“You were there. You know there was no hatch door.” He sounded like I was being unreasonable, but I knew I wasn’t.
“We checked the floor and the walls of the tunnel, but what if it was on the ceiling?”
“Why would it be there?”
“Because this is flatlands. You can’t dig too deep without the hole filling with saltwater. That tunnel was as deep as you can go here.”
He gave it a thought. “So you’re saying the secret room or tunnel is in fact on ground level?”
“Yes.”
“And you intend to go look for it.” Not a question.
“Yes. On the grounds that I saw a friend of a missing person go in there.”
“You said she already came out.”
“I have temporal amnesia.”
He growled. “I forbid you.”
“You’re not in a position to forbid me anything,” I said smartly.
“You’d be breaking and entering. I could have you arrested.”
“Come and get me, then. You know where I am. Look on the ceiling for the hatch.” I ended the call.
At least he’d know where I was if things went south.
As we talked, I’d rounded the block to the warehouse door on Georgia Avenue. It was locked, but I wouldn’t let that deter me. Deanna was inside. She had to be.
I sent Jackson a message: I’ll go investigate if I can find the route from the warehouse to the auto parts shop.
I took out my set of lockpicks from my bag. They were a gift from Jonny Moreira, of all people, but my skill with them came from Dad. I selected the most robust picks, glanced both ways to see if I was being observed, and got to work.
The lock was easier to pick than I’d anticipated, and it took only moments to open it. The door made that horrible squeaking noise again, no doubt so that it would warn people hiding inside. That had to mean the secret door was somewhere near.
The bulb above the steps was already lit again—or still—and still dim, and this time I didn’t have an industrial strength flashlight. I did have a small one though—my messenger bag was starting to be very well equipped—and I took that out. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing. Aided with it, I began searching for the hatch.
Convinced by my theory that it was on the ceiling, I looked up instead of down. Even so, it wasn’t easy to find. I’d gone the length of the corridor all the way to the garage and back, and was climbing up the steps to start again when I spotted it.
The hatch wasn’t above the corridor, as I’d assumed the whole time, but the stairs. The ceiling above the steps slanted down with the same angle as the stairs, but leveled out right before the corridor. And there, on that level bit above the last steps, was the hatch. It was exactly the size of the ceiling and covered in a thin layer of concrete, masking it perfectly.
But the hatch had scraped the wall lightly in one spot when it opened and closed, making a dent so faint that you’d really have to be looking for it to notice. My heart skipped in exhilaration, only to plummet again when I realized there was no obvious mechanism for opening it. My parents’ house had a similar hatch to the attic, but it had a string hanging from it to pull it down, and then a stepladder would fold open.
I stood staring at the hatch until I got a crick in my neck, but I couldn’t figure out how it was opened. Massaging my neck with one hand, I began to study the wall closely with the help of my flashlight. There had to be a mechanism there. I pressed every dent and bump on the wall, but nothing happened. I contemplated the possibility that it was triggered by pressure, but I couldn’t reach the ceiling even if I stood on the steps, and Alysha was even shorter than me.
I refused to give up. The trigger had to be either further down the corridor or up the steps.
Since up the steps seemed more logical—JT hadn’t had long to trigger the hatch before we followed him into the stairs—I climbed up. Right by the door, there were two switches. The first one turned off the light—not a big change, but I switched it back on. I tried the other, and that did the trick.
My heart beating in excitement, I watched the hatch open. It was operated by a silent motor and it was fairly swift. In moments the hatch was down and the steps began to fold open; proper steps, not a ladder. When they were down, they reached midway to the steps leading below ground at a comfortable angle for climbing. You just had to watch your head, as the ceiling slanted the wrong way.
I called Jackson instantly, but he still wouldn’t answer, so I messaged him: Switch by the door lowers the steps. I’m going up.
The climb was effortless and I was soon in a corridor much like the one below, only this one led left towards Flatlands Avenue—and the auto parts shop—and it was properly lit. I decided to leave the steps as they were, just in case I needed a fast exit—or Jackson came to look for me—and headed down the corridor.
There were no doors that I was able to detect, and though I wouldn’t be fooled twice, I decided to walk the length of the corridor first before I started looking for secret entrances again. But I didn’t think they’d hide the doors here.
At the end the corridor turned in a right angle towards Alabama Avenue. And here finally were doors, two of them on the right wall of the corridor, opening back to the direction I’d come from. On the left, in the middle of the corridor, was one door. I put on gloves and tried that one first.
It was a sturdy metal door, much like the one leading into the warehouse. I listened carefully, but couldn’t hear anything from the other side. I opened it cautiously.
I can’t say I was surprised to find that it opened to the alley between the warehouse and the auto parts yard. And turned out it wasn’t completely filled with cars after all. A corridor built of cars ran across the alley from the warehouse to the yard. The cars were piled cleverly so that they shielded anyone using the corridor from view on both sides, and prevented nosy people rummaging in the yard from noticing the entrance there.
That would be me.
