Part 6 (2/2)

Not the round room, Paul thought. That's not right. It's the diesel generator access station.

He stopped again, wondering where that knowledge had come from. He had never been here. He'd never worked in an iron works. None of what he saw looked familiar in the slightest, and yet he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that this place was a bad place, and that the round room Mike and the helicopter pilot spoke of was actually a place the men who worked here so long ago had come to repair the diesel generators that operated the slider belts and the electricity and a hundred other things that made this place run. Why was that, he thought. How did he know that?

”Let's go! Look sharp,” Mike said.

Paul tried not to look up at the superstructure. He focused instead on the dark tunnel before them, on the small, moving circles of dusty metal walkway lit by their flashlights.

I am doing a very stupid thing, he realized. I know this place is bad, and yet I'm allowing myself to be led like a lamb to the slaughter. No, he thought, correcting himself almost angrily. He was very sure of himself now. He was not going like a lamb to the slaughter. Not like a lamb.

Like a goat.

”Paul,” Mike said in a brutal stage whisper. At the same time he motioned with his gun. ”Get your gun up. Be ready.”

Paul nodded slowly, not wanting to show any weakness but at the same time unable to keep his fear down. G.o.d, he thought, I'm doing this badly. He's not going to trust me after this. How could he? I wouldn't, if I were him.

But then Mike was pus.h.i.+ng a blanket aside and stepping through, and for a moment, Paul stood alone. The crumbling metal walls suddenly seemed very close. The totality of this place, its immense wrongness, was leaning in on him, covering him.

No, he thought. Not covering me. Pulling me in. This place, it wants to hold me, own me, devour me whole. It wants to consume me.

On his hip, the radio sizzled.

He looked down at it, surprised. He couldn't make out the voices, the words used, but he could sense the urgency, and that urgency snapped him loose from whatever this was, the hold this factory had on him.

Paul pushed his way through the blanket and emerged into another metal tunnel, this one lined with broken bodies and trash and used needles in the dust. Mike was standing there, his gun lowered to his waist. Beyond him was a large circular chamber formed by immense walls. The body of a mutilated detective lay there, a crumpled, broken thing.

But Paul noticed none of that. His eye was drawn immediately to the large white Angora goat milling around in confused circles inside the chamber. Its large, black, vacant eyes caught Paul's, and then it looked away.

”No,” he said, taking an involuntary step back.

”Do you see it?” the helicopter pilot shouted over the radio. Paul could hear him clearly now. The calm veneer had slipped from his voice. He was absolutely frantic. ”You should be right on top of it?”

Paul could only stare. The goat ducked its head and made a low, moaning noise that Paul remembered from his days on his father's farm. The animal was confused, frightened.

Or is that me, Paul thought, projecting my fears onto it?

He wasn't sure.

”Do you see it?” the helicopter pilot said again.

”44-70,” Mike said, and dimly, absently, Paul was aware of the crack in Mike's normally calm exterior. His words broke off there as he stared at the dead detective, the staggering white goat, the blood spattered over everything.

He's frightened, too, Paul thought. But not as frightened as me.

”44-70, are you okay?” the dispatcher said. ”Mike, answer me. Are you okay?”

”10-4,” Mike said, sounding for a moment like his response was automatic. ”10-4,” he said. ”We see it.” His voice cracked. ”Oh Jesus, we see it. 44-70, start us EMS. The shooting team. I need more officers to contain this scene. Start me a supervisor, too. Jesus, start everybody. You're not gonna believe what we got here.”

Chapter 4.

After twenty-six years on the job, and sixteen of those in Homicide, Keith Anderson was used to nights like this. When they went to parties with their non-cop friends, and somebody would say they bet he had to work some weird hours, Keith would joke he was so used to it he could do it on autopilot. But it really wasn't a joke. Truth be told, he could have done it on autopilot, though he never did. He loved it too much.

But he had been just about to get into bed. He was standing there in a white t-s.h.i.+rt and boxer shorts, looking at his Blackberry on the nightstand, studying the caller ID display. Margie, his wife, was still asleep, but groaning irritably at the buzzing phone. It would have been nice, Anderson thought, to spend at least one uninterrupted night in bed with his wife.

He accepted the call.

”What's going on, Chuck?”

”Keith? You awake?”

”That's kind of a stupid question.”

”Keith, listen, we've got some real trouble.”

Chuck was Charles Levy. He'd been Keith's sergeant in Homicide for the last six years now, and he was one of Anderson's oldest friends.

Anderson was only forty-eight, but there were times, like this, as he looked down on his pasty white legs and felt every muscle in his back aching, that he felt positively ancient. He mopped a hand across his face and sighed. ”What's going on, Chuck?”

Beside him, Margie stirred. She sat up and turned on her light, then leaned against the headboard of their bed.

Anderson glanced over at her and nodded as Chuck Levy spoke into his ear.

”East Patrol's got a huge f.u.c.king mess on their hands,” he said. ”Real bad.” His voice sounded like it was about to break. ”Keith, it's Ram. He's been killed. His partner, too. Raul Herrera, if you know him. I...I don't know Herrera.”

Anderson was certain he hadn't heard that right. ”Wait, say that again. What do you mean Ram's been...you mean our Ram? You mean Bobby Cantrell?”

”Yeah,” Levy said.

This isn't happening, Anderson thought. I'm about to wake up. Come on, Keith, wake up.

”What's wrong?” Margie asked. ”Is Ram okay?”

He put his hand on her stomach. He tried to tell her no, that somehow Ram had just been killed, but the words wouldn't come. Instead all he could do was shake his head.

”Keith,” she asked, more urgently now, ”what's going on? Tell me what happened.”

”Killed,” was all he could say.

Margie clapped her hands over her mouth, and as Anderson watched she drew her knees up to her chest and started breathing in short, noisy sobs. She shook her head violently back and forth. She watched him without blinking.

”How did it happen?” Anderson asked.

”I have no idea. Like I said, East Patrol's got a mess out there. They've got Ram and Herrera down and about forty others, too. A bunch of junkies apparently.”

”Forty?” Keith said disbelieving. ”Did you say forty people dead?”

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