Hiram would have also ordered a survey—a requirement before he could donate any land to MoMA. No doubt, that survey would have revealed the risk. But Hiram would have done what he always did—used gold. He would have bought off the engineering firm, donated part of the land to MoMA, and gotten a huge tax write-off. It must have seemed like a reasonable risk. The cement factory had remained stable for a century. Who would expect a five-hundred-year flood to occur in one’s lifetime?
My hands were shaking as I opened my laptop and pulled up the status reports I’d been receiving on the Davenport case. I found the name and phone number of the specialist the Thornton detectives had brought in to run a GPR scan—a survey of the area using ground-penetrating radar. I dialed. After a few rings, a sleepy voice came on the line.
“This is Special Agent Parnell with Denver Pacific Continental. I’m looking for Jeff Bittman.”
A pause. “Speaking.”
“Mr. Bittman, I have a couple of questions about when you used the GPR at the Edison Cement factory.”
“Your name again?” More alert now.
“Parnell. Sydney Parnell. I’m on the task force searching for Lucy Davenport.”
“Okay.” There came the faint rustling of sheets. “What do you want to know?”
“You didn’t find any anomalies, is that right? No evidence of structures or bodies underground.”
“That’s right. It’s all in my report.”
“It’s possible that the land was mined for gold many years ago. Wouldn’t that have shown up during your scan?”
“It depends. Like I told the Thornton detectives, clay-laden soil is a poor conductor. Add all the rain we’ve been having, and I got very little ground penetration. In places, no more than a few centimeters. They eventually had me stop. I wasn’t hitting anything. But I only covered a small area.”
“The area near the kilns, right?” Which were at the opposite end of the complex from the gate someone had cut into the fence. A gate seemingly next to nothing.
“Right,” Bittman said. “I was led to believe the killer had been tracked to that location. I did fan out a few hundred feet from there, but the results I got weren’t any better. My understanding is they were relying on the K9s through most of the complex.”
I thanked him and started to hang up.
“If you really think there are tunnels,” he said, “don’t go looking for them now. The ground will be saturated from all this rain. If there really is a mine, the tunnels could collapse at any moment.”
“Got it,” I said, and we disconnected.
I whooped as I put the car in gear and sped out of the parking lot, the rear tires fishtailing as I turned hard onto the street. I refused to think about flooded tunnels and waterlogged earth. We’d come too far for that. “Hang on, Lucy. We’re coming.”
Clyde’s eyes were bright on mine. He’d picked up on my excitement and now he gave a single joyous bark, his ears up and head lifted.
“Game on, boy.”
I punched Cohen’s number. “She’s at the cement factory,” I said when he picked up. “Lucy is. I’m on my way now.”
Cohen didn’t ask me how I knew this. “I’ll call for backup and meet you there.”
“She’s in a mine shaft underneath the factory. On the west side, I think. Remember that gate the killer cut? We need engineers in there. We need lights and equipment. The tunnels will be flooding. She doesn’t have much time.”
“I’m on it,” he said. “Meet me at the front gate.”
Outside, the night was dark as pitch. I glanced at the clock on the dash. Dawn was still a couple of hours away.
I tried Mac next. When she picked up, the connection crackled with the coming storm, dropping our voices in and out as I tried to explain what I’d learned and where I was going. In the end, I wasn’t sure what I managed to communicate before the call dropped and I couldn’t raise her again.
Talk to Cohen, I’d told her, hoping at least that much would get through.
By the time I got off the highway and headed toward Potters Road, the rain was coming down hard enough that the wipers couldn’t keep up. I had to slow to a crawl to make sure we stayed on the road. Traffic on the highway, heavy no matter the day or time, had been reduced to twenty miles an hour, and most of the time I got through by hitting my lights and siren and driving on the shoulder, weaving in and out of the slowed cars.
Now, on Potters Road, there was no traffic. But we were driving through an ocean.
I imagined it had been this way two nights ago, when Samantha and Lucy Davenport had come this way with Roman Quinn. I pictured Samantha driving, Roman in the seat next to her with a gun, Lucy in the back clutching her sock monkey. Samantha knew where they were going. She had been there just that afternoon. She knew all about the empty, echoing silence of the cement factory, the many places where someone could be held and hurt. The fact that no one would be around to hear or see anything at all.
And so she had driven hard off the road, slamming the Lexus to a stop, screaming at Lucy to run, throwing her keys into the field so that Roman couldn’t force them to drive anywhere else. Maybe she thought she could keep the killer busy while her daughter escaped into the darkness.
The lights from the police barricade pulsed in the rain. I eased to a stop, rolled down the window, and showed my badge to the officer. I explained what I was doing, told him that more police were on their way, and asked him to direct them to the cement factory.
“It’ll be flooding out there near the river,” he said, water dripping off the brim of his cap.
“Why I’m in a hurry.”
He nodded and pulled one of the sawhorses out of the way. A few minutes later, I went past the place where Samantha had driven off the road. The pullout was awash in mud, the crime scene tape snapping hard in the lashing wind. As I went by, a piece of tape broke free and slapped into the windshield, startling me and obscuring my vision before the wind lifted it free again.
Clyde barked when the tape hit, a hard, savage sound.
The gate into the factory was open when we got there, the chain and padlock hanging free. The gate swung in the wind, its metal bars banging repeatedly against the fence with a stiff clang. I braked and we eased through, the tires bouncing as the asphalt ended and the mud and weeds began. I skewed the steering wheel right, heading toward the gate Roman had cut into the fence. I drove fast, the rear tires fishtailing, weeds slapping into the headlights and disappearing under the wheels.
For the first time, I allowed myself to wonder what the tunnels looked like. Was rainwater seeping in, turning the clay walls into a slick slime?
The rain backed off a bit, and I thought I saw a light ahead. I slowed and tried to raise Cohen on my phone, but the storm must have knocked out a tower or maybe the base station—I had no service at all. I picked up speed again, the truck bouncing violently on the rough ground. There was no question of waiting for the police. Roman had brought Lucy here, I was sure of it. And probably Hiram, too, for whatever ugly thing Roman had planned for them.