Darkside (2002), page 44
He tried to visualize Julie dating a guy like Dyle Booth but couldn’t quite do it. They had nothing in common except the swimming. Julie came from a very traditional family background; Booth from the white fringes of a Baltimore ghetto. Liz might have been right: The acerbic way Dyle could verbalize things didn’t square with a verbal skills problem. Had the kid been manipulating him in order to get at Julie?
Ev parked the car and got out. The night was very still now, with enough humidity in the air to give nearby lights a soft penumbra. Not quite fog yet, but soon, he thought. He went up to the darkened house and let himself in. He turned on the porch lights behind him, then turned them off. No point in porch lights—no one was coming to see him tonight. He walked down the darkened hall to the kitchen, through whose windows he could see the dock lights, which came on automatically at dusk. The furniture was all gray in the dim light. He stood at the kitchen sink and considered what he’d done this evening: alienated his daughter, and very possibly Liz as well. Could he have phrased it differently? Been more diplomatic? Explained it to Liz first, and not said anything to Julie? Yes.
He stared unseeing though the windows, knowing that it was dumb to be just standing here in the dark. He wanted to call Liz, but that wasn’t on, not tonight. He found himself wondering what else he didn’t know about his daughter. He turned on a light, fixed himself a snifter of scotch, and then went down to the dock to sit by the water. The highly varnished bottom of his upturned scull glistened in the dock lights.
13
At just past midnight, the main tunnel looked and sounded familiar: sterile concrete walls and ceilings, smelling faintly of ozone and steam, with the hum of electronic equipment racks and the quiet rush of steam permeating its entire length. They walked slightly uphill toward the King George Street interchange with the city utility vaults. They passed the big shark graffito, which remained unchanged. They did not speak, in deference to the possibility that Booth had the tunnels wired for sound as well as visual and electronic surveillance. The big steel doors leading out to the city tunnel were locked. Jim unlocked them and tried to pull them open. Neither of them budged.
“Okay! Chief,” Jim murmured.
“Hope we don’t get a fire down here tonight,” Branner whispered, looking at those locked doors.
“We do, we call for help,” he said, holding up his radio. He keyed the transmitter three times. There was a moment of silence, and then both of their radios clicked three times back at them. He stepped into an alcove to mask his voice.
“All the doors blocked?” he asked the chief.
“Affirmative.”
They walked back toward the intersection where the Mahan Hall grate door was, checking equipment room doors and generally looking around for signs of anyone else being down there. Then they continued down the long stretch under Stribling Walk, Jim watching in front of them and Branner walking backward, keeping an eye out behind them. When they got to the dogleg turn, Jim stopped, put his fingers to his lips, and listened hard. He’d felt a change in the air pressure. Something had been opened. Then he remembered the storm drain. He pointed back up the tunnel and whispered that he was going to check the storm drain’s flap doors. Booth might have figured out a way to open them from the drain side. She indicated she’d wait for him, just out of sight in the dogleg turn.
Jim yanked out his own weapon and went back up the tunnel. He walked to one side of the steel plates running down the center of the tunnel to avoid making unnecessary noise. The vestibule above the storm drain did not have any sort of door or hatch leading from the main tunnel down to the drain itself. The whole point was to have an immediate draining point for any water that got loose in the tunnels. But all the main grating access doors should be closed and locked. So what had been opened?
He got to the vestibule and the spring-loaded, sloping flap doors. He got down on his hands and knees and pushed on the center of the crack between the two metal flaps. They moved, but not easily. Putting a foot on one flap, he pushed against the hinge hard enough to expand the crack enough to get his hand into it. He could feel air streaming past his head. He ran his hand up the full length of the right-hand flap edge, but there was nothing but smooth metal. He switched his foot and tried the left-hand side.
