Taking hold of the lightweight balsa wood panel, I carried it with me outside the cell onto the front catwalk.
“Hey,” Rodney barked, “you can’t take that with you. It’s police evidence.”
“I’m just borrowing it,” I said. Then, turning to Bridgette. “You got somebody who can scrape off this paint and reveal the map under it?”
She thought it over for a beat. “I think I have somebody in mind. Could take a little while.”
“I’ll use that time to speak with Joyce Mathews and Mean Gene Bender. All goes well, Blood and I will be trekking through the woods on our way to Moss’s and Sweet’s exact position by lunchtime.”
“I prefer we go after lunch,” Blood said. “And ain’t you forgettin’ something? Me and Betty got a date tonight.”
“Sorry, old pal,” I said. “You might have to raincheck with the beautiful Betty. But on the other hand, that map turns out to be solid gold, we won’t even have to unpack the tent.”
“I’m hoping for the latter,” Blood said, pursing his lips. “I prefer civilized living.”
That’s when I heard it again. It was just as faint as it had been inside the warden’s office but still somehow unmistakable—the wail. The high-pitched noise that ran up the bony exterior of my spine and down into the nerve bundled center.
“You hear that?” I said to Blood.
He nodded. “Must be the pipes,” he said. But I sensed something else in his voice. The prison—any max security prison—was full of strange sounds that echoed throughout the steel and concrete block. Mechanical noises that mostly came from flushing toilets, humming industrial electrical fixtures, heating units that didn’t work, gates opening and closing, public address systems, you name it. But this noise was different. It was animal-like. Human animal. Unexplainable and, in a word, haunting.
“Could be the pipes,” said Sheriff Hylton. “Or a ghost.”
“There is no noise,” Rodney said. “It’s your imagination. Now, can we be done here? I ain’t got all day, people.”
I felt the lightweight board in my hands. Rodney was right, much as I hated to admit it. Time was wasting. With every minute I spent researching the situation, Moss and Sweet could be gaining ground. My entire approach in their eventual apprehension depended upon their being held up in one place. Still seemed the likely scenario to me, based on my experience. And that’s the reason Governor Valente had hired me in the first place. Experience.
“Show us the door, Rodney,” I said.
“Gladly,” he said, brushing past me on the catwalk like I was nothing more than a stranger on the street. And an invisible one at that.