“Moma Dee,” Wilson said. “That some kind of art humor? Sounds like a jazz player.”
Whatever it was, the sign was news to me. If DPC’s board had decided to sell this stretch of land, they hadn’t bothered to tell the grunts. I was scheduled to do a walk-through here next week.
Clyde turned and trotted alongside the fence. Just as Lucy or her kidnapper must have done. A dozen yards down, he stopped and pressed his nose to the fence. He gave a low whine, waiting for me to solve the puzzle of how to get him to the other side.
“They crossed here?” Wilson asked.
“Must have.”
“How the hell did they do that?”
I pulled back the weeds and studied the fence, spotting a place where the links didn’t quite line up. Someone had cut the metal to create a flap, which they’d then snugged back into place and fastened with wire. This kind of opening wasn’t something you created in the dark of night with a hostage on your hands. Nor was it the work of casual trespassers. The killer had made the opening before the events of this morning. And he’d been calm enough in the dead of night—and had Lucy enough in his control—to take the time to open and close the gap, rewiring it shut.
The location of the gap bothered me. It was nowhere near the road that led into the cement factory; if someone came here by car, they’d have to walk half a mile in to reach this improvised gate.
Another puzzle in a day filled with them.
I dropped Clyde’s lead and untwisted the wire without bothering with gloves—it was too thin to hold a print. Then Wilson and I grabbed the edge of the flap, yanking it open enough for Clyde to squeeze through. I ordered him to wait. He stopped, his eyes on mine, ready for the next command.
“You’re next,” I said to Wilson.
“You’re kidding. I’m twice his size.”
“Optimist,” I said. “You can walk around to the gate, if you’d rather. Assuming you can get in there.”
“I’ve been dieting, you know. Doesn’t do a damn thing.”
I tugged the fence open as far as it would go and waited.
“I’m wearing my best suit,” he muttered. But he lowered himself to his belly and wriggled through. While he gripped the flap from the other side, I crawled in after him.
As soon as we were clear of the fence I grabbed Clyde’s lead, and he took off again.
The first two buildings rose quickly around us, dropping shadows so deep it was like walking into an eclipse. It was ten degrees cooler here. I tucked my sunglasses into my shirt pocket and let my eyes adjust to the gloom as I scanned the buildings. Warehouses or offices, I assumed. Graffiti festooned the old brick walls. Broken windows glared as we passed. Small creatures skittered away in the tall grass, ignored by Clyde. Mica or a similar stone glittered in the dirt. Dew-bejeweled cobwebs guarded gaping doorways.
Near the end of the passageway between the warehouses, Clyde stopped, just as he’d been trained. I gestured for him to back down as I approached the corner and pressed my back to the wall. Wilson drew his gun and followed my lead, standing against the opposite wall.
I squinted into the brilliant splash of sunlight. Nothing stirred save the whir of grasshoppers rising and falling in the weeds. An immense cogwheel lay rusting in the open. A cluster of beer bottles twinkled brightly. I swiveled and checked the area around the immediate corner. All clear. Which didn’t mean anything except that Lucy’s abductor wasn’t waiting for us in the open with an M16 and an invitation to tea.
“See anything?” Wilson asked.
“Nothing. You?”
“Empty as a confessional in prison. But it doesn’t feel right. The hair is up on the back of my neck.”
“Wait here. If the killer circles around, you’ll have our backs.”
“Ah, hell.” Wilson holstered his weapon. “Wife’s always telling me I’ve turned into a desk jockey. You lead, I’ll follow.”
I unclipped Clyde’s lead, giving him more range, then gave him the go ahead. He jogged north and then turned east again as he pursued Lucy’s trail through the complex.
We followed him at a fast walk through shadow and sunlight as he led us past a factory and another warehouse and unnamable, cylindrical structures. Our path threaded between fallen concrete and unidentifiable slabs of metal and other chunks of debris. In one place, someone had made a campfire. The ground around the cold, charred wood was littered with empty crack vials and crumpled foil.
At each corner, Clyde stopped and waited for me to clear the next space. It was a beautiful demonstration of the drills he and I had been running under the guidance of the former Mossad K9 trainer I’d hired.
Your dog is one of the best I’ve seen, Avi Harel had told me. With good training, he will amaze you. But you’ve become lazy, and so has he.
Not lazy, I’d considered saying. Afraid.
Then, nearly a quarter mile into the complex, Clyde’s behavior shifted. He was twenty feet ahead, but a sudden alertness showed in his tense posture and the prick of his ears. It was different from the reaction he’d give if we were getting close to Lucy—he was uneasy, not jubilant. If Clyde was a human Marine on guard duty, this would be when he’d put out his cigarette and go quiet.
“Clyde’s got something he doesn’t like,” I said softly.
“What?”
“Don’t know yet.”
As I approached Clyde, he kept his gaze focused forward. Once I reached him, I touched his back and felt a faint shivering.
The death fear. Damn.
He’d stopped next to a half-fallen wall framing a set of stairs. The steps led down to an immense, sagging floor—a former basement-level room now completely open to the sky. The half wall, the stairs, and the floor were all that remained of whatever structure this had once been. At our feet, the ancient railroad spur that had served the factory curved through the tall grass.
But whatever interested Clyde was fifty yards away, across a meadow where five immense, beehive-shaped structures squatted in a field crisscrossed with concrete pathways. Twenty feet tall and the same distance apart, the domes were completely enclosed save for a single rounded doorway at the base of each. The railroad tracks swung behind the domes and disappeared. Beyond the buildings, a dirt road angled north.
I strained my ears, listening. Just the wind through the grass. High above, a hawk flew past, its shadow rippling along the ground.
“Kilns,” Wilson whispered. “It’s where they heated the raw materials to make cement. Back before someone designed rotary kilns.”
I gave him a look. He grinned and tapped his forehead. “They don’t make brains like this anymore.”
Impatient, Clyde started forward.
“Bleib,” I told him. Stay. To Wilson, I said, “There’s something dead. Up ahead.”
“Dear Jesus, tell me it’s not the girl.” His gaze followed mine toward the domes. “What are you looking at?”
“Nothing yet.”