“Cowboy’s online.”
“With you,” said Bug.
“What’ve you got?”
“We did a thermal scan on the place, but it’s cold. No one home.”
“That’s what I want to hear.”
I walked around the building. It really was a large mess. The additions and walkways looked almost like they’d grown organically, expanding out of need like a cramped animal. The paint jobs didn’t match section-to-section, and for a company with a lot of private funding the exterior of the joint was poorly maintained. Weeds, some graffiti, trash in the parking lot.
“Place is a dump,” I said.
“Better inside, from what I hear,” said Bug. “Some cool stuff.”
A red DO NOT ENTER sticker was pasted with precision to the center of the front door. I ignored it and used a preconfigured keycard to gain entry.
“Going in,” I said quietly.
“Copy that,” said Bug. “Watch your ass, Cowboy.”
“It’s on the agenda.”
The entrance lobby was small and unremarkable. A receptionist’s desk, some potted plants, and the kind of framed pictures you can buy at Kmart. Bland landscapes that probably weren’t even places in New Jersey. The lights were out, which was surprising since the key-reader was functional. The entrance hall was dark, and daylight didn’t try too hard to reach inside. When I tried the light switches all I got was a click. No lights.
I tapped my earbud. “Bug, I thought the power was still on.”
“It is.”
“Not from where I’m standing.”
“Let me check.”
I removed a small flashlight from my pocket and squatted down to shine the light across the floor. The immediate entrance hallway had a thin coating of damp grime on the floor — a side effect of the building’s position near a bay and a swamp. There were footprints in the grime, but from the size and pattern it was clear most of them had been left by responding police officers. Big shoes with gum-rubber soles. The prints went inside and then they came out again. If there were prints by an intruder, they were lost to the general mess left behind by the cops. Pretty typical with crime scenes, and pretty much unavoidable. Cops have to respond and they can’t float.
I tapped my earbud again, channeling over to Church. “Cowboy to Deacon.”
“Go for Deacon.”
“Did anyone have eyes on the cops who came out of the building last night? Are we sure they weren’t carrying anything? Or had something in their pockets?”
“The ATF agents on duty last night searched each officer,” said Church. “It was not well-received.”
“I can imagine.”
And I could imagine it — responding blues getting a pat-down by a couple of Federal pricks.
“Why didn’t the ATF agents accompany them inside?” I asked.
I could hear a small sigh. “The ATF agents had left the scene to pick up a pizza.”
“Ouch.”
“Those agents have been suspended pending further disciplinary action.”
“Yeah, fair call.”
“Which is why the ATF is rather prickly about your being there.”
“Copy that.”
I channeled over to Bug.
“Where are we with those lights?”
“Working on it.”
The lights stayed off, though.
There was a closed door behind the reception desk, so I opened it and entered a hallway that was as black as the pit. There was no sound, not the slightest hint that I was anything but alone in here, but regardless of that I drew my pistol. It’s hard to say if, at that moment, my caution was born out of a concern not to accidentally disturb any evidence left behind or because the place was beginning to give me the creeps.
The hallway hit a t-juncture. Each side looked as dark and uninformative as the other, but I took the right-hand side because that was my gun-hand side. I know. I’m a bit of a superstitious idiot. Sue me.
The side hallway wasn’t straight but jagged and curved and turned for no logical design reasons that I could see. Maybe there was something about the foundation structure that required so unlikely a design plan, but I couldn’t imagine what. The result was something that — as I walked through the shadows — triggered odd little thoughts that were entirely uncomfortable. The unlikely angles combined with the mildly curving walls and low gray-painted ceiling to give the whole place a strangely organic feel. Like a building that hadn’t so much been designed as allowed to grow. Like roots of a tree. Or tentacles.
Yeah, I shouldn’t be in here. I should be out in the bright sunlight watching a bunch of millionaires in white, black, and orange stretch pants hit a small white ball around a grassy field.
“You’re a fruitcake,” I told myself, and I had no counterargument.
I followed the flashlight beam down the crooked hallway until it ended at a set of double-doors made out of heavy-grade plastic. The kind meant to swing back when you pushed a cart through them, like they have in meat-packing plants.
A charming thought.
I pushed one flap open and peered into the gloom. The beam of the flashlight swept across a storage room stacked high with boxes of equipment and office supplies. There were bare patches on the floor where I assumed boxed files once stood, but they’d been confiscated by the task force. Motes of dust swirled in the glow, spinning like planets in some dwarf galaxy. They looked cold and sad.
As I began to let the flap fall back into place something caught my attention.
Nothing I saw or heard.
It was a smell.
A mingled combination of scents, pleasant and unpleasant.
A hint of perfume, the sulfur stink of a burned match, old sweat, and spoiled meat.
The movement of the swinging door somehow wafted that olio of scents to me, but it didn’t last. It was there and gone.
It was such an odd combination of smells. They didn’t seem to fit this place. And they were transient smells that should long ago have faded into the general background stink of dust and disuses. Except for the rotten-meat smell. That, I knew all too well, could linger. But this was a research facility not a meat-packing plant. There shouldn’t be a smell like that in here.
My brain immediately started cooking up rationalizations for it.
An animal came in here and died.
The staff left food in the fridge when the place was raided.
And….
And.
And what?
I tapped the earbud.
“Bug, what’s the status on those damn lights?”
There was a short burst of static, then Bug said, “—er company.”
“You’re breaking up. Repeat message.”
“The power is on according to a representative of the power company.”
I moved through the swinging doors and found a whole row of light switches. Threw them.
Stood in the dark.
“Negative on the power, Bug. Call someone who doesn’t have his dick in his hand and get me some lights.”
He paused, then said, “On it, Cowboy.”
The storage room had two interior doors, one of which opened into a bathroom so sparkling clean it looked like it had never been used. The only mark was a smudged handprint on the wall above the toilet. The smell hadn’t come from here.
The other door opened onto another jagged hallway that snaked through the building. The walls were lined on either side with closed doors. A lot of doors. This was going to take a while.
Dark and spooky as the place was, it seemed pretty clear that nobody was home but me. I snugged the Beretta into the padded holster but left my Orioles shirt open in case I needed to get to it in a hurry.
For the next half hour I poked into a variety of rooms, including storage closets of various signs, a copy center, a staff lunchroom, offices for executives of various wattage, and labs. Lots and lots of labs.