Bingo, he thought. He felt a crude U-shaped handle bolted to the other side. So someone coming up from the river would have access from the main drain pipe. He was withdrawing his hand when his wrist was seized in a viselike grip and he was pulled headlong right through the two flaps. He yelled, dropping both his Glock and his radio, as his body hurtled down through the doors into a sloping circular concrete pipe. It was pitch-black in the storm drain once the spring-loaded doors snapped shut behind him, and the bottom of the pipe was slippery with ancient moss and the trickle of water that was constantly draining out of the utility tunnel complex. Whoever had grabbed him had essentially flung him down the drain, and he skidded on his backside for an unknown distance until he gathered his wits enough to spread out his arms and legs and stop himself. He immediately flipped over onto his stomach and snatched out the Maglite. He shot it up the tunnel and saw nothing at all except his gun and his radio. It felt as if the storm drain was sloping down at about a ten-degree angle. Easy enough to maintain his position, but steep enough to have slid him almost sixty feet from the doors. Whoever had grabbed him probably had gone up through the doors once Jim had opened them. Branner. He had to warn Branner.
He scampered back up the drain, staying low enough not to hit his head, and recovered the radio first. He called Branner, but the thing didn’t seem to be working. He turned it over. The battery compartment had opened and the battery pack was missing. He swore and retrieved his Glock. He shone the light up and down the tunnel, looking for the cigarette pack–sized battery, and finally saw a flash of shiny metal. He recovered the battery, his hands fumbling because everything was wet. Son of a bitch had moved the doors to attract his attention, then simply pulled him into the tunnel. Strong son of a bitch, too. While Jim had been skidding down the drain, their quarry had gone through the flap doors and now was loose in the tunnel.
Hunched over beneath the flap doors, he fumbled to get the battery back into the radio, and then, realizing he was wasting time, swore again. Stuffing the radio and battery into a pocket, he pulled the flap door with the handle down into the drain. The yellow lights of the main tunnel flooded the drain. He stood up through the opening and yelled for Branner to look out, but she didn’t respond. Then he realized he’d screwed up again: Branner had probably heard the commotion when he went through the flap door, but now Jim had just given away her presence to Booth, who must have heard him yell. Screw it, he thought. He hoisted himself through the flap doors, fighting with the spring hinges, which were pinching into him like aluminum mandibles. He got up and trotted down toward the Bancroft Hall end of the Stribling tunnel. When he got to the dogleg, Branner wasn’t there. Now what? he wondered. He called her name, but she didn’t answer. Had Booth managed to take her down? He couldn’t have—she’d been waiting for him.
He pulled out the radio, dried off the battery contacts, and put the thing back together again. Where the hell was Branner? Then he had an idea. Maybe she was not answering in order to make Booth think Jim was faking it, trying to make Booth think he had backup. He put the radio up to his mouth but did not squeeze the transmit key. Then he gave a series of orders to a host of imaginary backup people. Then he did squeeze the key and said, “Lights-out.” Two seconds later, when the entire tunnel went dark, he flattened himself between two equipment cabinets.
At least the radio system is working, he thought. Branner should have heard him doing his deception routine and figured it out. Booth was in the tunnel. But where? And where was Branner holed up? She should be close by. He tried to think of the layout of the tunnel walls in the vicinity of the dogleg. Around the corner was the cross tunnel that led out toward the harbor area and the old Fort Severn doors. Branner could be anywhere. Hell with it. It was time to get it on with young Mr. Booth.
Keeping his Maglite handy but off, he patted the Glock and started feeling his way in the pitch-black tunnel, heading back toward the vestibule above the storm drain. He called out Booth’s name but got no answer. He called it again.
“Yo, Booth! Or is it Count Dracula-a-a? Where are you, Booth? The doors are all locked tonight, so it’s just us chickens down here, Booth. And chicken seems to be the word, hey, Booth?”
He listened to the darkness, but there was nothing stirring. Some of the equipment behind all the cabinet doors was still going, but the ventilation was off and the tunnel was starting to get warm. He kept inching his way along the wall on the Annapolis side, bumping quietly into steel cabinets, wireways, and pipe nests. He called out again.
“Hey, big guy. Come on down. Let’s have us a little chat.”
His fingers itched to turn on the Maglite. He had a vision of Booth in vampire drag, hanging upside down from the tunnel ceiling, waiting to pounce. His hand remembered that powerful grip that had pulled him down into the storm drain. His knees and elbows still stung. But he’d seen nothing. He stopped to listen. Then he felt a presence in the tunnel.
