by P J Parrish
There were seventeen buildings on the map. He looked around, trying to get the lay of the grounds. To his right was a large red brick dormitory-like building. The map identified it as Employee Housing. He decided he would start there and work his way around the grounds counterclockwise.
Luckily, the keys on the big ring Zeke had given him were all marked. He unlocked the main door and went in. Like most of the buildings, it had already been stripped inside by the salvage crews, the doors, office furniture, and anything of even remote value carted away. Louis noticed all the windows were secure as he made his way through the first floor of the large, L-shaped dormitory.
Finally, at the back north end, he found a steel door stenciled PASSAGE 3, pried open with the yellow tape lying on the floor. He shouldered the door open and went down the slope, flicking on the flashlight. About twenty feet in, he came to the cinder-block wall. No sign that it had been compromised.
After searching the rest of the building, he was confident there was only one tunnel door. He marked the door “3” on the map and went back out the front, locking up behind him.
To the east was a small plain building that the map said was the police and fire headquarters. A quick tour told him there were no tunnel doors in it. He found the same thing true of the small one-story cafeteria behind the housing building, but it was connected to the dormitory by a walkway, so he suspected the employees hadn’t needed a tunnel to go back and forth for meals.
He headed north, toward the commissary. It was another small one-story building, but it was made of wood and looked to be much newer than the red brick buildings. Inside, the shelves and counters were bare. There were no other doors except the one he had entered.
Outside again, he trudged across the ice-crusted grass, heading north toward the mammoth, spired infirmary. He couldn’t remember if he had seen any of the numbered passage doors when he had been down in the mortuary before. He didn’t really want to go back in there, but he had no choice.
Unlocking the double front doors, he entered the gloom of the old infirmary’s lobby. Down in the basement, he went slowly along the tiled corridor, searching for passage doors. Finally, he spotted the telltale heavy steel door. It was stenciled PASSAGE 9. That meant there had to be others in here. He found the cinder-block secure and came back out.
It took him a good half hour to find passage 8, which was also blocked off. It was so dark in the maze of basement corridors, he had to use his flashlight. Finally, he found himself in front of the door with MORTUARY stenciled on the glass. He went in, his footsteps echoing loudly in his ears as he ran the flashlight beam over the empty rooms.
The light came to a stop on the plain door. The columbarium. He hesitated. He knew Spera had taken all the cremation cans out, but he couldn’t remember if there were any doors in the small room or not. He took a deep breath and pushed the door open.
The flashlight beam swept over the room. He forced himself to check every corner, trying not to look at the small sandlike mounds that dotted the empty shelves. He backed out, exhaling.
Back in the main corridor, he was almost to the staircase when his flashlight picked up a spot of bright yellow. A tail of crime scene tape. It led him down a narrow short hallway to an open steel door. Passage 7. He had almost missed it.
He went down the tunnel slope. The concrete floor was puddled and he could hear the drip of water somewhere. He swung the beam up over the walls and saw water seeping in from the low ceiling where the light fixtures once hung. Finally, about twenty feet in, the gray block wall emerged from the gloom. Louis moved the beam over it to make sure it was in place and quickly retraced his steps.
Outside, he paused on the portico to take in a deep breath of cold air and mark the three passages. He was facing south and could see the commissary and beyond that, the back of the dormitory.
The passage from the dormitory had faced due north. But it didn’t connect with the commissary. So where did that tunnel go? Did it span the entire width of the compound and connect to the basement of the infirmary? That would make it maybe a half mile long.
His eyes traveled over the grounds, over the buildings with their empty windows looking back at him, and the realization hit him.
There were a hundred and eighty acres here, and there could be miles of these tunnels going in every direction, some of them possibly running under buildings with no exits. If he missed just one door, the whole security of the compound could be compromised. He had to be careful and do this right.
