Ridley Pearson - Chain of Evidence

There was a long pause. Dart could feel Proctor thinking, putting himself in Dart’s position. Proctor said, “We stay with the plan: All rooms that aren’t secure get a thorough search.”

Dart heard the men separate. The guard said to Proctor, “Where are you going? There’s nothing down that way.”

“I need to do something,” Proctor said. “Just do your fucking job,” he chastised.

Rent-a-cops , Dart thought, with equal disdain.

As far as Joe could tell, the guard headed back down toward the bathrooms while Proctor hurried up the corridor. The noise level in the tight space was amazing; despite their name, the acoustic panels did little to muffle any of the sounds. When the guard entered the men’s room, twenty feet behind Dart, every sound could be heard. The man stopped to urinate, and Dart could hear him work his zipper fly. He banged the stall door open. A moment later he was inspecting the women’s room. Not long after, Dart heard the clatter of brooms and mops and knew the guard was in a custodial closet. The detective used the cover of this noise to continue. With the hallway lights ablaze, he could see throughout the tight crawl space, and he plotted which pairs of pipes might support him en route to the computer room.

“… just guard it,” he heard Proctor say somewhere off ahead of him.

“I’m good at finding people,” a deep voice replied. “This is a waste of my talents.”

“Listen, Alverez, if you had any talent, we wouldn’t be here,” Proctor objected.

“You gonna insult me,” the man objected, “and I won’t do the business for you.”

“Do not fuck with me. Get in there and stay there. If and when we need your talents , I’ll send someone for you.”

“He won’t talk, and he won’t walk,” the other man said. “I owe this fucker.”

Dart felt a chill pass through him. Alverez, the man Zeller had wanted to avoid, was guarding the computer room.

Alverez continued. “Make it look like he took a tumble down some stairs. No problem.”

“Down, Rambo,” Proctor said disparagingly. “Just guard the fucking room.”

“Ain’t no problem.”

“And you don’t leave for any reason,” Proctor added.

Dart heard a door open and thump shut. It seemed twenty to thirty feet to his right. The computer room. He studied the pipes to see how to make it over there, then he plotted a course straight ahead ten feet that connected with a single sprinkler pipe he would use to take him over the room. Minutes later, he crossed over to that single pipe. He put his butt on it, his feet out in front of him, hands overhead on an I-beam and, lying back, scooted himself forward a few inches at a time.

Alverez , he was thinking, hearing Zeller’s voice: A guy hired to break my knees.

Without thought, Dart automatically reached down to pat the weapon that Haite had issued him, to make sure it was still there. In the process, he lost his balance, his left hand slipping off the I-beam. He reached out instinctively to block his fall and punched his right hand through an acoustical panel as his left hand saved him. He froze, dangling.

“Billy?” he heard a voice call out. “Hey, Billy? That you?”

Footsteps coming toward him.

Dart was looking down onto a set of plastic recycling bins, just on the other side of the wall from the corridor. He gently fingered the broken piece of panel that hung like a flap and drew it back up silently, partially patching his error.

The footsteps went past him. “Billy?” the voice called out again, growing more distant. He heard a walkie-talkie belch as this man complained, “Whoever’s up on one is making too much fucking noise. Keep it down up there.” A second later a heavy door thumped shut and Dart imagined that this man had left the basement. For good? Dart wondered. Or to get some backup?

He pulled himself back up and continued down the pipe, his butt sore, his fingers cramping. Each of the iron clamps and supports that hung the sprinkler system from the I-beams presented Dart with an obstacle around which he had to maneuver. Five minutes later, he was directly over the computer room, the only sounds the scraping shoes of Alverez as he paced, a bulldog confined to his pen.

All at once, the space went dark again-the basement hallway lights had timed out and had turned themselves off. The only light came in cones and shafts as it escaped the computer room below from holes created to carry conduit and computer and telephone cables. Dart allowed time for his eyes to adjust and then edged forward toward the nearest peephole.

The pipe shifted in a way that Dart had not experienced, a subtle movement that he didn’t understand until he heard a regular ticking sound. He sourced that sound and discovered a leak directly beneath him-a pipe joint had failed under his weight. The sprinkler water dripped like the ticking of a clock. In a moment it would seep through the panel and begin dripping into the room where Alverez paced. Dart reached down and ran his hand along the underside of the pipe, smearing the leaking water, and briefly stopping the drip.

With his hand still on the pipe, he craned himself down to get a look through the peephole, the escaping light flooding his face.

It was no use: He couldn’t control the leak.

Drip … drip … drip … It started up again.

Through the hole in the ceiling panel, he could make out a pair of large boxes the size of small refrigerators, and the corner edge of a desk. Directly below him was vinyl tile flooring. As he was peering down through the hole, he saw the first drop of water, like a small jewel, cascade from the ceiling to the floor, where it exploded.

Another. And another.

Dart worked his hand on the pipe furiously, to try to stop it, but the break was worse, the flow greater. The cold water seeped through his fingers and down to the room below.

Ironically, Alverez came over to inspect the leak. It was as if Dart had issued the man an invitation. And in a heartbeat, Dart understood what had to happen. There was no time to plan, to organize, to waste. Zeller would have called this a hot spot -an instant in time that demands reaction, not thought or consideration, one of those opportunities that comes around only once, and to think about it is to lose it.

Alverez stepped beneath the leak.

Joe Dart let go his grip, and jumped.

Alverez looked up toward the ceiling.

Dart understood intuitively that this moment of surprise was, and would be, his only advantage over an ape like this. He anticipated his landing, the gun coming out of the holster, and firing into the man’s legs if necessary.

He landed on his bad ankle.

The room swirled in a thick blue haze as nausea erupted inside him. He lost his balance and went down onto his back.

Alverez stood there, fighting to get pieces of acoustical tile out of his eyes.

Dart glanced over and saw a bank of computer equipment. He searched for the gear that Ginny had described. Plain vanillia box … He didn’t see what she had described to him. A good deal of the equipment was down an aisle behind the bank of keyboards.

Between Dart and that aisle stood Alverez.

Dart dared not use his gun, for that would alert Proctor-if his fall through the ceiling had not already done so-and, more important, bring the ERT team through the door, locking up the computer.

Alverez was big and stocky, and yet lightning quick. He attacked Dart as a boxer would, cagey and shifting side to side, light on his feet, ready to tangle. Enjoying this.

Dart came to his feet, woozy. Despite his reasoning, he reached for his gun and brought it out aimed at the man’s huge thighs.