After taking five glass sections out of the window and stacking them neatly against the outside wall, there was enough room for him to hoist himself up and crawl into the office.
The top of the desk was clear of paperwork and other clutter. The glass paperweight took the beam from the penlight and shot prism colors around the room. Bosch tried the drawers of the desk but found them locked. He opened them with a hook pick but found nothing of interest. There was a ledger in one drawer but it seemed to pertain to incoming breeding supplies.
He directed the light into the wastebasket on the floor inside the desk well and saw several crumpled pieces of paper. He emptied the basket on the floor. He reopened each piece of trash and then recrumpled it and dropped it back into the basket as he determined it was meaningless.
But not all of it was trash. He found one piece of crumpled paper that had several scribbles on it, including one that said:
Colorado 504
What to do with this? he thought. The paper was evidence of the effort to kill Bosch. But Bosch had discovered it during an illegal search. It was worthless unless found later during a legitimate search. The question was, when would that be? If Bosch left the crumpled paper in the trash can, there was a good chance the can would be emptied and the evidence lost.
He crumpled the paper back up and then took a long piece of tape off the dispenser on the desk. He attached one piece to the paper ball, which he then put in the trash can, pressing the other end of the tape down on the bottom of the can. Now, he hoped, if the can was emptied the crumpled paper would remain attached and inside the can. And maybe the person who emptied the can wouldn’t notice.
He moved out of the office into the hall. By the lab door he took goggles and a breathing mask off the hook and put them on. The door had a common three-pin lock and he picked it quickly.
The doorway opened into blackness. He waited a beat and then moved into it. There was a cloying, sickly sweet smell to the place. It was humid. He moved the flashlight beam around what looked like the shipping room. He heard a fly buzzing in his ear and another insect was nattering around his masked face. He waved them off and moved farther through the room.
At the other end of the room, he passed through a set of double doors and into a room where the humidity was oppressive. It was lit by red bulbs that were spaced above rows of fiberglass bug bins. The warm air surrounded him. He felt a squadron of flies bumping and buzzing around his mask and forehead. Again, he waved them away. He moved to one of the bins and put his light into it. There was a brownish-pink mass of insect larvae moving like a slow-motion sea under the light.
He then cast the light about the room and saw a rack containing several tools and a small, stationary cement mixer that he guessed was what the day laborers used to mix the food paste for the bugs. Several shovels, rakes and brooms hung on pegs in a row at the back of the room. There were pallets containing large bags of pulverized wheat and sugar, and smaller bags of yeast. The markings on the bags were all in Spanish. He guessed this could be called the kitchen.
He played the light over the tools and noticed that one of the shovels stood out because it had a new handle. The wood was clean and light, while all of the other tools had handles that had darkened over time with dirt and human sweat.
Looking at the new handle Bosch knew that Fernal Gutierrez-Llosa had been killed here, beaten so hard with a shovel that it broke or became so blood-stained it had to be replaced. What had he seen that required his death? What had the simple day laborer done? Bosch swung the light around again until it came upon another set of doors at the far side of the room. On these a sign said:
DANGER! RADIATION! KEEP OUT! PELIGRO! RADIACION!
He used his picks once again to open the door. He flashed the light around and saw no other doors. This was the terminus of the building. It was the largest of the three rooms in the complex and was divided in two by a partition with a small window in it. A sign on the partition said in English only:
PROTECTION MUST BE WORN
Bosch stepped around the partition and saw that this space was largely taken up by a large boxlike machine. Attached was a conveyor belt that carried trays into one side of the machine and then out the other side, where the trays would be dumped into bins like the ones he saw in the other room. There were more warning signs on the machine. This was where the larvae were sterilized by radiation.
He moved around to the other side of the room and saw large steel worktables with cabinets overhead. These were not locked and inside he saw boxes of supplies: plastic gloves and the sausagelike casings the larvae were shipped in, batteries and heat sensors. This was the room where the larvae were packed into casings and placed in the environment boxes. The end of the line. There was nothing else here that seemed significant.
Bosch stepped backward toward the door. He turned the flash off and there was only the small red glow from the surveillance camera mounted in the corner near the ceiling. What have I missed, he asked himself. What is left?
He put the light back on and walked back around the partition to the radiation machine. All of the signs in the building were designed to keep people away from this spot. This would be where the secret was. He focused on the floor-to-ceiling stacks of the wide steel trays used for moving larvae. He put his shoulder against one of the stacks and began to slide it on the floor. Beneath was only concrete. He tried the next stack and looked down and saw the edge of a trapdoor.
The tunnel.
But at that moment it hit him. The red light on the surveillance camera. The video panel in Ely’s office had been off. And earlier, when Bosch had visited, he had noticed that the only interior view Ely had on video was of the shipping room.
It meant someone else was watching this room. He looked at his watch, trying to estimate how long he had been in the room. Two minutes? Three minutes? If they were coming from the ranch, he had little time. He looked down at the outline of the door in the floor and then up at the red eye in the darkness.
But he couldn’t take the chance that no one was watching. He quickly pushed the stack back over the door in the floor and moved out of the third room. He retraced his path through the complex, hooking the mask and goggles on the peg by Ely’s office. Then he went through the office and out the window. He quickly put the glass panes back in place, bending the metal strips back with his fingers.
The dogs were still lying in the same spot, their bodies pumping with each breath. Bosch hesitated but then decided to drag them out in case the monitor at the end of the camera’s cable line was not being watched and he hadn’t been seen. He grabbed them by the collars and dragged them out of the pen. He heard one try to growl but it sounded more like a whine. The other did likewise.
He hit the fence on the run, climbed it quickly but then forced himself to go slow over the floor mats. When he was at the top he thought he heard the sound of an engine above the sound of the electric buzz. As he was about to drop over, he jerked the mats up off the razor wire and dropped down with them into the alley.
He checked his pockets to make sure he had not dropped the picks or flashlight. Or his keys. His gun was still in its holster. He had everything. There was the sound of a vehicle now, maybe more than one. He definitely had been seen. As he ran down the alley toward Mexitec, he heard someone shouting “Pedro y Pablo! Pedro y Pablo!” The dogs, he realized. Peter and Paul were the dogs.
He crawled into his car and sat crouched in the front seat watching EnviroBreed. There were two cars in the front lot and three men that he could see. They were holding guns and standing beneath the spotlight over the front door. Then a fourth man came around the corner, speaking in Spanish. He had found the dogs. Something about the man looked familiar but it was too dark and Bosch was too far away to be able to see any tattoo tears. They opened the door and, like cops with their guns up, they went inside the building. That was Bosch’s cue. He started the Caprice and pulled out onto the road. As he sped away he realized he was once again shaking with the release of tension, the high of a good scare. Sweat was running down out of his hair and drying in the cool night air on his neck.