The Art of Deception (41 page)

Crack the whip. Vanderhorst turned, shoved a key into the side door, and hurried through.

“Okay!” an elated Boldt shouted much too loudly for the small room, “let’s do it like we talked about.”

The guards busied themselves throwing switches, and the monitors displayed new views: the back hall, the ATM room, the stairs to the basement, and several angles of the basement itself.

“Go … go … go!” Boldt shouted at the screen like an armchair quarterback. Into the radio’s microphone he shouted, “More pressure, more pressure!” as Vanderhorst paused in the hallway outside the door that led into the ATM room. Boldt didn’t want that door an option.

Dispatch barked another order, and although the monitors had no sound, Boldt knew that Mackenzie was now pounding on that hallway door. Vanderhorst reacted in a mechanical, nervous way, looking first in that direction and then taking off down the hall and into the stairs leading to the basement.

“Yes!
” Boldt shouted excitedly. He grabbed Gaynes by the arm. “Get ready to run. You first. The basement.”

“Copy,” she said, moving toward the security room’s door.

Behind them, the image of Vanderhorst moved one monitor to the next, as if he were jumping from screen to screen. As he reached the last, with the flip of a switch, the monitors displayed several different views of the basement.

Special Ops had added these cameras at Boldt’s request.

Gaynes understood Boldt’s plan then for the first time. “You’re stinging him into showing us the way into the Underground,” she said.

“We hope,” he answered.

With that, as if instructed, Vanderhorst moved quickly across three of the screens and used a master switch to lower the elevator.

Boldt mumbled, “Not possible. I checked that elevator myself and—” But he interrupted himself as Vanderhorst boarded the elevator, stepped inside, and—after a brief but unexpected monitor glitch that left Vanderhorst off-camera momentarily—keyed open a back panel on the elevator car intended for emergency evacuation.

“Oh, shit,” Boldt barked, a police lieutenant who took pride in rarely swearing. Vanderhorst stepped through and pulled the elevator’s panel closed behind him.

“Keys!” Boldt shouted at the security men, as if rehearsed, which it was not.

One of the guards tossed him an enormous ring of keys,
saying, “The small, silver one does the panel. The green dot does the elevator override.”

Susan Hebringer had been pulled through that panel. Patricia Randolf before her. Boldt could see it play out, as if watching one of the monitors.

Boldt and Gaynes took off at run, Boldt shouting instructions into a handheld that he knew would lose contact once he was underground. “Contact lost. Repeat, Wildhorse contact lost!” Dispatch copied. Boldt shouted, “We want him
alive,
people! For God’s sake, let’s take him alive.”

Boldt and Gaynes descended the stairs two at a time, reaching the basement only seconds after they’d left the security room. At the most, Vanderhorst had a half minute lead on them.

Boldt keyed the elevator open, then tossed the keys to Gaynes, who was first into the car. She keyed open the back panel as Boldt stepped through. “Sixty seconds,” Boldt said, checking his watch.

They climbed through the open hole, descending a ladder of rebar that protruded from the chamber’s concrete wall. The space between the shaft’s wall and the car was narrow. Gaynes descended effortlessly, while Boldt had to flatten himself, his jacket hanging up on the car’s mechanics. The thick air smelled heavily of grease and electricity. Gaynes switched on a Maglite well before she reached the bottom rung, making the short leap to the shaft’s dirt floor. Boldt followed immediately behind her.

“Lieu!” The Maglite’s beam revealed the inside of a cast-iron coal chute door about two feet square. A false wall of bricks had been stacked to create an illusion, from the Underground side, of an enclosed coal chute. Gaynes kicked down the dry stack, pushed the iron door open further, and squeezed through. Boldt followed, again straining to get his girth through the small space.

Boldt heard a crackle in his earpiece, and the broken voice of Denny Schaefer as a few radio waves managed to briefly
penetrate the depths. He couldn’t understand a word that was said: They were on their own.

They stood in one of the dark underground hallways, vaguely familiar from the previous foray into the underground city block. Boldt used sign language to direct Gaynes, indicating that they would split up. She would take this hallway, Boldt would move south and search for another. Gaynes acknowledged. Boldt’s fists came together: They could reunite at the far end of the underground space.

