Tradition of Deceit (26 page)

Did breathing count as movement? Surely it did. With that assessment, Chloe instantly began hyperventilating.

Lovely. She could hold her breath until she suffocated on
top
of the wheat, or breathe until she suffocated
in
the wheat. A surge of hysterical laughter bubbled inside, and she fought to stay calm. And at least this particular bin wasn't empty. If she'd fallen into an empty bin, she'd already be dead.

And, while she had a vague memory of landing on her side, she'd rolled onto her back. That was good, right? If she hadn't bounced against whatever it was she'd bounced against, she might have torpedoed feet-first into the grain. Owen had spoken of that:
Even if a guy got buried just up to his waist, he'd have eight hundred pounds of pressure per square inch against his legs. It would have been impossible to pull him out.

Her fuzzy brain tried to replay what had happened up there. She didn't know who had actually opened the trapdoor—idiot teen on a dare, idiot kid with a smoke bomb, idiot college student here to clean up the distributor room for the reception. But she remembered the feel of that foot shoving her all the way through the hatch. She remembered hearing that
clang
overhead as she fell. Someone had watched from the shadows as she stumbled into the hole, shoved her on through, and deliberately shut the trapdoor. That someone was probably Whyte's killer.

It was all horribly unfair. “Why me?” she whimpered. “What did
I
do?”

Speaking brought an almost-imperceptible shifting beneath her. No more talking, she mentally commanded. No sniveling. The whys can come later. Right now, you need to focus on getting out of here.

Chloe
did
focus on that, for a good twenty or thirty seconds. But she couldn't come up with an exit strategy that didn't require movement. Maybe her best option was simply to wait motionless for help. Knowing that she must
not
move, however, simply made Chloe twitchy. It also switched her brain to overdrive. Maybe Whyte hadn't been killed because of his deplorable actions after all. Maybe there truly was a maniac roaming the mill, and she made as good a target as any.

And … maybe that maniac was headed downstairs right this minute. This bin's bottom hatch must have been shut since 1965. Suppose the killer was on his way to open it? If so, a billion-zillion kernels of wheat could start flowing any second. She'd be crushed. Or suffocated. Or both.

Chloe felt cold sweat soaking through her clothes. Her heart hammered. Her tongue tasted of iron. Her fingers clenched convulsively, gathering fistfuls of grain, terrified of the power these miniscule kernels possessed. Wheat was supposed to give life, not take it.

Had some poor mill workers died in this very bin? Chloe forced her breathing to slow, tried to become still and open her awareness, to reach out.
Um, guys? I'm terribly sorry about what happened to you, but right now,
I could sorta use some help here. Any suggestions?

Chloe expected to perceive, if anything, a sense of masculine horror lingering from a doomed man's last moments.

Instead she became aware of something strong and calm and feminine. No whispered words, no tugs on her sleeve, no ghostly light illuminating a ladder. But there was something, and it helped.

Okay, Chloe thought. Since waiting passively in the dark didn't work, I need a plan to get myself out of here.

She remembered bouncing against something hard as she fell, right before she passed out. Holding her breath, moving with exquisite stealth, she oh-so-slowly eased her right arm up from the grain. Clenching her teeth against pain she reached through the blackness—back and forth, up and down, cringing against every tiny shift beneath her.
Something
other than wheat was in here …

Her arm was trembling with effort before her hand finally struck something hard. Moving kernels whispered beneath her, but she hardly noticed because her fingers were exploring wood, rough and splintery but beautifully unyielding. Someone over the years had dropped a plank down here. It seemed to be wedged tight at an angle above her.

The lure of something so solid was irresistible, and Chloe's fingers closed over the board in a vise-like grip. She pulled herself to a sitting position and wrapped her right arm around the board. “
Thank
you,” she whispered, feeling a sense of reprieve. She had no way of knowing if the lower end was sitting on grain or lodged against the cement wall. She wasn't safe … but she wasn't paralyzed with fear anymore, either.

