Something ahead. A dull glint. The flashlight beam jumped in his hand, then steadied. A door at the top of a gently sloping ramp. Another steel door.
It had a handle. He gave it a pull. Nothing. The door didn’t move. He set the flashlight on the floor and grabbing the handle with both hands, he pulled again.
Nothing.
He staggered backward, wiping a hand across his face. Pulling in a deep breath, he grabbed the handle again and pulled hard. It gave way and opened with a loud scrape. Dust and a dim light flooded the tunnel. He grabbed the flashlight and squeezed through the opening.
For a second or two, Louis just stood there, hands on knees, eyes closed. Then he straightened and looked around. He was in a large ground-floor room. As his breathing slowed, things came into focus: shelves . . . rows and rows of them. It looked like a storage room of some kind. A low-slanting light was coming through the grated windows, but it was too weak for him to make out details. He turned the flashlight up over the shelves. They were empty, but he could make out the faded label on the nearest one: CONDIMENTS. He moved the light down the long rows of shelving and picked out other labels: FLOUR. SUGAR.
The warehouse . . . he remembered now seeing it on the map. He unfolded the map. Yes . . . a large building in the far southwestern corner of the compound. He had to be in the warehouse.
He walked slowly through the rows of shelves. There were cans on some of the shelves, he saw now, large dusty cans. He stopped and turned one around. The blue label said STEWED TOMATOES. And it had the distinctive lettering he had seen before: SOUTHERN MICHIGAN FOOD SUPPLIERS.
So this was where he got his food. But how did he get in and out? Was that tunnel he had just come through somehow connected all the way back to E Building?
He found his way to the front entrance and flipped the lock, going out into the cold air. He stood on the frozen grass, looking north to the physical therapy building. He turned to his right and in dim light, he could just make out the spires of the infirmary far off in the northeast. He couldn’t see E Building, but he knew it was there, just behind the infirmary, out on the farthest corner of the compound.
How in the hell did this guy get all the way from there to here without being detected?
There was only one answer. Somehow the tunnels were connected, despite the cinder-block walls. There was an entrance somewhere, and he had missed it.
He was too tired and too cold to go back and look again—alone. He locked the warehouse door and pulling up the collar of his jacket, started back across the compound.
As he was walking past the back entrance of the administration building, one of the guards he had seen earlier emerged.
“Hey,” Louis called out, “you seen Zeke?”
“Nah. He probably left already. His shift was over at three.” The man hurried off to his car.
Louis hesitated, then set off for E Building. He hadn’t gone in there on his search for the tunnels, but he couldn’t remember if he had locked it when he and Dr. Seraphin left earlier. Zeke was probably still waiting for him there to return the keys.
Hunched into his jacket, Louis cut a quick diagonal across the compound, passing the infirmary entrance and turning left to E Building.
Sure enough, he had left the door unlocked. He went into the lobby. It was dark inside and icy cold.
“Zeke?” Louis called out. “You in here?”
No answer.
“Hey, Zeke!”
His voice echoed and died. Louis turned to go back out the door. The beam of the flashlight picked up a spot of color on the floor.
Blood. Louis dropped to one knee, touching a finger to the stain on the terrazzo floor. It was wet, but cool to the touch. And there was more. Trailing toward the staircase, small smears that looked brushed on the terrazzo like paint. On the bottom step, a larger, thicker streak.
Louis drew his Glock and moved the flashlight beam over the steps of the dim stairwell. The blood grew darker and heavier as the steps went up, and Louis followed the path, pressing himself against the wall to avoid stepping in it.
“Zeke!” he shouted.
His voice hung unanswered in the cold air. He reached the second-floor landing. The door was ajar, the edge covered in bloody fingerprints where someone had pulled it open. The floor was puddled and smeared with splashes of red.
“Zeke!” Louis screamed.
Nothing.
Louis stepped out onto the second floor, spinning first right, then left. The blood trail went left, down the hall, long, crimson streaks along the floor, like a body was being dragged. But there was so much blood, Louis knew the body had still been bleeding, the person still alive, when it was moved.
He stayed near the wall, listening for any noise, his eyes following the blood almost to the end of the hall. Then the bloody path took a sharp right turn to a closed door. The plate on the door read THERAPY. Under that, there was a slot for another plate, but it was empty.
Louis stood stiff against the door frame, slowly reaching down to try the knob. When he touched it, the door eased open and Louis stepped away from it, leveling the gun.
He heard nothing and after a few seconds, he stole a look inside.
The room was no more than ten by ten feet. The faded yellow walls were defaced with red and black graffiti. There was no furniture.
Zeke was propped up against the far wall. His chin was on his chest, his light hair wet with blood, arms limp at his side, legs spread out in front of him. His navy blue uniform was shiny with blood.
Louis stepped inside, checking behind the door, then spinning back to Zeke. He dropped to one knee and put a hand to Zeke’s forehead to tilt his head back.
Louis swallowed back a small gag.
Zeke’s throat was slashed, the skin ripped and ragged, like it had been torn apart with short angry strokes.
Louis drew back and pulled in a breath to calm the rising bile and anger. Then he stood quickly and reached for the door, his head spinning.
The man might still be inside E Building somewhere, but Louis wasn’t sure whether to search now or leave Zeke here while he went back to the administration building to call the police.
Damn it.
Why had this happened? Why wasn’t he halfway down the hall, going after this guy already?
