Eileen Reed - Ground Zero Part 18

"I found out how it was done. I need the print people. Get up here." Eileen hung up the phone and clicked the locking mechanism on the suction tool.

"Here we go," she said to herself.

The carpet flap came up like a jigsaw puzzle piece. The st.u.r.dy carpet pieces were laid across a metal checkerboard of tiles. The tool sucked up against a metal tile firmly, but it took Eileen a couple of tries to get the heavy tile up and out of its metal frame. When the tile moved aside, a blast of cold air hit Eileen in the face. The opening was pitch black, and cold.

Eileen made a little whistling mouth but didn't whistle. She had never liked dark places very much. The flashlight was powerful and the batteries were fresh. The floor looked as if it was a good distance beneath the layer of tiles. Huge gray cables snaked across the floor. Bright red and blue lines twisted through the cables. The gray cables looked like enormous snakes.

"'Snakes, why'd it have to be snakes,'" Eileen quoted to herself. She checked her gun and looked around the room. Blaine would figure out where Eileen had gone when he came in. Eileen had pulled up the floor tile directly in front of the Center door. If Blaine didn't look down, he'd fall right into the hole when he walked in.

Eileen dropped into the darkness. She crouched down, and only then thought perhaps the murderer was waiting in the dark for her. That perhaps she should have drawn her gun. She peered around in all directions and felt her body p.r.i.c.kle with sudden sweat.

There was nothing but cables, and thin metal columns that supported the frame that held the tiles. Eileen swept the flashlight around in a circle. She could see to the walls in every direction. The walls were concrete, solid, pierced by cables and vents that were only big enough to let a good-size rabbit through, if that. Eileen swept again, more slowly, looking. There was no dust. The chilled air started to cool the sweat, and Eileen began to feel the cold. There were cables dangling from the metal framework, attached to the Silicon Graphics machines above her. Eileen crawled forward a few paces. The fit was fairly tight, but she could move around. She'd found her murderer's pathway.

"Miss Reed," said a voice, and Eileen backed up. She looked up out of the hole to see Major Blaine. "What are you doing?"

Eileen stood up.

"I found out how the murder was done," she said. "And I found out it had to be one of your Gamers. Unless-" Eileen looked around. "What if the murderer were hiding in the floor? They could have gotten out sometime yesterday, when no one was looking. You said all doors weren't guarded? They were dead-bolted?"

"Wait, wait, what's going on? I don't understand. Explain."

Eileen sighed and stepped out of the chilly hole. She clicked off the flashlight.

"This is how the murder was done. The murderer was either one of your Gamers, or someone already here, hiding underneath the floor. Unless there was someone here before the Game began, it has to be one of the Gamers. They pulled up the floor tile in their cube, dropped underneath the floor, and crawled to Terry's room. They came up through a floor tile behind Terry, stabbed her, and then went back underneath the floor. Get it?"

"Got it," Blaine breathed. "I got it."

"Okay. If the killer was a Gamer, they went back to their room, put on their gear, and pretended everything was okay. If this murderer was another person, when did they leave? Could they have left the room last night, after everyone had gone?"

"I understand now. But they couldn't have. All the doors except one were dead-bolted from the inside. The other one was locked and guarded. They were still all dead-bolted this morning when I checked."

Eileen stood looking at the hole in the floor. She shut out Major Blaine and thought about the possibilities of what she'd just discovered. She'd had this ability since she was a child. Perhaps it had been born in her. She could turn off all input and stand in a clean white room in her head, arranging puzzle pieces.

So she stood with a blank face, looking toward the hole in the floor but seeing a white room and a white table. Some of the pieces went together. Terry Guzman's piece lay neatly surrounded by interlocking Gamers. A pile of white pieces lay off to one side. The Procell file. Now a new puzzle piece appeared. It had a familiar shape.

Bernie Ames, the best friend of her Air Force days, was killed and cla.s.sified a "pilot error" death. Bernie would not fly into a mountain. Bernie would not make such a mistake. Eileen tried to get the doc.u.ments about the A-10 crash. The doc.u.ments were sealed. Other doc.u.ments were mysteriously missing. Was Bernie shut up because she knew something? Was the plane crash the result of some scandal, some error, that the Air Force didn't want brought to the light of day?

The puzzle piece that refused to be solved had existed in Eileen's white room for seven years. Now it suddenly joined the Gamers that surrounded Terry Guzman. There was another possibility for Terry's death, the same sort of piece that fit in with Bernie's unadmitted murder. The piece was t.i.tled "Cover up." It could fit.

Eileen blinked and looked at Major Blaine, who was speaking to her. Eileen hadn't heard a word he had been saying.

