The wind whipped my voice away.
I called Conrad, message went to voice mail. I texted him and Pierre: Bernie was seen scaling the bleachers at Wrigley Field around one a.m. Two guys on her tail, my source a drunk.
Pierre replied as I was trotting along the gangway: I’m coming. Conrad, you will meet me there.
The aisle doors loomed as darker holes against the darkness of the green seats and concrete. I went into the nearest one and turned on my flash again: it was impossible to see inside. In the dark, the place smelled of stale beer and popcorn, of damp concrete.
I stopped every few yards to call her name again. My voice bounced around the concrete columns; the echo was the only reply I got.
It was no warmer inside the cement walls than it had been dangling from the brickwork outside. I swung my arms, slapped my sides, tried to restore circulation to my arms and legs, even if not in my fingers, jogging in a great circle past the closed concession stands, the locked doors in side walls that led to the stadium’s guts. It would take a hundred cops to search this place thoroughly.
Where had Bernie gone? Had she overheard me talking about the scrap of paper in Sebastian’s bag? But even if she had, she wouldn’t have known it meant—possibly meant—a meeting outside Aisle 131.
Fatigue and fear were stirring a great soup in my gut. Because I couldn’t think straight, or think of anything else, I went on down the gangway, following the ramps down to the field box level, toward Aisle 131.
I climbed the short flight of stairs that led to the stands. After being inside in complete darkness, I could make out the field and the seats in the grayer light outside. I held myself completely still, heard nothing, saw nothing move except a few stray pieces of trash.
I went back inside, trying to figure out what place Sebastian might have been meeting someone. Men’s room, smelling thickly of disinfectant layered over urine. I banged open the stall doors but the room was empty. Women’s room, empty as well. The concession stands were locked tight. I pried at the shutters, but not even a skinny street urchin could wriggle through the cracks.
There were several side doors, also locked. One door had two industrial mops wedging it shut. I took them out, but the door was locked. Maybe a janitor had been fooling around.
Bernie didn’t have picklocks, and using them was a skill I’d prudently kept to myself. She could not have opened this lock on her own.
I was close to weeping. I needed a plan, a thread to follow, but I had nothing. The men who’d been after her, who had they been, had they found another way in and grabbed her?
I shone the flash around one more time. Light glinted on metal. I knelt and saw an earring in a crack in the concrete just outside the doors with the mops through the handles. I used the edge of my pick to pry it free. A design in red and blue enamel of a flattened C embracing an H, logo of the Canadiens, inlaid in a reddish gold circle.
A chill deeper than the cold of the stadium froze my bones. I couldn’t move, couldn’t think.
You are frightened now, my darling one, and that is as it should be as we prepare to say good-bye. Gabriella’s words floated into my panic-stricken brain, her comfort to me when she told me she was dying. The brave person isn’t the one who feels no fear, but the one who continues to act, even in the middle of fear. I know your brave heart and I know you will not let fear disable you.
My brave heart. Open the damned door, stop whining, start acting.
I knelt in front of the door, flashlight in my mouth so I could use both hands on the picks. The lock was tricky and my frozen fingers kept dropping the picks. When I finally got the last tumbler in place and heaved open the heavy door, it was to see the outsize pipes and cables that ferried water and power through the building.
I tried shining the light into the depths of the room, but my flashlight was puny and the space was vast. The entrance looked like the one I’d seen in one of Mr. Villard’s photos, the tunnel where Annie had emerged, grinning cockily, empty-handed after leaving her book inside. How had Bernie known to come here?
As I played the light around, a movement overhead made me jerk my neck back: red eyes stared down at me, then turned to saunter a short distance off along the pipe: We own this space, we own the night, we’re leaving because we want to, not because you scare us.
I jumped back involuntarily, then stomped forward, loud. “Bernie, are you in here? Come out, it’s V.I.! You’re safe now, let’s go home.”
I shut my eyes, concentrated on sound. Creaks and clanks in the ancient pipes. Feet whispering overhead, those were the rats. Gurgles and clangs along the pipes, all the sounds of an aging building.