by Meg Gardiner
“This where they’re going to make the delivery?” Sean said.
“Let’s talk about immunity.”
“Give me delivery dates, descriptions of the vehicles they’re using. Names. Cell phone numbers. Then we can talk about immunity.”
Dix ran his hand across his stomach like the idea gave him indigestion. “Okay—but one thing at a time. Next delivery’s gonna come in here at the loading dock.”
“Show me.”
“Other end of the building.” He led Sean toward the door at the far side of the factory floor. “But quick. Don’t want to hang here a second longer than I have to.”
Nobody said following a tip about contraband purchases of bomb-making material was easy. Mostly because you dealt with squirrels. But this was serious. Ammonium nitrate and fuel oil primed with nitroglycerine dynamite, allegedly. Truck-bomb shit.
The screeching of the gulls was dulled by the walls. Outside the high, grimy windows, clouds skimmed past in the acrylic-blue sky. In the next room, Sean saw pallets covered with blue tarps, and more fifty-five-gallon drums stacked along the walls. Pipes and spools of copper wire, possibly stolen from a construction site. When they reached the far end of the room, Dix got his keys to unlock the door to a back hall.
“Hold up,” Sean said. He was looking at the drums.
“Forget that shit. Keep moving. I know it’s Easter Sunday, but the guys doing this, they ain’t pious Christians. They could show up anytime.”
The CI unlocked the door. The hallway was dark. He flipped a light switch but nothing happened.
“Hang on.” Dix jogged down the hallway.
Sean pulled the door open wide and followed. Dix tried a switch farther down the hall. Still nothing. He rounded a corner into the dim recesses of the building.
“What the fuck?” he said.
Sean pulled his jacket back and set his hand on the butt of his pistol. From around the corner came scuffling sounds and a muffled shout. Empty barrels clanged and toppled to the concrete.
Sean drew his gun. He moved rapidly along the hall and stopped before the corner. He heard nothing.
This was bad. All caps B-A-D. It was dark. He was alone. He approached the corner at an angle. He raised his gun and incrementally cleared the intersecting hallway, one vertical slice at a time, stepping gradually closer to the turn. Nothing.
Commit. He swung around the corner. Halfway down the new hallway was a double door. He advanced, gut-checked, yanked open the door, vertically swept it again, and went through. He found barrels knocked over, like they’d been hit with a human bowling ball. Blood on one of them. A phone cracked and abandoned on the concrete. No sign of Dix.
He cleared the room and stopped. The walls were covered with wild drawings.
From floor level to eight feet up, the walls were spray-painted and chalked with psychedelic images. Demons torturing people in pits. Pigs digging their tusks into screaming men. Vultures with women’s faces, ripping flesh from weeping trees.
A trail of nails was pounded into the walls. It looked like machine-gun fire.
This was an ambush, and he’d walked directly into it.
Weapon sweeping the room, he put a wall to his back and got his phone to call for backup. He had no signal. He saw that his text to his boss had failed to send.
Back off. Get out, find a signal.
From deeper in the building, Dix cried out. “Fuck, stop, oh, Christ, don’t . . .”
Forget backing off.
Sean crossed the room, following the trail of nails to the door on the far side. Again he incrementally cleared it, and went. He advanced quickly into the room, sweeping it. Saw nobody. The CI had been dragged away. The wind blew through empty windows, and plastic sheeting flapped against the walls. At the far end of the room, shadows flickered beyond it.
The Prophet.
The son of a bitch who had sent him running onto an empty field while he tortured and murdered two women. The killer who wanted to destroy Caitlin.
Sean crossed the floor, gun raised, sweeping the room, and pulled the plastic sheeting back. There was a hole in the concrete floor. Spray-painted in front of it were the words All Hope Abandon, Ye Who Enter Here.
The hole in the concrete dropped to a tunnel far below. The wind whistled through it.
The shot came from the dark doorway he’d passed through, and hit him in the back.