All right, damn you
, she told whoever had shoved her through the hatch.
You may think you did me in, but I'm not dead yet.

Forty-Three

“Don't go to the
cemetery,” Fritz Klinefelter said.

Roelke hunched his shoulders against the wind. He'd waited for Fritz by his van at the Police Administration Building. “Look, I didn't come here to argue. I just want somebody to know where I'm going. If this goes sour, please—call these women.” He handed over contact information for Libby and Chloe.

Fritz tucked it away. “You said you had one more place to look for evidence, right? What—”

“I didn't get it. That means all we've got is a cop's prints on a gun that was
not
used to shoot Rick or me. I have to go to the cemetery.”

“It's a trap.”

“I
know
. That's one of the things I have going for me. I also learned some things about the killer back in Kozy Park. I've got a plan.” He told Fritz what it was.

The older man remained unconvinced. “For Chrissakes, at least take backup!”

“We don't know who else is involved.”

“This damn chair,” Fritz muttered, pounding his knees. Then he glared at Roelke. “You will call me when you're done.”

“Yes sir. I'll call you.” Roelke extended his hand. “Thanks, Fritz. Thanks for everything.”

In the dark, Chloe had no idea how far she'd fallen. Two feet? Twenty? If she could shimmy up the board, would she be able to reach the trapdoor? If she reached it, would she have the strength to push it open? Would her weight on the board make it more secure, or press the lower end into the grain and start a cascade?

“Only one way to find out,” she muttered. She leaned sideways, face-down over the plank, and slid her right knee over. The board hitched downward a couple of inches, and grain kernels
shushed
a warning. Chloe waited until everything was still and quiet again before trying another slide to center her weight on the board. The grain muttered with more menace, and the effort brought a wave of dizziness.

This might, she thought, be even harder than I thought. The pain in her left wrist suggested a broken bone. The board was only about six inches wide, and wedged at about a forty-five degree angle. The upward crawl would be a slow process.

Well, there was nothing to do but try. She held her breath, reached higher on the board, and managed to pull herself up—perhaps an inch. Reach, pull. Reach, pull. Reach, pull.

Sometime later she had to stop. Her arms were quivering. Her clothes were clammy. Her fingers felt like sausages, and her wrist pulsed white-hot. She was pretty sure that if she tried one more hitch she'd pass out. Rest, she thought. Rest is good.

At least it sounded good in theory. It was difficult to rest, however, while balanced on a narrow plank over twenty thousand pounds of gluteny quicksand. Focus on something else, Chloe told herself. Friends. Kittens. Polish doughnuts.

But her brain twitched stubbornly back to the mess—her fall, Owen's injury, Whyte's death. What if Star or another young runaway had killed Whyte? Surely the girls would never tell.
Some of the homeless people who live here speak of tribes
, Sister Mary Jude had said.
Groups of people who join forces.
Who better to join forces than teenaged girls who found an abandoned flour mill more appealing than what they'd left behind? Of course they'd protect each other's secrets.

That thought took Chloe down a mental path she hadn't noticed before. One uneasy fact presented itself. Then another. She felt herself getting seriously upset all over again.

“All right, that's it,” she muttered. Resting and thinking were not improving her situation. Gritting her teeth, she reached above her head, grabbed the board, and tried the pull-slide maneuver again.

The board lurched, dropping several inches.

She froze, heart thumping, cheek pressed against the musty wood. How close was the board to giving way altogether? Was she closer to the wheat below or to the trapdoor above?
Please
, she said silently to God or the feminine presence or whomever might be listening.
Please
…

A human voice echoed faintly from above. “Chloe?”

Chloe's inner pendulum made a wild swing from despair to hope. “Officer Ashton?” she cried, trying not to shift her weight an iota. “I'm down
here
!”

The metal hatch groaned open above her head. Chloe squinted against the square of dim-but-gorgeous light, dazed. I was almost there, she thought. A couple more hitches and I would have hit the trapdoor.

A head appeared above the opening. “Chloe? How on earth did you get down there? Are you okay?”

