbasement as I had expected, but an oval-shaped tunnel about six feet wide and eight feet high. Steel tracks swept down the tunnel floor.

  What in the world…?

  Then it hit me. The tunnel was part of the crazy quilt of intersecting freight and mail tunnels built forty feet below street level in the late nineteenth century.

  I knew the network ran under the entire Loop area. Everyone in Chicago probably knew about them after the flood. A decade ago, there’d been a leak in a wall banking the Chicago River. The wall had given, and not only had the entire Loop network flooded, but subbasements of buildings, as well. Interest in the abandoned tunnels had been high, and the story had been heavily covered by the media.

  I remembered reading that spur lines extended west under and then beyond the river for another half mile or so because of the fish and meat markets that used to occupy this area. The tunnels had been sealed off for more than half a century, but apparently someone had found use for them once more.

  The tunnel floor was mostly smooth, but in places it was strewed with debris, chunks of decomposing wall and ceiling. I was careful to keep to the middle area between the tracks, and to avoid stepping on anything that might twist an ankle.

  Ahead the tunnel split in two. I took the right branch. And when it split again, again I went right. I kept careful track of every twist and turn. The last thing I needed was to get lost in this maze.

  This dark, dank and ultimately deserted maze. My gut was telling me to head back and call for backup. I was risking my life because I couldn’t sleep at night without a visit from LaTonya. But ending up dead wouldn’t do anyone any good.

  Suddenly feeling not so brave, I began tracing my way back the way I’d come.

  But before I could get there, I heard something that sounded like loose material skittering along the ground—some of the detritus from a crumbling wall that I’d come across before. Was that a natural sound? The decomposition of the tunnel? Or something human?

  Then I swore I heard the whisper of footsteps along the tracks somewhere ahead.

  The idea of unexpected company made my mouth go dry. I stopped and clicked off my flashlight and tried not to breathe. Did my best to listen, to pin where that sound had come from. My best effort was met with silence.

  No aura of light came from anywhere down the shaft.

  How could anyone get around in such absolute darkness?

  I removed my weapon from its holster and held it firmly in front of me, aimed into the dark.

  Still nothing.

  I waited yet another interminable moment before going on, my flashlight low and close to me—a roaming beam would be a warning signal should someone else be in the tunnels. I would have clicked it out, but then what? I needed to see where I was going. All the while I crept back the way I came, I kept my inner radar at alert. I didn’t hear another sound, but for reasons I couldn’t explain, I felt another presence.

  Call it instinct, call it experience, call it anything that fit, but I knew that whatever it was that I’d come looking for tonight was within my reach.

  I made another turn, got that much closer to where I’d entered the maze, when my foot landed on loose matter and I would have done the splits if my boot hadn’t smacked up tight against an old train rail. I threw out my arms to catch myself and loosened my grip on the flashlight. It went flying, hit the tunnel wall and with a smack, went out.

  Damn!

  I didn’t dare curse aloud…didn’t dare breathe…didn’t dare take another step until I reconnoitered.

  I strained for an entire minute at least, listening for some reaction. But the tunnel remained eerily silent.

  Pent-up air flowed from my chest, and I blindly sought the flashlight, crouching and running my hand along the ground. Finally my hand nicked loose metal, spinning the flashlight out of reach.

  I reached farther, finally closing my fingers around the comforting tool.

  As I snatched it up, a feeling of triumph filled me. But my relief was short-lived because the light wouldn’t turn on. I tried snapping it. Shaking it. Begging silently with it. Nothing worked. It remained adamantly dark.

  Great, because that’s just how I was going to have to get out of there—in the frickin’ dark!

  Bemoaning my fate, I was about to stand to feel my way to the next tunnel split, when I heard a scuffle behind me. I started to whirl but something hard hit me in the side of the head and I staggered to my knees. I must have accidentally squeezed the trigger, because my gun went off with a resounding boom and sharp flash of blue light that illuminated a dark silhouette. But one whose identity I couldn’t penetrate.
r />   I couldn’t focus my eyes.

  Couldn’t focus my mind.

  Couldn’t make my body cooperate.

  A kick to the head did it every time. But this was the first time I was experiencing it myself.

