THE PASSAGE TO the panic room, Justine thought, leaning out to shine her Maglite into the shaft. About twenty feet below her she spotted a cement floor and a door. About eight feet above her, a faint ligh
t shone from another passage.
She thought of telling McCormick, the FBI tech, but knew that meant she would not be able to explore for herself. She ducked through the open pocket door, leaned across the space, and climbed the ladder until she was level with the second passage.
Unlike the one below, this passage had no door, just a narrow entry that doglegged left. Justine held the light between her teeth, stepped across the space, found footing inside. She took another step, met a wall, turned left, and found herself in a room about seven feet high, fifteen feet long, and twenty deep. There were bunk beds, a table with six chairs, and a small kitchen whose shelves were stocked with canned goods.
She noticed a switch at the entry and tripped it. Another pocket door slid out, blocking the entrance.
Light fell into the panic room from a window placed flush at the top of the wall. It was about a foot wide and ran most of the length of the space. Just above the window on the ceiling, Justine noticed metal brackets, a series of them, spaced at three-foot intervals, five in all.
She tried to orient herself based on her movements after she’d left Jennifer Harlow’s closet, tried to figure out where the window faced.
“It’s not a window, it’s a two-way mirror,” she muttered to herself.
Again she looked up at the brackets: simple bent and drilled steel bars screwed into the ceiling. There were extra holes in the bars, and signs that something had been bolted to them at one time.
Except for electrical plugs in the wall and what looked like a socket for a cable connection, the place was empty. A cable connection?
Justine looked back at the brackets, imagining screens and cable lines hanging there. But why? And then she saw it. Not screens. Cameras. It made sense, didn’t it? The Harlows were filmmakers, after all.
Justine wanted to see what a camera might pick up from the window. She jumped, grabbed hold of two brackets, and pulled herself high enough to peer through the two-way mirror, which afforded her a complete and elevated view of the Harlows’ bed and the FBI tech still working on it. She swung her attention around the room, spotting the other four mirrors. Were there brackets for cameras behind them?
She was going to find out. As she returned to the ladder, questions and hypotheses darted through her mind. What were the cameras for? In case they had to use the panic room and wanted to document intruders?
She supposed that was possible, but for some reason it didn’t make total sense to her. She tripped the switch; the door slid open again. She left it open and climbed back down the ladder. She almost turned and stepped back through the open pocket door into Jennifer Harlow’s closet but decided to go all the way down the ladder first.
As she neared the bottom, her flashlight beam picked up an alcove of sorts set opposite a steel door. There were three steel shelves set in the cement in the alcove. On the wall between each shelf were an electrical socket and another of those cable connections. She looked closely at the shelves and saw no dust. Which meant what? The shelves were cleaned regularly? Or had they been cleaned after something was removed from them?
Unable to answer, Justine turned toward the door, spotted a switch beside it. She flipped it up. Nothing happened. She shrugged, turned the dead bolt, and yanked open the door.
In the darkness she heard a crash and then a voice yelled out, “Who’s there? Identify yourself or I swear to God, I’ll shoot!”
Chapter 65
“BROTHER DEAREST,” TOMMY said as he entered my office, arms spread wide. He was wearing a five-thousand-dollar suit, no tie, and appeared to have hit the tanning salon earlier in the morning.
I remembered my brother winking at me in the courtroom the day of his arraignment. Was this part of his plan? Figure out a way to get me to admit that I was at the scene when Clay Harris took a 9mm round to the chest? It was not beyond Tommy to go this route. I still suspected that Tommy had hired Clay to kill my ex-girlfriend in the first place. In order to frame me for the murder. Since that didn’t work out, it only made sense that he’d try to frame me for Clay’s murder instead. But I had no proof.
Carmine entered my office right behind Tommy, his skin an even deeper red against his starched white collar and yellow cashmere sweater. “Jack,” the mobster said, as if we were long-lost golf buddies. “How gracious of you to entertain us at such short notice.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “What’s the proposition?”
“What, no business pleasantries?” Tommy said, taking a seat across the desk from me.
“I’m not feeling particularly pleasant, brother,” I replied.
Tommy beamed at me as if I’d said something of deep significance.
Carmine shut the door. He looked around my office, a space I intentionally keep devoid of personal effects. In my line of work, I’ve found that it pays to know more about other people than they do about me. Carmine gazed at me, popped his chin up. “Place bugged?”
“Good idea, but no,” I said. “You fellows wearing wires?”
Tommy cocked his head as if I’d gone paranoid, which I had.
“Nah,” Carmine said. “I was never one for taping myself.”
I said nothing. Tommy scowled but took off his jacket, unbuttoned his shirt, and showed me his chest and back. “Satisfied, brother?”