Chapter 9 - THE WATER PLANT
Ruiz wanted to lock my phone in an evidence box.
I wanted to throw it through a wall.
Instead, we stared at Sarah's two messages and tried to determine whether Sarah had actually sent them.
The first message sounded like her.
The second sounded like fear.
But anyone who had read our texts could imitate both.
"Can you trace it?"
"The phone is moving," Ruiz said.
"Where?"
"East."
"Toward the water plant?"
"Yes."
"Then she's there."
"Or her phone is."
"You can't keep using uncertainty as an excuse to wait."
"I'm using uncertainty as a reason not to walk into an obvious trap."
She was right.
Again.
I hated how often that happened.
The state police built the operation around the assumption that the water plant was bait.
Two teams approached from opposite sides.
A third watched the access road.
A drone stayed high enough not to announce itself.
I remained at the command post with Emily.
She refused to let me out of sight.
At 4:06 p.m., the first team entered.
The plant had been closed for twelve years.
Rust covered the tanks.
Broken windows lined the control building.
Pipes ran between concrete structures like ribs.
Thermal imaging showed one heat source in the main pump room.
The team moved toward it.
I watched the camera feed.
A chair sat in the center of the room.
Someone was tied to it.
Brown hair.
Blue shirt.
My heart slammed.
"Sarah."
The troopers advanced.
Then Ruiz shouted into the radio.
"Hold!"
The image on the monitor looked wrong.
The person did not move.
Not even slightly.
The drone operator zoomed in through a broken roof panel.
The figure was a mannequin.
A wig.
Sarah's shirt.
A phone taped to the chest.
My phone rang.
Sarah's number.
The entire command room went silent.
Ruiz put the call on a recording system.
"Answer."
I did.
"Sarah?"
A man's voice replied.
"Hello, David."
I had heard it only once before.
At the hotel door.
Calvin Reed.
"Where is she?"
"You ask that a lot."
"Where is Sarah?"
"Alive."
"Let me speak to her."
"No."
"Then I don't believe you."
Reed laughed.
"You should."
"Why?"
"Because dead people don't sign documents."
Ruiz wrote SIGN WHAT? on a notepad and pushed it toward me.
"What do you need her to sign?"
"Nothing anymore."
"Then why keep her?"
"Leverage."
"Against who?"
"You."
I looked at Ruiz.
"Why me?"
"Because Sarah made you important."
"I don't know anything."
"You know enough."
"About Meridian?"
Silence.
Good.
We had touched something.
"About Redwood Terrace?"
Longer silence.
Ruiz underlined the words.
"About Bell?"
Reed's voice changed.
"Be careful with names you don't understand."
"I understand Jason's."
"Jason is a fool."
That surprised me.
"You work for him."
"No."
"Then who?"
Reed laughed again.
"You still think Jason is near the top."
The line clicked dead.
Ruiz immediately ordered the team to sweep the entire plant.
They found no people.
But they did find a room filled with old monitors.
Most were disconnected.
One was active.
It displayed a live camera feed.
The camera showed me.
Sitting at the command post.
I stared at my own image on the screen.
Someone was watching the police watching the water plant.
"Kill every network," Ruiz ordered.
Technicians began disconnecting equipment.
The live feed froze.
Then a message appeared on the monitor.
TOO LATE.
Hale leaned toward the screen.
"They compromised state systems."
The state captain swore.
"Impossible."
"No," Hale said.
"Expensive."
That distinction mattered.
The operation was bigger than corrupt local officials.
It had money.
Technical expertise.
Years of preparation.
And confidence.
Inside the plant, officers discovered a hidden fiber connection running to a municipal communications line.
Someone had used city infrastructure to access police data networks.
Owen Price, the missing facilities administrator, had the expertise to build it.
"Find Price," Ruiz said.
"We find the surveillance network."
But Price found us first.
At 6:22 p.m., he walked into a state police station thirty miles away and surrendered.
He asked for Detective Ruiz by name.
He refused to speak to anyone else.
Ruiz drove there immediately.
I stayed with Emily at the command post.
Two hours later, Ruiz called me into a secure video room.
Price appeared on a monitor.
He looked nothing like a criminal mastermind.
Thin.
Gray hair.
Wire-frame glasses.
The kind of man nobody remembered five minutes after passing him in a hallway.
"David," he said.
I did not answer.
"I owe your family an apology."
"Where is Sarah?"
He looked down.
"I don't know."
"Then your apology means nothing."
He flinched.
Good.
"Who has her?"
"Reed."
"Where?"
"I don't know."
"Who does Reed work for?"
Price looked at Ruiz.
"You already know."
"Say it."
He swallowed.
"Bell."
Deputy Chief Thomas Bell.
The man who trained Ruiz.
The man who buried the warehouse investigation.
The man whose department had been compromised for years.
"Bell runs Meridian?" Ruiz asked.
Price shook his head.
"No."
"Then who does?"
Price's eyes moved toward the camera.
"Bell protects it."
"Who runs it?"
Price hesitated.
"Warren Pike manages the legal side."
"Who runs it?"
"Judge Whitmore handled court orders."
"He's dead."
Price closed his eyes.
"I know."
"Who runs it?"
Price opened his eyes again.
"I never met the person at the top."
"That's convenient."
"It's true."
"How did you receive instructions?"
"Through encrypted messages."
"From who?"
"A username."
"What username?"
Price looked directly at me.
"Mother."
My stomach turned.
"What?"
"The account called itself Mother."
Ruiz asked, "Why surrender now?"
Price laughed bitterly.
"Because they're cleaning house."
"Whitmore?"
"Yes."
"Who else?"
"Me."
"Why not run?"
"I tried."
"What happened?"
Price raised his sleeve.
A fresh bandage covered his forearm.
"Reed found me first."
"How did you get away?"
"He wanted information."
"What information?"
Price looked at me again.
"Where Sarah hid the master archive."
I leaned toward the screen.
"You know where it is?"
"No."
"Then why does Reed think you do?"
"Because I helped her copy it."
The room went silent.
Ruiz's face sharpened.
"You helped Sarah?"
Price nodded.
"Three months ago."
"Why?"
"Because I was done."
"Done with what?"
"Watching people lose homes while men in offices called it process."
He rubbed his face.
"Sarah came to me with one ledger and asked what Meridian was."
"How did she know you?"
"Jason introduced us at a barbecue."
I remembered him.
"You were at their house."
"Yes."
"You knew Emily."
Price looked ashamed.
"Barely."
"You knew what Jason was doing."
"Not to her."
"You knew what he was capable of."
"Yes."
My hands clenched.
Ruiz cut in before anger could take over.
"Where is the master archive?"
Price shook his head.
"Sarah didn't tell me."
"Then what did she tell you?"
"She said if something happened to her, David would know where to look."
I stared at the screen.
"I don't."
"She believed you would."
"Why?"
Price looked puzzled.
"She said it was somewhere you already lost once."
I felt something inside me stop.
Somewhere I already lost once.
There was only one place Sarah would describe that way.
Our old house.
May you like
The house we sold after the divorce.