Boldt got his flashlight lit. Ninety seconds had elapsed since they’d lost Vanderhorst.

They heard a crash in the distance—wood and then glass. Too far away to discern someone running.

Boldt took off into the dark, through a huge, empty room. He found a second hallway and turned left, his mind searching for explanations for that noise. Certainly Vanderhorst, if their man, would know this city block of the Underground intimately, an area the size of several football fields. So what, or who, had made that noise—and was it worth following? Boldt slopped through mud and debris, believing that by then Gaynes would be passing close to the lair. She would take a few seconds to inspect it. In that time, Boldt found himself at the end of the hall.

He took the door to the right, into and through a former barbershop, the beam of light catching his own reflection in the dusty mirrors, still intact. He jumped back from his own reflected image, stumbled over a barber chair, and fell down, the chair noisily spinning on rusted joints. Boldt clambered to his feet, dodged debris on his way out yet another door, and found himself in a section of Underground sidewalk he hadn’t seen on his earlier exploration. The sidewalk was caved in ahead, choked with earth and stone, reminding him how fragile an environment this was. He took the first doorway to his left that he encountered,
working his way judiciously through a room filled with discarded washing machines and tooling equipment that had to go back forty years.

Through this door he reached another short hallway, and up ahead a tangle of yellow police tape. He paused here, aware this had been what he’d heard only moments before—Vanderhorst had been tripped up by one of their yellow tapes. Blood beat loudly in his ears, his mouth dry, his body damp with sweat. He thought of his promises to Liz to stay behind the desk, of his kids and their bright faces. But then in his mind’s eye he saw Susan Hebringer’s unconscious body being dragged down this hallway, a face now attached to the man dragging her, and he inched forward, following the unmistakable sound, an uneven scraping—something dragging—through a door to his right.

He followed that sound, careful of his own footfalls.
He’s limping.
Vanderhorst had hurt himself in the fall caused by the crime scene tape. Boldt moved more quickly, seizing the opportunity, aware all of a sudden of footfalls approaching rapidly from his left.
Gaynes.
He cupped the flashlight. This was the horror house in the amusement park, where goblins and witches and skeletons jumped out at you. Boldt braced himself for surprise, his nerves electric with anticipation.

He crossed through to a smaller room, fully covering the flashlight’s lens with his fingers and issuing darkness. He could smell the man now—the sour human fear.
He’s close.

He heard the
whoosh
to his left, and credited his sensitive hearing with sparing him the blow. As he ducked, a piece of lumber cut just above his head, and that promise to Liz loomed all the more clearly. He slipped his fingers off the flashlight, and the beam swiped the side of Vanderhorst’s face like the slice of a sword. Boldt saw fear and determination. He saw what Susan Hebringer would have seen as she’d come awake in captivity. The timber caught Boldt in the gut on its return.

Boldt bent over and fell back, but kicked out mightily as he went down, connecting with the side of the man’s knee and causing Vanderhorst to cry out as he careened into a shelf of rusted paint cans and spilled them in a waterfall of tin to the floor. Vanderhorst clawed and picked his way through the debris to the far end of the room, delivered a chair through what remained of a window, and was following through himself when Boldt got a hand on him. He pulled the man back, so that Vanderhorst’s head and shoulders struck the floor. Boldt swung a paint can and struck the man in the head. The lid popped off, a thick red sludge melting down the side of Vanderhorst’s face and shoulder, looking like fresh blood.

His right foot on the man’s throat, Boldt sighted down the barrel of his handgun, the flashlight catching the whites of complacent eyes. The sudden calm in those eyes went straight to Boldt’s stomach. Vanderhorst held the wire handle of a paint can gripped firmly in his left hand, ready to strike.

Boldt said, “Do it,” his breath shallow and quick. “Do us all a favor.”

Gaynes caught up to them, breathless. “Easy, Lieu.”

Boldt backed off, removing his foot from the man’s throat. Vanderhorst released the can’s wire handle, slowly closed his eyes, and said, “I want a lawyer.”

Matthews heard the key in the lock, saw Blue run to paw the door, and set down the glass of wine. Her heart fluttered in her chest, and she thought herself a teenager as she crossed the room.

