A Treasure Deep (42 page)

Perry agreed, setting his toolbox down and
opening it. He removed a flashlight and closed the box. In
buildings this tall, elevators were moved by cable. Smaller
buildings could get by with hydraulic elevators, but such devices
were too slow and too difficult to make work in mid- and high-rise
buildings. Cable elevators required a room above the shaft to house
the drive equipment and pulleys.

Suddenly Perry had an idea. He moved swiftly
to the elevator structure and found the door. He tried the doorknob
but found it as he expected, locked.

“We need a way in,” Perry said.

“That’s not going to be easy,” Jack said.
“The door is designed for security. It’s steel-cased. It swings
inward. That means the hinges are on the inside and out of our
reach.”

“There’s machinery in there, it has to be
vented somewhere. Look for a vent.” Jack did and found it moments
later. Perry rounded the corner to find his friend chuckling.
“What’s so funny?”

“I just caught myself praying for God’s help
to illegally break into a building. Seemed like an unusual
prayer.”

“It’s one for the theologians. What did you
find?”

Jack pointed with his light. “It’s a typical
louvered vent with a wire mesh insect screen. It looks to be about
eighteen inches wide and four feet long. We can fit through that,
although it’ll be a tight squeeze for me.”

“It’s our best option,” Perry said with
determination. “Let’s open her up.”

Perry rifled through his tool case. He had
told Karen to fill the boxes with an assortment of hand tools, and
she had taken the request to heart. Between the two boxes was a
range of tools including a hammer, chisels, screw drivers,
wrenches, and more. The vent cover was painted aluminum and
attached to the wall with large lag bolts.

“I’ve got it,” Jack said, pulling a ratchet
and socket set from the box. “That gal thought of everything.”

“Her father was a mechanic. She once told me
she cut her teeth on a Craftsman box wrench.”

“Yuck,” Jack said as he set about removing
the bolts. There were eight bolts in total and some were welded by
years of exposure to sun and rain. Jack brought his great strength
and weight to the task. Perry was sure that he would strip the
heads off a couple of them. His fear was unfounded. The vent came
free.

As Jack set the metal vent to the side, Perry
poked his head in the opening and saw a room filled with large
motors. He crawled through the opening. The room smelled of heavy
oil and electronics. Mounted to one wall was an electrical panel.
Just to his right sat a large-gear drive drum and cables. The
cables were called ropes even though they were made of woven metal
strands. The ropes disappeared down the shaft. Perry moved the
light around the room, playing its beam on the floor.

“Cozy,” Jack said as he squeezed his bulk
through the opening.

“We’re in luck,” Perry said. “Each shaft has
an access panel. We’ll be able move through the shaft.”

“And you call that lucky?”

“Come on, big guy. Adventure is your middle
name.”

“Oh, that’s right,” Jack said. “I almost
forgot.”

“Sarcasm is ugly on one so educated as you.”
Perry stepped to the access panel in the floor, found the recessed
ring-shaped handle, and gave a twist and pull. The panel opened
easily. Despite the easy banter between the two men, Perry knew
that Jack was as tense as he. But he couldn’t allow that to matter.
What had to be done would be done.

He shone the light down the shaft, found the
safety ladder that ran along the back wall, stuffed his flashlight
in his pocket, and began his descent.

Elevator engineers were a cautious bunch, and
elevators were fantastic inventions. A metal ladder ran the length
of the shaft to allow workers to conduct maintenance and repairs.
Unlike the movies, there was little chance of Perry getting
squashed like a bug by the moving car, should it begin to ascend—at
least in principle. That knowledge gave him little comfort. A fall,
however, could be deadly.

The ladder was located near the front of the
shaft, the door to the various floors were to Perry’s right. As he
descended, he could hear the heavy, booted footsteps of Jack on the
ladder.

That reminded Perry of another problem: He
didn’t know where Claire and Joseph were confined.

He tried to picture in his mind the photo
he’d been shown back at the site. Claire and Joseph were in a
small, windowless room. Windowless meant the room most likely
didn’t adjoin an exterior wall. Perhaps there were a series of such
rooms off a corridor with larger labs around the perimeter of the
building? That was likely but not a certainty. The room was devoid
of equipment, so it must not be presently in use.