It wasn't Officer Ashton. It was Sister Mary Jude. Chloe couldn't find words.

Mary disappeared momentarily. Then her head and shoulders reappeared. Prone now, she stretched one arm through the hatch. “Grab my hand!”

Chloe couldn't move.

Mary wiggled her fingers. “Can't you reach?”

Chloe still wasn't sure that talking was wise, but this silent standoff wasn't accomplishing anything either. “I can reach, but … I don't trust you.” Being shoved from the board by Sister Mary Jude seemed a worse fate than simply falling again.

“Why on earth would you say such a thing?” Mary sounded genuinely shocked.

Oh, Chloe thought, she's good. “The day we found Whyte's dead body, you were calm. But you were a wreck the day Owen was injured, even though the paramedics said he was going to recover. Why the change?”

“Look, I don't know what's happened, but we've got to get you out of there.”

Chloe closed her eyes. “I think Star, and maybe some of the other girls too, told you that Everett Whyte was a predator. You promised Star she wouldn't have to talk to ‘that guy' again. You told me she was referring to Officer Crandall. It's hard to imagine Crandall actually talking with her, though. And in the very same conversation, you said all Crandall wanted to do was stick girls like Star on a bus out of Minneapolis. Star was referring to Whyte, right? He'd been hassling her?”

“We don't have time for this!”

“You also told me that Whyte was an advocate for the homeless. But I've seen his report in Ariel's files. He didn't suggest any kind of assistance. After space for the museum is set aside, all he envisioned for the rest of the complex were condos and high-end shops.”

Mary's voice became strident. “
Please
, Chloe. Grab my hand.”

“Tell me!” Chloe cried. “Did you kill Everett Whyte?”

Roelke drove around the perimeter of Forest Home Cemetery's two hundred rolling acres on streets busy with commuter traffic. If he'd guessed right, and timed things right, the shooter was already hidden on the cemetery grounds. Waiting for
him
, Officer Roelke McKenna, to blunder into the lighted portico at the old chapel on the northern side, looking for Erin. Waiting with a rifle and an exit strategy that, based on what had happened in Kozy Park, led back south for a quick getaway …

Yes
. Roelke felt a flush of triumph when he spotted the car he was looking for, parked inside the cemetery near the Cleveland Avenue bridge. Maybe he really could end this thing tonight.

He parked, approached the red Thunderbird, and destroyed the possibility of quick escape with a couple of screwdriver stabs. He heard air leaking from the tires as he walked north in the fading twilight with compass in hand. Time to track a killer.

He was able to begin on one of the meandering drives, which was good—no footsteps crunching on snow. Despite the biting wind, the landscape was serene. This oldest part of the cemetery was dotted with elaborate monuments, fancy mausoleums, towering trees. When he'd scoped out the cemetery earlier, he'd seen the sign proclaiming Forest Home's status on the National Register of Historic Places. He seemed destined to visit historic places these days.

Or maybe he just hadn't paid attention to historic places before he met Chloe. Despite the coming confrontation, the pervasive sense of oldness here felt surprisingly peaceful. His weeklong efforts to
not
think about Chloe had been stupid. Chloe was part of him now.
When this is over,
he told her silently,
I'll make things right.

Until then, knowing that Chloe was far away, safe with her friend, made it easier to concentrate on the job at hand.

“Did you kill Everett Whyte?” Chloe repeated. She had to know. Before she passed out and fell off the board and drowned in a crushing mass of wheat, she had to know.

“This is crazy!” Sister Mary Jude cried.

The plank jerked beneath Chloe again.

Go!
someone whispered in her ear.

Chloe scrambled to get one foot planted on the board. She managed one blind, desperate upward lunge, right arm stretched above her head.

A hand clamped around her wrist like forged iron. “Come on!” Mary gasped. “Help me!”

Mary tugged, and Chloe strained with every ounce of grit she had left. Her head cleared the hatch. Mary scrambled onto her butt and braced her feet. Chloe got one elbow braced on the floor.

