“How’s this a library?” Veronica remarked, looking at the narrow stairwell winding downwards, decorated with yellow caution markers. Despite her petite stature, even she was concerned with hitting her head in the confined space. The university library’s ‘stacks’ were stored in the basement and the university never bothered updating how to get there. Cold War era fallout shelter signs were still bolted to the dull concrete walls. After cleaning up, I had managed a white dress shirt and gray slacks under my favorite old gray twill pea coat. Veronica was content with a pink blouse and jeans under her black leather jacket.
“Here we go.” I opened a heavy metal door at the bottom of the stairs, while she leaned on the skinny metal railing behind me. A rush of stale dry air struck us. Now we just had to find Leighton.
“What is it with creepy guys hanging out in the creepiest locations?” Veronica observed. The stacks were a series of bookcases at least twelve across and four deep under a low ceiling with lighting in every third row. The room was more reminiscent of a claustrophobic nightmare than a conceptual library. Bare white walls tried to amplify the light and increase the space, but with the dismal gray carpeting, it only succeeded in an institutional look. The place was just as bad as I remembered.
“Here.” I moved to turn on additional lights, but was greeted with a paper tag over the switch with the words out of order and do not touch written on it. I rolled my eyes.
“That’s state funding for you,” Veronica scoffed.
“What?” I turned around to see she had wandered over to a Cold War era propaganda sign. I shook my head and walked toward the far wall across from the door. Veronica followed me into a recessed alcove, where I found a couple of tables. I set the backpack on the table, slipped off my coat and rolled up my sleeves. There are many times as a consultant you have to adjust yourself to your situation. As I unzipped the side to unpack, the room’s lights flickered and went out altogether, leaving us in an absolute blackness. Then there are times when you need to be able to adjust your situation.
“I think this is an improvement,” Veronica quipped from my side. I reached in the pack and felt around for the long plastic shapes. Bending the objects gave a quick cracking sound, and illuminated us in a greenish-yellow glow. “A regular boy scout.” Veronica straightened her blouse and brushed back her hair.
“Right.”
“Leighton?” She leaned on the table, picking at the combination of electronics and handguns in the pack.
“He’s got a hidden room down here someplace.” I tried not to sound so skeptical. There were far less believable things that were real.
“It sounds too comic-book to me.”
“Yeah, but you don’t know him like I do.” Scowling at me, she picked up the camcorder. I found the combat knife and clipped it on my belt while she activated the night-shot on the camera. “Tell you what, you take the history section while I check the front section.”
“Which way is history?” Veronica looked around in the pathetic light. I watched her shifting. Five years later and she still looked like she did in high school. It was hard to believe she was really here. She snapped her fingers in front of my face.
“Huh? Oh. Head back toward the door we came in through and follow the wall left, until you hit the corner.”
“Okay.” Veronica turned to leave the pale yellow glow of the table behind.
“Be careful.” I called, to make her turn back.
“Hypocrite.” She spun on her heel and walked into the darkness.
“Yeah, right.” I pulled out a flashlight and zipped up the bag to leave me in complete black. I didn’t put it past Leighton to switch off the lights on us just for kicks. The flashlight came on with a quick click.
Walking over to the head of the room, half-way to where we came in, I stopped and took in the darkness. Leighton was an engineering grad student who also happened to be a prolific arms dealer. I had met him a number of times, but I could never really tell where his hidey-hole was down here. I felt my way long the wall from one door to the other. There had to be some sort of maintenance access or something.
Both times that I bought from him, he had disappeared off to my right from the tables to retrieve the order. Veronica was more than likely in the right area. I switched off my light in hopes that if Leighton was here he wouldn’t be able to conceal his work-lights. In theory it was a brilliant idea. In practice, I dropped my flashlight and it rolled down the aisle. I felt my way down the shelves to pick up the light when Veronica appeared. She let out a shriek of surprise, and reeled backwards, tripping over something.
“Trying to give me a heart attack?” I switched on the light.
“You!” Veronica squawked. “Can’t you make some noise or something?” She shifted her weight. “Ow.”
“Are you alright?” I took her free hand and pulled her up.
“Yeah. No thanks to you.” She sputtered a threat while I brushed off.
“You find anything?”
“Nothing.” She adjusted the camera to focus on me.
