Detective Morse took less than ten minutes to arrive. Harriet had spent the time pacing from the front room to the back door and back again, while Lauren texted Beth, Mavis and Connie.
Lois held the front door open as soon as Morse parked at the curb.
“I’m Lois. James is the son of my best friend. He came by today and asked if he could go through my yard to access the green space. He said he’d stop on his way back, and he never came, and his van is still parked down the street,” she blurted without pausing for breath.
Morse looked at Harriet.
“And what, exactly, was he looking for?”
Harriet explained about the pipe, the vent theory, and their discovery that the green space bordered Fogg Park.
Morse looked thoughtful.
“That’s all pretty preposterous. I mean, a vent coming from the green space to the park? I know there are stories of tunnels across the Mexican border or from taverns in a town to the shipping docks for shanghai purposes, but out in the middle of the woods? What would be the reason for that?”
No one said anything. Morse put her hands in her back pants pockets.
“Having said that, I wouldn’t have guessed anyone was holding people in a cave in Foggy Point. There’s nothing to connect that with Chef James, that I know of, but he does appear to be missing. I’m going to call for some backup to search the woods, and we’ll start an official missing person report, even though it hasn’t been twenty-four hours.”
Harriet stepped over and stood toe-to-toe with her.
“I want to help.”
“You know I can’t let you do that. If James is out in the woods hurt, or if there’s evidence that will help us find him, we need trained officers to handle it. The best thing you can do is go down to the station and tell the duty officer all you can about James’s whereabouts before he disappeared. I need to call people and get things started. It’s going to be dark soon.”
Morse made a series of phone calls and barked orders to whoever was on the other end of them. Foggy Point PD cruisers pulled up in front of Lois’s house, and a pair of evidence technicians walked down the street to James’s van.
Harriet sat with Lauren and Lois in the living room.
“We can’t just sit here.”
Lois’s eyes grew wide.
“The police told us to stay in here out of their way.”
“Actually, she didn’t,” Lauren told her. “She wanted Harriet to go to the police station to tell them about James’s disappearance. Only she didn’t go, because she realized Morse was trying to get us out of here. She knew that because we’ve already told Morse everything we know about James’s disappearance, which is pretty much nothing. We also have history with Jane. She tells us all the time to keep our noses out of police business.”
Harriet sighed.
“I’d stick my nose in now if I thought it would help find James. Unfortunately, this time, Jane is right. They’re professionals in searching, so we don’t have much to contribute.”
“I’m sure James isn’t lying out there hurt,” Lois said. “He knows every inch of those woods. Besides, they aren’t that big—it’s maybe eight acres. If he’d sprained his ankle, all he’d have to do is holler. We’d hear him from here if he was calling out.”
“Or, to state the obvious,” Lauren said, “he’d use his cell phone.”
Harriet’s shoulders slumped.
“I’ve been calling his cell phone since before we left the prize ceremony. It goes straight to voicemail.”
“Would you gals like some tea or a soda?” Lois asked.
“I’d like some water,” Lauren told her.
“I’ll have tea,” Harriet said.
Lauren turned in her seat so her body blocked Harriet from Lois in the kitchen and the police in the dining room.
“Okay, what are you thinking? I know you don’t want tea at a time like this.”
Harriet took a deep breath.
“This might be another wild-goose chase, but I can’t help but think this has something to do with the vent or tunnel or whatever it is sticking out of the hill in Fogg Park. The fact that someone is using the cave to house people makes me believe even more that there could be an underground place of some sort.”
“So, how does that help us with the James situation? Are we going to go to the vent and try to tap Morse code or something?”
“Be serious. I don’t know Morse code, and I’m pretty sure you don’t, either. But, am I remembering right—at dinner a couple of weeks ago you said you were working on software that went with a sewer-scoping camera?”
“I see where you’re going. Yes, I still have one of the cameras to test the software with. It’s currently in the sewer line in front of my apartment. My landlord has been letting me test my program. I can get it out but it will take fifteen minutes or so. You’ll have to hose it off as I pull it out.”
“Let’s go get started.”
“We don’t know that the vent actually goes anywhere.”
“There’s only one way to find out.”
Lois came back with their tea and water. Harriet took a sip then set the cup down on the coffee table.
“Thanks, we’ve got to go check something out.”
Lauren led the way back to the car.
“This all raises the question of what’s going on. Who on earth would be trafficking people in Foggy Point?”
Harriet slid into the passenger seat.