But she simply couldn't manage the second. “My wrist is broken,” Chloe gasped. “I'm falling!”

“No—you're—
not
.” Mary had both hands on Chloe's right wrist. She wrenched so hard Chloe thought her arm might pop off, but she didn't care because she was slowly scraping through the hatch.

The two women landed in a throbbing heap on the floor. Mary kicked the metal door shut again. “
Thank
you,” she whispered prayerfully, much as Chloe had earlier. Then, “I'll go get help.”

“No. Please, before anybody else comes—just tell me what happened. Was Whyte preying on the girls?”

Mary hesitated, then nodded. “He was. They wouldn't have tolerated rape, but he offered things—food, a warm coat, money for a fix, whatever they needed most. And most of the girls were so desperate that they were willing to pay the price. A quickie, nude photographs, whatever. Not Star, but most of them. You don't know what it's like …”

Chloe remembered Mary's earlier brief accounting:
Once upon a time, I was fourteen and needed some help. I was lucky enough to find it. Now I can't imagine anything more important than looking out for girls like Star.
“You were a runaway once too, right? Runaway girls stick together in here. They're a tribe, and you're still a member.”

“Perhaps I am.” Mary stared blindly at the floor. “I hated Everett Whyte. I hated how he used his power to abuse those girls. I did not kill him.” Her shoulders sagged. “But I watched it happen, and did nothing to stop it—”

“Okay, I've heard enough.” Officer Ashton walked into the room. The gun held in both hands was pointed toward the floor. “I've been searching high and low for you,” she told Chloe. “You all right?”

Not really, Chloe wanted to say. “I'm all right.”

Officer Ashton stepped closer, reached for the handcuffs on her duty belt, and started to holster her weapon. “So we can finally identify Professor Whyte's killer—”

An angry roar echoed from within the grain distributor's metal head. A blur of olive drab and dark hair launched at Officer Ashton. The man grabbed her, threw her against the wall.

“No!” Mary screamed. “John,
no
!”

A gunshot exploded.

Camo John whirled, stumbled, went down to his knees with a look of surprise. He pawed at the blood staining the front of his coat. Then he toppled, landing crookedly on one of the distributor's metal arms.

Officer Ashton and Mary looked stunned. Chloe
felt
stunned. What had just happened?

“I guess I got the bastard,” Officer Crandall said from the doorway behind her. Feet spread, gun still pointed, he surveyed the scene.

Mary crawled to Camo John, then glared at Crandall. “You
killed
him!”

“Hey,” Crandall said sharply. “That douchebag attacked my partner. I got here in time to hear her say she'd identified Whyte's killer, and I saw him go crazy.” He glanced at Officer Ashton. “You okay?”

She staggered to her feet. “I'm okay.”

Crandall strode to Camo John and pressed two fingers against his wrist. “Yeah, he's gone.” He surveyed the three women. “None of you look fit for duty. Stay here. I'll go down and call it in.” He disappeared again.

A wretched silence settled over the room. Chloe opened her mouth, but no words emerged.

Finally Mary said, “This man was a lieutenant in Vietnam, you know.” She shrugged out of her coat and draped it over Camo John's head and shoulders. “He suffered from post-traumatic stress, but he still tried to watch over this mill.” She crossed herself and began murmuring a prayer.

Chloe remembered the first time she'd seen the man, circling the perimeter. She felt sick.

“Did he kill Everett Whyte?” Officer Ashton asked.

“Amen,” Mary whispered, before addressing the policewoman. “Whyte was abusing the girls here. Once John figured out what was going on, he tried to protect them. On Friday afternoon I came up here and found John …”

An actual coherent thought surfaced in Chloe's brain. “Wait. Whyte
was
killed up here? The coroner said—”

“John told me later that he'd found Whyte lying up here unconscious.” Mary raised a hand to deflect objections. “I can't say I understand that.”

I do, Chloe thought. Camo John had arrived shortly after Toby had decked Whyte.