'Jackie! I found something!'
McGlade was holding up some kind of hook.
'Nice work, Harry. Now sit on it and spin.'
'It was right on the ground, next to this manhole.'
It took a few seconds to register, and then I hobbled over. McGlade used the hook to pry up the cover, dragging it off to the side. He flashed his key light down into the hole.
'Stinky. Think he's down there?'
'Jack!' My earpiece buzzed. 'We have a man and a woman, four doors down. Team is moving in!'
'Roger that, Herb. McGlade and I...Harry!'
Harry disappeared down the hole.
'Dammit! Herb, we found a manhole in the yard, Harry just went down. I'll contact you again in a minute.'
I got on my knees and peered down into the sewer.
'Harry! Get up here!'
'Sorry, Jack,' he called up. 'You did this to me. I have to catch the guy to clear my good name.'
'Goddammit, McGlade, you don't have a good name! Harry! Harry?'
He yelped once, then didn't answer.
I reloaded, told Herb my intention, and then went down after him.
Chapter 43
THERE IS NO BOOM.
Charles stops, hunching down in the sewer line, filthy water up to his ankles. He holds his breath and listens.
No explosion. No screaming. Nothing.
What's going on?
He wraps his hand in Diane's hair and pulls her along. If the cops aren't burning, they'll be coming after him. He has to hurry.
It's dark as ink, foul, claustrophobic. The narrow pipe forces him to run in a crouch. His wife whimpers, dragging her feet, slowing him down. He jabs her with the knife to get her to move.
'I told you to run!'
After the fourth or fifth jab, she falls down. Continued poking doesn't make her get back up.
Damn her. Charles hates to end it here, in a sewer where he can't even see her face. This isn't how it's supposed to be. He wants to take his time, make it last, feast on a banquet of her agony.
A clang, in the distance. Someone opening the manhole cover.
Jack.
Charles reaches down, slashes at his wife in the darkness. Such a disappointing ending. She deserves so much more.
Then he scurries away from her. He moves by feel, counting his steps. Sight is minimal, but he's walked the route several times. Before he became a media darling, Charles always kept his kills hidden. The sewer is the perfect hiding place for corpses -- he can bring them here without witnesses, no one notices the smell, and the rats take care of any evidence. Throughout these pipes are the remains of a half-dozen people he's killed.
After twenty-four paces he stops, feeling for the grating. It's two feet before him. Taped to it is a flashlight.
He crouches in the concrete tube and flicks on the light, briefly. Finding the clasp, he opens the rusty gate and slips down four feet into the main line.
Now he can walk upright rather than bent over. The sewer main is wide as an alley. Filthy water runs down the center in a putrid, brown stream. Charles doesn't know how deep it is, and has no desire to find out. On either side of the flow is a ledge, a catwalk that can be treaded upon when the water level is low enough.
His smartest escape route is to follow along the right wall, down to the end of the block, and then turn left and go eight blocks over. He'll pop up in an alley, right across the street from the public garage where he keeps his second car, and far from the searching pigs overhead.
But he isn't ready yet. He still has to deal with Jack.
The lieutenant can't be allowed to live. She found him. She'll find him again. Charles doesn't want to be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life, waiting for her to pounce.
It will end here.
The Gingerbread Man checks his bullets and switches off his light.
Noises are coming from the sub main he'd exited moments before.
He hunches down and giggles, ready for the fun to start.
Chapter 44
THE LADDER WAS MADE OF STEEL bars, rusty and slimy. Descending was a complicated ordeal where I had to hop down each step, since my bad leg refused to bend. When I finally reached the bottom, I stepped on something.
