Lisa Gardner: Hide

She started walking without waiting to see if he'd follow.

Beneath the blue awning, Bobby found a pile of Tyvek coveralls plus shoe booties and hairnets. He pulled the papery material over the top of his clothes, while D.D. exchanged her soiled booties for a fresh pair. There were two eye-and-snout masks lying next to the coveralls. D.D. didn't take one, so neither did he.

"I'll go first," D.D. said. "I'll yell 'Clear' when I hit the bottom, then it's your turn."

She gestured toward the back and Bobby caught the faint glow coming from a roughly two-by-two-foot opening in the ground. The top of a metal ladder protruded above the earthen lip. It gave him a strange feeling of deja vu, as if he should know exactly what he was seeing.

And then, in the next instant, he got it; he knew why D.D. had called him. And he knew what he would see when he went down into the pit.

D.D. brushed his shoulder with her fingertips. The touch shocked him. He flinched; she immediately pulled away Her blue eyes were somber, too large in her pale face.

"See you in five, Bobby," she said quietly.

She disappeared down the ladder.

Two seconds later, he heard her voice again: "All clear."

Bobby descended into the abyss.

IT WASN'T DARK. Spotlights had been placed in the corner, moveable light strips hung from the ceiling; crime-scene technicians needed bright lights for their laborious work.

Bobby kept his gaze focused in front of him, breathing shallowly through his mouth and processing the scene in small bits.

The chamber was deep, at least six feet tall; it easily cleared the top of his head. Wide enough for three people to stand shoulder to shoulder, it loomed ahead of him for nearly two full body lengths. Not a random sinkhole, he thought immediately, but something intentionally and painstakingly made.

The temperature was cool, but not cold. It reminded him of caves he'd once visited in Virginia; the air a constant fifty-five degrees, like a walk-in refrigerator.

Smell, not as bad as he had feared. Earthy, laced with the faintest odor of decay. Whatever had happened here, it was almost done now, hence the presence of the forensic anthropologist.

He touched one earthen wall with his gloved hand. It felt hard-packed, lightly ridged. Not bumpy enough to have been dug with a shovel; space was probably too big for that kind of labor anyway He would guess the cavern had originally been dug with a backhoe. Maybe a culvert that had been ingeniously reengineered with another purpose in mind.

He moved ahead two feet, came to the first support beam, an old, splintering two-by-four. It formed part of a crude buttress arching over the room. A second buttress appeared three feet after the first.

He explored the ceiling with his fingertips. Not dirt, but plywood.

D.D. caught his motion. "Whole ceiling's wood," she supplied. "Topped with dirt and debris except for the opening, where he left an exposed wooden panel he could plop on and off. When we first got here, it looked like random construction debris lying in the middle of an overgrown field. You'd never guess… You'd never know…" She sighed, looked down, then seemed to try to shake herself out of it.

Bobby nodded curtly. The space was fairly clean, spartanly furnished: an old five-gallon bucket placed next to the ladder, lettering so faded with age, only dim shadows remained; a folded-up metal chair, corners laced with rust, propped against the left-hand wall; a metal shelving unit, spanning the length of the far wall, covered in bamboo blinds on the verge of disintegration.

"Original ladder?" he asked.

"Metal chain link," D.D. answered. "We've already bagged it as evidence."

"Plywood cover obscuring the opening, you said? Find any good sticks around?"

"One approximately three feet in length and an inch and a half thick. Bark worn off. Props up the plywood cover about as you'd expect."

"And the shelves?" He took a step toward them.

"Not yet," D.D. spoke up sharply

He concealed his surprise with a shrug, then turned to face her; it was her party after all.

"I don't see many evidence placards," he said at last.

"It's that clean. It's like the subject closed it up. He used it. For a while, I'm willing to bet, then one day he simply moved on."

Bobby studied her intently, but she didn't elaborate.

"Feels old," he commented.

"Abandoned," D.D. specified.

"Got a date?"

"Nothing scientific. We'll have to wait for Christie's report."

He waited again, but once more she refused to provide additional information.

"Yeah, okay," he said after a moment. "It looks like his work. You and I only have secondhand details, though. Have you contacted the detectives who worked the original scene?"

She shook her head. "I've been here since midnight; haven't had a chance to check the old case file yet. That's a lot of years back, though. Whichever officers handled it, they're bound to be retired by now."

"November eighteen, 1980," Bobby provided softly

D.D. got a tight look around her mouth. "Knew you'd remember," she murmured grimly. She straightened her shoulders. "What else?"

"That pit was smaller, four by six. I don't recall any mention of support beams in the police report. I think it's safe to say it was less sophisticated than this one. Jesus. Reading about it still isn't the same as seeing it. Jesus."

He touched the wall again, feeling the hard-packed earth. Twelve-year-old Catherine Gagnon had spent nearly a month in that first earthen prison, living in a timeless black void interrupted only by visits from her captor, Richard Umbrio, who had held her as his own personal sex slave. Hunters had found her by accident shortly before Thanksgiving, when they had tapped on the plywood cover and been startled to hear faint cries below. Catherine had been saved; Umbrio sent to prison.

The story should've ended there, but it didn't.

"I don't remember any mention of other victims at Umbrio's trial," D.D. was saying now.

"No."

"Doesn't mean he hadn't done it before, though."

"No."

"She could've been his seventh victim, eighth, ninth, tenth. He wasn't the type to talk, so anything's possible."

"Sure. Anything's possible." He understood what D.D. left unsaid. And it's not like they could ask . Umbrio had died two years ago, shot by Catherine Gagnon, under circumstances that had been the true death knell to Bobby's STOP career. Funny how some crimes just went on and on and on, even decades later.

Bobby's gaze returned to the covered shelves, which he noticed D.D. was still avoiding. D.D. hadn't called him at two in the morning to look at a subterranean chamber. BPD hadn't issued red-ball deployment for a nearly empty pit.

"D.D?" he asked quietly

She finally nodded. "Might as well see it for yourself. These are the ones, Bobby, who didn't get saved. These are the ones who remained down in the dark."

BOBBY HANDLED THE blinds carefully. The cords felt old, rotting in his hands. Some of the tiny interwoven pieces of bamboo were splintering, snagging on the strings, making the shade difficult to roll. He could smell the taint stronger here. Sweet, almost vinegary. His hands shook in spite of himself and he had to work to steady his heartbeat.

Be in the moment, but outside the moment. Detached. Composed. Focused.

The first blind rolled up. Then the second.

What helped him the most, in the end, was sheer incomprehension.

Bags. Clear plastic garbage bags. Six of them. Three on the top shelf, three on the bottom, positioned side by side, tied neatly at the top.

Bags. Six of them. Clear plastic.

He staggered back.

There were no words. He could feel his mouth open, but nothing was happening, nothing coming out. He just looked. And looked and looked, because such a thing couldn't exist, such a thing couldn't be. His mind saw it, rejected it, then saw the image and fought with it all over again. He couldn't… It couldn't…