I closed the door and turned to face the other two doors. I tried the one on the right first. It was steel-plated and looked sturdy enough not to let noises through. I thought it would be perfect for hiding an abducted girl, but when I tried the handle, it wasn’t locked. I opened it a crack, and peeked in.
It was the drug laboratory. That didn’t really surprise me either—I’d known it had to be here. But it was empty, which kind of did, especially since there were packages of white substance wrapped in clear plastic on one shelf, waiting to be processed. A metal laboratory table in the middle of the room took most of the space. On it was equipment for handling, cutting and repacking the drugs—and all those little plastic bags too—and above it a laboratory grade roof fan.
I wasn’t interested in drugs, but holding my breath, I stepped in, took a couple of photos and sent them to Detective Lawrence. Then I headed to the last door.
Chapter Twenty-two
I almost jumped out of my skin when my phone vibrated in my pocket where it was on mute. “Where the fuck did you take those photos?” Lawrence demanded to know.
“I’m in the warehouse,” I hissed. “I can’t talk, in case there’s someone in here. Take the door on Georgia Avenue, the steps start from there. There’s a switch by the door.”
“Get out of there, right now!”
“No, I have one more room to check. Deanna has to be here. Just get your men here, fast.” I hung up.
The last door was an ordinary wooden one with a simple indoors lock and with a key in the keyhole even. I turned it as silently as I could and the door opened.
My heart beating hard, I peeked in, hoping no one was standing behind it, pointing a gun at me. Just in case, I took my pepper spray out of my pocket, though what good it would do against a gun I had no idea.
It wasn’t needed. No one attacked me. But the room wasn’t empty.
Opposite the door, on a bare mattress on the floor, sat Deanna. Her mouth was covered with a strip of duct tape and she was handcuffed to a
wall with a long chain. A portable toilet was placed next to the mattress and there were fast-food wrappers and empty soda bottles littering the floor. She stared at me with large eyes, clearly expecting me to be someone who would bring her more horror. Dried tears streaked her face, and her clothes were dirty.
Tears in my own eyes, I rushed to her. “Deanna, I’m a friend of your aunt’s. I’m here to free you. This’ll hurt a bit.” I ripped off the tape covering her mouth and she gasped. “The police are on their way, but let’s get you freed while we wait.”
I dug into my bag for a key to the cuffs—presented to me by Jackson with the cuffs he gave me. I freed Deanna’s hands and she began massaging her wrists that had gone red from chafing. Tears sprang to her eyes.
“Thank you,” she said in a hoarse voice.
“Can you get up?”
“Yeah. The chains allowed me to walk a little, so that’s all I’ve been doing for days and days.” She sniffed. “It was Alysha.”
“I know. I followed her here.”
“How could she do that?”
“We’ll ask her later. Let’s just go now before someone finds us.” I helped her up and her legs held.
I led her to the door by the hand and peeked out, but our luck held and it was still empty. “I think we’ll take the shortest route out.” I would take my chances with the people at the garage, if they spotted us. I took her to the door to the alley and opened it.
A man was standing behind it, about to come in. We stared at each other, baffled. Then his face furrowed and I pulled the door closed.
“Run.” Still holding Deanna’s hand I dragged her down the corridor towards the stepladder. Behind us, the door opened and the man shouted something, but we didn’t pause to ask what. Duh.
We reached the end of the corridor where the steps should’ve been. Not anymore. The hatch had closed. The man rounded the corner, blocking it. We were trapped.
I fought panic as I watched him approach at a leisurely pace. “Well, well.” He was maybe in his late forties, tall and fairly large. The belt of his jeans hung below a portly belly that was covered by a large shirt. But I was more interested in the gun he was pointing at us.
“I don’t know how you got in here, but you are not getting out.”
“The police are coming.” I searched desperately for the switch, but couldn’t detect it.
“They raided this place once and didn’t find here.”
“I did.”
“Aren’t you clever.” He waved with his gun. “Let’s return to the back room, shall we.”
Since we didn’t have a choice, we walked hesitantly to him and past him as he stepped out of the way. I had to support Deanna, who was sobbing. I was angry. Down the entire length of the corridor to the room where I’d found Deanna, I contemplated ways of overpowering the man, but I couldn’t come up with anything. I had my pepper spray, but it was in my pocket again and I wouldn’t be able to draw it fast enough.
In the room, we turned to face him. Well, I faced him. Deanna’s shoulders had slumped and she was crying in earnest, her face covered in her hands. I didn’t blame her. She’d been so close to getting freed, and now this.
“Cuff your hands together,” the man ordered. I picked up the cuffs from where I’d left them.
“Who are you?” I asked, both to play for time and because I was curious. “When we’re freed, I’d like to know where to direct the police.”
He sneered. “You’re not getting free anytime soon.”
“You’d have shot us already if you wanted us dead.”
“I don’t intend to dirty my hands myself. It’s bad enough I was lured in here today.”
“Lured how?” I was genuinely curious.
“My informant told me my competition had found this place and was making away with my drugs. But it’s just you here.”
I got queasy. “You’re John T. Brody, aren’t you?” Did that mean the competition was Craig Douglas? And if so, had Moreira tricked the man into coming here today? To what end? Had he known I’d be here? Or had he hoped the police would follow Brody?
