Death Angel

THIRTY-THREE

Fifteen minutes later we were on the twelfth floor of the massive storage facility.

Will Jarvis had acknowledged the giant security breach and admitted that whoever signed B. Wicks’s name had forged it. He agreed to let us eyeball the contents of Dalton Portovaults number seven and eight, in light of the subpoena, and because whoever visited a year earlier had been unauthorized to do so.

“You can physically get into the vaults without the owner, can’t you?” Mike asked.

“Certainly. We have to be able to do that in case of a fire or an emergency like that. We’ve had two or three abandonments as well, when owners died without heirs.”

Four workmen had followed us up in the service elevator, and Jarvis pointed them to the units we wanted to view.

One of the men stationed himself near the control switch. When Jarvis gave him the signal to start, the system generated a noise that was frightening in its volume and intensity.

The huge steel vault shook awake like a hibernating bear, whatever motored it growling at us in the dark space. Suddenly, Portovault number seven lurched forward on its rails, coming toward us in the middle of the floor, then chugging as the man at the controls was able to regulate its speed and bring it to a stop.

A pair of wheeled jacks, operated by two of the men, helped them spin the container around to reposition it. Will Jarvis explained that only one end of the giant vault had a door that opened. We stood to the side as he used the master keys-a duplicate of Lavinia Dalton’s set-to unlock the fist-sized bolt, while the foreman disengaged the Day & Meyer backup lock.

It took two of the men to slide open the heavy metal door, chaining it in place on the inner wall of the vault.

Jarvis handed each of us a battery-operated flashlight so that we could look inside the black hole that was the mouth of the vault.

“Watch your step,” he said to Mike. The steel rollers on which the container had been moved were slippery. One of the workers walked over with a stepladder that had been leaning against the far wall of the large room.

Mike and Mercer climbed up onto the platform and stepped into the vault. They were on either side of the container, beaming their lights downward, and I could see the reflection of the many shiny objects inside.

“It’s Archer Dalton’s train set,” Mike said. “An entire silver city of railroad miniatures.”

I saw him squat and pick up one of the cars.

“The originals?” I asked.

“Gorham and Frost. The real deal.”

“The Park?”

“No need to jump up here, Coop,” Mike said. He replaced the train and walked farther into the dark void of the vault. His flashlight’s beam and Mercer’s crisscrossed each other as they examined the contents of the space. “There’s nothing from the Park in here. The railroad tracks take up the entire thing. Grand Central Terminal, the old Penn Station, and every kind of train you can imagine.”

“All in silver?”

“Like Jillian Sorenson said, it must be worth a king’s ransom.”

They took their time examining the entire vault before stepping onto the platform and down the ladder.

“Satisfied, Detective?” Will Jarvis asked.

“For now,” Mike said. “Let’s see number eight.”

It was a difficult job for the men, once they had resecured the locks on the Portovault, to wheel the jacks back into place, push the weighty container into alignment with the rollers, and position it to be docked back into its berth.

There was a slight incline to the floor-perhaps from decades of wear by the loads it bore-and when the motor roared on again, two of the men got behind the vault and steadied it while they shoved to get it moving. Mike and Mercer added their strength to the crew’s manpower, each throwing a shoulder against the giant-sized container.

“Okay, guys,” Jarvis said. “Let’s bring out number eight.”

The foreman never left the controls to help the other men on his team. He was out of sight, near the elevator, and responding to orders from Jarvis.

Mike and Mercer followed two of the workers across the set of rails from the vault they’d just examined and got into place on either side of the transfer platform in front of which number eight would come to a stop.

The rollers beneath number seven stopped humming and vibrating as it was shut down, while its neighbor started to make noise.

The behemoth of a container nosed out of the darkness and headed our way.

Another sound, behind me, made me turn my head. The elevator door was opening, and a shrill voice was calling out for Will Jarvis.

“Where are you, Will? What’s going on?”

It took me a couple of seconds to place the voice, but I recognized it as Jillian Sorenson. Jarvis had managed to call her after all, to alert her to the fact that he was taking Mike and Mercer up to the vaults.

The metal rollers were grinding as the number eight container came barreling down toward us.

Mike had heard the voice, too. “Yo, Ms. Sorenson,” he called out, trying to cross the rail track. “This is police business. You’ll have to wait down-”

I watched in horror as his foot caught between two of the rollers and he fell to his knees.

“Stop it!” I screamed. “Stop the damn thing.”

More than a ton of steel-a Portovault on a fast track-was aiming straight for Mike, ready to crush him against the concrete-reinforced pillar that separated both sides of the vast storage space.

I charged toward Mike as he tried to free his right foot from the roller, praying that the foreman would brake the system, although he couldn’t see what was wrong.

Jarvis had also yelled to cut the power, but the vault kept coming.

Mercer’s back had been to Mike when he fell-looking to see who had gotten off the elevator-but he was still closest to our fallen friend.

The big man bent over and lifted Mike beneath his shoulders, dragging him to safety a moment before the speeding Portovault mashed Mike’s loafer into the spinning rollers and came to a screeching halt.