There was also the problem of which floor.
Generally, executive offices were on the highest floor. The plans
he had committed to memory bore that out. There were four floors of
laboratories and small offices. Most of the laboratories were
larger than what he’d seen in the photo. What was it Karen had said
about magazine covers? “They love to show him in his
wheelchair.”

Thoughts began to percolate in Perry’s mind.
Wheelchair . . . ALS . . . empty lab. Could the lab be a private
one associated with Straight’s office? Since his condition hindered
his mobility, he would no longer be able to work in a lab made for
a person who could stand and walk. Perhaps he abandoned it? It made
sense and was a place to start.

After descending a few more feet into the
darkness, Perry stopped, removed his flashlight, and directed the
beam toward the front wall. He was at a set of doors. Since he had
only taken a few steps down the ladder he knew that he was looking
at the doors that opened to the machine room. He extinguished the
light and returned it to his pocket. In the dark, he had to feel
for each rung below him in a slow, methodical process.

He estimated that he had traveled another
twelve feet. That should put me near the next set of doors, he
thought. Once again he reached for and switched on his light. He
had estimated correctly. Another pair of stainless steel doors
reflected his light.

“We’re going in here, Jack,” Perry whispered.
“Shine your light down here. See the doors?”

A light beam from over Perry’s head pierced
the black. “Yeah, I see them.”

“I’m going to pull them open. As soon as I
do, I’m going in. Feel free to follow.”

“I was hoping you’d invite me.”

Perry secured his light, tightened his grip
on the ladder with his left hand, and stretched his right arm to
the side, feeling along the cool, smooth metal. He found the
juncture of the two doors and pressed his fingers in there, slowly
parting them. Elevators were designed to allow forced opening in
case of prolonged power outages.

Just as he started to pull, the shaft was
filled with a clanking and whirring noise. Perry snapped his hand
back. The elevator was moving. He waited, his lungs holding in
breath as tightly as his fingers gripped the rungs of the service
ladder. He could hear the metal cables rattling and the heavy
counter balance sliding in its track.

Then it stopped.

“I can’t tell you how much I’m enjoying this,
Perry,” Jack said in a barely audible voice.

“Only the best for you, friend,” Perry
retorted.

“You always did know how to make people feel
special,” Jack said.

“I’m going to try this again.”

Once more, Perry reached to his side, found
the joint caused by the edge of the sliding doors, pushed and
pressed until his fingers found enough surface to grip, and pulled.
Nothing. His ribs protested hotly. He pulled again and the door
budged an inch. Mustering as much strength as he could, he pulled
and leaned away, pulling the door with him. The opposite door,
connected by the gears and motor device above them, moved as
well.

Perry wasted no time. With his hand still
clutching the door, he extended his right leg until it touched the
metal sill, then pulled himself through the opening and dropped to
a crouch. He was in the elevator lobby of the nineteenth floor, and
he was alone—for the moment. Glancing at the ceiling, he saw what
he feared: video cameras.

Perry stood and took a step to the side. Jack
lumbered through the doors a moment later. Perry pointed at the
ceiling-mounted cameras. Jack looked straight at them, smiled, and
waved.

ARE YOU CERTAIN, Dr. Carmack?” Rutherford Straight
asked. “I want to move along as quickly as possible.”

Dr. Benton Carmack shook his head vigorously.
“No assistants. They get in the way. There are too many
distractions already. You should all leave.”

Rutherford looked at Julia, then Alex. Alex
started to say something to the researcher, but Rutherford called
him off. “It’s the price of genius,” he said.

Rutherford, Alex, and Julia sat in a side
room adjacent to the laboratory. A glass partition separated them
from Carmack, who moved around the lab in a sterile, white body
suit. A loose-fitting non-permeable material and faceplate formed a
hood over Carmack’s head. He looked something like an
astronaut.

