Chapter 6 - The Wrong Dead Man

“No one tells Felix until we have an identification,” Mara snapped into her radio.

Roman was already moving toward the front doors.

Mara blocked him. “You don't get to run into an active police scene.”

“Then arrest me while we walk.”

Elena pushed between them. “Listen. The boiler shaft has a pressure door. If those men try to force it, they'll lose the only dry route out.”

Mara stared at her. “You know how to open it?”

“I can read the plans. It's more than anyone else here can say.”

At 8:47, Mara put Elena in the back of her car and Roman beside a firefighter in a rescue truck. It wasn't permission for Roman to act as a cop. It was an acknowledgment that his knowledge of the estate might keep somebody breathing.

“Body isn't Tomas Moreno. White male, early forties. We're running prints. Someone dressed him in Moreno's jacket.”

“Victor wants us chasing the wrong person,” Roman said.

“Or he wants Tomas presumed dead,” Elena replied.

They reached the river as lightning split the clouds. Pump House Twelve sat beside a black wall of water, its windows boarded, its chain-link fence rattling in the wind.

Two officers waved them past a covered body. Roman glimpsed a silver cuff link on the man's sleeve. It belonged to Malcolm Voss, Victor's private accountant, a quiet fellow Roman had seen at board meetings.

“Malcolm knew the money,” Roman murmured. “Now he's dead.”

Elena spotted a riveted steel panel behind a bank of weeds. “That's the boiler shaft.”

A firefighter cut the rusted lock while she traced the lines on her grandfather's map. Roman held a flashlight over her shoulder.

“If we go down here,” Elena said, “we reach the upper walkway. But one more pump cycles on at nine, and that walkway vanishes.”

The panel groaned open. Heat rolled out, mixed with the smell of diesel.

From the darkness came a man's voice.

“Don't come in!”

Mara drew her weapon and flashed her light downward.

A young worker stood on the narrow stairs, bloody and trembling, with a metal chain around his ankle.

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“Please,” he said. “They wired the steps.”

Then a red indicator beside his foot started blinking.