The radio. Zeke’s radio. Louis started to reach down to Zeke’s belt, but his eyes caught a bright streak of red on the wall above Zeke’s head.
It was mixed in with the other graffiti, but Louis could see now it was fresh, still dripping, and written in blood.
One word: BITCH. And a bloody handprint.
CHAPTER 31
The rain had turned to snow by the time the state police arrived. The dark blue patrol cars in the parking lot looked as if they had been sprinkled with powdered sugar. A few uniforms stood rigid at doorways, others darted in and out of buildings, scrambling to find some trace of Zeke’s killer.
Louis stood just inside the door to E Building, hands in his pockets, watching the snowfall. Down the hall, troopers were scouring the rooms and he could hear them opening and closing doors. Another trooper stood on the landing between the first and second floors, arms crossed, posture stiff. Louis could hear a clamor of voices, footsteps, and radio transmissions coming from upstairs.
He stepped outside, staying under the portico. He saw a black van coming across the grass and guessed it was the medical examiner or coroner. Behind it was an unmarked state car with a light on the dash.
Louis looked out across the grounds. They could send a hundred men and he doubted they would find the killer. He thought about the four files in his car, and he knew he should turn them over. But it was going to be impossible to justify having them and harder yet to tell the state police how he got the patients’ names in the first place.
The door opened and a man pushed out. Tall, bulky, his face ruddy from too many Michigan winters, his hair a golden brush cut on a square head. He wore a navy peacoat, a gold badge on the front, the buttons pulling across a wide chest.
“You Louis Kincaid?”
“Yes,” Louis said.
The man sniffed from the cold and gave him a hard stare. “I’m Detective Bloom, State Police. They tell me you’re a private detective. You got some paper?”
Louis wondered who had told this man he was a P.I. He had hoped the Ardmore P.D. badge would get him by these questions. Maybe it still would.
Louis showed him the badge. “I am a P.I., but I’m working with the Ardmore police.”
Bloom looked at the badge, snorting softly. “Some hick chief handing you a piece of tin doesn’t make you a cop here. You got a P.I. license?”
“In Florida.”
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“I’m trying to locate a former patient for a friend, that’s all.”
The detective reached inside his coat and pulled out a notebook, flipping it open with one hand. “What’s the patient’s name?”
Louis looked at him. He didn’t want to give anyone Claudia’s name, but he knew they had to check him out, and that would mean going back as far as they could. He had no idea what they’d find, or what might still be on record for him in Michigan.
“Claudia DeFoe.”
Bloom wrote it down. “Your address here and in Florida, your middle name, and your Social Security number, Kincaid.”
Louis gave him the information, his eyes drifting across the grounds. He saw a white police car in the distance and wondered if it was Dalum.
“Why were you in this building?” Bloom asked.
Louis kept his eyes on the parking lot. This was going to get messy real quick. “I was helping Chief Dalum investigate the murder of Rebecca Gruber and—”
“I thought you were looking for this DeFoe woman.”
“It started out that way, but then Chief Dalum asked me to assist him with—”
“I told Dalum to let us handle it.”
“It’s his town,” Louis said. “He’s protective of it. He was just trying to help.”
Two men from the county van came up the steps with a gurney and a body bag, and Louis and Bloom stepped aside to let them pass.
“We don’t need his help,” Bloom said. “Or yours. Did it occur to you that maybe by sneaking around out here, you set this guy off and you got that guard killed?”
Louis tightened his jaw, biting back his first reply. Bloom was partly right. But he hadn’t been the one to set the killer off. Louis believed it might have been Dr. Seraphin whom the killer was calling a bitch. And he knew he needed to tell Bloom that. But there was no way to say it and not lose Dr. Seraphin as an ally.
“You fucking amateurs,” Bloom said.
“Look,” Louis said, “when Rebecca Gruber was murdered, you guys made a big show out of coming out here and working the scene. But despite the fact that this place is enclosed by a fence, and the victim was an on-duty employee, and the killer likely lives out here somewhere, you left
no one
here for surveillance or to protect the remaining employees.”
“Now I got some private dick telling me how to run my investigation,” Bloom said.
“You didn’t even seal the tunnels back off,” Louis snapped.
“They’re all walled up, you dumb shit.”
“Well, you missed one. At least.”
“You been down there?”
“Yeah.”
“I oughta bust you for that.”
“Go ahead.”
The door banged open and three uniforms came out. Bloom grabbed Louis’s arm and pulled him off the steps and onto the grass. The snow was growing heavier and Louis jerked up the collar of his jacket.
“You carrying a gun, Kincaid?”
He
was
carrying a concealed weapon, and he knew Michigan was supposed to recognize his Florida permit. But Bloom seemed like the kind of guy who had his own way of doing things.
Bloom noticed Louis’s hesitation and thrust out his hand.
“Let me see it,” he said.
Louis reached under his jacket and withdrew the Glock, holding it out to Bloom by the trigger guard.
Bloom took it, then held out his other hand. “Now your Florida P.I. license and CCW permit.”
Louis dug them out his wallet and handed them to Bloom. Bloom eyed them both, then looked up.
“Okay, P.I.,” he said. “Tell me what you know about this case.”
Louis blew out a breath. “The chief and I think it’s an ex-patient, probably come home to make some kind of statement about the place closing.”
“What makes you think that?”
“All three victims were killed here and left here.”
“You’re so smart, why bury one and leave the other girl above ground where we can find her?”