Jeffery Deaver: The Burial Hour

Move! You have to move.

He looked over his gear. None of this could be found. Stefan had been careful, but connections could be made, evidence could be discovered, and he absolutely could not afford to be stopped.

He could not, under any circumstances, disappoint Her.

I’m sorry, he repeated. But Euterpe, of course, did not reply.

Stefan stuffed his computer into his backpack, and from the canvas sports bag he’d brought he extracted two other items. A quart jar of gasoline. And a cigarette lighter.

Stefan loved fire. Absolutely loved it. Not the jerky dance of orange and black flames, not the caress of heat. No, what he loved was, not surprisingly, the sound.

His only regret was that he would not be around to hear the crackle and moan as fire turned what is into what is not.

Sachs ran to the twelve-foot-high chain link, the six uniforms behind her.

The gate was secured with a chain and an imposing padlock.

‘Anybody got a breaching tool, bolt cutters?’

But these were patrol officers. They stopped speeders, defused domestics, helped out motorists, restrained mad dogs, busted street buys. Breaching tools were not among their issue gear.

She stood with her hands on her hips, gazing at the factory complex.

There was no question of waiting for Emergency Service; the victim was about to hang to death. The only issue was how to get inside.

Well, one way was obvious and it would have to do. She would gladly have sacrificed her Torino but the snout of the fifty-year-old muscle car was delicate. The squad cars were mounted with push bumpers — those black battering rams that you saw in high-speed-chase videos.

‘Keys,’ she called to a young patrol officer standing nearby, a stout African American woman. She handed them over at once. People tended to respond quickly to an Amelia Sachs demand.

‘Everybody, back.’

‘What’re you... Oh, Detective, no, you aren’t. I gotta write it up, you mess up my front end.’

‘I’ll do the footnotes.’ Sachs dropped into the driver’s seat, went for the belt. Backed up. She shouted out the window, ‘Follow me and spread out and search like hell. Remember, this guy’s got minutes.’

If he’s still alive.

‘Hey, Detective. Look!’ Another officer was pointing into the complex. At the end of a two-story wing of the factory a haze of white and gray mist formed into liver-colored smoke and spiraled upward fast — pushed hard by the heat from a fire. Intense heat.

‘Jesus.’

The unsub had tipped to them and set fire to the room where, she guessed, he’d made the video, intent on destroying the evidence.

And that meant he’d set fire to Robert Ellis too, whether or not he’d already died from hanging.

A voice shouted, ‘I’m calling FD.’

Sachs jammed the accelerator to the floor. The Ford Interceptors weren’t the gutsiest wheels on the block — punching in at 365 horses — but the hundred-foot takeoff run propelled the bulky vehicle plenty fast enough to pop the chain link like plastic and send the two sides of the gate butterflying into the air.

She continued on, the six cylinders exhaling fiercely.

The other cars were directly behind her.

In less than a minute she was at the building that was burning. There was no indication of fire in the front; the smoke was billowing from the back, though it would also be filling the interior, which Sachs and the others now had to hurry through, if they wanted to save the victim.

They had no masks or oxygen but Sachs hardly thought about that. She grabbed a Maglite from the purloined car. Drawing her Glock, she nodded to two other officers — one a short, handsome Latino man, the other a blond woman, hair in a severe ponytail.

‘We can’t wait. You two, with me. We go in, smoke or no.’

‘Sure, Detective.’ The woman nodded.

Sachs, the de facto commander, turned to the others. ‘Alonzo and Wilkes’re going up the middle with me. I want three of you around back, flanking the unsub. And somebody take wheels and circle the perimeter. He can’t’ve gotten very far. Any vehicle, anybody, assume it’s hostile.’

The others left.

The blond officer, Wilkes, covered Alonzo and Sachs as they shouldered their way through the door — thank God, unlocked. She dropped to a crouch inside, sweeping with light and muzzle. Wilkes followed.

It occurred to her just as she breached the portal that the perp was probably certifiably crazy and might have decided to hang around and kill some blue, in a suicidal fit.

But no gunshots.

Listening.

No sounds.

Was Ellis dead? If so, she hoped he’d died from the hanging, not the flames.

The three now started jogging through the corridor, Sachs trying to stay oriented and keeping in mind — in general — where the smoke had been coming from. The factory was decrepit and it stank of mold. Near the entrance, the walls were decorated with graffiti, and there was a collection of used condoms, spent matches, needles and cigarette butts on the floor. Not a lot, though, and Sachs supposed that even the most desperate johns and addicts knew what a toxic-waste Superfund site was and that there were healthier places to shoot up or get a blow job.

Signs above or beside the doors: Machine Operations. Fissile Research. Radiation Badge Testing Center — Do Not Pass Checkpoint B Without Test.

‘Funny, Detective,’ the man beside her said, gasping from the jog.

‘What’s that, Alonzo?’

‘No smoke here.’

True. Odd.

The black column had been quite thick, rising into the sky from a source very close. But there was no smoke directly around them.

Hell, she thought. This was a facility that had fabricated radioactive materials. Maybe at the end of this corridor they would find a thick, and impenetrable, security door, keeping the smoke out — but barring their way, as well.

They came to an L in the hallway, and paused at the juncture but only for a moment. Sachs crouched and went low, sweeping her gun forward.

Wilkes covered her again, with Alonzo going wide.

Nothing but emptiness.

Her radio crackled. ‘Patrol Four Eight Seven Eight. Gap in the fence in the back, K. A local outside said he saw white male, heavyset, beard, exit five minutes ago, running. Bag or backpack. Didn’t see where he went or if he had wheels.’

‘K,’ Sachs whispered. ‘Call it in to the local precinct and ESU. Anyone in the back of the building? Source of fire?’

No one answered. But another officer radioed that the fire department had just arrived and were through the chain link.

Sachs and her colleagues continued up the dogleg of a corridor. Keep going, keep going, she told herself, breathing hard.

They were almost to the back of the wing. Ahead of them was a door. It wasn’t as intimidating or impenetrable as she’d expected: just a standard wooden one and actually slightly ajar. Yet still there was no smoke, which meant there had to be another room, on the other side of this portal, sealed up, where the victim would be.

Sprinting now, Sachs ran through the doorway, pushing forward fast to find the chamber that was in flames.

And, with a breathtaking thud, she slammed directly into Robert Ellis, knocking him off the wooden box. He screamed in terror.

‘Jesus Lord,’ she cried. Then to her backup: ‘In here, fast!’

She clutched Ellis around the waist and lifted hard to keep the pressure of the noose off his neck. Damn, he was heavy.

While Wilkes covered them once more — there was no certainty that the fleeing man was the perp or, if he was, that he was operating alone — Sachs and the other officer lifted Ellis up; Alonzo worked the noose off and pulled the blindfold from his eyes, which scanned the room frantically, like a terrified animal’s. They eased him to the floor.