Ridley Pearson - The Art of Deception

He pointed to a massive grill installed high on the cement wall.

“Don’t ask me how, because we still haven’t figured it out, but this baby was basically a waterfall.”

Boldt said, “That other emergency door we passed. That would be more like the middle of the block?”

“A little north of center.”

“I’d like a look at it.” Boldt clarified, “Inside it.”

Iberson motioned Boldt back well before a dragon rushed past, wind and dust kicking up behind it. He said, “Sure thing.”

They walked a distance in silence. By this time Boldt’s thoughts were sparking as he assembled a possible explanation for both the missing women and what Iberson had been telling him. He explained as if he absolutely knew this to be fact, “Your ventilation duct penetrates the original retaining wall, constructed to enclose what once were street-level storefronts. When the water main broke, it flooded that area deep enough that your vent went underwater, creating your waterfall and flooding your tunnel.”

They reached the door. It was marked 19.

Boldt asked, “This is which kind, spiral stairs and trapdoor, or building access?”

Iberson shrugged. He didn’t have a clue. “You want a look?”

“Yes.”

Iberson disarmed the door with a key and led Boldt through, saying immediately, “It’s not the trapdoor variety.”

Boldt hadn’t thought so, but he said nothing, preoccupied with trying to put himself in Chen’s shoes or even those of Hebringer and Randolf.

The floor was textured steel plate, the walls a gray metal paneling. The lights flickered on with the opening of the door.

It was a man-made hallway leading twenty feet straight ahead to another door.

“Detective?”

“Lead on.”

They walked twenty or thirty feet before climbing a short flight of steel “fire escape” steps, at the top of which yet another sign on a steel door warned of alarms. Iberson keyed this door as well and pushed it open. It accessed a basement room bearing large EXIT signs directing pedestrians up a flight of stairs to reach the surface. The room itself felt eerily similar to the bank basement Vanderhorst had shown Boldt. If Iberson had his directions correct, then it even seemed possible this room shared a wall with the bank. The basement smelled of fresh paint and mildew. Boldt could hear the rumble of the overhead street traffic for the first time, a sound absent in the bus tunnel.

Iberson said, “Most all of the basement accesses I’ve seen look about like this. Basically nothing in them but a few signs directing traffic.”

Boldt turned and studied the wall the door had led through.

It, too, showed evidence of former windows having been bricked up. The hallway they had passed through connected this wall to the bus tunnel.

Boldt stood there for a few seconds, all else tuned out. He put Hebringer and Randolf into this space-a transcendental moment when he experienced an actual image of a man dragging an unconscious woman by the arms. It was a dreamy, jagged image, not born of anything that had happened here, but his own creation. He knew this perfectly well, and yet he went with it, allowing himself the luxury of a vivid imagination. The man had the woman by both wrists. Her hair cascaded to the floor.

Her blouse ripped, her bra pulled down exposing her right breast, her head hung to the side, lifeless. The killer pulled the gray door open, only to have Boldt find his own left hand on the cool steel metal. The killer looked back at him, but before Boldt could see the face, it melted, along with the man himself.

Susan Hebringer lay on the floor of the man-made hallway connecting the basement to the tunnel. Her eyes popped open, and she looked directly at Boldt. Her face and body changed to that of Chen, the city street worker. Chen had been clubbed on the back of the head and was bleeding. Then he, too, was gone.

“Did you hear anything I just said?” Iberson asked.

Boldt lifted a finger for silence. He studied the door as would any SID tech, running his fingers along its edge, reaching overhead, fingering the crack at the hinges. In a voice he did not recognize as his own, he asked, “How often are the alarms checked? The door alarms,” he clarified.

“I … ah …”

Boldt motioned for Iberson to step through the fire door with him, and the two stood in the steel hallway, and Boldt pulled the door shut behind them. “Arm the door,” Boldt instructed.

Iberson’s hand shook slightly as he keyed the panic bar.

“Okay?” Boldt asked.

“Okay,” Iberson answered.

Boldt pushed against the door’s panic bar and swung the door open. No alarm sounded. Boldt shot Iberson a knowing look.

“No fucking way,” Iberson said, astonished. “Pardon the French,” he said, covering himself.

Boldt examined the doorjamb and located a wire intended for the panic bar. The wire’s insulating sheath had been cut open, a thin blue jumper wire twisted to connect two of the four multicolored wires. The main part of the wire had been cut, no longer connected to the panic bar. Boldt pointed out the modi-fication to Iberson.

“Fuck me,” Iberson said, no longer apologetic for his language.

“Check the other one,” Boldt said, pointing back toward the tunnel. Iberson took off at a run. The hallway was like a jetway at an airport. It thundered as Iberson ran.

Boldt turned and studied the hallway as Iberson stepped through the far emergency door and back into the bus tunnel.

The man pulled the door shut behind him. A moment later when he pushed through, it was to silence. No alarm.

“I’ll be goddamned. How’d you know that?” Iberson’s surprise seemed authentic. If he’d had anything to do with the tampering of these doors, he was a damn good actor.

Boldt reasoned it through-the disarmed doors gave the perpetrator access from both the tunnel and from wherever the basement exit led. He reconsidered: Was it access, or an escape route? Was it both? His chest tight with anticipation, he knew this was a solid discovery-the tampering all but confirmed it.

He thought it through again: an exit or entrance from the bus tunnel, an exit or entrance from the basement of some building up on Third Avenue. “It doesn’t help him,” he muttered.

“What’s that?” Iberson asked, studying the sabotaged wiring on the tunnel door as Boldt had on the interior door. “Same story here.”

Boldt moved panel to panel along the hallway wall. He pushed, thumped a fist against the steel, then jammed his fingers into the cracks and pulled hard as if trying to open a cabinet that had lost its handle. One after the next, he proceeded down the length of the hallway, crossed over, and started up the north side of the hall. The third panel away from the bus tunnel rattled loudly when he thumped it with his closed fist. He signaled Iberson to join him, and the two of them ran their fingers into the cracks, attempting to pry. All at once, the panel jumped off its frame several inches. It was held by a wire-a section of the same colored wire used to bypass the alarm systems-twisted on the far side of the panel. In the dark.

A damp, heavy air surged through the open crack. It smelled like a swamp in there.

Reaching for a pair of latex gloves, Boldt said, “You’re going to have to close the southbound tunnel. Make an excuse.”

“Like hell!”

“In about ten minutes, this place is going to be crawling with lab personnel.” Boldt checked his cell phone service. No signal.

“I’ve got to get to the surface,” he said anxiously. “In the meantime, we lock this up. You and I go out together. No one touches anything. And if anyone asks, you tell them it flooded again.

Whatever you want, I don’t care. But I want no mention of police, no mention of my visit, no mention of the lab guys. You screw it up, I’ll not only have your job, I’ll have you in for obstruction. Are we clear on that?”