Michael Prescott - In Dark Places

One of the uniformed cops, whose name, she had learned, was Beecher, stepped into the office, rover radio in hand. "A-forty-three's at the residence. They found the front gate jimmied open."

Robin sank onto the couch. "Oh, God."

"Why would he need to force the gate?" Wolper asked. "He took your keys."

"My car keys. Not the house keys. That's a separate set."

Beecher was listening as the dispatcher relayed communications from the West LA unit. Robin heard only screeches and squawks, but apparently the noise was intelligible to the patrol officer. "They've found the door to the unit ajar. They're going in."

She bit back a moan. There was an endless period of silence before the radio crackled again. "The unit is empty. No sign of your daughter, Dr. Cameron."

The words seemed hollow and unreal, like a line of dialogue in a movie.

"Was there a struggle?" she heard herself ask.

Beecher shook his head. "They haven't reported any indications of violence."

"They should talk to the neighbors," Robin said dully. "One of them may have seen something, heard something."

"They will, Doctor. That's standard procedure."

Standard. But there was nothing standard about any of this. She felt her control slipping.

She sank onto the couch, her lower body going numb.

Years ago, on a trip to Oregon, she'd been caught in a snowstorm while driving through the Cascade Mountains, and her tires had lost traction on the icy road. The sickening sense of the road surface sliding out from under her, the car yawing toward the guardrail, the steering wheel useless in her hands amp; that was what she felt now, as her world and her life spun away.

Some kind of barely repressed hysteria hiccuped inside her, threatening to break out in a flood of screams and sobs. She pressed down on it with the full force of her self-control, refusing to fall apart when Meg was in danger and needed her. Later there would be time for helplessness, but not now.

"Dr. Cameron?" Wolper's voice, from far away. "Robin?"

She didn't answer.

Her daughter was gone.

"Inside," Gabe said again, as Meg hesitated on the threshold of the doorway.

When she didn't react, he hustled her through the door, into a large open space lit by narrow windows and skylights high overhead. In the middle of the room were two long conveyor belts, rusted and useless. Crates tied shut with twine were scattered around the dust-caked concrete-floored room like islands in a gray sea. Doorways at the far end of the room hinted at side passages that perhaps branched into a warren of halls and offices, lavatories and lunchrooms, all the places used by the employees who were now only ghosts.

"What kind of place is this?" she breathed.

"Bottling plant. Some soft drinkDr Pepper, maybe. Shut down in the seventies, around the time this whole part of town was going belly-up. Been stripped of everything valuable."

"How did you know about it?"

"Years ago when I'd just started working patrol, we got a DB call here." He smiled at her incomprehension. "DBshort for dead body."

"Oh."

"Some bum had been squatting in here. OD'd or stroked out or something. Other vagrants found the body. I remembered it because the dead guy had been here a long time. Seemed like a good place to stash a body."

Is that what I am ? Meg wondered. A body ?

"So you really are a cop," she whispered.

"Real as steel. Were you starting to doubt it?"

"I'd like to think a cop wouldn't amp;"

"Commit the occasional felony? Sweet meat, you got a lot of growing up to do."

"Will I get the chance to do it?"

He didn't answer. She hadn't thought he would.

In silence he led her across the cavernous room to a metal door in the far corner. When he opened it, the feeble daylight from the windows and skylights illuminated a flight of stairs, descending into darkness.

"Go down," Gabe said.

Meg looked at him. "No."

"It's only for a little while." He shifted the gun in his hand, just enough for her to become aware of it. "I need to stash you somewhere."

"You'll kill me down there."

"It's a holding area, that's all." He gestured with the gun. "Now go down."

"Please," Meg said.

"I don't have time to argue. Get the fuck down there. Do it."

There was no pity in his face, no memory of affection.

Heart pounding, she reached out for the metal handrail and made her way down the staircase with Gabe at her back. The treads were steel, and there were no risers, only gaps between the treads that threatened to catch her foot and pitch her forward into blackness.

At the bottom she turned to look at him. He was right behind her, smiling. "Give me your hand," he said.

"My hand?" she said blankly.

He grabbed her left hand, not asking again. Something glinted in the semidarkness. Handcuffs. He fastened one cuff to her wrist, the other to the handrail at hip level.

"Sit tight," he said. "I'll be back for you. That's a promise."

He mounted the stairs. She reached for him with her free hand. "Please, Gabe amp;"

He laughed, shrugging free of her. "That's not even my name, you dumb bitch."

She watched him climb to the top, becoming a silhouette against the daylight. She expected him to look down, say something more, acknowledge her in some way, but he just closed the door. Darkness slammed down like an anvil.

She hugged the handrail, listening as his footfalls receded into silence.

Alone. She was alone in this place, this basement in a deserted bottling plant.

She rattled her cuffed wrist uselessly against the handrail and tried not to cry. She prided herself on not being a crier, and normally she wasn't, but these circumstances weren't normal, and she decided she could cut herself a break.

She cried because she was alone and scared, and because she would probably die soon, and because Gabe had called her an immature kid and worse things, and because she wanted to be out of here, home and safe, and she wanted her mom.

Not Robin, not anymore.

Her mom.

The offices of the OCB, Operations-Central Bureau, were located in the Central Facilities Building on Sixth Street in downtown LA, a spot conveniently close to Parker Center, LAPD headquarters, where Hammond intended to work someday.

He let his adjutant follow him into his office and shut the door. His uniform hung in the closet, clean and unwrinkled, where Lewinsky had placed it after removing it from Hammond's locker. He took down the hanger.

"Give me the overview," he said, unbuttoning his shirt.

"Gray escaped from custody at Cameron's office in Rampart. He stole her car and fled the scene."

"Armed?"

"He took the dead deputy's service piece."

"Deputy shouldn't have been carrying when the prisoner was offloaded from the felony bus anyway."

"Van," Lewinsky said. "It was a van. And no, he shouldn't have been carrying, but according to his partner, he was."

"Why wasn't Gray in leg irons, handcuffs?"

"Apparently Cameron had insisted on minimal restraints."

"Stupid bitch. He should've offed her. Don't quote me on that."

"No, sir." Lewinsky looked away as Hammond pulled off his pants.

"Any witnesses report which direction Gray was headed in?"

"No, but we caught one break. Because of that carjack attempt yesterday, Cameron's Saab is visibly damaged. It'll be easy to spot."

"Gray will ditch the Saab as soon as possible, if he hasn't already. We got ASTRO flying?"

"Choppers are up."

"Area cars?"

"Alerts have gone out to all patrol units, and of course we've dispatched BOLOs to the sheriff's office and all municipal PDs."

"CHP too? Orange County? Riverside?"