“What we still don’t know is why. Why did the guy living next door want this kind of access?”
Sam had a point. “He certainly went to a lot of trouble, didn’t he?”
“This is the sort of thing bank robbers used to dig to get into a vault full of cash. But if Doyle Chandler wanted to bust into the Millers’ house to steal, why do all this? People bust into houses all the time. And they get away with it, neighbors even. They pick locks, break windows. But this tunnel wasn’t built for some one-time burglary. This was built for long-term access. Bill Miller never reported a burglary at that house. If Doyle wasn’t stealing from them, why did he want in so badly?”
“Mallory?” I said in reply to Sam’s question.
“Yeah, maybe it’s that simple, maybe he was a perv. Time will tell.”
“What if your underlying assumption is wrong, Sam? What if she didn’t run? What if Doyle took Mallory out through the tunnel? What if that’s why he wanted access to the Millers’ house?”
Sam closed his eyes and his body stilled as though he were narcoleptic and he’d suddenly started sleeping standing up. For a moment even the act of breathing wasn’t apparent. Finally, he opened his eyes and said, “Again, why? There are easier ways, and there’s a lot we don’t know.”
“Like?”
“Like… where does this thing come out in the Millers’ house? Why didn’t we spot it last month? That house got more attention than the new girl at a titty bar.”
“You weren’t looking for a tunnel. I wouldn’t have found this if I didn’t suspect it was here.” I actually didn’t feel like admitting to Sam that what I’d been looking for when I stumbled on the tunnel was Doyle’s fancy remote control. “Who would have guessed that somebody had dug a tunnel into his neighbor’s house? Who does things like that?”
Sam eyed me suspiciously. “You didn’t go down there, did you? To the other end? Tell me you didn’t mess with this evidence.”
“I went no farther in than you did.”
I waited in the vacant living room while Sam went through the house ordering all the search personnel to pack up their equipment and immediately leave Doyle Chandler’s home. While he was upstairs I ambled over to the southern window in the living room and checked to see if I could spot the familiar silhouette in the front upstairs window of the Millers’ house. I couldn’t.
Sam was the last to clear out.
“Not a word,” he said to me as we approached the front door.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t want Bill Miller to know we’re heading over there. All I’ve told the team is that I’m modifying the affidavit. They don’t know about the tunnel yet.”
I made a zip-it motion over my lips.
Sam clarified. “Not even Lauren.”
“She’s probably asleep. I’ll tell her in the morning.”
“That’s fine. You can tell her in the morning. But you can’t tell your source. Your patient, whatever.”
I looked at him quizzically.
“Because I know you aren’t clairvoyant, I also know that somebody told you about the existence of this tunnel. It wasn’t Doyle Chandler since I don’t think he’s done much chatting to anybody over the last few days. So it was someone else. Maybe the Camaro guy, maybe not. Doesn’t matter. Keep the discovery of the tunnel to yourself.”
“I understand.”
“Wait.” He glared at me. “You weren’t seeing the kid for therapy, were you?”
“Mallory? No.”
The glare degraded into a face that was merely suspicious. “Was Diane?”
I shook my head. I was glad I wasn’t hooked up to a polygraph.
“No bullshit?”
“No bullshit.”
“And your guy’s still missing, right?”
“Who?”
“The Camaro guy? You haven’t talked to him.”
For the moment, I’d almost forgotten about Bob’s plight. “Yes, he’s still missing, and no, I haven’t talked to him.”
Sam kept his eyes on mine for a few seconds after I answered his question. He was trying, I thought, to decide whether or not he believed me.
“There’s something else to wonder about, too,” he said.
“What?”
“Say the Camaro guy knew about the tunnel. What’s his part in all this? You’re afraid he’s a victim. Not me. I’m seeing his name on our list of suspects. Everything’s in play again, Alan. Everything from Christmas Day on.” He opened his eyes wide in amazement. “And I’m right in the f-ing middle of it.”
It was at that moment that I stopped waiting for Sam to thank me for my help in discovering the tunnel. It was apparent he wasn’t too happy about being right in the f-ing middle of whatever the tunnel represented.
“Sam, Mallory could be alone somewhere. If you guys have been wrong all along-if she didn’t run, if she was abducted by Doyle… well, Doyle’s dead. She could be locked in some crappy cabin up in the mountains all by herself. She may not have food or water. It’s freezing outside. She may need help.”
“I know all that.”
“Did you guys find out where Doyle’s been living since he moved out of here?”
Sam just shook his head. “We have a cell number, that’s all. He was pretty intent on keeping his profile low.”
“Why?” I asked.
“We don’t know.”
“You don’t know or you won’t tell me?”
“We don’t know,” Sam admitted.
“Did you find his car?”
“Truck, but no.”
Finally, he opened the front door and allowed me to walk out in front of him. “Go home. We can do this,” he said.
I thought he was trying to convince himself, but I kept that thought to myself.
55
I took advantage of the cover provided by the cluster of crime-scene techs still huddled outside the front door of Doyle’s house and immediately cut across the neighbor’s front lawn toward my car. I was hoping that Bill Miller hadn’t spotted me either arriving or leaving, but I didn’t turn around to check for his silhouette at the window.
The night had turned cold, bitter cold, so cold that the snow on the ground squeaked beneath my feet with each step. I raised the collar on my jacket and stuffed my hands as deeply into my pockets as I could. A breeze was blowing down from the north and I lowered my face to retard the harsh chill of the Canadian air. Each fresh gust cut at my skin like a shard of glass.
“I thought that was you over there.”
Someone was leaning against the hood of my Audi wagon, bundled in a ski parka, a wool cap pulled all the way down past the ears. It took me a moment to process the available data-first, that the person was a man, and second, that the man was probably Bill Miller.
“Good evening,” I said. I thought I’d managed a pretty fair attempt at disguising my fluster.
“We need to talk,” he said.
Politely, I said, “Well, we have a time set up, I think. I don’t have my calendar with me.” I didn’t really expect my parry to work, but mounting it seemed like a necessity.
It didn’t work.
“No, now. You’re back in my neighborhood. And you’re here with a whole shitload of police. That means we talk tonight. Is that too much to ask?”
Shitload? That wasn’t a Bill Miller word.
I was starting to shiver from the cold. I was dressed to travel short distances between warm houses and cars with seat heaters. I wasn’t dressed warmly enough to linger on a Boulder sidewalk in January in the face of a north wind.
“It’s not appropriate for me to see you here, Bill. This isn’t the place for a professional meeting.”
“You want to come over to my house?”
The tone of the question was appropriately sarcastic. When I didn’t reply, he added, “Or I could follow you over to your office. That would be fine with me, too.”
My fingers clumsy, I fumbled for the tiny button on the key that would unlock the doors on the Audi. “Let’s get out of the cold. At least tell me what’s on your mind.”