“Are there more doors like this?”
“Not that I know of. Upstream of this one, the pipe gets too narrow for me to crawl through, so I can’t say for sure. More importantly, we need to get this woman someplace safe. Do you think it’s okay to move her?”
Faye looked at Stacy. She was wobbly, but she was still sitting upright without leaning on the chair back. She did not look like a woman with a traumatic brain injury or a compromised spinal cord. She looked drunk.
As soon as that thought crossed Faye’s mind, she picked up Stacy’s milk, dipped a finger in, and touched it to her tongue. The milk didn’t taste like it had soured, but it did taste really bitter. “She’s not like this because she has a head injury. Somebody’s drugging her. Let’s get her out of here.”
Cully stuck a finger in the milk, tasted it, and grimaced. “You’re right.”
“We’ve got to get her someplace safe, but it makes no sense for the three of us to limp back through both of those big rooms and drag Stacy up to the surface before we call for help. I’ll go and you wait here with Stacy. I’ll call Ahua and tell him where we are, and he’ll send some people to help us get her out of here safely.”
“No, that won’t work,” Cully said without explaining why.
“Then you go call for help and I’ll wait here.”
“No, that won’t work, either.” His face was obstinate.
“Well, now you have me stumped. Why won’t those plans work?”
“Nobody but you can know I was here. I can’t be around when she’s rescued, and nobody can call for help from a phone that can be linked to me. You have to do it from your phone. There are too many questions about what happened to Angela. I don’t want the FBI to know how much I know about these rooms down here, not when it was the last place I ever saw her.”
“That makes sense. Not a lot, but a little.”
“I’m telling you. I can’t be seen. Make a lot of noise when you’re coming through with the Feds, so I can crawl out in the storm sewer and hide.”
“Explain something to me. Until I showed up, you were going to do this alone. What were you going to do? Drag her to the surface and leave her there? See if you could find a pay phone to call for help? There aren’t many pay phones left these days, Cully.”
“Look. There was a big chance that I wouldn’t find her. There was another big chance that I might find her dead and yeah. If she was dead, I bought a burner phone while I was out shopping this morning that I could use to tell someone where to find her body. There was only a little chance that I would find her alive and need to stay with her until help came. If that happened, everybody would start wondering how I know so much about this place. I’d have done it to save this lady, but I wasn’t going to cross that bridge until I came to it.”
“Why can’t the world know, Cully? What’s wrong with having a mother who lived down here?”
Faye watched his face change as he lost control and shouted, “There’s nothing wrong about having a mother like mine! She was an angel here on Earth.” Immediately, his face showed deep shame. “I’m sorry I lost my temper. That’s something my mother never did, not in all her years.”
“What about Angela?”
“Angela? Yes, she had a temper. She was in a powerful rage on the last night I saw her.”
“Did you have an argument?”
“No, that’s just it. I was all by myself in that little cell, scratching a drawing on the wall.”
He stopped himself to say, “I can’t believe it’s still there, actually,” and shook his head.
Then he went on. “If you could have seen the terrible look on Angela’s face. She got that way, sometimes. I always told myself that it was the drugs and if I could get her away from that school and her son-of-a-bitch stepfather, I could get her sober. Anyway, she called me terrible names, and then she turned and ran deep into these tunnels, in the dark. I looked and looked, but I couldn’t find her. I waited for days for her to come back. When my food ran out, I went up top to buy some and I saw a newspaper that said a dead woman had been found in the river. I didn’t know whether she’d jumped off a bridge or whether she’d drowned in the storm sewer. I just knew it was Angela and I knew they’d be looking for me. So I ran.”
Faye wondered how you told a man that he’d spent a lifetime grieving for no reason.
He mistook her silence for judgment. “You can’t let ’em know that I was with Angela the night she died. Getting famous was a stupid thing for a man on the run to do, but it snuck up on me. I went to bed one night as a low-rent extra and got up the next morning a star. I figured it was all over then. I figured the Oklahoma City Police would come after me, but I guess they never put two and two together and tagged me with murdering Angela. I stayed away all these years because I didn’t want people asking me where she was and maybe getting the police all stirred up again. I’d have been on trial for her murder before I knew what was happening. Still would be, I guess. Dear God, the idea of me sitting in California with a bunch of money my family needed has eaten me alive for fifty years.”
