Chapter 16
Madsen was right. Siobhan wasn’t in the alley. However, that was insane. She hadn’t gone back inside the Barley Corner; the Colombians had been close behind her and would’ve shot her. ESU officers had been at both ends of the alley. There were a couple of other doors, which led to other buildings, but those were all locked, and the cops swore she hadn’t gone through one of them.
Erin scanned the alley. It was clean and well-kept, especially compared to some back streets she’d seen. Besides the bodies of the two gunmen, she saw a couple of dumpsters and a manhole. Not many places to hide. Her eyes went back to the manhole lid as she remembered Rojas’s hiding place.
“Tell me again,” she said to Madsen. “You saw her, right?”
“Yeah. She was standing right there. Twig, you getting this?”
“Copy,” said their spotter. “I saw her. Red hair and all, just like you said. She came out the back and started jogging toward the street, right at the car you wrecked. When you rammed the car, she dropped and rolled sideways, behind the trash bin. If she’s not there, I got no idea where she is.”
“She couldn’t have gone into the sewer?” Erin asked.
“Not a chance,” Twig said. “I’d have seen her. That lid stayed closed.”
Erin checked it anyway. It was solid cast iron, heavy, and didn’t look to have been moved recently. She took Rolf over to the dumpster in question. A woman could’ve hidden back there, but the other three ESU officers had already entered the alley from the far end and would certainly have seen her. All Erin saw was a basement window, at ankle height, with a wrought-iron grille over it.
“Check inside the dumpster?” Madsen suggested.
“It’s not a real investigation until somebody wades through the trash,” she agreed sourly.
They flipped the lid open. All they found was the rancid smell Erin expected from the trash behind a bar and restaurant, along with a few bags of garbage. Madsen poked gingerly among them with the barrel of his rifle, finding nothing.
“No,” Erin said, denying the evidence of her own eyes. She pointed to the space behind the dumpster. “Rolf, such!”
The K-9 dutifully started sniffing around. Any dog on Earth would be delighted by the smells of half-rotted food, but Rolf was trained to ignore the more interesting odors and concentrate on human scent. Without a particular smell to trace, he went for the freshest one he could find. The sweat left by tense, excited humans had an especially strong odor, and he was good at picking it out.
He whined and scratched at the window grate.
Erin dropped to one knee beside him and tugged on the grate. It wouldn’t budge.
“Here, let me try,” Madsen said. He was six inches taller than Erin and much heavier, with a shaved head and enormous shoulders.
“Knock yourself out, caveman,” she said. Macho posturing left Erin unimpressed. She didn’t think this was a brute-force problem.
Madsen grabbed the bars and heaved, grunting with effort. He muttered a curse and tried again, with no result. He stood up and put his hands on his hips.
“This thing feels pretty solid to me,” he said. “I swear, it’s cemented into the brick. We could rig the winch on the Cat, but that’d tear a hole in the wall. Then the city would probably get sued.”
Erin looked the grate over. It looked every bit as solid as Madsen said, but Rolf was insistent, and she trusted Rolf’s nose more than her own eyes.
“Give me some space,” she said. Madsen obediently sidestepped. Erin crouched down and ran her hands over the grate.
She was missing something. People didn’t just evaporate into thin air. The grate was old and coated with rust. Hell, it’d probably been there for decades. The Barley Corner was an old building, at least a hundred years old.
Erin paused, remembering something Carlyle had mentioned. He’d told her the Corner’s basement had been used as a speakeasy back in the Twenties, with secret passages. That way the bootleggers could smuggle their goods in and out, along with themselves if they ever got raided.
She felt it then, a metal lever hidden behind the grille, almost invisible. She squeezed. There was a metallic click. The whole window, frame, and grille swung inward on well-balanced hinges, revealing a low opening.
“Whoa,” Madsen said.
Vic had finished loading Ian into the back of the BearCat and had come to see what Erin was up to. Piekarski was right behind him. He echoed Madsen.
“Whoa.”
“Follow me,” Erin said. She had to crouch low to get through the opening; it was less than three feet high. Rolf, tail wagging eagerly, hurried in alongside her. The other three were close on her heels.
Erin found herself in a dark storage room. She played her flashlight around the room. The place was made of brick, the floor concrete. Boxes were stacked against the walls, all of them bearing the labels of different brands of whiskey and beer. A single bare bulb hung from the ceiling with a string dangling from it. She pulled it and the room was flooded with light. Rolf was pulling against his leash, aiming for the one door that led out of the room. She let him lead the way.
For all the dozens of times she’d been in the pub, Erin had never seen the basement before. It really did feel like something right out of the Roaring Twenties. She saw all kinds of old bar furnishings: art deco stools and railings that’d been pulled out when the place had been remodeled; an ancient jukebox; crates of empty bottles; sheets of wood paneling. There was a musty, dusty smell in the air.
Rolf led the way through one room after another, taking no notice of the antiques. They passed several closed doors. The K-9 came to another door and scratched at it.
“Ready?” Erin asked.
“Ready,” Vic said. His rifle was at his shoulder, ready for action.
She pulled the door open to find a staircase, leading up.
“Let’s