Was something there?
He pointed the Maglite in the direction his senses were indicating and waited.
Nothing moved.
He took another sideways step and stopped again. “C’mon, Booth. We know what you did. You can’t win this thing.”
A voice whispered right into his left ear. “Sure I can, Hall-Man-Chu.”
Jim barely suppressed the urge to jump out into the tunnel and snap the light on. The voice had been right beside his ear, but his ear was right next to a solid steel cabinet. No way could there be anyone there. It had been a chilling voice, a metallic whisper. As if someone was synthesizing it. He lifted his left hand above his ear and felt around until he encountered a tiny plastic box. There was a screen on the front of it. A speaker.
“Because, Booth, like I said, the doors are all sealed tonight. All except the storm drain, and I have people sealing the river grate as we speak. It’s like Hotel California, Booth—you can come anytime you want, but you can never leave.”
There came a booming sound of something heavy being shut way down the storm drain tunnel. The river grate, right on cue. But the voice spoke in his ear again. “Who wants to leave, Hall-Man-Chu? I certainly don’t. I’ve been looking forward to this.”
Jim began to perspire. Booth was speaking on the tunnel announcing system, which was a string of speakers scattered throughout the tunnels, so that the PWC could make announcements to people working down below. Shit! Was Booth in the PWC ops station? Or had he just tapped in? Yeah, that was it—he had tapped into the speaker system. And also provided it with some electrical power. Guy was good.
“So let’s chat, Drac,” Jim said, trying not to let his voice betray the anxiety he was feeling. If Booth could do sound, maybe he could do lights, too. And maybe even video. So Jim didn’t dare turn on his flashlight. “You can talk to me or to all of us.”
“You mean both of you, don’t you?” whispered the speaker. “Although one of you is—what’s the word?—indisposed.” A nasty laugh. “So what is it you think you know, sir, other than that you’re alone down here on my turf?”
Indisposed? He didn’t like the sound of that. Had he taken Branner? “I know you’re some kind of whack job who had something to do with Brian Dell’s so-called accident, for one thing,” he said. Then he moved back away from the speaker, very slowly, standing on tiptoes so as to make absolutely no sound. The darkness remained absolute. There weren’t even any lights from the power panel showing in the passageway.
“Accident? You don’t know shit. Is that what Hot Wheels is telling you? Silly girl. She has it all wrong. Oh, and I know where she is right now, too. With that pretty little lawyer. You know her? Did you know she’s doing Julie’s daddy these days?”
What? Jim thought as he continued to reposition himself. He felt for the radio. He had to figure out when to call for the lights, but he didn’t want to do it before he knew where Booth was.
“Surprised there, Mr. Security Man, sir? Mr. Hall-Man-Chump? Mr. Lame-Man-Chump is more like it. Here’s whassup: I’m going to do you and your butch buddy there, then deal with Hot Wheels. Then, who knows—maybe I’ll just go radio-silent and wait to throw my hat in the air with the rest of my sterling classmates.”
Jim kept moving, turning as he went, one arm held out in the darkness to keep himself from bumping into anything, the other holding the Maglite close by his hip, ready to snap it on. He thought he was moving back down toward the dogleg turn, closer to the Fort Severn doors. Was Booth using a radio to key the speakers? If so, he could be anywhere in the tunnel complex. Or right behind him.
“No way, Booth,” he said. “We’ve told too many people about you. Your name’s already on the graduation hold list.”
The voice just laughed. Jim had moved far enough away from his starting point to be between speakers now, and the voice had an echo to it. He still sensed that there was some human presence nearby, but he couldn’t pinpoint it. “Not what I’ve heard, Mr. Security Officer, sir,” Booth whispered. “The word in the third is that the Dark Side’s gonna rug this one. The dant’s had some guidance from on high. Accident. All an accident. Very sad, but there you are. Told those naughty mid coolies not to go up on the roof. Told ’em a million times.”
