THEY ARRIVED IN TACOMA JUST AFTER FIVE. THE TRAFFIC was slow. It moved like floating trash in a slow deep river. The rain hadn’t let up and the hillside of the city was masked in fog. All the freighters moored in the port were beaming into the clouds. The port was so bright that Fielding and Batey almost had to squint at it. Past the chain-link fences they saw men in coveralls and hard hats going about their work. Forklifts and cranes. Teamsters and their semis lined up like dominoes. They drove on and the light faded and that light receding seemed an omen of what was to come. The darkness that lay ahead. Pulling them deeper whether they liked it or not.
The road split from the water and soon they were on an abandoned road that ran straight as a plumb line.
Batey followed it till he was forced to stop. The headlights caught the tall fence ahead. An old iron sign half hanging on the fence and covered in lichen and rust. NO TRESPASSING. There was thick chain coiled around the gate and an old ABUS padlock keeping it all closed.
End of the road, Fielding said.
Just the beginning, Batey said.
Batey got out with the engine still running and went to the back of the Bronco and opened the door and pulled out a set of heavy-gauge bolt cutters and went around toward the gate and laid the chain in the jaws and popped the chain like he was cutting paper with a pair of scissors. Batey pulled on one end. The severed chain slipped through the fence like a snake with its head cut off. He pitched the length into the grass. Then he opened the gate on its rusty hinges and it made a sorrowful sound.
Back in the Bronco Batey turned off the headlights and looked back at Fielding without saying a word.
They drove through the gate in the new darkness. Batey stopped the Bronco again and got out and closed the gate behind them. Then they drove on.
Their eyes started to adjust to the dark. Things became recognizable. To either side of the Bronco were acres of flat concrete, deserted parking lots with old streetlights with the glass busted out. The paper mill in front of them looked like something out of a gothic fairy tale. The kind of place that haunts children’s dreams.
Fielding leaned forward and looked through the window. The factory seemed to rise up like a giant wave.
What’d they make here? Fielding asked.
The stuff sweethearts wrote their sweet little nothings on, Batey said.
All that, Fielding said, pointing, for a little paper?
A mechanical nightmare, Batey said.
The front entrance was boarded up and the boards were all covered in graffiti. Over the entrance was a sign covered in moss and the O of whatever name used to be there was all that was left. Batey swung the Bronco around toward the mill. There were clusters of thick tubes. Stacks where the burn-off had once escaped. Now all was still. Valves seized. Thousands of tons of steel arrested in time. Batey pulled up to a side entrance. A small metal door with no windows.
They sat in the Bronco watching the door as if waiting for someone to come out. Finally Batey turned off the engine.
Okay, he said.
The dome light shined for a moment as both doors opened and for a moment Fielding watched his shadow over the concrete and it seemed to be moving of its own volition and he had the urge to warn it to go no further. To shout out the mistake it was making. But then he closed the door behind him and the shadow disappeared. Batey came around the truck and the two stood side by side looking at the door leading in.
You know that feeling you get watching a scary movie, Batey said, when the character is about to do something dumb and you’re sitting there yelling at the screen telling him not to go through that spooky door of an old, abandoned paper mill?
Sure do, Fielding said.
Me too.
Well.
Yep.
The handle of the door was cold against Fielding’s hand as he touched it. The metal was rusted and the rust was boiling up and was so thin in spots you could put your finger through it. Fielding tried the handle. He thought it would be locked but the handle swung down and the door opened.
Convenient, Fielding said. He pulled the door.
The smell that came from inside was like a cave. Within was a blackness absolute. A void without end. The rain had started up again. Batey snapped on his flashlight and the bigger drops fell through the beam with a kind of impatient determination. They stepped through the door. There was water at their feet.
Don’t let that shut behind yeh, Fielding said.
Batey wedged a rock in the jamb and then lifted his flashlight to the room. There were miles of overhead tubing. Bent pipes. Tanks and valve wheels. Dials with shattered glass faces and the indicator pins frozen in place. There were prison-like elevated walkways. It looked at once orderly and chaotic. The flashlight caught only glimpses of it in its narrow spectrum as Batey swung it around. Fielding was squinting as if it were blinding. The roof was leaking and there were pools of stagnant water all over the floor. They stood and listened. They didn’t know what for but still they listened. There was only the sound of the rain on the roof. The water dripping through.
Yeh want to lead the way? Fielding asked. I’m already lost.
Batey led them down the only way they could go. At the end of the corridor was an airtight door like in a ship. It had been left open. They stepped through one at a time. The air seemed to be getting worse. Sulfuric. A faint smell of sweet rot. And heavy. Like they could drape it over their shoulders. Like it could smother out their lungs.
This lookin familiar? Fielding asked.
He pointed his light across the room.
Through that door, Batey said.
Stinks in here.
I’m hoping that bad smell isn’t what I think it is. Here.
He handed Fielding his gun.
What am I goin a do with this?
Shoot it, Batey said. If it comes to that.
They walked to the door on the far side of the room. Batey put his hand on the handle.
Ready?
Fielding nodded. He raised the gun. Batey opened the door slowly. The hinges didn’t make a sound. The door eased in. It was like it was being inhaled. Neither man moved. The flashlight cut a stark line over the floor where the door had stopped. They waited as if something was going to cross the path of light but nothing did. Not even a single speck of dust.
Yeh keep that trained upward, Fielding said. Don’t let it go dark in here.
He walked through the door with the gun raised. Neither of them knew what they were expecting but what they saw was not it. The room was large with high ceilings and was completely empty. Every bit of machinery had been removed. The tanks, the boilers. Not even a forgotten bolt. As if the place had been scrubbed clean. All the glass was gone from the windows near the ceiling and the rain was coming in.
Where’d everythin go? Fielding asked.
I don’t know.
This is the room, Fielding said. I recognize it.
Yep.
They walked out to the middle of the room and stood in the very spot where the girl on the video had been tied to the table and murdered. Batey looked down at the cement floor where a stain should have been. But there was no stain. Only the anemic gray of the concrete. Batey walked around with the flashlight trained on the ground in an attempt to find a bloodstain but he couldn’t find anything. Fielding was looking up at the punched-out windows where a lighter shade of black was printed in the open frames.
Maybe we got it wrong? Fielding said.
No, Batey said. This is the place.
Blood don’t come out of concrete easily.
A sound came careening from the far side of the room and Batey wheeled around with the flashlight and stunned there in the yellow light was a wharf rat the size of a house cat. Its tail more than a foot long. The oily hair on its back was clumped with wet. It hunched there blinking at them. Fielding raised the gun and aimed it at the animal and said, Git. Then the rat ran off and again they were left with an empty room.
Well? Batey said.
Yeah.
They retraced their steps back to the Bronco. Outside the rain was coming harder. Inside the Bronco the rain was loud as it crashed against the roof. They sat there silent. Fielding handed Batey back the gun. Then he faced the window looking out at the mill.
Bit of a wasted trip, Batey said. Not even sure what we were looking for.
Wasn’t a waste, Fielding said. Got Thursday night after all. Might tell us somethin.
Yeah, Batey said. How you going to navigate that, by the way?
I do not know, Fielding said. Suppose I’ll have to beat it out of him.
Batey grinned but when he turned to look at Fielding he saw Fielding was not grinning and judging by the look on his face they were thinking the same thing. That by the end of this someone was going to die. Batey did not know who was going to die, if it was going to be one of them or someone else, but someone was going to die. That he knew.