“It has to be this section.” I headed back toward the history aisles.
“But I already checked it.” Moving to the next aisle she almost tripped over me when I knelt down in front of her. She backed up. “What are you doing?”
“Someone knocked some books off the shelf.” I finished laying the books on the bottom shelf. It was faint but I could feel a trace of moving air. All I could see was the dingy white wall at the end of the aisle.
“Now you’re playing librarian?” I ignored her comment and moved to the wall… Running my hand over the surface I could feel a slight breeze.
“Step back.” She moved to the side as I pulled the knife free. Running the tip of the blade along the wall, I heard the difference. It was metal, and sure enough, the tip found an unseen edge. I pressured the blade into the hidden space and used it to lever the panel free. “Ha!” I smiled at her as the maintenance panel swung open.
“Just who is this guy?”
“You’re about to find out.” I stepped around the panel and examined the opening with my light. It was a perfectly square three foot hole. I ducked down to step through the opening and promptly dropped down several feet.
“Are you alright?” Veronica leaned in to look at me through the camera.
“Fine.” I swept the light across my surroundings. Concrete floor, concrete walls and a heavy duty bundle of pipes following the wall on my right. “It’s one of the old maintenance tunnels that connects the buildings.”
“Uh, I think I’ll stay here.”
“Where’s your sense of adventure?”
“Lost it in a tunnel somewhere,” Veronica shot back.
“Oh, come on.” She let out an audible sigh and hopped down next to me. “See, it’s not so bad.” All she did was roll her eyes. I turned and started following the tunnel.
The tunnel stretched well beyond the reach of my light, and its narrow confines changed little as we moved forward. Even spiders had abandoned the stretch to leave the dank concrete untouched. After a good distance, I let out a silent curse and jogged ahead.
Fear crept in my mind when I stopped and cast my light on the scene. A lanky young man in maintenance overalls was sprawled on the floor in a large pool of blood. His long dark hair and pale complexion confirmed his identity. There were three gunshot wounds on his back, and he was splayed out like he had been running. I stooped down to examine the blood.
“Leighton?” Veronica knelt beside me, covering her nose at the smell.
“Unfortunately.” It looked like the blood was fairly recent. Two, maybe three days ago. Rostern was already in Northfield by that time though. Our shooter covering their tracks? I heard something up ahead.
“You always take me to the nicest places.” I scowled at her remark.
“Let’s get out of here.” I watched the corridor ahead as she turned and started back. A cold shiver ran down my back and made the hair stand up on my arms. There are chilling moments when you fully understand that you are prey. I shook it off and jogged after Veronica.
“So much for that lead.” Veronica tucked the camcorder in her jacket. “Is it too much to hope that Rostern did that?” I didn’t want to answer her but my silence was just as telling. “So the snitch is next?”
“Later.” I unconsciously hastened our pace, still feeling the pressure at my back. “Coffee first.” Veronica gave a shrug. “Alison is going to stop by the scene on her way back from Sarah’s. Hopefully we might have missed something else.”
“So when is she due back?” I heard the tone of her voice change with her attitude. Alison and Veronica will never get along perfectly, but they had a common goal for the time being. Staying alive when it seems like everyone wants you dead can be a very unifying goal.
“Later tonight.” Veronica jumped up and caught the lip of our entrance. She pulled herself up and crawled out. I gave a nervous glance back and caught movement. Shining the light back down the corridor revealed nothing. She stuck her head back through the opening to startle me.
“You never told me why someone might be shooting at us.” I grabbed the edge and pulled myself up and out onto the abrasive carpet. Veronica was kneeling next to me in the inky black.
“Yeah, well, I’m not really certain yet.” I felt a growing unease watching the opening with my flashlight. I swallowed a breath and kicked the panel closed. Somehow the sensation didn’t let up. Veronica flicked my forehead.
“Then how about some idle speculation?” Veronica leaned over me. “You really have a bad habit of holding back important information.” She got to her feet and took my hand to pull me up. “A really bad habit.”
“I know.” A loud slam exploded from the closed panel, making us jump. “Time to go.” I tugged her toward our gear.
“What was that?”
“Not sticking around to find out.” I grabbed our stuff and hurried us toward the exit as the panel banged open.