An Unquiet Grave (Louis Kincaid Mysteries) (32 page)

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Authors: P.J. Parrish

BOOK: An Unquiet Grave (Louis Kincaid Mysteries)
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There was no sign of Zeke, the security guard. He’d been gone for more than two hours. Probably still on break in the administration building. Louis hurried to his car, dumped the folders in the backseat, and trotted to the administration building.
He stopped inside the door to shake the water from the umbrella. He needed to call the state police to tell them about the corn can and to convince them to come back and weld the tunnel doors closed.
There was a small room off the lobby that the security guards had commandeered as their break room, and when Louis went to the door, there were two guards sitting at a table sharing a thermos of coffee. He put in a call to the state police. The guy who took his message promised it would get to the right person, but as he hung up the phone Louis doubted it would. He made a mental note to call Dalum and tell him to put on some pressure.
Louis turned to the two guards at the table.
“You guys seen Zeke?” Louis asked.
“He was here about an hour ago when I came in,” one of the men said. “I think he went back out.”
Louis pulled Zeke’s keys from his pocket. He was about to hand them over to the guard when the thought hit him. It could take days for the state police to get back down here to close the tunnels back up. The killer could have already found his way back in. Maybe the guy was down there now. And if they acted quickly, they could have him trapped.
Louis pocketed the keys and went back outside. At the Impala, he grabbed a flashlight he had stowed in the trunk yesterday and the diagram of the hospital grounds from the backseat.
Then he popped the glove box and took out his Glock. He hooked it on his belt and started off toward the nearest building.
CHAPTER 30
 
He was only going to check to make sure the cinder-block walls in the tunnels had not been compromised. That was all.
It was logical that the administration building would be connected to the tunnels, so that is where he would begin.
He didn’t tell anyone what he was doing. He just walked the ground floor, looking for steel doors with no handles. Finally, he found one, painted green like the one in E Building, with PASSAGE 2 stenciled on it. Also like the one in E Building, it had been pried open and had yellow tape on it.
Louis pulled it open, flicked on his flashlight, and went down the sloping ramp. The tunnel had the same damp smell as the other one, and about twenty feet in Louis came to an intact cinder-block wall. Making sure it was secure, he backtracked. At the back of the building, he found a second tunnel door marked PASSAGE 1. It, too, was taped and securely bricked off. After he was positive there were no other tunnel entries in the building, Louis went outside.
He unfolded Spera’s map and pulled a pen from his jacket. He made marks on the administration building outline where he had found the tunnel doors, numbering them 1 and 2.
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.

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