"...one of the Gamers? It must be? Miss Reed?"

"Or maybe that's what I'm supposed to think, Major," Eileen said coldly. "Maybe. I want the names of the guards who were at this door last night."

"Surely you don't think someone else was here-"

"I think I'm going to keep my mind open," Eileen said. "I need the names of those guards. And your OSI crime scene team needs to get prints from this floor." Eileen glanced at her watch. "I've got to go, I'm going to be late."

"Will you be back tomorrow?" Blaine asked, for the first time looking lost.

"I'll be back," Eileen said. "I've got some other work I need to do. I'll be back at eight."

"I'll expect you," Blaine said. "You-"

But Eileen was already walking away.

She pa.s.sed Roberto in the hallway as she headed out. Roberto was coming through the doors with a can of pop in his hand, and he gave Eileen a cautious smile. Eileen lifted a hand to him. Her other arm was full of her notes and the personal files of the Gamers. Along with the notes, she carried the Procell file.

18.

Colorado Springs Investigations Bureau.

a.s.sociated Press 5 April POLICE CONFIRM DEATH OF FIFTH SCIENTIST.

UNDER UNUSUAL CIRc.u.mSTANCES.

LONDON (AP)-Police on Sunday confirmed the death of a metallurgist involved in secret defense work-the fifth such case in the past eight months in which authorities have been unable to establish the cause of death.

A sixth scientist, a research expert on submarine warfare equipment at the University of Loughborough, vanished in January.

Eileen took a bite of her third taco and wiped some shreds of lettuce off the file. The file was extremely neat. The newspaper articles were folded and slipped into envelopes, stapled to a photocopy of the article. The name and date of the newspaper had also been included when Doug Procell clipped his articles. There were pictures, too, one of them of a spectacular wreck. One glance and Eileen knew it was a nonsurvivable wreck. There was nothing that the paramedics called "living s.p.a.ce," the bubble formed of twisted metal and gla.s.s that could hold a human being. Sometimes people died when there was a living s.p.a.ce in the vehicle, because their seat belts weren't on or they didn't have the ancient animal cunning to hunker down when the accident started to happen. Sometimes, though, nothing would help because the living s.p.a.ce was destroyed. The car in the newspaper photograph was one of those. The only recognizable thing were the wheels.

Harriet Sullivan, 26, was p.r.o.nounced dead on arrival at Memorial Hospital after this single-car rollover on Highway 94.

Eileen looked at the picture again. Then she turned it over and read the next article. It was another article from England, but it was a completely different murder.

a.s.sociated Press Fri 10 April 00:41.

DEAD SCIENTISTS MYSTERY BAFFLES BRITAIN.

LONDON (AP)-On March 30 scientist David Sands climbed into his car, the trunk packed with tanks of gasoline, and drove into the front of a vacant restaurant. He died in a fireball that incinerated him almost beyond recognition, the fifth British scientist involved in security-related research to die in mysterious circ.u.mstances since August. A sixth scientist has been missing since January. Together the cases add up either to a series of bizarre coincidences or to a cloak-and-dagger conspiracy.

Eileen stretched. She finished her taco and took a big swig of her pop. The murders were fascinating, but there didn't seem to be much connection to Terry Guzman. She bent to the article.

"Eileen, what are you reading?" Harben asked from behind her shoulder. "Oh. I see."

"Procell's stuff is interesting, but still." Eileen snorted.

"How much is there?" Harben asked.

Eileen measured the remaining papers with her fingers. "An inch and a half, boss," she said gloomily. "I'll be here all night."

"Don't be here all night. You've got some work to do tomorrow. They might come up with some prints from your discovery, or perhaps not. You need to talk to those Gamers again. Someone will crack."

Harben tapped a finger on the file. "Good work, by the way. In most mystery novels, however, once the good detective figures out the locked-room mystery, he knows immediately who has committed the murder."

Eileen grinned at Harben. Harben's congratulations always made her feel good.

"I'll get there."

"See that you do."

Harben turned and went back to his office. Eileen crumpled up the taco papers and tossed them into the wastebasket. She turned to the next article and began to read.

Hours later, Eileen glanced up at the clock and winced. Eleven. Betty would be hungry. She'd missed the local news again. She rubbed her forehead and stacked Doug Procell's papers. John Richmond's article was not accompanied by a picture, mercifully. He must have died instantly when the garbage truck slammed into his little commuter car. The other deaths were all at other military bases, sometimes mysterious but mostly just common accidents. Eileen lingered over a picture of an unsmiling, curly-haired woman with dark eyes. Harriet Sullivan. Sully. The notice was her memorial service, and Joe Tanner was not mentioned in the survivors list. They probably weren't officially engaged. Eileen put the picture in the file and shut the cover. She sighed.