“I’ve been thinking about that. Molly and Amber disappeared from this street, and now James has disappeared from the same street. Sandra Price’s mother owned the property where he disappeared. Doesn’t it seem like the Price name is coming up a lot in this whole situation?”
“It does seem weird, but Sandra Price? She always says how people keep harassing her because her daughter was killed and the body was never found. Are we joining the harassers? I mean, what about the whole serial-killer thing?”
“I don’t know. Maybe all this has nothing to do with Amber and what happened to Molly before. Molly was trying to find out what happened back then, but maybe in the process she stumbled into something new and unrelated.”
“And deadly?’
“Yes, and deadly.”
Harriet tried to call James again. Again, nothing. She slammed her phone onto the seat beside her.
“James wouldn’t be in this mess if he hadn’t been trying to help me.”
Lauren glanced over at her.
“Don’t even go there. James is a big boy, and he’s resourceful. You can’t run a restaurant as well as he does and not know how to deal with difficult situations.”
“This isn’t a kale delivery that didn’t come or table linens that are wrinkled. Someone has James, and that same someone probably killed Molly.”
“Let’s not borrow trouble. Let’s just worry about getting the camera and sending it down the vent.”
They drove the remainder of the trip in silence.
Lauren slid the camera and its short cable connection into a pillowcase and handed Harriet a metal reel with the cable spooled around it.
“I’ll have to burn this pillowcase when this adventure is over.”
“Small price to pay if we find James. Let’s go.”
Lauren drove as fast as she dared, but it felt like an hour before she pulled her car to the curb next to the restrooms in Fogg Park. Harriet was out of the car before Lauren had killed the engine. She rushed down the path toward the homeless camp lugging the spool of camera cable. The sun had dipped below the horizon, and it was rapidly turning dark.
She nearly knocked Joyce down when she came around a bend in the path.
“What’s the hurry?” Joyce asked. “And what it that?”
“We need to get back to the vent you showed us. My friend’s life depends on it.”
Thankfully she didn’t ask any questions.
“Let me get a decent light.” Joyce hurried back down the trail to her camp, returning a moment later with a large spotlight. “Follow me.”
Lauren stumbled over a root and turned her ankle, but kept going as they followed Joyce through the woods for what seemed an eternity before they finally reached the clearing at the base of the bluff.
“Hopefully, we have enough cable to reach whatever is at the other end of this opening.”
Lauren swung her messenger bag from her back and pulled out her laptop and the camera. Harriet brought the spool of cable over, and together they hooked the camera to one end of the cable and the laptop to the other. Joyce began clearing weeds and vines from the vent opening and the surrounding area.
“Can I help?” said a masculine voice from the trail.
Joyce put her hand to her heart.
“Oh, Max. You gave me a start.”
“I was out looking for owls when I heard something crashing through the woods, so I took a deer trail over and came to investigate. And here you are, scaring the animals. Why are you in such a hurry?”
Joyce explained, and Max helped her finish clearing the opening.
Lauren brought the camera to the vent and set it down.
“Here goes nothing.” She handed the cable to Harriet. “As soon as I get the image on my computer, start feeding the camera into the hole.”
Lauren sat down and opened her computer, waking it from its sleeping state with four keystrokes.
“Okay, we’re on board. Harriet, hold your hand at least a foot from the camera.”
Harriet did as told; and when Lauren confirmed she could see the hand on the screen, she gave a thumbs-up, and Harriet fed the camera down the hole.
“Can you see anything?” she asked as she stood up.
Lauren began slowly uncoiling the spool of camera cable.
“If I could see anything interesting, we’d be standing on top of wherever this vent leads. So far, it looks amazingly similar to the sewer in front of my apartment.”
Harriet came over and crouched behind her.
“What’s that white thing that looks like a snake?”
“Based on my vast experience in the sewers, I’d say it’s a root that worked its way through a seam in the vent lining.”
Harriet ran her hands through her hair. Joyce came up behind her and put her hands on her shoulders, massaging as she did so.
“It’s going to be okay. Take a deep breath. You have to believe this will work.”
“If this leads to some sort of bomb shelter or something, won’t it have filters in the vent?”
“Not necessarily,” Lauren said without looking up from her screen. “First, if Molly crawled out of this vent, it implies the filter, if there is one, is missing. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have made it out. We’re far enough in already to conclude it probably really is a vent.