  Before I could recover, my head exploded with more pain—another kick—and my body went numb. Both the gun and the flashlight dropped from my fingers, which went slack.

  And then my internal lights went out….

  Sometime later I came up from a deep, dark void, someplace far, far away.

  My head was still fuzzy and I was floating.

  My head hung back as if over the edge of a bed. My legs dangled in space. And one arm hung loose and bobbed a steady rhythm as I moved. But I couldn’t move the other arm; it was up against something solid and covered with cloth.

  Someone was carrying me! To where? To what? Thoughts raced through my still fuzzy mind as I stirred and tried to fight whoever it was.

  His hold tightened. “Shelley, ease up.”

  “Jake?”

  “Yeah, so relax until we get out of here.”

  How was I supposed to relax when I’d been knocked unconscious only to wake up in his arms? How did I know he hadn’t been the one to do the head knocking?

  I shoved at his chest. “Let me down!”

  He did.

  I concentrated on coming up through the cottonyminded world that still cocooned me. Wondering if Jake had followed me or if he’d had his own reasons for entering the underground labyrinth, I said, “I left the bar without you knowing.”

  “Making assumptions was your first mistake.”

  I clenched my jaw so I didn’t say something I would regret. How many mistakes did he think I had made?

  “Did you see who kicked me in the head?” I asked, vaguely uncomfortable because for all I knew, it really could have been him.

  “Whoever it was had gone by the time I got to you. Must have heard me coming.”

  “Damn! My gun—”

  “I have it on me. The flashlight, too.”

  Apparently, the cotton was dissolving, for it suddenly hit me that we were still in complete and utter dark. “How did you know where I was without a light?”

  “I saw your beam ahead until it went out.”

  “Well, there is no light now.”

  I was dizzy and my head hurt—it felt as if someone were drilling through my skull—and I still couldn’t see. But I could feel my way along the wall, so that’s what I did.

  Directly behind me, Jake asked, “Whatever possessed you to do something so reckless?”

  “I don’t have to justify myself to you.”

  “Surely you answer to someone. Or do you? Could it be you just go off on your own because you think you’re the only one who can do whatever it is that needs to be done?”

  Words similar to those that I had been hearing from Mom and Silke and Al. What was this? Beat-up-on-Shelley week? Heat shot through me and I walked faster.

  “Careful, you don’t want to crash into the elevator. It’s just ahead.”

  “How could you possibly know that?”

  “I can see in the dark.”

  “All those carrots your mother force-fed you as a kid?”

  “Not exactly.”

  He had to be joking, of course. Only I didn’t think it was funny. Just irritating.

  And the feat seemed mind bending until he admitted, “I counted turns in the tunnel. We passed the last one just before I let you down. Be careful or you really will run into the doors.”

  I took his warning seriously and, while keeping one hand sliding along the wall, I reached forward with the other just in time to touch the wall of the elevator.

  “We’re here.”

  I was shaking by the time I got into the elevator car. Jake tried to hold me upright, but I eluded his grasp and found the control, then put my back up against the wall as the car vibrated up the shaft.

  My head was starting to feel bigger than my body. And more painful. I wondered how many ibuprofens it would take to calm this headache down. I couldn’t wait to get back up to street level and fresh air.

  As I stopped the elevator car at the basement level, I heard a series of clicks coming from Jake’s way. Before I could ask what he was doing, an explosion of light blinded me.

  “Here,” he said, shining the flashlight at me. It didn’t seem to be broken, after all. “You could have a concussion. Let me take a look at your eyes.”

  He didn’t give me a choice, merely cornered me. My pulse triggered but I was too weak to fight him. Thankfully he didn’t try shining the light directly into my eyes. He aimed it somewhere over my shoulder, making me wonder how he could then see my pupils well enough to tell anything.

  Or maybe that wasn’t the point, I thought, my suspicions rising. Maybe he was simply trying to distract me.

  “Pupils look even,” Jake said, his voice rumbling through his chest and making my stomach do a flip. He moved the light toward my left eye. “It’s reacting to the light normally.” Then he switched hands and did the same with my right eye. “Looks okay.”

