“This is the police,” he called out in his sternest voice. “Please identify yourselves.”
The only answer was the echo of his own voice coming back at him from the blackness.
Moving forward carefully, letting his light drift from left to right, he exited the loading bay and walked along the catwalk leading into the plant proper. It was very dark and smelled strongly of chlorine, and as he walked beneath a partition he felt, rather than saw, the ceiling suddenly rise to a great height. He paused to run the beam of his light along the conveyor belt that snaked through the plant like an endless metal road, back and forth, up and down, on at least three different levels. Emerging first from a small, tiled room attached to the stunning area, the “line” ran through several freestanding structures within the plant, buildings within buildings: the Scalder, the Plucker, the Box Washer. Tad remembered their names from his previous visits. It was the kind of thing you didn’t forget too quickly.
He shone his light back toward the tiled room. This small structure, the first within the plant, was the Blood Room. Its door was ajar.
“This is the police,” he rapped out a second time, advancing a few more steps. Outside, the shriek of the wind answered faintly.
Transferring his flashlight to his left hand, Tad unsnapped the leather guard on his service holster, let his palm rest lightly on the handle of his piece. Not that there would be any call for it, of course. But it felt reassuring, just the same.
He turned and shone his light around again, licking the beam off the gleaming assembly line, off the tubes and pressure hoses that snaked up the gray-painted walls. The plant was vast, cavernous, and his light penetrated less than a third of it. But the place was silent, and what he could see looked decidedly empty.
Tad felt a certain relief. The kids had probably run for it at the first sign of his cruiser.
He glanced at his watch: almost quarter after nine. Hazen would be at the sheriff’s office by now, preparing for the ten-o’clock raid. He’d followed through, and found nothing. Any further time here would be wasted. He’d check out Smit Ludwig’s place, then get back.
It was as he turned to leave that he heard the noise.
He paused, listening. There it was again: a kind of giggle, or wet snicker. It seemed to come from the Blood Room, queerly distorted by the stainless steel floor and tiled walls.
Christ, the kids were hiding in there.
He shone his flashlight at the open door of the Blood Room. The conveyor belt emerged from a wide porthole above the door, dangling hooks winking in his beam, throwing cruel misshapen shadows over the entrance.
“All right,” he said, “come out of there. All of you.”
Another snort.
“I’m going to count to three, and if you don’t come out you’ll be in serious trouble, and that’s a promise.”
This was ridiculous, wasting his time like this in the middle of a tornado warning. He was going to throw the book at those kids. Deeper scum, he was sure of it now.
“One.”
No response.
“Two.”
He waited, but there was nothing but silence from the half-open door.
“Three.” Tad moved swiftly and purposefully toward the door, his boots echoing on the slick tile floor. He kicked the door wide with a hollow boom that echoed crazily around the vast interior of the plant.
Feet set apart, he swept the Blood Room with his light, the beam shining off the polished steel, the circular drain in the middle of the floor, the gleaming tile walls.
Empty. He walked into the middle of the room and stood there, the smell of bleach washing over him.
There was a rattle overhead, and Tad quickly angled his light upward. A sudden furious sound, a clashing of metal. The hooks dangling from the conveyor line began to bounce and swing wildly, and his light just caught a dark shape scuttling along the line, disappearing out the porthole above the door.
“Hey! You!” Tad ran back to the door, stopped. Flashed his light. Nothing but the swinging and creaking of the line as it moved away into blackness.
No leniency, no soft touch, this time: Tad was going to lock these kids up, teach them a lesson.
He let the beam of his light linger on the line. It was still swinging and creaking, and it looked as if the kids had climbed along it through a curtain of plastic flaps into the next structure, an oversized stainless steel box. The Scalder.
Tad moved forward as silently as he could. The plastic flaps covering the entrance to the Scalder were still swinging slightly.
Bingo.
Tad circled around to the other end of the Scalder. The thin black shape of the line emerged here, but the plastic flaps on this end weren’t swinging.
He had trapped the kids inside.
Tad stepped back, bobbing his light back and forth between the Scalder’s entrance and exit points. He spoke, not loudly, but firmly. “Listen: you’re already in big trouble for breaking and entering. But if you don’t come out of there right now, you’re going to be charged with resisting arrest and a lot more besides. No probation or community service, you’ll do time. You understand?”
For a moment, silence. And then, a low murmur came from inside the Scalder.
Tad leaned forward to listen. “What’s that?”