51
Outside Rhone’s house, Caitlin handed an evidence bag to a forensic tech and signed the chain of custody. Beyond the barricades, the crowd was swelling. TV crews jostled for position. A news helicopter hovered overhead. A second was inbound.
Lieutenant Kogara had made the official announcement that the sheriff’s office was seeking a suspect in the Prophet killings. Titus Rhone’s photo was everywhere, along with a warning: Be on the lookout. Do not approach. Rhone is armed and extremely dangerous.
Caitlin’s phone buzzed with an incoming message. She pulled it from her pocket. She saw a number she didn’t recognize: 925 area code. Pleasanton prefix. Sheriff’s office prefix. She hesitated.
Subject: Re: Mercury.
She opened it. A video played.
Her legs turned to water. “Oh, Christ.”
The sunlight seemed to shriek at her. On-screen was Sean. Weapon raised.
A figure swept from the shadows, raised a pneumatic nail gun, and shot him in the back. Twice.
Sean spun. Buckling, pain on his face. He aimed at the figure. Center mass. Fired.
The figure kept coming. Nail gun up. He shot Sean again, in the chest. Again and again.
Sean dropped.
The figure swept across the screen toward him. Kicked Sean’s gun from his hand. Kicked him in the head. Sean lay still. The figure grabbed his arm and dragged him across a floor to a hole in the concrete. With the heel of a work boot, he kicked Sean over the edge into it.
The Prophet’s voice seeped from the phone. “I heard Rawlins abandoned you when you needed him. Betrayal condemns sinners to the darkness of the pit.”
The screen went black.
52
In the war room, Caitlin stalked back and forth in front of a freeze-frame image. It showed light falling from high windows into a room where Sean stood. A concrete floor. Corrugated walls. A warehouse, hangar, or disused factory floor. When she hit PLAY and watched again, shadows passed over the windows and she heard the screech of gulls. He was somewhere near the water.
The entire Bay Area was near the water. The shoreline ran for hundreds of miles. Sean could have been in San Jose, Vallejo, or Suisun Bay.
In the corner, the big-screen TV showed the national news on mute. PROPHET SUSPECT SOUGHT. FEDERAL AGENT MISSING.
Shanklin and Martinez swooped in and out, talking into their phones, writing notes, sticking Post-its to the wall. Guthrie swept in, phone to his ear.
Sean, we’re going to find you.
But they needed better video. They needed to find the stolen Dodge Ram truck Rhone was driving. And to locate any storage units, get his phone and credit card records. They had nothing yet.
Patrols were scouring the streets. But they had hardly anything to work with.
“Keep me apprised,” Guthrie said, and ended his call. “ATF special agent in charge never received confirmation from Rawlins that he arrived at the meet with his CI.”
“Where were they supposed to meet?” Caitlin said.
“East Bay. That’s all she has.”
“GPS from his phone, his truck?”
“It went down this morning. Long before the meet.”
“The Prophet ratted his phone and disabled GPS,” she said. “Goddammit.”
“Highway Patrol has closed the bridges. They’re setting up checkpoints. Searching every vehicle,” Guthrie said. “The streets were practically empty to begin with, and
now the whole area’s on near complete lockdown.”
Shanklin said, “Who was the CI? Was it a legit meet or a setup?”
Guthrie said, “ATF’s looking into that.”
Caitlin’s stomach churned. An image played in her head. Sean, walking away from the station with Sadie in his arms. His face turned to his daughter, smitten, protective.
Her eyes went to the clock on the wall. Six forty-five P.M.
She turned to the items spread across the conference table—the scant evidence found in the raid. Seven editions of The Divine Comedy. A box of sixty-four-color artists’ pencils. And a stack of hand-drawn maps.
Rhone’s clothing and a pair of hiking boots had been seized and were in the criminalistics lab, undergoing analysis. There was no sign of a laptop, any computer at all, or the black pickup truck with the chrome rims. Rhone seemingly had lived like a day camper in his daughter’s spare room: pack it in, pack it out, leave no trace.
But they had found the false space behind the floorboard in the bedroom, where he’d stashed the maps.