“All true, Booth,” Jim said, stopping in place now and listening hard. “Except Julie’s given NCIS enough to reopen this thing. I personally told the supe we’d be reopening, or he could read it in the newspapers. And you know how the supe hates newspapers.”
“She can’t get me without getting herself,” the voice said softly, as if Booth were closer. Much less of an echo. “I know her. You don’t. She’s complex, Julie is. And she’ll never do that. Life for Julie is all about Julie, see. And without her, you and your rent-a-cop pals got jackshit. Most importantly, the Dark Side wants it over, Mr. Hall, sir. Even if you leak to the Annapolis crab wrapper, no one’s going to give a shit. By direction.”
“So where’s the Goth girl, Booth? What happened to little Miss Natter? Do you happen to know? Annapolis cops are looking into that one, by the way. They won’t care what the SecNav has to say.”
“They don’t care, period, Mr. Insecurity Officer, sir. It’s a missing persons case. And besides, if it all goes south, I’m prepared to do the honorable thing. And the name wasn’t Natter. In her world, she was Krill.”
“Krill, Drill, Snapping Shrimp, for all I care,” Jim said. “But we’ve given them your name as our best bet for the downtown Batman. See, the issue is time. Their investigation will take more time than you’ve got days left here. And that will give us time to pull the scab on Dell. You’re done, shithead. Come on down!”
Booth didn’t answer this time. Jim bumped into something on the side of the tunnel. He felt behind him and his fingers told him it was a door. It was ajar. There was a strange chemical smell coming from behind the door. He picked up the radio and called softly, “Lights on.” Nothing happened.
He called again, louder this time, feeling with his fingers for the radio’s power switch to make sure it was on. He heard what sounded like fading laughter coming from the speakers, then silence. The radio appeared to be working. Had the son of a bitch trashed the retransmitter? Screw it, he thought, and snapped on the Maglite.
The tunnel was empty in both directions. The concrete was strangely gray in the blue-white beam of the Maglite. There was enough humidity in the air now that he could actually see the shape of the beam. He was standing right next to the equipment room. He nudged the door open with his foot. The chemical stink was stronger. A can clinked as it rolled out of the way. Shining the light on it, he saw that it was a can of diesel engine-starter fluid. And then he saw Branner. She was slumped against a telephone switchboard cabinet. There was a swatch of duct tape plastered over her mouth, and what looked like a small sponge sticking up out of it under her nostrils. There was more duct tape wrapped around her arms and legs.
He recognized the smell: ether. Starter fluid contained ether. He looked both ways again and then stepped into the room. He bent down and snatched the tape and sponge away from her face. She groaned but did not open her eyes.
He stepped back out into the main tunnel and checked both ways with the Maglite again. Still nothing. No one lurking. He listened carefully. No one coming, either. He tried the radio again, but there was no answer. His fingers were sticky from the duct tape and stank of ether.
He felt the warm air stir, but it wasn’t like the last time he’d been down, when there had been a distinct pressure change. This was different, more subtle. He keyed the radio again and saw the tiny red light come on, indicating a transmit signal. The radio was working. The signal just wasn’t getting out. He could go up the tunnel and check the retransmitter, but then he’d have to leave Branner. He went back inside after sweeping his light around the tunnel one more time. He set the Maglite down on the floor and used his knife to cut away the duct tape from her arms and legs. She groaned again but still didn’t open her eyes. He could smell the ether on her breath. She’s going to hate life when she does wake up, he thought, the smell nauseating him.
He felt another stir of air as he checked her pulse. Booth must be big and fast to have been able to get Branner, the judo instructor. He had to get her out of here, and get her some oxygen and medical attention. That much ether, she might get chemical pneumonia. He reviewed the tunnel layout in his mind. The nearest exit grate was next to Dahlgren Hall, about 150 feet to the right, beyond the oak doors to the Fort Severn tunnels. It was at least two, maybe three hundred feet back to the Stribling Walk grating, and twice that to the interchange between the Academy and the town’s utility tunnels. The ether smell was making him increasingly nauseous. He knew he was forgetting something. Okay, so he’d carry or drag her to the—What was that?