The power plant was next—a huge brick box with its towering smokestack thrusting two hundred feet into the gray sky. He went through the front door and the warren of offices, emerging into what he assumed had been a main boiler room once. It was a drafty, cavernous place with steel girders above and a dirty tile floor below. A bank of large windows fed the place with gray light that revealed six sets of gigantic turbines.
He spotted a door on the far wall of gauges and switches and went to it. The door led down a hall that dead-ended at a steel door. Passage 5. He confirmed that it was blocked off. Twenty minutes later, he emerged from the power plant, marking off passages 4, 5, and 6.
It was the same in the next three buildings he went in—the men’s and women’s wards and a huge decrepit building identified on the map only as D Ward. By the time he finished his tour of the laundry and the kitchen, he was able to check off passages 10 through 17. All had been yellow-taped by the state police and all were solidly walled off.
It was nearly two by the time he made it to L Building on the far western edge of the compound. His teeth were chattering and his hands numb as he stood outside, holding the map. L Building, the map indicated, was Occupational Therapy.
The inside was a mess. Old metal desks and file cabinets. Ramps, handrailed stair-steps, and padded wooden tables. Battered wheelchairs and a pile of old crutches. But it was all organized in a way that made Louis believe that this was where the salvage crew had set up some kind of holding area for their work. His suspicion was confirmed when he spotted a box of tools on a counter emblazoned with VASQUEZ SALVAGE.
He began his tour of the ground floor. He forced himself to go slow, his flashlight beam moving over the piles of junk and down the dark hallways. Finally, he found passage 18. It was blocked off.
He kept searching but didn’t find any other doors. Standing in an empty hallway, he pulled out the map. Something didn’t seem right. All the other buildings had been connected to each other—except for the store and police headquarters—but they weren’t used by patients. By that logic, the occupational therapy building should be connected to M Building next door, which the map said was Physical Therapy. There had to be another passage in here somewhere.
But where the hell was it? He had been through this building twice now. Maybe his theory was wrong. Maybe he was just cold, tired, and getting impatient.
Pocketing the map, he went back to the entrance and started over. He was about to give up when he saw a stack of doors leaning against a corner in a dark hallway. He went to the stack and shone the flashlight behind the doors.
The steel door was there.
Shit . . .
Setting the flashlight down, Louis began moving the heavy doors. He was sweating by the time passage 19 was revealed. The door was shut. No tape. The state cops had missed it.
He glanced around, looking for something to pry the door open with; then he remembered the tools and went back to get a crowbar.
It took him a good half hour to get the door open. The hinges were rusted and he could barely get it ajar. But it was enough to slip through. Wiping his face, he clicked on the flashlight and entered the gloom of the tunnel.
A putrid smell made him put a hand over his mouth. He was halfway down the slope when his shoe hit something soft and he skidded down. He threw out a hand to brace his fall and swung the light back.
Fuck . . .
A dead rat, writhing with maggots. He had stepped in it. Swallowing hard, he stood up
. Directing the flashlight beam ahead, he moved on.
Twenty feet . . . thirty feet . . . how far had he gone?
It was so dark he couldn’t see anything but the thin path made by the flashlight. He had a sense of being closed in, like this tunnel wasn’t very wide or high. But he wasn’t sure.
Where the hell was the cinder-block wall?
Forty . . . fifty feet?
His footsteps echoed in his ears, close, as if someone were walking directly behind him.
Something gray up ahead.
Louis let out a breath. Cinder block. He moved forward to make sure it was intact. But as he swung his flashlight to the left, it fell away into blackness.
Jesus. This wasn’t a wall. It was a turn. The tunnel didn’t end; it turned south.
He trained the beam into the bend. It disappeared, the light falling off into nothingness.
He swung the light back toward the direction he had come from. Black. But at least he knew there was a door back there.
Then he heard it. A steady thud-thud sound. Thud-thud . . . thud-thud, getting louder, louder. It took him a moment to realize it was his own pulse pounding in his ears.
