“That mud patch with the vine attached is like something I have at my house in Virginia. In the house, it’s called a pocket door. The wall slides into a pocket in the rest of the wall.”
Abby picked up her flashlight and stood by his side. She gasped. “Malachi—that’s the end of the tunnel that leads from the Dragonslayer!”
“That’s what I figured,” he said. “So, our killer’s been able to access the Dragonslayer from the Wulf and Whistle, the Wulf and Whistle from the Dragonslayer and the river from either of them.”
“We can shut off the bastard, cement him in,” Abby said bitterly.
Malachi shook his head. “Not if we want to find him while Bianca is still living.”
“So what do we do?”
“Right now, we go back. We pretend we’ve never been here—and we get Will to bring in some cameras. We need to follow this killer wherever he’s going. That’s how we’ll rescue Bianca.”
Malachi stepped through the hole he’d created in the tunnel wall. He inspected the pocket into which he’d slid the wooden door that had originally seemed to be just more earth-and-hardwood tunnel wall. “At my house,” he told Abby, “this kind of door was used to turn the place into a tavern by night—a way stop for travelers—and then back into separate rooms for working and sleeping. Thomas Jefferson’s family had apparently been involved with the building of my house. I really have one of those places where you get to say ‘Washington slept here.’ But I believe this technique must’ve been common during colonial days.”
“I guess these tunnels were used at various times, for various reasons,” she mused.
Malachi nodded. “City planners might have started them, pirates might have continued to use them—to shanghai others or to effect their own escapes. And then they became important to the Underground Railroad during the Civil War. At other times, the city or property owners sealed up entrances, as well as these secret doorways from one tunnel to another. Remember, governments—federal, state and municipal—usually do whatever is cheapest. You don’t need a tunnel, then seal up the entrance. If you know the city and you’ve heard about its history all your life—and studied it—you might realize where to look for these entrances.”
“I know the city!” Abby said.
“Yep, and you knew about the tunnel under the Dragonslayer because it was your tunnel. You knew about the hospital tunnels because their existence and the history of what went on during the yellow fever epidemic was recorded—sketchily, yes, but there were records,” Malachi said. He offered her a dry smile. “Since you were never looking for a way to kidnap people and take them out on the river, you probably never tried to explore underground Savannah as thoroughly as our killer did. Come on, let’s go back to where we came in. I don’t want to use the Dragonslayer tunnel and the tavern stairs. The dining room will be full right now, and I don’t want to be seen.”
“Let’s hope nobody sees us crawling through the garbage,” Abby said.
“Yeah,” Malachi agreed. “I’m going to give Jackson a call so he can arrange for someone to watch the entrance here. Someone in plain clothes who won’t be noticed. Jackson will have to talk to David Caswell, get someone he trusts implicitly.” He had his phone out, tried to call, then made a face at her.
“Well, that was dumb. No signals down here. Come on. Let’s go back up as smoothly as we can and get someone down here.” He grinned at her. “After that, we need to shower again. Another reason I’d rather not go to the Dragonslayer—I don’t want to be seen like this. We’ll go to your house on Chippewa, okay?”
Abby nodded. Malachi closed the pocket door, and they made their way back through the tunnel.
Abby’s flashlight reflected off something on the floor. She instinctively started to pick it up and then didn’t. She hunkered down and took a closer look; Malachi hunkered down next to her. “Gum wrapper,” he said. “Or part of a gum wrapper.”
“Fingerprints?”
“Possible, yes,” Malachi said. He glanced at her. Even in the eerie light, there was a beauty, a strength, in his face. Not only that, she couldn’t remember being able to communicate with anyone as she could with him.
It was the ghost thing.
It was the sex.
It was whatever made him unique.
“Certainly not an eighteenth-or nineteenth-century object,” he said. He was prepared; he reached into his pocket and she saw that he had a little envelope. He turned it inside out to pick up the ripped gum wrapper, secured it without touching it and slid it into his pocket. He took her arm, drawing her up. “Okay, let’s get out of here now.”
He hoisted Abby up and out of the hole. She turned around to help him, but he’d gotten a grip on the tenuous ladder to get himself up.
“Wow,” he said, looking at her. “Let’s hope we don’t run into anyone we know.”