Rutherford spoke to him through an intercom
system. “Your desire to work alone is legendary, Doctor, but I
stay. Alex and Julia are necessary because of my special needs. You
understand that, don’t you?”

“Of course, of course,” Carmack said. He was
looking at an unusually shaped set of linens that rested on one of
the large worktables. His eighteenth-floor lab was directly below
Rutherford’s office and was the largest facility in the building.
“I didn’t mean you had to leave. Of course you can stay. It’s your
place. Of course you can stay. Now, where did you get this?”

“That doesn’t matter now. I want to know if
you think it will work.”

“Maybe . . . possibly . . . it should.
Maybe.” He lowered his face and squinted. “This dark spot—is that
blood?”

“I assume it to be so. It’s old . . . very
old,” Rutherford said.

Carmack walked around and stared into the
cavity of the chrysalis, studied it for a moment, then pulled a
magnifying glass from a drawer in the worktable. He began to
scrutinize the inside of the body-shaped shell. “Hair. There is
hair here. Body hair stuck between some of the layers of the
wrappings.”

Rutherford’s heart quickened. Blood and hair
was a good sign. What he hoped to achieve would require the DNA,
and those were two good sources.

“Extraction will need to be done delicately,”
Carmack said more to himself than to the others. He was known to
carry on long conversations while sitting alone. Rutherford worked
with some of the finest and most innovative scientific minds in the
bio-industry; many had quirks. He had learned to live with
them.

“Sample the bloody linen,” Rutherford said.
“I want to determine the extent of degradation. We should be able
to type the blood and do some genetic profiling.”

“I will start with the hair,” Carmack said
flatly.

“Dr. Carmack, I would prefer—”

“The hair! I will start with the hair!”

“All right, Doctor.”

A ringing filled the observation room. Alex
snapped his cell phone to his ear. “Olek,” he said. He paused, and
his face tightened. “When . . . where?” Another pause. “No, I’ll
take care of it.” He hung up.

“We have visitors,” Alex announced.
“Nineteenth floor. Security picked them up on surveillance
cameras.”

“Who are they, and how did they get in?”
Rutherford snapped.

“They came through an elevator shaft. As to
who it is, I won’t know until I find them, but the description I
just received makes me think of Perry Sachs and Jack Dyson.”

“Go,” Rutherford asked. “Take care of them.
Better yet, bring them to me. Take Julia with you.”

“I can handle this.”

“Take her with you. We’re too close to my
dream to take any chances.”

“Very well,” Alex said. He exited the room in
long strides. Julia followed.

CLAIRE WATCHED JOSEPH with a mixture of fear and
amazement that made her ache with worry. He sat at the bench, paper
stretched before him, crayons scattered in an arch around his
drawing. He was sketching so fast that Claire could hear the crayon
scraping the paper. Joseph always drew slowly, never in the manic
fashion she was witnessing.

“Joseph? Honey?”

He ignored her. The crayon broke in his hand,
but Joseph seemed not to notice. He kept moving, kept drawing with
the stub of crayon.

He stopped suddenly, sitting up straight.
Then he slipped from his stool, walked to the locked door, stood
before it, then leaned forward, resting his forehead on its wood
surface.

“Uhh . . . uhh . . .”

Claire moved to the bench and gazed at what
her son had been drawing. Again he had constructed an image far out
of character for him. This one included people—and it included an
amazing likeness of himself standing at the door just as he was
now.

Stranger still, he’d drawn the scene in
section showing not only the room they were in and the door, but a
hallway outside. A man stood in the hallway, just on the other side
of the doorway. He was looking down at the floor. Claire recognized
the man. It was Perry Sachs.

“I don’t understand,” she whispered. “Perry
is in California, not here. Why would he be standing at the door
looking down . . . ?”

Realization hit Claire like a flash of
lighting. Seizing the picture, she ripped it from the table and
raced to the door. She had to move Joseph to the side to make room
for herself. Kneeling, she offered a prayer as she pushed the
picture under the door and into the hall.

She stood and took a step back, wondering if
she had just done a wise or foolish thing.

Joseph moved to the door and once again
leaned his forehead on its smooth surface.