He squinted into the darkness ahead. He could go get help. Or he could go forward and make sure the tunnel was secure at the other end.
What time is it?
He flicked the beam up to his wristwatch. Three. Why did it feel as if he had been down here for hours?
Go, Kincaid . . . go on, get this over with and get out of here.
Training the flashlight ahead, he moved forward.
The walls . . . old tiles . . . yellow and stained with rivulets of dark brown liquid. Steam pipes above, laid out like sinew and bones. Twenty more feet . . . thirty . . . forty.
He kept the flashlight beam low, concentrating it on the floor, forcing himself to watch the tips of his shoes as he walked.
Something ahead. A dull glint. The flashlight beam jumped in his hand, then steadied. A door at the top of a gently sloping ramp. Another steel door.
It had a handle. He gave it a pull. Nothing. The door didn’t move. He set the flashlight on the floor and grabbing the handle with both hands, he pulled again.
Nothing.
He staggered backward, wiping a hand across his face. Pulling in a deep breath, he grabbed the handle again and pulled hard. It gave way and opened with a loud scrape. Dust and a dim light flooded the tunnel. He grabbed the flashlight and squeezed through the opening.
For a second or two, Louis just stood there, hands on knees, eyes closed. Then he straightened and looked around. He was in a large ground-floor room. As his breathing slowed, things came into focus: shelves . . . rows and rows of them. It looked like a storage room of some kind. A low-slanting light was coming through the grated windows, but it was too weak for him to make out details. He turned the flashlight up over the shelves. They were empty, but he could make out the faded label on the nearest one: CONDIMENTS. He moved the light down the long rows of shelving and picked out other labels: FLOUR. SUGAR.
The warehouse . . . he remembered now seeing it on the map. He unfolded the map. Yes . . . a large building in the far southwestern corner of the compound. He had to be in the warehouse.
He walked slowly through the rows of shelves. There were cans on some of the shelves, he saw now, large dusty cans. He stopped and turned one around. The blue label said STEWED TOMATOES. And it had the distinctive lettering he had seen before: SOUTHERN MICHIGAN FOOD SUPPLIERS.
So this was where he got his food. But how did he get in and out? Was that tunnel he had just come through somehow connected all the way back to E Building?
He found his way to the front entrance and flipped the lock, going out into the cold air. He stood on the frozen grass, looking north to the physical therapy building. He turned to his right and in dim light, he could just make out the spires of the infirmary far off in the northeast. He couldn’t see E Building, but he knew it was there, just behind the infirmary, out on the farthest corner of the compound.
How in the hell did this guy get all the way from there to here without being detected?
There was only one answer. Somehow the tunnels were connected, despite the cinder-block walls. There was an entrance somewhere, and he had missed it.
He was too tired and too cold to go back and look again—alone. He locked the warehouse door and pulling up the collar of his jacket, started back across the compound.
As he was walking past the back entrance of the administration building, one of the guards he had seen earlier emerged.
“Hey,” Louis called out, “you seen Zeke?”
“Nah. He probably left already. His shift was over at three.” The man hurried off to his car.
Louis hesitated, then set off for E Building. He hadn’t gone in there on his search for the tunnels, but he couldn’t remember if he had locked it when he and Dr. Seraphin left earlier. Zeke was probably still waiting for him there to return the keys.
Hunched into his jacket, Louis cut a quick diagonal across the compound, passing the infirmary entrance and turning left to E Building.
Sure enough, he had left the door unlocked. He went into the lobby. It was dark inside and icy cold.
“Zeke?” Louis called out. “You in here?”
No answer.
“Hey, Zeke!”
His voice echoed and died. Louis turned to go back out the door. The beam of the flashlight picked up a spot of color on the floor.
Blood. Louis dropped to one knee, touching a finger to the stain on the terrazzo floor. It was wet, but cool to the touch. And there was more. Trailing toward the staircase, small smears that looked brushed on the terrazzo like paint. On the bottom step, a larger, thicker streak.