I’d managed to surprise him. “Well, aren’t you knowledgeable.”
“The police know pretty much everything.”
“They don’t have a fucking clue.”
“Your son was in their custody. He spilled the beans.”
“JT doesn’t know enough to spill anything. He just recruits the dealers.”
“Like Alysha?”
He frowned. “I don’t know who that is.”
“She’s my friend,” Deanna managed to say. “Was my friend, until your horrible son ruined everything.” She started crying again.
“Ah, the reason you had to be held here,” Brody said. “You just learned too much, dear. We couldn’t risk that you’d go to the police.”
I sneered. “Ironically, her disappearance is why I’m here, so it backfired spectacularly.”
“But you won’t have a chance to tell anyone either.”
“I already told the police how this operation works. They’re about to raid the auto parts shop and the scrapyard that handles the actual distribution.”
I had no idea if that was the case—the police didn’t exactly act on impulse like I did—so when Brody dug out a phone from his back pocket I panicked. He’d warn the people at the scrapyard and ruin everything. I had to stall him.
“I’m right, aren’t I?”
He paused. “About what?”
“How you get the drugs out.”
“It doesn’t matter if you’re right.”
“I like being right. It makes me all warm inside.” I don’t know where I got the courage to taunt him.
“Let’s hear it then.”
I summed up what I knew. “Your trucks bring the drugs here from the harbor, maybe hidden in the coffee.” I paused, but he wasn’t impressed yet. “From the garage, you bring the stuff into your hidden laboratory.” I gave it a thought. “But the steps are a bit impractical, so there’s probably another hidden door in the garage straight to the corridor on this level.” That made his brow twitch. “I’m right, aren’t I?”
He sneered. “Yes. But the police won’t find it.”
I ignored him. “At the lab, the product is cut and repackaged, and then you take it through that tunnel of cars to the auto parts shop, where it’s hidden in the cars that are headed to the scrapyard in southern Brownsville.” I gave him the name of the place and his brow twitched. “From there the drugs go to sellers.” I paused and gave him a challenging look.
“Bravo. That’s exactly how it happens. My trucks and my garage, though I’d have been wiser not to use my own name, I give you that, but I was pretty confident I wouldn’t be connected to the drugs, since they’re distributed from the scrapyard. But you’re forgetting one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“The police already raided the place and didn’t find the drugs. And there isn’t a judge in this town that will give them another search warrant for the same place.”
It was my turn to smile. “Ah, but you’re forgetting that for me this isn’t about drugs. It’s about an abduction of a fourteen year old girl. The police don’t need a warrant to come and rescue her. And if they happen to find the drugs when they search for her, well, then it’s their lucky day.”
Brody’s face distorted in anger and he took a firmer hold of his weapon, pointing it directly at me. Deanna sobbed and hid her face against my shoulder, shaking. I tried to console her, but my heart was beating so hard I could barely stand, let alone hold her up. You’d think that with my experience I was used to having a gun pointed at me, but no such thing.
“Then I’ll have to make sure the police won’t find you alive.”
A shadow passing down the floor behind him was the only warning I got. Detective Lawrence appeared in the doorway behind Brody, his gun pointed at Brody’s head.
“This is the police. Put down your weapon and get on the ground.”
Lawrence’s demand made Brody startle, and his gun went off. Deanna and I dropped on our knees, our legs giving under us, but neither one of us was hurt. When I opened my eyes again, Lawrence and the cops in tactical gear had Brody on his face, his hands cuffed behind his back. Brody was swearing the air blue.
Lawrence came over to us and opened the cuffs. “Are you girls all right?”
“Yeah,” I managed to say.
“Can you get up?”
“No.”
He gave us a grim smile. “We’ll take this bastard away first and then come help you out, okay?” I nodded and he went to supervise Brody being taken away. Cops swarmed out with him and for a moment the doorway was empty.
Then Jackson was there. He had a bulletproof vest on and his gun in his hand. He put it away and crossed the room to us in a few strides. He put his arms around me and squeezed so hard I couldn’t breathe, but I didn’t mind. I was safe now.
Then he started yelling.
Epilogue
Jackson yelled at me a lot in the next half hour, about my reckless behavior and idiotic recklessness—he wasn’t very eloquent—and everything that happened to pop into his head in between, like starting a drug war. In private, I’d mentioned my assumption that Moreira had lured Brody into the warehouse.
I let him yell. It made me feel cared for.
While he caught his breath, I briefed Lawrence about what I’d learned, but it turned out they’d heard everything. They’d come in soon after Brody had found us, but instead of charging in they’d let him speak.
“What if he’d shot us?” I asked, dismayed, but Lawrence shrugged and grinned.
“I was willing to take that risk.”
Since I’d been the one who put my life in jeopardy in the first place, I let it go. I was simply grateful he’d acted immediately on my tip. He’d had the raid up in mere moments—relatively speaking—at the warehouse, the auto parts shop and the scrapyard.
Tracy Hayes, P.I. to the Rescue (P.I. Tracy Hayes 3) Page 12