Faye tried to speak, but he interrupted her.
“Faye. Help me. There has to be a way to help Stacy without sending myself to prison.”
“Listen. We don’t have time for me to tell you all the details. I’ve got to go for help while you stay here and take care of Stacy. Then I’ve got to tell the FBI everything I know so that we can find the person who did this to her. Just know this. Nobody’s looking to send you to jail for killing Angela because she’s not dead.”
“What?” The bolt cutters hit the hard floor.
“At least, I don’t think so. I know that wasn’t her body in the river in 1962. Maybe she’s died sometime in the past fifty or sixty years, but the FBI knows that she was alive when you left for Hollywood. That’s why they never came for you, Cully. I’ll tell you more when I get back. Take care of Stacy.”
“Take my flashlight and be safe. Stacy and I will be here when you get back.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Faye ran through the first long room lined with sleeping chambers, following the bright beam of Cully’s flashlight through the inky darkness, and then she sprinted through the second one. The staircase waited for her at its far end. Exhausted, she told herself that it wasn’t as tall as it looked. Her legs and her lungs might be tired but they would take her to the top, where she could get a cell signal and call Ahua for help.
She wobbled as she hauled herself up the old stairs and her breath came short, but she could see sunlight leaking under the door that would take her into the alley. She was going to make it.
Stooping to pass through the door leading out of the low shed that concealed the staircase, Faye stepped into dazzling daylight shining through lead-gray clouds. It was so bright and her eyes were so dark-adapted that even late-afternoon sunshine was too much for her. The alley ran east to west, so the slanting of the sun toward evening illuminated all of it. She needed a bit of shade to help her see the phone’s screen.
Things might have been different if Faye had turned around and seen the shadow cast by the shed directly behind her, but she was too exhausted to even be standing, much less trying to save a kidnapped woman’s life. She broke into a run again, a limping and stumbling run, heading for the mouth of the blind alley because she knew that there would be something on the sidewalk—a tree, a bus stop shelter, something—that would block the sun and let her make a critical phone call.
* * *
In this moment, watching Faye Longchamp-Mantooth sprint out of an alley where she has no reason to be, I know to my core that Lonnie has ruined everything. He ruined my life long ago, my mothers’ lives, my sisters’ and brothers’ lives. He ended Gabe, Zeb, and Orly’s lives, or allowed them to end, which is the same thing.
In death, he has ruined the only victory that I could ever have over him, and he
has done it by simply failing to follow the plan. How hard would it have been for him to stay underground long enough for me to blow him to smithereens?
Apparently, it was way too hard. And now here I am, face-to-face with another person who needs to be silenced before I’ve even decided what to do about poor Stacy Wong. I know that Faye Longchamp-Mantooth needs to die, because there can be no reason that she went down that alley except because she wanted to get underground. The dust and grime coating her clothes says that she’d succeeded. And the emotion on her face says that she has found Stacy.
But there is still hope. I am armed and I have the advantage of surprise. I do not have the moral high ground as I did when I killed Lonnie, but I still have loved ones to protect. I can do what needs to be done. I just wish that the rather likable Faye Longchamp-Mantooth hadn’t been caught in the ever-expanding destruction sparked by Lonnie and his evil.
* * *
As Faye came out of the alley she nearly ran into the shade tree that she’d been hoping to see. Skidding to a stop, she found Ahua’s number and placed the call. As his phone rang in her ear, she looked around her for the first time. Less than a block away, Kaayla, Grace, and Lucia stood near a service entrance for the South Tower. They all had very serious expressions on their faces. Faye hoped the maids weren’t in trouble with their boss, then she realized that the serious expressions were focused on her, not each other. She supposed that she did look a little the worse for wear, and they probably had seen her running out of the alley like wild tigers were after her.