Those maps had been rolled up and stored inside a cardboard poster tube. They meant something important to Rhone. They’d been dusted for prints and examined with ultraviolet light for hidden writing. There was none.
They were puzzles nobody could solve.
Caitlin’s desk phone rang. Michele Ferreira. Her blood pressure spiked.
She answered, dreading it. “Michele. Where are you?”
Silence. Caitlin heard traffic noise. And a bright little voice in the background. “Mommy.”
When Michele spoke, her voice was tight. “Just pulled off the freeway at a truck stop south of Eureka. What’s happened?”
Caitlin thought she might cry. Michele hadn’t heard. She’d probably been driving with a kiddie album on the car stereo. “Stay there. I’m sending a CHP unit to your location.”
“Caitlin.”
The room had become airless. “It’s Sean.”
She told it to Michele plain. “Everybody’s on this. Alameda, ATF, SFPD, statewide BOLO. We’re going to find him if we have to tear the Bay Area apart.”
Michele took a shuddering breath.
“Wait for the CHP,” Caitlin said. “Then check into a motel. They’ll escort you. Call your parents and have them meet you there. Get them a room too. Once you check in, don’t open the door.”
“Got it.”
Michele went quiet. In that pause, Caitlin heard fears and accusations. If Caitlin hadn’t brought Sean into her cracked orbit, this wouldn’t be happening . . .
Michele said, “Do you pray?”
“I will.”
“Let me. You find this cocksucker and bring Sean home.”
In the background, Sadie gasped. “Mommy, you said a swear.”
Caitlin lowered her voice. “Motherfucking right I will.”
She ended the call, more alone than she’d ever felt, and again looked desperately at the clock.
“The Prophet never keeps his victims alive for long. Sean left here at twelve thirty. The video was sent at four thirty-seven P.M.”
The sound of the nail gun drilled through her. Time was ticking down. Briefly she felt like she’d been shoved off the roof of a skyscraper.
“He has a showstopper planned,” she said. “And we have no leads.”
She turned and booted a wastebasket across the room. It bounced off the wall and clattered across the floor. Everyone stared at her.
“Take a turn. It helps,” she said. Then she scraped her hair back from her face and returned to the conference table. “These maps tell a story. We have to find it.”
Guthrie approached. “Like you said, everybody’s on this.”
“We can’t add time. We have to add eyes.”
“This is all we’ve got.”
She turned. “No, it’s not.”
* * *
Caitlin saw him through the glass: her father, standing at the front counter, coiled with energy. He clipped on a visitor’s badge and was buzzed through. His hands balled into fists but she could see the tremor.
He was her last throw of the dice.
She wanted to toss her arms around him. His look, the glittering heat in his eyes, told her he knew she wouldn’t, not here. Not now. The disquiet that washed his expression told her how she looked: half unspooled with fear and rage.
He put an arm around her as they walked through the station. “Channel it. Channel it all.”
She nodded. “We have to strip this bastard’s mind bare.”
They walked into the war room and conversation stopped. Shanklin and Martinez eyed Mack warily. Guthrie approached and extended his hand.
“Detective Hendrix. Thanks for coming.”
Mack gave him a handshake. “Show me what you’ve got.”
Guthrie led him to Rhone’s maps. Mack leaned over the table.
“Most of these are old,” he said. “He’s tried to protect them, but the paper’s yellowed at the edges and the pencil work is smudged.”
Caitlin handed him a pair of latex gloves. “They mean something. Let’s find it.”
He snapped the gloves on as he circled the table. For a couple of minutes, he absorbed it all. Then he said, “Some of these are operational maps. Some are fantasy.”
He indicated one drawn in black and white. “This looks like a pit mine. The hills, the winding roads, the little figures with pickaxes. And that machine, with the spinning teeth at the front.”
“It looks like a thresher,” Shanklin said.
“It’s a continuous miner. For digging coal.”
Guthrie said, “We got an image of Rhone’s passport from his employer. He was born in West Virginia.”
