Diabolical (40 page)

The back of the vehicle rammed into the sectioned door, slamming him against the seat. He put the car into drive, pulled out a few feet, then shifted into reverse again. The rear of the car smashed against the door even harder this time. He inched the car forward and put it in park.

Several panels were dented and buckled. But it was the edges that mattered. For a door like that to open and close, it had to ride on a track. A door could be made of the hardest substance known to man, but its ability to withstand force couldn't be greater than the track that held it. Or the brackets that held the track. Or the extensions that connected it to the rollers.

Just as he'd hoped, the force had almost snapped the door free from the track at an edge. An extension rod, bent and loose, the roller wheel acting as hook. Hatcher kicked the spot several times, stomping his heel against it, until the remaining connection broke. Because the door was a stacked series of horizontal sections, it was flexible. He bent the bottom two sections back until he managed to squeeze through, sliding along the concrete.

The inside of the warehouse echoed with the hollow quiet of an empty auditorium. Diffuse sunlight beamed in from the high windows, darkened by coatings of greasy dust. He didn't need much light to see the place was deserted. No Humvees, no paramilitary types in fatigues, no tables displaying weapons. No tables at all. Nothing. The sound of Hatcher's hands slapping the cement dust and grime off his jeans bounced off the walls and windows.

Hatcher crossed to the makeshift office he'd been led through during his visit. He opened the door and reached for a light switch. No power. But the spill of light through the doorway was enough to let him see a little. The computers were gone. File cabinets gone. The desk was still there, but it had been cleaned out.

The war room was pitch black. Hatcher stepped a few feet past the entryway and stood there, letting his eyes adjust. The dim light reaching in from the outer office doorway barely dented the mass of shadows, but he could make out the conference table and chairs, smaller tables along the walls. It was hard to tell what, but there was something still on one of the walls. He groped toward it, felt a surface of slick, coated paper. A map.

It tore away from one thumbtack and popped another onto the floor as Hatcher yanked it off the wall. Hatcher held it open, gave it a snap. It made a loud papery sound and collapsed into a few incorrect folds. He carried it out into the main warehouse, where there was more light, and spread it open on the cement floor.

The map of Los Angeles. It had four red Xs. He read the streets. One was the house on Mulholland. One was the warehouse he was in. Another looked like the location of the church. The fourth was at Fifth and Hope, a spot he didn't recognize.

He lowered himself from a crouch into the floor and sat, thinking. He would have to head over there, to Fifth and Hope, and check it out. But the chances of Bartlett actually being there were slim, especially if he left this map behind. What was bugging him even more was the question of why that location seemed familiar.

The thought of heading back to the bar one more time to do a search crossed his mind, but he knew that would not go over too well. He thought about calling Amy again, when he remembered what Denny had asked him about having internet access on his cell phone. His cell phones didn't, since they were inexpensive disposable ones. But the one he took from Fernandez might.

He folded up the map into fourths, crawled back through the bent edge of the garage door, and hurried to the car. Fernandez's cell phone was in the storage compartment between the seats. Hatcher turned it on, waited for the screen to brighten, then searched the icons. He clicked on one that said “browser.” The screen flashed a spinning globe, with a download bar. He muddled around until he found a search function, typed in the streets and the city.

It took a few minutes to load, but he was able to scroll through a list of hits. As best he could tell, it was the main branch of the public library.

Hatcher stared into his lap, raking his fingers back over his scalp. Where had he just seen a reference to the library? Thoughts of the church kept blipping. He struggled to make the connection.

Then it hit him. Those conspiracy websites, talking about lizard people and underground tunnels. One in particular maundered about how there was an entrance rumored to be in the church. But the site also mentioned another.

Hatcher started the car and drove, wondering whether people had to pass through a metal detector to access the Los Angeles Public Library.