"Done?" Harben's voice startled her.

"I'm done. I don't think I learned a d.a.m.n thing."

"Could she have been executed?" Harben asked quietly.

"Yes, I think so," Eileen said, and looked up. Harben was sitting at the desk next to her own, a cup of coffee in one relaxed hand. The man was uncanny, he was so silent. Eileen should have heard him walk up and sit down, but she hadn't. "Major Blaine would have to be involved, I think. I saw him tape the door shut. But who's to say he couldn't have smuggled the murderer out before he sealed the door?"

"More important, who was brought in to commit the murder?" Harben asked quietly. "Where do you hire a killer with a security clearance?"

"You're right," Eileen said. "They'd have to bring someone new on base to do that. A mole. A spy. Maybe there's a trail there."

"I find the scenario unlikely, Eileen," Harben said. "A killer who has a clearance, who is brought onto the base to kill someone, who is hidden in the dark and the cold for hours ... with no guarantee he won't be discovered and shot to cover the whole mess up. Then the killer is smuggled out of the area with no one spotting him?"

"Accidents are much easier to arrange," Eileen said grimly.

"Which is why I don't believe this is an execution," Harben responded. He leaned back in his chair and sipped from his coffee. "I think you've met your murderer already, Eileen. You just have to find out which of your Gamers it is."

Eileen was opening her mouth to speak when the on-duty phone rang. The Investigations office was quietly busy with the nighttime s.h.i.+ft, but just the same the phone cut through the air. Harben took a small measured sip of his coffee as the on-duty officer picked up the phone. The officer was Rosen. New detectives always pulled the worst s.h.i.+fts. Eileen hadn't even noticed he was there, she'd been so absorbed in the case. Rosen spoke for a moment and then glanced over at Eileen and Harben. He nodded his head at them and waved for them to come over.

"Oh, no," Eileen said, and got to her feet. She knew, she always knew. She saw the shy smile of Joe Tanner as he handed her a can of pop, and swallowed past a lump in her throat.

She took the phone.

"Detective Reed here."

"Oh, Miss Reed, thank G.o.d," Major Blaine said in a hoa.r.s.e voice. "Thank G.o.d. Can you get out here?"

"What happened?" Eileen said tightly.

"It's Art. Oh, G.o.d, it's Art. Art Bailey," Blaine choked.

Eileen had spoken to Art just a few hours before, when she'd told the sad-eyed Truth Team leader to clear out of the Gaming Center.

"What about Art?" Eileen asked.

"It's-I-He's been murdered," said Blaine.

Colorado Springs Investigations Bureau.

"I'll be right there," Eileen said. She hung up the phone. She stood there for a moment and then turned to Harben.

"It's Art Bailey. He's been murdered too. I didn't let him help me with the floors," Eileen said. "I didn't let him look at the tapes with me. He must have thought of something. He must have figured it out."

Harben looked down at his coffee cup, his mouth tight.

"This will not be an unsolved case," Harben said coldly. "I'll send officers out to the other Gamers' houses. You have the names and addresses in your file? What's your file and code name access?"

"The file is TGUZMAN," Eileen said, reaching for a sc.r.a.p of paper and writing it down. "And the code name access is MEDEA." The software system picked the code names and a.s.signed them to case files. Eileen had felt a chill when she first saw the code name. Medea was the mythological queen who murdered her own children.

"Dave," Harben said. Rosen looked up from his desk and got to his feet at Harben's nod. Eileen had thought over the past few weeks that perhaps Harben was going to a.s.sign Rosen as her partner. She'd worked without a partner for nearly six months, ever since Jim Erickson moved to Denver. Eileen liked working without a partner, but that couldn't go on much longer. There was too much to do, working alone. Harben had given her a chance to get her hands on the Senior Detective position, and now it was time to see if she could keep it with a new partner. Dave Rosen looked like a good choice. He was smart, and he was green. This was a test, for both Rosen and herself.

"Yes, sir," he said.

"Eileen's file on the Guzman case. Get the other Gamers listed here on the phone. Find out who they are. Read the file. You'll be a.s.sisting Eileen on this case. Understood?"

"Understood, sir," he said quietly, and took the sc.r.a.p of paper. His eyes glittered, and Eileen remembered that was Rosen's way of smiling. He was a rookie, but he was going to be good.

"I've got to go," Eileen said. She had to get to Schriever. "I'll contact you by radio."

"All right," Rosen said, as evenly as before.

"Keep in contact," Harben said. "Watch your back, Eileen."