Chapter 67
“SCI!” JUSTINE YELLED. “Don’t shoot!”
“Oh, my God,” she heard Kloppenberg grunt. Shaking, she stepped back and flipped the switch in the shaft, flooding Thom Harlow’s basement editing room with light. Sci had his hand on the console, struggled to get to his feet. He looked at her, affecting dignity with his nose up; he pushed his glasses tight to his forehead, said, “Well, you succeeded in scaring the living bejeezus out of me.”
Justine laughed and put her hand over her heart. “It didn’t do much for my blood pressure either.” She looked around. “What were you doing down here?”
Kloppenberg brushed lint from his jacket sleeve, said, “Going over it a second time. As a matter of fact, I was wondering what was behind that door when the lights went off and you jumped out.”
“I didn’t jump out,” Justine said. “You make me sound like the boogeyman.”
“I thought that’s who you were, exactly,” Sci said. “What’s up there?”
Justine described where the shaft led and what she’d found.
“So all computers and all cameras were taken with the family,” Sci said.
“Anything in here?”
He shook his head. “All the editing equipment is intact, but there’s no hard drives, no film.”
She frowned. “Nothing at all to do with Saigon Falls?”
“Nothing.”
Justine ran the facts as she knew them through her head. The shaft connected the Harlows’ bedroom suite to the panic room and the editing room.
The children had said that their father had spent much of their first days home down here in the editing room, working on the film, which was what Thom had told Sanders he was going to do when they got back.
Was the film behind their disappearance? Had Thom’s cameras happened upon something politically explosive while they were in Vietnam? Or something that implicated …
McCormick, the FBI forensics tech, entered the editing room, looked surprised to see Justine, glanced at the open door to the shaft, frowned, but said, “Thought you should know, Sci. Cadaver-sniffing dogs just hit. We’re digging for a body.”