Blue started licking his hand the moment it showed.

LaMoia, looking exhausted, shut and locked the heavy door. “Hi, honey, I’m home.”

His making light of it like that caught Matthews short and stopped her just prior to offering herself for a hug. What the hell had she been thinking?

“What’s with the radio car?” he asked, shedding the deerskin jacket and playing with Blue.

“Lou’s idea.”

“We’ve got Walker an overnight room in the Grand Hotel.”

“Good riddance.”

“We should make the reservation permanent, you ask me.”

“He’s working through this.”

She didn’t want to even
think
about business. She wanted to enjoy his company, order some takeout, get as far away from police business as possible.

It wasn’t to be. LaMoia said, “Bobbie Socks and the Sarge arrested a bank maintenance guy for Hebringer and Randolf.”

“Yes, he called,” she said. “He wants me in on the first round
of interrogation, but the lawyers are into it pretty thick and it isn’t going to happen until tomorrow.”

“Same thing I heard,” he said. “Kind of shoots my theory on Walker.”

“It kind of does.”

“What?” he asked. “No ‘I told you so’?”

“Lou was hoping for a court order to process Walker’s clothing.”

“He got it. They lifted some blood. They’re testing whether it’s fish or human. Some fibers they want to run against a pile of shit they collected in the hideaway.”

“It wasn’t Walker’s,” she said. “Lou knows that. He wants to jam Walker up just to keep him off the streets. Fine with me.”

LaMoia noticed the open bottle of wine.

“Self-medicating,” she said, thinking it funny until her brain caught up with her mouth. “Sorry about that.”

“Do I look like I have a problem with it?”

They spent a half hour on the couch, LaMoia nursing a beer, Matthews working on the bottle of merlot she’d already promised to repay him. Blue settled in at their feet, looking like a rug that breathed.

“I think I should go at him,” she said.

“Walker? Are you kidding?”

“We need his help with the key.”

“We’re trying the Underground. The Sarge messengered a Polaroid over to an archaeologist at the U. Something’ll break.”

She said, “Somebody’s got to bring him up to speed on email attachments.”

“He’s got his own ways of doing things.” He sounded mad at her, and she wondered how she deserved this.

The dog jumped to his feet and began to whine.

“Rehab needs a walk,” he said, toeing the dog’s fur with his right foot.

“It’s weird you call him that,” she said.

LaMoia took it wrong. “So, I’m weird. What of it?”

“Is something wrong, John?”

“Yeah, something’s wrong.”

“Me being here? Have I overstayed my welcome?” Why had she said that? She felt herself blush.

“What? No! It’s me … my stuff,” he said. He stood and the dog rallied. “Come on, you idiot.” He petted Blue’s head.

“Would I be in the way?” she asked.

“You still don’t have it figured out, do you, Matthews?”

“Probably not.”

“You’re not in the way.”

“Okay.” She fought back a flicker of anger. At herself? At him? She wasn’t sure.

He turned toward the couch, looking away momentarily. “What you said just now … self-medicating …”

“Was stupid,” she interrupted.

He had sadder eyes than Blue. “Listen, Matthews … I stole two caps from your bathroom on my last visit. I tucked them away in my pocket and I walked around with them there for
days,
and I never said a thing to you, to Boldt. At the meetings. Nothing.”

Somehow this scared her more than Walker had. Her words caught in her throat. “Did you … take them?”

“No, I tossed them, but I was this close to taking them,” he said. “I stole from you, and I didn’t tell you. I lied to myself that tossing them made it fine, but it didn’t make it fine. It sucks. What an asshole I am. The worst of it is that I haven’t stopped thinking about them. I keep thinking how stupid it was to toss them.”

“You tossed them, John. That’s the point.”

“Listen, Matthews, this is as much about you as it is about those caps.”

“I understand that,” she said.

“Do you? I don’t think so. You don’t know the half of it.”

Indicating Blue, she said, “I think he’d rather we continue this outside.”

LaMoia found a slight grin. She thought:
That’s better.

They moved toward the front door, the three of them. He hooked her arm and said, “The guys in the cruiser out front. They’ll see us. You know they’re gonna talk if we walk armin-arm.”