  Even with the diagnosis complete, he didn’t move away. My heart thudded. If he tried something, I wasn’t sure I was up to fighting him off.

  And then he stepped back and handed over the flashlight.

  I snatched it out of his hand, tersely saying, “The gun.”

  He handed me that, too. “What is it you expected to find down here?”

  “I don’t know.” Had I imagined a cry or really heard it? Or had I been set up? “I was following my instincts.”

  True, if not totally honest.

  Something kept me from telling him about my overhearing Sheena talking about this place in the ladies’ room. That something being the fact that I had no idea of who Jake really was.

  Or if he’d been the one to stop me from finding what I’d come for. I didn’t think so, but trusting my instincts right now probably wasn’t in my best interests.

  He said, “You’d better come home with me. Concussions can be tricky things, and you should be watched closely for the next twenty-four hours.”

  “I would rather go to my own apartment,” I said back to him.

  “Then I’ll take you there.”

  “You need to get back to the bar,” I reminded him.

  “It’s closing time. Besides, I would rather check you out personally, make sure you’re all right.”

  Remembering what had happened the night before after he’d taken care of my wounds, I said, “I’m not in the mood.”

  Truth be told, I needed to be on guard against making another mistake, especially with a man who was harboring potentially dangerous secrets—his real identity and his true interest in the case, whatever that might be.

  The creature stepped out of the shadows the moment the elevator doors whisked closed. Lights weren’t really necessary, though they presented a certain charm. Humans, for example, had quite a bit more to them than simple infrared pulses common to all living things.

  The woman was exquisite under lamp light.

  Silke Caldwell…what had gotten into her?

  How had she found the entrance to these wellhidden chambers?

  She was lucky to be alive. The bartender had followed her, and he had been her savior.

  This time.

  Jake DeAtley…what in Hades was he?

  His scent had been different this night, and had raised an alarm that had saved the woman from death. Or from a more complicated fate.

  DeAtley would need further looking into.

  But enough about the man.

  Not only was the woman attractive, but she was also strong and sure of herself…and far more intelligent and interesting than the other new ones. It was so difficult starting over, so hard to pick the right companions.

  But there was no doubt that she would make a fine addition to the stable.

  Maybe that’s what she had come for.

  Maybe that’s what she would get.
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  Chapter 14

  “So where the hell did you disappear to last night?” Norelli demanded of me the next morning, the moment I set foot in the Area 4 office.

  As if I was really going to make him my best friend and confide everything in him.

  My head twinging a bit—I’d iced it several times and had taken a ton of ibuprofen—I set my briefcase on my desk and put on a puzzled expression. “What do you mean?”

  “Doran said he never saw you the last hour before the bar closed.”

  Officer Fred Doran was the plant inside the bar.

  “Maybe Doran had one too many to keep proper track of anyone.”

  “Doran’s no drunk,” Walker said.

  “Was he drinking his soda straight last night?”

  “Well, no, that would have made him look suspicious, coming to a bar to not drink.”

  I spread my hands in an I-told-you-so manner. “Nothing against him. I mean, if he doesn’t usually drink, the booze probably gave him a kick in the head.” One a whole lot more gentle than the one I’d received. To keep the headache at bay, I still was eating ibuprofen as if they were candy. “He was simply mistaken.”

  I could tell Norelli thought I was lying and that he was having trouble keeping himself muzzled.

  He locked gazes with me and said, “You need to be wired from now on.”

  “You’re not putting a leash on me, Norelli,” I informed him as calmly as I could, “so don’t even try it.”

  He straightened to his full height. “This is my case, Caldwell.”

  “But it’s my undercover operation, so we’re partners. You’re not running me. Get used to it.”

  Norelli grabbed his coffee cup and stormed off. I felt Walker’s gaze on me.

  “What?” I asked him. “You want a piece of me, too?”

  “I would rather have your cooperation. You and me—we’re not important. The victims are the only ones we should be thinking about. Are you ever gonna stop being pissed off and try to work with us?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The victim comment got to me, though. Wasn’t that why I’d gotten into this situation in the first place—because I couldn’t forget about LaTonya Sanford?