 

 

THE RICHARD RIORDAN CENTRAL LIBRARY LOOKED MORE LIKE a state capitol than a place for people to borrow books. The building was an imposing structure, vaguely Egyptian in its lines, all smooth and sandy-looking concrete and glass, climbing up in vertical blocky layers to a triangular apex with panels of sunburst mosaics, as if a pharaoh had commissioned an Art Deco pyramid. Hatcher passed between a pair of metal gates, beneath an overhead carving of men inscribing books through the ages, and through an ornate set of glass and iron doors.

No metal detectors.

If the exterior was that of an executive or legislative seat, the interior was more like a museum. Hatcher had to admit he was impressed. From the vaulted ceilings with the enormous decorative windows to the hanging displays to the exquisite sculptures, if budget were an indication, the city sure seemed to take reading seriously. Not sure exactly where he was going other than down, he wandered through the main lobby until he found a set of elevators.

The walls of the elevator car were papered with three-by-five Dewey decimal cards, protected by glass panels. His initial thought was that the last time he'd been in a library, that was the only way you could find a book, but then he realized that wasn't true. The last time he'd been in a library was in Manhattan, researching demons. He pushed the lowest button on the panel, marked with a B.

He stepped out into a narrow corridor bathed in fluorescent light. To each side, books stretched out in rows of vintage shelving that looked like it dated back to the twenties or thirties. A young, rather petite woman was pushing a cart of faded, threadbare texts. She looked up from behind circular glasses the size of drink coasters as Hatcher approached, revealing a gap in her teeth.

“Need some help?”

“I just have a question. Is this the lowest floor?”

“Yes, sir,” she said. “It sure is.”

“Nothing lower?”

“Unless you want the boiler room.”

“How would I get there?”

“Sir, I was kidding.”

Hatcher said, “I'm not.”

The woman's eyes widened and creases appeared above her brow. She broke eye contact and glanced nervously past him.

“I just need to see the lowest floor of the building. I'm not trying to cause any trouble.”

“You can't go down there, sir. Nobody goes down there except maintenance.”

“Maybe I can talk to one of your maintenance guys.”

She lowered the book in her hands back onto the cart. “Why do you want to see the boiler room?”

“I don't. I want to see the lowest floor.”

The woman sighed, eyes rolling a bit. “You're not one of those, are you?”

“One of what?”

“Those. You know. One of those guys looking for the lizard people.”

“A lot of people come here for that?”

“You wouldn't believe.”

“Do they go to the boiler room?”

“No. They go to Jim.”

“Who's Jim?”

A voice behind him said, “I am.”

Hatcher spun to see a large man standing a few feet away. Corn-fed midwestern type, with thin blondish hair and a patch of scraggly beard on his chin. Late twenties or so. He didn't look like he spent as much time at the gym as he did at the lunch buffet, but he was several inches taller than Hatcher in addition to having a good thirty or forty pounds on him.

“What can I do for you?” he said.

Before Hatcher could open his mouth, the woman said, “He's here for the lizard people.”

She said the words “lizard people” slowly, in the manner of someone pointing a finger at their own head and making circles with it.

“Ah!” Jim said, patting Hatcher on the shoulder. “Right this way.”

The man started walking. Hatcher looked back at the woman, who popped her eyebrows with an ambiguous grin but said nothing. Not certain what any of it meant, Hatcher followed.

Hatcher rounded a corner to find Jim already leaning on a wide wooden cabinet that came up to his chest. He gave the top of it a double tap with his hand.

“All the information we have on them is on them is right here,” he said.

“Like what?”

“Oh, the usual. Newspaper articles, magazine pieces, old maps. And, of course, books about them. Them, or subjects related to them. Everything you ever wanted to know about G. Warren Shufelt, for example.”

“Who?”

“The guy who started the whole thing. The one the city granted a contract to dig for tunnels? To find the gold? The one the
L.A. Times
did that piece on back then?”

“Right.”

“Well, it's all here.”

Hatcher brushed a hand over the top of his head, scratched at his crown. “I was hoping to get a look downstairs, Jim.”