“Second, depending on how the system works, it may rely on positive pressure. As long as the pressure in whatever this vent is attached to is greater than the outside pressure, the air inside will stay clean. I wouldn’t count on that working in a nuclear holocaust, but if this leads to an underground still or a root cellar or something like that, they wouldn’t need a sophisticated filtration system—or any filter at all, if we’re lucky.”
Harriet stood up and started pacing.
“Stop, already,” Lauren said. “Or move farther back.”
“How far has the camera gone?” Harriet said as she backed up.
Lauren glanced at the bottom corner of her screen.
“One hundred feet and counting.”
Max came to stand by Harriet.
“The vent probably goes along the edge of the slope for twenty feet or so and then cuts out of the park and into the green space. It would be the easiest path to the area behind the houses down there.”
Harriet strained to see.
“Can you see all that?”
Max chuckled.
“No, I’ve just studied every square foot of this park and its surrounding area over the years.”
Lauren leaned closer to her screen.
“Something’s changing here. The vent is getting bigger. The light isn’t hitting both sides anymore.”
“Whoa,” Harriet exclaimed as the camera view spiraled, flashing a rapid series of images and then going dark.”What happened?”
“Hold on,” Lauren said. She slowly reversed the direction of the spool, backing the camera out by a foot. The LED camera illuminated the area it was looking at. It appeared to be a flat, rough surface. “I think we’re looking at the floor of wherever our vent terminates.” She backed the camera slowly, waiting each time for it to auto-focus.
Harriet leaned closer and reached over Lauren’s shoulder to point.
“That looks like the toe of a shoe.”
Joyce and Max joined them, and they all studied the screen.
Harriet startled when the foot moved.
“Can you move the camera up and down a little to make sure whoever belongs to that foot is seeing us?”
Lauren did as requested, moving the camera first a little then, eventually, three feet up and down, repeating several times. On the fourth try, the image went crazy, flashing light and dark. A blurry image pulsed on the screen as the auto-focus tried to sharpen it. The cable went taut, and Harriet reached over and fed more cable into the hole.
“I think someone just grabbed the camera.”
James’s face came into focus as she spoke. He had figured out it was a camera and was holding it at arms-length. They could see his mouth moving but couldn’t tell what he was saying.
“Anyone read lips?” Lauren asked.
Harriet pulled her phone from her pocket and speed-dialed him. The call went to voicemail without any reaction from him.
He looked up at the ceiling and then down. They watched as he crouched and, with his free hand, attempted to write in the dirt on the floor, but the floor was too rough. They also noticed as he moved the camera around that he wasn’t alone.
“Write a note on your phone and hold it up to the camera,” Harriet told the image on the screen.
James turned around, the camera pointing at three young women cowering on a filthy mattress. Their lips moved. He must have asked them something. The middle one shook her head and looked at the woman beside her, her lips moving as she did so. The second woman shook her head also. James shone the camera back on himself, a look of frustration on his face.
“You cell phone,” Harriet repeated.
He pressed his lips together.
“Whoever put him there probably took his phone.” Lauren said.
“No, they didn’t, I can see the shape in his front pocket. They probably knew he wouldn’t get a signal underground, so they didn’t worry about it.”
James looked off-screen in the direction of the women, and then reached into his pocket. One of the women must have prompted him about his phone.
The group collectively held their breath as James typed on the little screen.
“Good grief, is he writing a novel?” Lauren said in frustration.
Finally, he held his phone in one hand and the camera in the other, spreading them several feet apart. Lauren adjusted the focus with her computer. Harriet leaned even closer to the screen. He had typed a message using the notepad function on his phone.
“Exploring foundation behind and between Lois’s and Price house,” she read. “Hit from behind. Woke in dark, chained to bed. Not alone.”
Harriet’s own phone was still in her hand. She dialed Morse.
“We found James,” she said when Morse answered.
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know—not exactly. He says he was exploring the burned-out foundation behind Lois’s house, and someone hit him on the head. He woke up in a dark place that’s connected to the vent in the park.”
“Slow down,” Morse said. “You’re not making sense. We searched the foundation. There’s nothing there.”
Harriet recounted how they’d discovered James. Lauren pointed at the screen.
“Look, James is showing us around the space.”
He pointed the camera across the room to a ladder that disappeared upward into the dark. He wasn’t able to get close enough to it, and the camera’s light range was sufficiently small, that they couldn’t see where it went other than up.
He tapped a note on his phone and held it to the screen.
Only entrance ladder up into ceiling. Round pipe?
Harriet relayed the message to Morse.
“I’m headed back to the foundation, and I called in the K-Nine unit.”