Mack said, “The machine is pursuing the miners. It’s about to drive them into a pit and chew them to bits.”
“Hell,” Caitlin said.
Mack picked up the next map. “This is the Bay Area. The peninsula, San Francisco, the bridges. But it’s highly . . .”
“Freaky?” Martinez said.
“Allegorical.”
Caitlin saw. “It’s another rendering of hell.”
“He sees Earth as an immense abyss. All these maps show the world as a surface that’s hollowed out. That’s filthy and undermined with evil. And he’s sending people to the depths for punishment.”
He moved down the table to a map that consisted of lines, circles, and text. The two lines of text formed an X.
The bottom of all the universe
Deep in the darkness of the pit
The first line started at the top left corner and ran diagonally down to the bottom right. The second started at the bottom left and ran to the top right. The lines of text crossed at the letter a.
“From Dante?” Mack said.
“Canto thirty-two. The Ninth Circle,” Caitlin said. “The Prophet used part of the second line in his video message. ‘Betrayal condemns sinners to the darkness of the pit.’”
Mack pulsed with energy. He rounded the table, slowly, deep in thought. Then turned back. He shoved maps around and grabbed one that had been half covered by the others. It too was an X. The arms of the X were stringy and misshapen, and drawn in vibrant colors: red, orange, yellow, green, and blue. It looked vaguely like a chromosome.
Mack stabbed at it. “That’s the BART system.”
Caitlin and Guthrie rounded the table.
Mack held it up. “It’s not simply an X. There are multiple threads within each branch. Those are train lines.”
He nodded at Shanklin. “Can you put up a BART map on the projector?”
Shanklin found one. Put it up. “He’s right.”
Martinez said, “Does it mean anything?”
Caitlin felt a sensation deep in her brain, nibbling at her conscious mind. She tried to turn it
into a concrete image. It wouldn’t solidify. Come on, come on.
Mack was snapping his fingers, staring at the maps, like he had the same sensation.
“Why would he draw the BART system? What does it mean to him?” she said.
Guthrie said, “He used it to escape after the raid on Bart Fletcher’s apartment.”
“Ingress, egress,” Shanklin said. “He can be faceless and move anywhere.”
“But why draw his own map of the system?” Caitlin said.
Mack said, “He wouldn’t have carried it with him around the world if it didn’t mean something. He wouldn’t have hidden it.”
She stepped back and ran her fingers through her hair. X. X marks the spot. X it out. Come on.
She picked up the small abstract map with the X design. Did it relate?
Always. This was the Prophet. His fantasy was a grand design.
Caitlin stepped back from the table, closed her eyes, and cleared her mind. She stood still until all she could hear was her own breathing, all she could feel was her heartbeat in her throat. She opened her eyes and looked at the maps.
The crossed X of the text that described the Ninth Circle, the center of hell. The X of the train lines. They meant the same thing to him.
She thought about the video the Prophet had sent of the attack on Sean.
“On the video, the phrase ‘All hope abandon, ye who enter here’ is spray-painted in front of a hole in the floor. That’s the sign that it’s the portal. It’s the gate to the underworld. And from what we can tell from the video, the hole drops to an abandoned tunnel. A subway tunnel?”
Caitlin stared at the BART map. Mack neared her, nodding.
Guthrie said, “Most BART lines run aboveground. Tunnels are mainly in downtown San Francisco and Oakland.”
“Where does the X cross?” Caitlin walked to the projected BART map. “Eastern edge of the bay.” She turned to Guthrie. “We need a schematic of the system.”
Shanklin made calls and unearthed BART blueprints. The clock read 7:17 P.M.
The grainy video of Sean strongly suggested he’d been attacked at an industrial site. There were few clues beyond the construction of the building, its seemingly abandoned character, and the hint that pallets and barrels were at the corner of the frame. It wasn’t much. But when they identified East Bay industrial corridors that overlay underground BART lines, they managed to narrow their search area—to a stretch from the Port of Oakland to the oil refineries in Richmond, a strip of land approximately twenty miles long.