Louis drew his Glock and moved the flashlight beam over the steps of the dim stairwell. The blood grew darker and heavier as the steps went up, and Louis followed the path, pressing himself against the wall to avoid stepping in it.
“Zeke!” he shouted.
His voice hung unanswered in the cold air. He reached the second-floor landing. The door was ajar, the edge covered in bloody fingerprints where someone had pulled it open. The floor was puddled and smeared with splashes of red.
“Zeke!” Louis screamed.
Nothing.
Louis stepped out onto the second floor, spinning first right, then left. The blood trail went left, down the hall, long, crimson streaks along the floor, like a body was being dragged. But there was so much blood, Louis knew the body had still been bleeding, the person still alive, when it was moved.
He stayed near the wall, listening for any noise, his eyes following the blood almost to the end of the hall. Then the bloody path took a sharp right turn to a closed door. The plate on the door read THERAPY. Under that, there was a slot for another plate, but it was empty.
Louis stood stiff against the door frame, slowly reaching down to try the knob. When he touched it, the door eased open and Louis stepped away from it, leveling the gun.
He heard nothing and after a few seconds, he stole a look inside.
The room was no more than ten by ten feet. The faded yellow walls were defaced with red and black graffiti. There was no furniture.
Zeke was propped up against the far wall. His chin was on his chest, his light hair wet with blood, arms limp at his side, legs spread out in front of him. His navy blue uniform was shiny with blood.
Louis stepped inside, checking behind the door, then spinning back to Zeke. He dropped to one knee and put a hand to Zeke’s forehead to tilt his head back.
Louis swallowed back a small gag.
Zeke’s throat was slashed, the skin ripped and ragged, like it had been torn apart with short angry strokes.
Louis drew back and pulled in a breath to calm the rising bile and anger. Then he stood quickly and reached for the door, his head spinning.
The man might still be inside E Building somewhere, but Louis wasn’t sure whether to search now or leave Zeke here while he went ba
ck to the administration building to call the police.
Damn it.
Why had this happened? Why wasn’t he halfway down the hall, going after this guy already?
The radio. Zeke’s radio. Louis started to reach down to Zeke’s belt, but his eyes caught a bright streak of red on the wall above Zeke’s head.
It was mixed in with the other graffiti, but Louis could see now it was fresh, still dripping, and written in blood.
One word: BITCH. And a bloody handprint.
CHAPTER 31
The rain had turned to snow by the time the state police arrived. The dark blue patrol cars in the parking lot looked as if they had been sprinkled with powdered sugar. A few uniforms stood rigid at doorways, others darted in and out of buildings, scrambling to find some trace of Zeke’s killer.
Louis stood just inside the door to E Building, hands in his pockets, watching the snowfall. Down the hall, troopers were scouring the rooms and he could hear them opening and closing doors. Another trooper stood on the landing between the first and second floors, arms crossed, posture stiff. Louis could hear a clamor of voices, footsteps, and radio transmissions coming from upstairs.
He stepped outside, staying under the portico. He saw a black van coming across the grass and guessed it was the medical examiner or coroner. Behind it was an unmarked state car with a light on the dash.
Louis looked out across the grounds. They could send a hundred men and he doubted they would find the killer. He thought about the four files in his car, and he knew he should turn them over. But it was going to be impossible to justify having them and harder yet to tell the state police how he got the patients’ names in the first place.
The door opened and a man pushed out. Tall, bulky, his face ruddy from too many Michigan winters, his hair a golden brush cut on a square head. He wore a navy peacoat, a gold badge on the front, the buttons pulling across a wide chest.
“You Louis Kincaid?”
“Yes,” Louis said.
The man sniffed from the cold and gave him a hard stare. “I’m Detective Bloom, State Police. They tell me you’re a private detective. You got some paper?”
