Killer Move

“Every other line I’ve seen is about the same. Like an eighth of an inch gap. This looks smaller.”

Hallam saw the guy was right—though he would have never noticed it himself. Guess that’s why some people make good techs. He felt around the wall either side of the line. After a minute he started pressing harder.

A moment later, there was a click. A section of tiling slowly bounced back half an inch.

Hallam heard an exhale. He wasn’t sure whether it was the tech or something else. He got his fingers around the edges of the door and pulled it back.

A corridor lay beyond, perhaps thirty feet long. Two doors on the left, a single one at the far end of the other side. They stepped into it together. They became enveloped in a silence so loud that they could hear each other breathe. They opened the doors, one by one.

The first held what could have been pieces of gym equipment, but for the straps. A short rack on the wall held a few tools that would have seemed more suitable to a workshop. Screwdrivers, short saws, a hand drill. There was a long mirror on the side wall.

The next room held two sofas, positioned so as to be able to watch through the one-way glass, and a good deal of video equipment. They came out of the room together and went, slowly, to the door on the other side.

This was much heavier than the others, and when it opened a burst of freezing air escaped and a sound like the flapping of wings.

The tech made some kind of a noise.

Hallam stared past him at the things hanging from a hook in the center of the room. The plastic had a frosted texture, presumably from the refrigeration. They looked like body bags. All were empty, now.

He reached out and pulled aside the flaps of the one nearest to him. The inside was smeared with dry, frozen blood. He looked more closely and saw indentations in the plastic, at about head height. They looked like teeth marks.

As if someone had been hung in one of these things, not yet dead, and had tried to bite their way out.

“Okay,” Hallam said quietly, acutely aware that what he did now would govern the rest of his career. “We need Barclay right away. I’m going to go find a signal and call him. You’re going to stand at the doorway in the wine cellar and let no one pass. And we talk to nobody until the sheriff says so. Got that?”

The tech tried to speak, could not, nodded instead.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

I waited an hour in the street outside the gates to Cass’s building. Hallam didn’t show. I didn’t know what else he had on his plate, but I believed that what I’d said should have been enough to get most cops to come take a look. Maybe he just didn’t give a damn.

A clot of pain was attached to the back of my skull, mingling badly with the lingering effects of the previous night’s drinking. It was making the world hot and bright and unreal. I called the cop’s phone but got routed to voice mail again. I didn’t leave a message. Fuck him.

I noticed I had an indicator saying that three Facebook “friends” had sent messages, presumably updating me on what passed for their news. Fuck them, too. The idea that I’d care about whatever was going on in their lives—that I’d ever cared, or pretended to—made me want to laugh out loud.

I’d sat absolutely still after finding he was no longer behind me, convinced he’d moved to some position I couldn’t see, the better to pull the trigger in safety. I gingerly got to my feet. I took some tentative steps, still half believing they were going to be my last. I darted forward and swept up my wallet and car keys. I made my way through the half-built structure until I found a thick plywood door. I stepped out into the glaring sun and a mothballed building site, and walked across it to the road. My car was parked there.

When I’d stood on Ben Franklin Drive for five minutes and watched vehicles drive past and a few tourists stroll by, I finally began to believe that the guy had simply gone. I limped along the road to the building where Cass had lived, and waited. In the meantime I’d checked on Steph and was told she was sleeping.

So now what? I realized suddenly that there was something I could do, and I should probably have thought of it before. I didn’t want to do it, but it’d become clear that I was no longer living in a world where what I wanted counted for much. It would also be, in its own horrible way, the smart thing to do. For once.

I hurried over to the big metal gates, pushed them open, and went inside.

When I got to apartment 34, I hesitated. Getting my USB drive back, thus removing the evidence that I’d been in the apartment, was critical—even besides the importance of having copies of the pictures—so I could try to prove to the cops that something was going on. I was going in, no question. But still, I took a moment.

Then I turned the handle. I did so in a firm, even fashion—and pushed the door open, stepping out of sight as soon as I was sure it was on its way. Nothing happened. Nobody came running out, nobody fired a gun.