I slipped the Maglite between my teeth so I could use my left hand to tug the hatch’s cover free while keeping the SIG aimed down the hole with my right.
The cover was heavy, but manageable, and a moment later I was staring down into the tunnel.
It looked like it was approximately three meters to the bottom, or at least to the water that was rushing past. It was hard to tell how deep the current was, but based on the curvature of the corrugated-metal tunnel, I guessed the water would reach nearly to my knees.
Quite possibly the tunnel served to help channel floodwater away from this low-lying area of the city after storms. However, at the moment I didn’t care why this tunnel system was here, as long as it didn’t fill up with water while I was inside it.
A rusted ladder led down along the side of the tunnel. The sound of the flowing water was loud enough to make me think it wouldn’t do a whole lot of good to call out for Basque, so, still gripping the flashlight in my teeth to free up my left hand, and keeping my SIG in my right, I scrambled down the first few steps, then leapt to the bottom.
I landed with a splash. The water wasn’t quite as deep as I’d thought it would be, but it still reached to the middle of my calves. Though the current wasn’t strong enough to sweep me off my feet, it was stiff enough to make me realize I’d need to be careful when I moved forward.
Grabbing my light again, I visually swept the tunnel to the right, saw nothing, then directed both the beam and my SIG down the tunnel to my left.
And I saw a man about thirty meters away, just on the edge of the flashlight’s beam.
He was facing me, but turned and disappeared down a side tunnel before I could identify for certain that it was Basque. I yelled for him to stop and the words reverberated off the metal walls with a coarse, hollow sound before being quickly overcome by the noise of the rushing water.
I sprinted after him as fast as I could through the rapidly flowing current.
12
A dot of light bobbed in front of me, indicating where the man was running.
I didn’t want to jump to any conclusions, but obviously all the evidence pointed to this guy being Basque. If it really was him, I didn’t need to see him to picture him: Caucasian, six-two, athletic build, dark hair, striking features, piercing aquamarine eyes. He could have stepped off the cover of GQ magazine, but beneath his impressive exterior was one of the vilest hearts of anyone I’d ever encountered.
Lien-hua shot him. He’s injured. You can catch him.
The damp smell of mold and decay filled the tunnel, while the sound of the splash and flow of water echoed off the tunnel’s metal walls, slightly disorienting me.
I’d been running for maybe sixty or seventy meters when the light ahead of me went out. I turned off my flashlight as well, hoping to pick up movement of the light again, but all I saw was uninterrupted blackness before me. Light back on, I pushed forward, and a few moments later I arrived at an intersection.
Alternating my Maglite back and forth between the two tunnels, I saw nothing to indicate which direction the man I was pursuing might have fled.
No sign of anyone.
The building’s schematics hadn’t included the tunnels this far from the structure itself, and even taking into account the geography of the surrounding area, there was no way to know which of the two tunnels might lead the most directly to the outside world.
Two tunnels.
One veering left, the other right.
The tunnel to the left leveled off, allowing less water to pass by.
My first thought: That water dissipates eventually; you’d be able to hear him running. He would take the one that would hide the sound of his footfalls — he’ll stay in deeper water.
But then a second thought: No, Pat, he would know you’d think that.
I equivocated.
Go. Hurry. Decide!
The water rushing past me had to go somewhere or else it wouldn’t be able to have such a strong current. At some point it had to empty into a drainage ditch or the Anacostia River. Taking a moment to orient myself, I guessed it might lead toward the grove of trees I’d seen earlier, east of the plant.
Knowing he would have to exit the tunnel system somewhere, I chose the tunnel carrying the swifter current and flew down it.
The musty air down here reminded me of that day when I first caught him in the slaughterhouse.
He abducts women, he eats them, he kills them. That’s what he was going to do to Lien-hua.
Anger flared inside me.
Ralph had said that Basque was trying to make me stupid with rage. Well, maybe that was true. And maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. I recalled my words to Ralph: “If I get him alone, I can’t promise you that I’ll bring him in alive.”
No.
No, I couldn’t make a promise like that to Ralph or to myself.
After two more bends I still hadn’t seen any flicker of light or any indication that the man had come this direction, and I was beginning to think I’d probably chosen the wrong passage when I saw the water disappearing down a metal grate in front of me.
Sticks, waterlogged garbage, and half a dozen dead rats lay compressed in a pile above the two-meter-wide grate, forced there by the current. I could only guess that the water pouring out of sight probably channeled into an underground stream leading to the Anacostia.
If the man I was chasing had pushed that grate aside and dropped in there to escape, this debris would’ve been disturbed and the grate wouldn’t have been pushed back into place.
If he came this direction, he would have had to pass by it.
I inspected the floor of the tunnel beyond the place where the water went down the drain and I saw what I was looking for — wet sole impressions.
I dashed forward until the sound of the water draining through the grate behind me began to fade, but when I paused to listen, I heard no footsteps, just that faint echo of churning water and my own ragged breathing.
Pressing on, I cornered a bend in the tunnel and nearly smacked into a locked metal gate that reached from the bottom of the tunnel to the top.
The tunnel terminated a few meters beyond the rusted steel bars, opening up into the night, and from the looks of it, the tunnel ended halfway up an embankment. I guessed that during storms it would feed overflow water into a streambed or drainage ditch below.
A light snapped on outside the tunnel on the left side of the embankment and a voice of someone out of sight called to me, “Did she survive?”
I recognized the speaker right away.
Yes, without a doubt, it was Richard Basque, and he had made it past the gate.
13
I grabbed the bars to get to him, but the gate only rattled harshly against its chain when I did. Not even Ralph could’ve wrenched it free. The lock looked new, which made me think that Basque must have been prepared for this — chaining and locking the gate behind him as he fled.
It was a keyed lock rather than a combination one, and that might actually play to my favor.
I’m pretty good with locks, and although I didn’t have my lock pick set with me, I did have a pen. And it had a spring inside.
“From where I was standing, Pat,” Basque said, “it looked like that car hit her pretty hard.”
He was around the corner; I still couldn’t see him. Still had no shot.
I slipped the pen out.
He used your name. He knows it’s you back here.
But my light had been in his eyes when I first got into the tunnel. How did he know I was the one who’d followed him? He heard you calling? Or maybe he was watching through a window in the front of the building and saw you enter?