The Art of Deception

Into the Dark

Boldt and Gaynes descended the stairs two at a time, reaching the basement only seconds after they’d left the security room.

At the most, Vanderhorst had a half minute lead on them.

Boldt keyed the elevator open, then tossed the keys to Gaynes, who was first into the car. She keyed open the back panel as Boldt stepped through. “Sixty seconds,” Boldt said, checking his watch.

They climbed through the open hole, descending a ladder of rebar that protruded from the chamber’s concrete wall. The space between the shaft’s wall and the car was narrow. Gaynes descended effortlessly, while Boldt had to flatten himself, his jacket hanging up on the car’s mechanics. The thick air smelled heavily of grease and electricity. Gaynes switched on a Maglite well before she reached the bottom rung, making the short leap to the shaft’s dirt floor. Boldt followed immediately behind her.

“Lieu!” The Maglite’s beam revealed the inside of a cast-iron coal chute door about two feet square. A false wall of bricks had been stacked to create an illusion, from the Underground side, of an enclosed coal chute. Gaynes kicked down the dry stack, pushed the iron door open further, and squeezed through.

Boldt followed, again straining to get his girth through the small space.

Boldt heard a crackle in his earpiece, and the broken voice of Denny Schaefer as a few radio waves managed to briefly penetrate the depths. He couldn’t understand a word that was said: They were on their own.

They stood in one of the dark underground hallways, vaguely familiar from the previous foray into the underground city block.

Boldt used sign language to direct Gaynes, indicating that they would split up. She would take this hallway, Boldt would move south and search for another. Gaynes acknowledged. Boldt’s fists came together: They could reunite at the far end of the underground space.

Boldt got his flashlight lit. Ninety seconds had elapsed since they’d lost Vanderhorst.

They heard a crash in the distance-wood and then glass.

Too far away to discern someone running.

Boldt took off into the dark, through a huge, empty room.

He found a second hallway and turned left, his mind searching for explanations for that noise. Certainly Vanderhorst, if their man, would know this city block of the Underground intimately, an area the size of several football fields. So what, or who, had made that noise-and was it worth following? Boldt slopped through mud and debris, believing that by then Gaynes would be passing close to the lair. She would take a few seconds to inspect it. In that time, Boldt found himself at the end of the hall.

He took the door to the right, into and through a former barbershop, the beam of light catching his own reflection in the dusty mirrors, still intact. He jumped back from his own reflected image, stumbled over a barber chair, and fell down, the chair noisily spinning on rusted joints. Boldt clambered to his feet, dodged debris on his way out yet another door, and found himself in a section of Underground sidewalk he hadn’t seen on his earlier exploration. The sidewalk was caved in ahead, choked with earth and stone, reminding him how fragile an environment this was. He took the first doorway to his left that he encountered, working his way judiciously through a room filled with discarded washing machines and tooling equipment that had to go back forty years.

Through this door he reached another short hallway, and up ahead a tangle of yellow police tape. He paused here, aware this had been what he’d heard only moments before-Vanderhorst had been tripped up by one of their yellow tapes. Blood beat loudly in his ears, his mouth dry, his body damp with sweat. He thought of his promises to Liz to stay behind the desk, of his kids and their bright faces. But then in his mind’s eye he saw Susan Hebringer’s unconscious body being dragged down this hallway, a face now attached to the man dragging her, and he inched forward, following the unmistakable sound, an uneven scraping-something dragging-through a door to his right.

He followed that sound, careful of his own footfalls. He’s limping. Vanderhorst had hurt himself in the fall caused by the crime scene tape. Boldt moved more quickly, seizing the opportunity, aware all of a sudden of footfalls approaching rapidly from his left. Gaynes. He cupped the flashlight. This was the horror house in the amusement park, where goblins and witches and skeletons jumped out at you. Boldt braced himself for surprise, his nerves electric with anticipation.

He crossed through to a smaller room, fully covering the flashlight’s lens with his fingers and issuing darkness. He could smell the man now-the sour human fear. He’s close.

He heard the whoosh to his left, and credited his sensitive hearing with sparing him the blow. As he ducked, a piece of lumber cut just above his head, and that promise to Liz loomed all the more clearly. He slipped his fingers off the flashlight, and the beam swiped the side of Vanderhorst’s face like the slice of a sword. Boldt saw fear and determination. He saw what Susan Hebringer would have seen as she’d come awake in captivity.

The timber caught Boldt in the gut on its return.

Boldt bent over and fell back, but kicked out mightily as he went down, connecting with the side of the man’s knee and causing Vanderhorst to cry out as he careened into a shelf of rusted paint cans and spilled them in a waterfall of tin to the floor. Vanderhorst clawed and picked his way through the debris to the far end of the room, delivered a chair through what remained of a window, and was following through himself when Boldt got a hand on him. He pulled the man back, so that Vanderhorst’s head and shoulders struck the floor. Boldt swung a paint can and struck the man in the head. The lid popped off, a thick red sludge melting down the side of Vanderhorst’s face and shoulder, looking like fresh blood.

His right foot on the man’s throat, Boldt sighted down the barrel of his handgun, the flashlight catching the whites of com-placent eyes. The sudden calm in those eyes went straight to Boldt’s stomach. Vanderhorst held the wire handle of a paint can gripped firmly in his left hand, ready to strike.

Boldt said, “Do it,” his breath shallow and quick. “Do us all a favor.”

Gaynes caught up to them, breathless. “Easy, Lieu.”

Boldt backed off, removing his foot from the man’s throat.

Vanderhorst released the can’s wire handle, slowly closed his eyes, and said, “I want a lawyer.”