“Hurry up, Josh. Time to pat down the detective.”
“Stop squirming,” Josh Hanson said to Luc, who seemed to be trying to help Mike in his own way.
Mike leaned one hand on the metal shelf below a row a bottles. “You were smart to wear gloves, though. I gotta give you that. Crime Scene tried everything to get DNA outta that place. Not a whit.”
“I’d take credit for surprising you with my intelligence, Mike, but then you’d be able to say ‘gotcha.’”
Mike was rolling his head to the side. I thought he was signaling me to break away from Danton and take shelter in the next row over.
“Oh, I can still say ‘gotcha,’ my man. You know they found a pair of latex gloves in the canal, caught up under Luigi’s arm, in the material of his jacket. I guess too much Gowanus sludge had gotten inside to get DNA out of them to see who’d been wearing them, and most of his blood had washed off in the canal. Tested positive for blood, but in amounts too minuscule to test.”
“Convenient,” Danton said. “Search him, Josh.”
“Almost there, Peter.”
“But there weren’t even any traces of blood on the two fingers of the right-hand glove,” Mike said. “So I’m thinking you were the killer, and your chopped off, mutilated digits didn’t reach to the tip of the gloves when you were wearing them. So no blood got on them when you sliced the Squid. Not even a drop. How’s that for a deduction?”
“You should keep your thoughts to yourself, Detective. In fact, if you hadn’t been so curious about narcotics trafficking in Africa fifteen minutes ago, and about what’s behind the wine labels in the bottles here, you and these lovebirds might have been on your way back home.”
It was Mike who had triggered Danton’s suspicions, not Luc. But that hardly mattered, now that we were captured in his lair.
Josh Hanson tugged at the rope behind Luc’s back to secure it, did the same to Jim, then started to walk toward Mike. I don’t think I had ever seen my friend react so quickly. He swiveled in Hanson’s direction, bringing with him a bottle from the shelf he’d been leaning on and cracking it against the side of Hanson’s head.
The bottle splintered and the wine spurted out. Hanson fell to his knees and toppled onto his side, screaming in pain. Shards of glass were lodged in the skin on his face like arrows shot out of a bow.
“Run, Coop!” Mike shouted at me.
I pushed at Danton while he used both hands to raise the shotgun. I knocked him off-balance and he cursed at me as he tried to regain his footing.
Luc yelled for me to get out of the way, too, and the last thing I saw before I turned the corner-looking for an escape route-was that Mike had unholstered his revolver and was pointing it at Peter Danton.
FIFTY-FIVE
I ran to the massive steel door as fast as I could. I pushed against it, just like I did at the door of Luc’s home the night this all began one week ago. Nothing gave, and I didn’t know which lever to touch or pull to get the lock to respond to me.
I turned my head and saw Danton eyeing me, having rounded the corner to get away from Mike.
He was coming in my direction, still almost thirty feet away down the long corridor, holding the shotgun with both hands. Behind him, Mike stuck his head out and pointed his revolver at Danton.
Before he could take aim, Danton darted into one of the side aisles. Mike moved cautiously into the center corridor, inching his way forward.
“Look for a panic button, Coop,” he called out to me. “There has to be one somewhere.”
I didn’t want to take my eyes off Mike, for fear that Danton would shoot or charge toward him. I stepped backward toward the door, then glanced from side to side to see if there was anything as obvious as a panic device.
Before I heard the noise, I could see the enormous rack behind Mike’s back-almost to the ceiling of the vault, at least fourteen feet high-begin to tilt. Danton must have been pushing at it. I screamed to warn Mike, but the wine cartons began to fall off the uppermost shelves, crashing to the ground all around him as he covered his head with his hands.
The wine was as red as blood, spilling out and gushing from the broken glass as it cascaded over other cases and onto Mike’s head and body.
“Are you okay?” I yelled out to him.
“Keep it up, kid. You know I’ve got a thick head.”
There was no way Mike could free himself from the cartons and bottles fast enough to follow Danton. I couldn’t see Danton, of course, but I could hear movement as he seemed to be struggling with something-maybe another heavy table or piece of furniture-deep in the row into which he had receded.
I turned around to examine the sides of the great door more closely. Off to my left was a small yellow box, the size of a light switch pad. I tugged at the cover and pulled it open. Inside was a black button with the word ALARM written below it.
I pressed the button, half-expecting something to ring inside this airtight space, but there was no sound. I pressed it again, with no idea who might be summoned, if the device was even connected to anyone in the outside world-on or off the grounds of Stallion Ridge.
Now I returned my attention to Mike, who was on his feet, digging his way out of the debris around him. I started to move toward him, but he held out his left arm, motioning me to stay in place. The revolver was in his right hand.
There were two distinct sounds I could hear. The farther one came from Josh Hanson, moaning as though he was still immobilized by pain. The other must have been Peter Danton, dug in behind the overturned shelves of wine, but making noise as though he was scraping something with the end of the shotgun.
I needed to take cover, but there were so few places that afforded it, and I didn’t know whether there were openings within any of the other rows in this bizarre maze. I feared that Danton would emerge from some part of this hideaway which he knew so well, ready to shoot his way out.
Each time Mike took a step to position himself closer to the row into which Danton had disappeared, the glass and cardboard beneath his feet gave his movement away.
“Come on out, Danton,” he called. “I got you trapped in there. I can wait you out all night.”
Mike was trying to peer between the metal racks to look for Danton, so he was no longer paying attention to me. I crouched down and quickly ducked over into the first aisle to my right-Danton was off somewhere to the left-and got down on one knee. If I could eventually move closer to Mike, maybe I could help him draw a bead on his human target.
The scraping noise stopped. Suddenly, there was a blast from the shotgun, aimed in Mike’s direction, that sounded like cannon fire because of the confines of the shelter.
My hands reflexively flew up over my ears, and it looked as though the pellets had shattered another dozen bottles of some ridiculously expensive vintage.
Mike swiveled quickly again-obviously safe-and flattened himself against the wooden wine crates that bordered the adjacent row of shelves.
As I readied myself to go forward to help him, I could see a flash of steel out of the corner of my left eye, as though something on the door was in motion.
I froze in place, watching the enormous handle-the size of a car’s steering wheel-turn in a circle, around and around again.
“Mike!” I called out, torn between diverting his attention from Danton and needing to let him know that someone was about to open the vault door.
“Stay back,” he said. “Get way back in that aisle, will you?”
Danton fired again, this time spraying the ceiling with shotgun pellets. He was laughing as he spoke. “Find the alarm, did you, Alex? Who do you think is going to get here first? The town police or my foreman?”
Terrified that someone who worked for Peter Danton would be the next man through the door, I kept my eyes riveted on the steel handle. The soundproofing of the shelter made it impossible to hear anyone or anything from outside.