A brief silence hung in the hallway outside. "My uncle protected this department for thirty years. People like you come in from the capital with your clean uniforms and your white papers, and you don't know what it takes to keep this town from burning itself down."
"Your uncle executed David Morris in that warehouse because Morris found the shipping manifests," Marcus replied, looking down at the red folder in his hands. "And you helped him stage the scene. You took the casing off the floor and dropped a nine-millimeter shell from an unregistered gun near the loading bay."Advertisement
The lock rattled violently as Vance kicked the base of the door. "Shut up! You don't know anything about that night!"
"I know the ballistics report in this box has your badge number written on the evidence log receipt, Tom. You forgot that state crime labs duplicate their transfer receipts on carbon paper. The top copy went to your uncle’s shredder. The bottom copy stayed in the district clerk’s basement until yesterday morning."
Vance’s breathing grew faster, ragged and wet. "Nobody’s looking down here. There are no cameras on Level Two. Henderson’s already got his car running in the rear lot. We can say you had an incident with Caldwell. We can say you went out for a lunch meeting and never came back."Advertisement
Marcus looked around the storage room. It was an old civil defense bunker from the 1960s—poured concrete walls eighteen inches thick, reinforced rebar, and an overhead ventilation duct that fed into the main furnace room.
"You think you're locking me in, Tom," Marcus said, his voice dropping into that deep, terrifying quiet that had broken hardened syndicate captains in interview rooms across the state. "All you're doing is putting yourself on the outside of the only door that can keep you safe when the Attorney General's convoy arrives."Advertisement
"What convoy?" Vance's voice cracked.
"Did you really think I drove down the interstate alone this morning without an operational contingency?" Marcus asked. "I arrived early so I could verify Caldwell’s temperament and Henderson’s compliance. The state tactical response team was staged at the county line at eight-thirty. If my encrypted transponder doesn't ping the dispatch relay every twenty minutes, they execute a federal warrant on this entire precinct."
Marcus glanced at his wristwatch. The second hand swept past the twelve.Advertisement
"You have six minutes left, Tom. If that door opens now, you get to sit in an interview room with an attorney and negotiate a manslaughter plea. If that door stays locked until the tactical team breaches the lobby, you're looking at federal conspiracy to commit capital murder."
On the other side of the door, Marcus heard the distinct scrape of leather soles against concrete as Vance shifted his weight. The man was unspooling; Marcus could hear it in the stutter of his breath.Advertisement
"You're bluffing," Vance said, but the conviction had drained out of his words. "The city wouldn't authorize a federal breach without notifying the mayor."
"Call the mayor's office, Tom. Go ahead. See if his assistant picks up. Or see if you get the field director for the Department of Justice."
A sharp, metallic scrape echoed as Vance's service weapon cleared its holster. For a split second, Marcus considered taking cover behind the metal shelves in case the detective fired blindly through the steel plate. But Vance didn't shoot. The sound of his frantic footsteps began retreating up the concrete stairs, fast and clumsy.Advertisement
Marcus walked over to the electrical junction box on the north wall. He didn't waste time on the door. He picked up an iron crowbar resting against the base of an old filing cabinet, wedged it behind the junction conduit, and levered the metal bracket off the masonry.
Behind the box, the master building control wiring ran through a two-inch conduit heading directly toward the main power distribution board in the furnace room. Marcus grabbed the heavy rubber-coated casing, wrapped his tie around his hand for insulation, and wrenched the commercial breaker feed clear of its terminal.