Jim smiled. He had a crooked incisor, which made his smile seem like he was showing it for comment.

“Hate to disappoint you, but I can't let you down there. I'll tell you what I tell everyone, there is no ‘secret tunnel entrance.' There's nothing down there but steam pipes.”

“I'd appreciate it if you just let me take a look.”

“Sorry, I tell everyone the same thing. There is no tunnel running under the library.”

“Have you been down there?”

The muscles in Jim's face loosened for a moment. “Well, yeah.”

“How did you get there?”

“Sorry, friend.” The man shook his head. “You can't go down. There are all kinds of insurance and legal issues involved. If it were up to me, shoot—I'd take you myself. But, like I tell everybody, there's no tunnel.”

Hatcher peered into the man's face, then dropped his eyes to the cabinet.

“So,” Jim said. “Look through all this as long as you want. If you have any questions, just come find me.”

He gave the cabinet another double pat and walked past Hatcher, close enough to brush against him.

“Jim,” Hatcher said.

The man stopped, turned around. “Yes?”

“One more question.” Hatcher took a step toward him, then jammed a forearm against his chest, spinning him to the side and driving him into the nearest wall. “Why are you lying?”

“Let go of me!”

“Answer my question.”

The man gulped audibly. “I'm not lying!”

“Oh, yes, you are. Like a rug.”

The man opened his mouth as if to yell, but Hatcher clamped a hand on his voice box, biting deep into his throat with his fingers.

“Look, I don't want to hurt you. Really. But I don't have time to dick around, either. You stood there with a plastic smile handing out rehearsed answers, conveniently qualifying them with weasel phrases about ‘what you tell everyone is.' You do that because you can rationalize that it's not quite a lie, since you can tell yourself all you're really saying is that's what you tell everyone. It's literally textbook evidence of deception.”

A gurgling sound escaped the man's throat. He clawed at Hatcher's arms, but it didn't do any good. He was clearly afraid to try anything beyond that.

“Now, I'm going to let go, and you're not going to make any loud noises. What you are going to do is tell me how I get down to the tunnels. Because I know you know.”

Hatcher released the man's throat. He sunk forward, coughing and holding the front of his neck. Hatcher gave him a few seconds to catch his breath.

“Okay,
Jim
. The quicker you tell me, the quicker I'll be out of your hair.”

“The board,” he said, straightening a bit, hands still rubbing his throat, coughing again to clear his windpipe. “They forbid us from talking about it. They wanted to make sure no one tries to go down there, looking. There are steam boilers and electrical boxes and hot pipes. It's dangerous.” He coughed again, hacked like something was stuck. “We could get sued.”

“Very noble. I'll sign a waiver. Just tell me everything you know.”

“There was a fire in '86,” he said, his breaths starting to normalize. “Gutted much of the library. It used to be pretty easy before that, from what I was told. Three or four access points in the subbasement. Ladders down to a tunnel system. Dug right through the earth. Some think the original construction crew dug them, for smugglers.” Jim squeezed his eyes shut and worked his head back and forth, massaging his neck. “When they renovated, they included some plumbing and heating upgrades, had the contractor wall them over.”

“But?”

Jim made a final wet noise, swallowed, and sighed. “But they missed one.”

DETECTIVE AMY WRIGHT NOTICED THE FAX COVER SHEET ON the top of the stack as she slid into the chair at her desk. Her landline buzzed the moment she reached across to her inbox.

“This is Sergeant Wright,” she said, putting the handset to her ear and plucking the document from the pile. The cover page bore the words
Office of Vital Records
across the top, along with the contact information and the message,
Requested Document Attached.

She flipped the sheet over its stapled corner to see the copy of the death certificate. Typical government document. Blocks of identifying information: names and dates and places. Signatures and titles. Her eyes roamed the page, skimming the details. She wished the caller, a detective from the Nineteenth, would get to the point and let her hang up. She was much more interested in the document.