Kaayla was holding a sleek phone in one hand, with a finger poised to scroll through whatever information showed on its face. Perhaps she’d taken notes on the maids’ failings and was now using them to ream Grace and Lucia out. This would explain their body language, which was so tense that Faye worried that she’d interrupted Kaayla as she fired them.
The thin, expensive phone in Kaayla’s hand held Faye’s attention. A memory was tickling at her mind. It was a recent memory, but it was fogged by pain and fear. Faye worked hard to reach through that fog and was rewarded by a single image, as clear and self-contained as a snapshot. It was Kaayla’s hand, and it was holding an old clamshell phone until the bomb blew it out of her hand.
Ahua had said that pressure cooker bombs were often set off remotely by cell phones. Faye realized that bombers who didn’t want to be caught wouldn’t use their own phones. They’d use burner phones that couldn’t be traced to them and they’d get rid of them immediately. And Kaayla, who spared no money on her professional appearance and would certainly not carry a cheap clamshell phone, had been holding something that looked an awful lot like a burner phone at the exact time of the blast.
It would have made sense for either of the other two women to carry an inexpensive phone. Kaayla, by contrast, stood there in her crisp suit and holding a purse that was way too pricey for one of her employees to carry. The slim phone in her hand now was the one that matched her self-image.
Kaayla was looking at Faye intently, as if by seeing her run, dusty and filthy, out of the alley where Stacy’s hiding place could be accessed, she had proof that Faye was now dangerous.
Finally, Ahua answered his phone, Fate set to work blurting out information while she could, because Kaayla’s expression was terrifying. Faye was in good shape, but she was exhausted and Kaayla was probably ten years younger than she was. Faye didn’t think she could outrun her.
Backing away from the three women, Faye started talking without waiting for Ahua to say hello. “Kaayla set off the bomb. Stacy’s underground.” As she spoke, she backed slowly away from Kaayla and the fierceness in her eyes.
Ahua was trying to talk, but she kept steamrolling right over him. “Kaayla sees me and she knows I know. We’re behind the South Tower.”
In one motion, Kaayla dipped her hand into her stylish leather handbag, pulled out a handgun, and let the bag fall to the ground. “She’s got a gun.”
Wrapping the other arm around Lucia’s neck, Kaayla pulled the woman close and pressed the gun’s muzzle to her head.
“Drop the phone or she dies.”
* * *
Ahua cursed at the sound of Faye’s phone hitting the sidewalk. He shouted “Come!” as he barreled out of the command center, followed by four agents who had no idea where he was taking them. Ahua didn’t have much of an idea himself, but he could certainly take himself behind the South Tower and see what was there.
* * *
Faye never took her eyes off Lucia’s weeping face, not while Kaayla was picking up her purse and telling her to back slowly into the alley, not while she was ordering her to open the door to the lean-to shed, and not while she was forcing all three of them—Faye, Grace, and Lucia—to go down the stairs by pressing the muzzle of a handgun to Lucia’s head.
Some of the jigsaw pieces were starting to fit, but not all of them. Kaayla had certainly had the opportunity to mastermind the bombing. As assistant manager of the Gershwin Hotel, she was in a position to know about the hidden staircase, but Faye couldn’t quite work out the reasons for the location and timing of the blast. She knew of no reason for Kaayla to bomb her own hotel on purpose.
But maybe she didn’t. Maybe she had explored as far as the painted room—but no farther, based on the tracks in the dust—and had sent Alonso Smith there to set off the bomb. Ahua had said that footprint evidence on the staircase was scant. He could say that nobody but Alonso had been past the foot of the staircase, but he couldn’t say much about the stairs. Or maybe she’d gone down that far, but had told Alonso to take the door to the left and go further before setting the bomb. And maybe he was supposed to walk away from it alive, but Faye doubted it. Kaayla was a dark-haired woman born in the eighties, so she fit the profile of Lonnie’s daughters, probably the oldest one, Lonna. Any surviving child born to Alonso Smith might be happy to bomb him out of existence.
