Geographically proximate, unchanging, undisturbed, always accessible, and perfectly safe.
It fits. But would Peters really use it like that?
One way to find out.
The door was oak, dense and heavy, mounted on massive forged hinges that looked like they might date back to the founding of the cemetery. The lock was newer, a deadbolt that looked out of place. Cooper paused, glanced around. Some distance away, an elderly woman limped down the path, a bouquet of flowers dangling from one hand. There was the sound of a lawn mower, and, more distant, a siren.
He knelt in front of the door and took a closer look at the lock. A year ago, when Cooper had needed to get through locked doors, he used a ram. Lock picking was for thieves, not DAR agents.
Then he became a thief. It hadn’t taken long to learn; once you understood the fundamentals, the rest was just a matter of practice, and he’d had time. The lock was stiff, but he had it popped inside two minutes.
Cooper gripped the iron handle and pulled. With a rusty screech, the hinges gave. The door opened slowly. Sharp sunlight spilled into the crypt. The floor was stone, thick with dust, and the air smelled stale.
Here’s another first.
He stepped inside the crypt and tugged the door closed behind him.
The bright sun vanished, but watery light filtered through the stained glass. If the light had been a sound it would have been a requiem, slow and quiet and full of loss. Cooper stood still and let his eyes adjust. The mausoleum was one room, thirty feet on a side, a bench in the center, ledges carved like bunk beds in the wall. Four high and three across, on all but the entrance wall, where the door took up one of the columns. Forty-four stone berths, all but two of them filled. Forty-two coffins, laying in orderly rest, names and dates carved beneath each one. A house for the dead. He felt a chill to think it, a primal shiver down the lizard part of his brain.
The light was too dim to make out the inscriptions, and he pulled out his datapad, uncrumpled it, and let the digital glow flood across the stone. The act felt strangely more offensive than breaking in had. Something wrong with introducing the modern world to this tomb, with using a device that couldn’t have been conceived of when this place was built.
And then he saw that he wasn’t the first to do it.
The box was about the size of a pack of matches, matte gray metal mounted just inside and above the door. No label, no LEDs glowing, nothing to reveal its purpose, but Cooper recognized it. It was government technology. Most of the box was a battery. The rest was a motion sensor and a transmitter. The thing was a long-term monitoring device, the kind you could put in a safe house for a decade and never think of again, just let it sit and watch, passive until it caught a hint of motion and broadcast its signal.
The monitor meant two things. First, that he was right in his hunch. The evidence was hidden here. The family might think to install a motion alarm in the crypt, but it wouldn’t be DAR technology.
Which led to the second thing. The moment Cooper had opened the door, the monitor would have sent a blast to the director. His phone would be ringing, his d-pad pinging, sending one message:
Someone is where you don’t want them to be.
Cooper’s heart kicked up a notch. Peters was a man with astonishing power. The moment he got the alarm, he would dispatch a team, faceless most likely, heavily-armed men and women sent hurtling to this place. And because Peters couldn’t risk a subject talking, that team would have shoot-to-kill orders.
On the upside, it does mean your brain is working. The evidence is here.
So get it and get the hell out. You’ve already lost about a minute. You’ve got…call it two more.
Shit.