“My God,” Stenko said. And as he said it, they cleared the tunnel of trees and the massive power plant filled the northern sky, lights blazing.
“So if you ever meet Lucy Turek,” Robert said, “be sure to thank her. She’s the sweetie who made it possible for you to go out in a great blaze of glory. Because of her, you may just be able to get to below zero after all.”
The headlights lit up a ten-foot chain-link fence that now bordered the road. Ahead, Stenko could see a dark guardhouse. There was a metal lockbox with a slit to slide the keycard in to open the steel-mesh gate.
“She said there wouldn’t be a guard this late,” Robert said. “Cool. Now all you have to do is go inside wearing that lanyard. You can get anywhere you want to by swiping that card through the readers. Find the security elevators and go to the top floor. That’s where the hatches to the hanging boilers are located. If someone tries to stop you, just shove them off the catwalk. The boiler hatch opens by turning a big wheel, according to my sweet Lucy. Open the hatch and jump in. The open door and the presence of your body will shut down the whole system and you’ll leave this planet as a hero.”
“Are you coming in with me?” Stenko asked.
Robert said, “Are you kidding? This isn’t
Stenko sighed, “Of course not.”
“Think of what you’re doing as a gift to me and the younger generation,” Robert said. “After a lifetime of committing environmental crimes, you’re sacrificing yourself for us. For me. It would make me happy, Dad. It’s the one thing you can do for me to make up for everything else. You can go out a martyr for Mother Earth.”
Stenko’s eyes flooded with tears. They were tears from the pure physical pain that laced his guts, but also because of April and her innocence and how she was gone. But most of all the tears were because of Robert and what he’d turned into.
“Are you really this broken?” Stenko asked. Oh, how it hurt to talk.
Robert glanced over. His eyes were cold. “What are you babbling about, old man?”
“You’re not very sentimental, are you?”
“I learned from the best about selfishness, Dad.”
Robert looked up at the rearview mirror and made a face. “There’s that damned single headlight behind us again. What’s up with
Sheridan rolled over and yawned and remembered she was in a hospital and why she was there. She sat up and rubbed her eyes, then looked over at Lucy, who was still sleeping, and her mother, who’d finally dozed off.
There had been a sound that had jarred her awake. She looked down the hall, assuming it was a nurse or staffer who’d passed by, but she couldn’t see anyone. She stood and looked out the window at the night and the still parking lot below.
Then she heard it again: the rapping of knuckles on glass.
She turned and saw him, a cop in a khaki uniform on the landing of the emergency exit that went to the stairs. He gestured at her and pointed at the handle of the door. She thought he looked vaguely familiar, and when she opened the door she recognized him from earlier that day. He’d been one of the deputies who’d arrived at the scene of April/Janie Doe’s crash.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” he said, stepping into the hallway. His hat was clamped under his arm and he carried a plastic grocery sack. “They shut the elevator down to visitors at night, I just found out. Anyway, the sheriff sent me over here to talk to Agent Portenson and Agent Coon, but I don’t see them anywhere.”
“They’re gone,” Sheridan’s mom said from her chair. “Is there anything we can do?”
The deputy shrugged. “Is Joe Pickett here?”
“He’s with them,” her mom said.
The deputy’s face fell. He clearly didn’t know what he should do next. He said, “We found some personal items in the wreckage of that car. The sheriff bagged them up and asked me to deliver them to the FBI, thinking they might help somehow. Now I’m not sure who to give them to.”
“What kind of personal items?” her mom asked cautiously.
The agent flushed. “Just some feminine things, you know. Underwear, tampons, that kind of thing.” When he said the words, he looked away from Sheridan. “Plus, a pocketbook thing. Do either of you know a girl named Vicki?”
Sheridan felt the skin of her scalp pull back. “No,” she said, “but I think I know where she is.”
Her mom asked, “What’s her full name?”
“Damn, I forgot. Let me look it up,” the deputy said, digging into the plastic bag and pulling out a small leather purse with a metal clasp. He opened the clasp and drew out a small stack of papers, photos, and cards. “This here is a library card from Chicago, Illinois. It says it belongs to Vicki Burgess.”
Her mom covered her open mouth with her hand.
Even though it seemed like alarm bells were going off inside her head, Sheridan said to the deputy, “Can we look at what else is in the purse?”
Thinking:
The deputy straightened the stack of papers to put them back into the purse when he said, “Oh, there’s a photo. Two girls in it. I bet one of them is this Vicki Burgess . . .”
Nate leaned forward on the handlebars of the dirt bike and opened it up. Joe bent with him. The electric steel-mesh gate Stenko and Robert had just passed through was closing. Joe squinted over Nate’s shoulder as the