The note in Lonnie’s pocket had addressed him as “Father,” and it was written by the person who provided him with the bomb. The letter-writer claimed to be helping him obliterate evil, but the bomb given to Lonnie was a modestly sized people-killer, not something that would bring down a building if detonated below the building’s foundations.
If it had blown up underground, it would have destroyed nothing but Lonnie. From Kaayla’s point of view, Lonnie embodied quite enough evil to be ripe for obliteration, all by himself. She had sent him underground with a cell phone to be used as a dummy detonator, keeping the real detonator phone for herself. When he was safely underground, she had activated it or, more likely, activated a timer right after she took Faye’s picture with Cully. And Faye had thought she looked nervous because she’d just met a movie star.
Kaayla must have felt confident that he would die alone with his evil, never to be found. But he had ruined her plan by aborting his mission and coming back upstairs into the hotel lobby where Kaayla stood waiting for him to die.
Faye couldn’t stop looking at Lucia’s stoic face. Kaayla had given her a flashlight and ordered her to hold it. Her fear only revealed itself by her trembling lips. They were walking through the first underground chamber and Faye’s steps were slowing as she worked through what Kaayla had done.
This was the key. Alonso didn’t know that the bomb would kill him. Kaayla had planned the whole thing as a way to kill Alonso Smith remotely. She wouldn’t see any blood gush or hear any groans. She would probably never see the body. In fact, it might never even be found.
Stacy was probably headed for a similar fate, dying underground so that Kaayla would never have to see what she’d done. Faye remembered the ham sandwich and milk carton and knew that Kaayla couldn’t even bring herself to starve Stacy while she figured out how to silence her. She also knew now that the napkin she’d seen with the food, blue like the Gershwin Hotel’s linens, was a clue that should have pointed her to Kaayla.
Kaayla’s refusal to look a
t murder as she committed it was her Achilles’ heel, but Faye had no idea how to exploit it.
Faye remembered the three little bodies in the painted chamber, all of them Alonso’s sons and all of them born after Kaayla. If Faye had lived Kaayla’s life, watching three little brothers waste and die without the help of a doctor, she might have grown up homicidal, too. And she might have a strong aversion to ever again watching anyone die.
Faye might even be willing to say that Kaayla had done the world a favor when she killed her father, but there was no redemption for beating Stacy, drugging her, and locking her up while she hardened her heart enough to murder her. And why did she need to silence Stacy, anyway?
So that she could never tell anyone that she’d seen Kaayla defacing the paintings in an attempt to hide any clues that might help the FBI track down the family of Alonso Smith.
They stood outside the door to Stacy’s prison. Kaayla was holding the gun in one hand and the padlock that Cully had destroyed in the other.
“It was a flimsy lock. No wonder you were able to break it. That’s why I was on my way down here with a better one,” she said, pulling a bigger padlock out of her pocket. Its shank was way too stout for Cully’s bolt cutters, even if he had been on the right side of the door to use them.
Kaayla pulled the damaged lock out of its hasp and dropped it to the floor, hooking the new one into its spot, ready to use after she had pushed Faye into the room with Stacy and closed the door. And, Faye supposed, Lucia and Grace, too. She couldn’t imagine Kaayla leaving witnesses able to incriminate her. Would all of their bodies—Faye’s, Lucia’s, Grace’s, Cully’s—ever be found? Only if the FBI was able to find a way into this portion of the Chinese catacombs.
Holding a gun on Faye, she said, “Open the door. Now, back in slowly or I’ll shoot you right here where nobody will ever find you. I’ll shoot all of you.”
Faye did as she was told. Stacy was in the chair where she’d left her, unconscious and wrapped in her chains. Cully had heard them coming and had hidden any evidence that he had been there. She saw him hiding behind the open door, holding his puny toy gun at the ready and unaware that Kaayla held a real one. She didn’t know what good keeping Cully’s presence a secret was going to do them once that door closed, but information had power. It made sense to limit who held that power.
Catacombs Page 25
