Brett Battles - Shadow of Betrayal

“I was he—”

“Don’t lie to me,” Quinn cut him off.

Al licked his lips again. “I left, okay? Went for a walk.”

“All evening?”

“Yeah. Okay? All evening,” Al said.

“Why did you leave?”

“I can go out when I want,” he said defensively. “I don’t have to be here all the time. Mr. Monroe told me that when he let me live here.”

“Who’s Mr. Monroe?”

“He owns the building.”

“Why did you leave today, Al? Did you hear something you didn’t want to? Then decided it was better to find something else to do?”

The caretaker’s pause was all the confirmation Quinn needed.

“Tell me the truth, or I’ll have my friend here, the one you hit with your head, shoot you someplace that won’t kill you, not right away, but it’ll hurt like hell.”

Al took another look at Nate. The sight must have been enough to convince him.

“I heard her come in, okay?” he said.

“Her?” Quinn asked.

“A woman. It was around sunset.”

“How do you know it was a woman if you only heard her?”

“I, eh, snuck downstairs. Sometimes we get kids in here. You know, try to trash the place. If I surprise them, it scares the hell out of them, and they leave. So I come down to do the same thing, okay? Only when I come down to the basement and peek around the corner, it’s not kids. It’s a woman. And she looks like she ain’t here to trash the place. But she got that door open, you know? That door you’re not supposed to go through. I was going to warn her, but she was already stepping inside. Then … boom.”

“How did you know you weren’t supposed to go through that door?”

“Shit. I don’t know … I just know it, okay?”

“Not okay, Al. How did you know?”

Al closed his eyes. “Goddammit,” he said under his breath.

“Al.” The sharp tone of Quinn’s voice brought the man back into the here and now.

“He told me, all right? He told me about the room.”

“Who?”

“Mr. Monroe,” Al said. “Who else?”

“What exactly did Mr. Monroe tell you about the room?” Quinn asked.

“That it was dangerous. You’d die if you went in there.”

“So you never tried to see for yourself?”

“Hell no,” the man said. “He made it very clear if you went in there, you wouldn’t come out. He was right, too. Jesus, what a mess.”

“And you didn’t stay around to see if she might need any help?” Quinn asked.

“A fall like that, I figured she was dead. Didn’t want to be here when the cops came and found her.”

“So you left.”

“Yeah.”

“Where’d you go?” Quinn asked.

Al hesitated.

“You went to a bar, didn’t you?”

Al moved his gaze away from Quinn, then nodded. “I needed a drink, you know?”

“Why’d you do that?”

“Mr. Monroe is not going to be happy about this,” Al said. “I was going to get the hell out of here, then I passed the bar, and decided getting drunk would be a first good step.”

“You don’t seem drunk.”

Al licked his lips like he wished there was a bottle nearby. “I stopped after three.”

“Why?”

“Got to thinking about that woman.”

“You felt guilty and decided to come back and check on her?”

“Something like that.”

“Or did you decide you wanted to see if she had anything valuable on her you could hock?”

Al pushed himself up on his elbows, his head shaking side to side. “No. That wasn’t it. Like you said before. I wanted to make sure she was all right. I may be kind of on a downswing, you know, but I ain’t a thief. Never been a thief.”

“So what happened when you came back?” Quinn asked.

“You hear me? I’m not a thief.”

“I heard you. Tell me what you found when you returned.”

Al bit his lower lip, then took a deep breath. “I… I could tell someone else had been here. There were lots of footprints in the hallway. They weren’t there before. When I looked down into the room, I didn’t see the woman anywhere. Figured someone had come and gotten her.”

“So you decided then it was okay to stay? Your boss is still going to find out about the mess.”

“I know that! I went back upstairs to pack my things. I was sitting around wondering if I could stay the night or should just leave. That’s when I heard you all down here.”

Quinn stood. “You can get up, but I wouldn’t move around much.”

Quinn nodded toward Orlando and Nate, then made the shape of a gun with his fingers, and moved his thumb back and forth a couple of times like he was shooting. The look in Al’s eyes told him the caretaker was going to be very cooperative.

Quinn moved down the hallway so that he was out of Al’s earshot, then pulled out his phone and called Peter.

“Find anything?” Peter said.

“Your agent was a woman,” Quinn said.

“I never told you otherwise.”

Quinn was silent for a moment. “She was looking in the wrong room.”

“What do you mean?”

Quinn described the door Orlando found.

“You think you can get in without tripping any explosives?”

“There might be a way. But people will know someone’s been there. I won’t be able to cover it up.”

Peter didn’t even hesitate. “Do it.”

“Fine,” Quinn said. “Then what would you like me to do with the eyewitness?”

“What eyewitness?” Peter asked, surprised.

Quinn smiled to himself. Didn’t expect that, did you, Peter? “Says his name is Al Barker. Said he saw your agent go into the room just before the explosion.”

“He was there?”

“Says he left right after.”

“Describe him.”

Quinn gave him a quick snapshot of Al’s vitals.

The tone of Peter’s voice changed from one of surprise and concern to one of controlled anger. “Hold him there. I’m sending someone to pick him up.”

“All right,” Quinn said. “You can probably get a description of this Monroe guy out of him, but I doubt much more.”

“Find anything else I should know about?”

“No. That’s it.”

Peter hung up.

“Please,” Al said. “Don’t open it. We’ll die like that lady did.”

They’d brought Al and Nate with them when they returned to the other doorway. Once Al saw where they were going, he’d tried to stop walking. But Nate’s gun in his back was enough of a prod to keep him moving forward.

“Do you know what’s behind this?” Quinn asked the caretaker.

“No,” Al said. “Always been locked. You should leave it that way.”

“I’m planning on it.”

Quinn picked up the two-by-four he’d left on the floor earlier.

“Move him back a few feet,” Quinn said.

His apprentice nodded, then pulled Al out of Quinn’s swing zone.

“What are you going to do with that?” Al asked.

Quinn held on to the middle of the two-by-four with one hand, and wrapped the other hand around the end pointed away from the wall. He pulled it back high behind his head, then swung it forward. Like a battering ram, the two-by-four smashed into the soft spot of the wall.

There was a loud crack as the plaster and the wooden slats beneath it shattered under the force of the blow.

“Hey! Stop it,” Al said. “Mr. Monroe is going to be pissed.”

“According to you, Mr. Monroe is already pissed,” Quinn said. He pulled the two-by-four back, raising it high again. “What’s behind the door?”

“I don’t know! I swear!”

Quinn drove the board into the wall again.

“Ah, man,” Al said. “No one’s supposed to go in there.”

“What’s inside, Al?”

Al’s shoulders slumped. “You might as well finish it. I don’t know.”