Decker looked at the arson boss, Chuck Walters. “That’s very suspicious, Chuck. I think we need to look inside for a point of origin. This might be some sort of feint, with the real fire to come once we leave.”
The notion was fairly nonsensical, but Chuck nodded and said, “I think that’s a good idea. Never know what might be on the inside.”
“Never know,” agreed Decker.
But hopefully we’re about to find out.
They forced open the front door of the restaurant, which immediately set off the alarm. One of the firefighters hastened to turn it off using a special code he inputted into the alarm panel.
“A call will go out to whoever’s on the notification list,” said Lancaster.
“What I’m hoping for,” replied Decker.
The firefighters went in first and gave the all-clear about twenty minutes later.
“Okay,” said Decker, turning on the lights. “We need to search this place for possible arson materials. No stone unturned. Let’s hit it.”
The officers fanned out.
Decker immediately went into the kitchen area, followed by Lancaster and Mars.
The kitchen was spacious, scrupulously clean and organized, and virtually everything in the place looked made of stainless steel. They spent an hour going over every inch of it.
Afterward, Decker leaned against one of the counters and looked around, his thick arms folded over his chest.
“They’re not making this easy,” said Lancaster.
“Lots of people come in and out of this kitchen, including people who have no connection to any of this. So it can’t be apparent. But even so, it has to be somewhat accessible.”
Lancaster looked around. “I don’t see anything that fits the bill unless we’re talking a trapdoor in the floor.”
Mars looked down. “It’s tiled. With no breaks. A trapdoor would be pretty obvious.”
Decker pushed off the counter and went back into the large freezer room. It was about ten feet deep and eight feet across. He shivered slightly as he moved around the space, examining all the shelves and food stacked on them. He came back out and looked at the outside of the freezer compartment.
“Anybody got a tape measure?” he asked.
Neither Lancaster nor Mars did, but one of the cops had a rolling distance tracker in his trunk. He used it to measure distances during traffic accident reconstructions.
Decker took the roller and paced off the depth of the freezer, going in between the shelving at the rear to tap his wheel against the back wall. Then he measured the width.
He checked the measurement and then went outside the freezer and measured the distance from the front of the freezer to the back wall of the kitchen. And then from the side of the freezer to the far wall.
He checked the measurement. “I’m two feet short. This wall is two feet longer on the outside than the depth of the freezer on the inside. And the width is off by over eighteen inches.”
“How could that be?” asked Lancaster. “Maybe a load-bearing wall at the back or the side?”
“Why would it just be in the freezer and not out here?” said Mars.
Decker hustled into the freezer, followed by Mars and Lancaster. He went straight to the back.
“Melvin, help me with these shelves.”
Together the two big men moved the heavy shelves out of the way with the food still stacked on them. When they were done, they were staring at a seemingly blank wall.
Decker hit every angle and corner of the wall with his light. He got down on his hands and knees and felt along the bottom where the wall met the floor.
Lancaster was shivering. “Can we hurry this up before I get hypothermia?”
Decker stood and faced the wall. “I don’t see a button or anything like that. That would be too risky anyway. Someone comes in here, sees it, and pushes it to see what happens. Your secret is out.”
“Like the floor, I don’t see any break in the wall, Decker,” observed Mars. “If there’s a door hidden in here I just don’t see it.”
Decker looked back at the shelves they had moved. “With those shelves in front and food stacked on them, no one would be able to even get close to the wall.”
“And what exactly does that mean?”
Decker put his palms against the wall. “It means that maybe the wall is the door.”
He set his feet and pushed. The entire wall easily rolled back. Revealed off to the left was a door. He opened the door: there was a set of narrow steps going down.
“Open sesame,” quipped Mars.
They went single file down the stairs and came out into a darkened space. Decker shone his flashlight around, as did the others.
The space held desks, maps on the wall, computers, telephones, racks of clothing, thick binders, and other pieces of equipment. On one side of the room, a long curtain had been drawn around a space about six by ten feet. The lights suddenly came on and Mars and Decker looked around to see Lancaster standing by a light switch.
“I don’t like the dark,” she said, turning off her flashlight.
Mars and Decker put away their flashlights and gazed around.
“Holy shit, what is this place?” asked Mars.
Decker strode over to a desk and looked down at the items lying there, next to a piece of machinery.
“They’re making IDs here.” He picked one up to see a young man staring out from what was a Virginia driver’s license. The name on the license was Frank Saunders. Born in 1993 and with an address in McLean, Virginia.
“This guy I saw working at the restaurant as a wait staff ‘trainee.’ Only his name, I was told, was Daniel, not Frank.”
Mars held up a stack of credit cards in one hand and sets of American passports and birth certificates in the other. “Okay, I’m no expert, but these damn things look genuine.”
Lancaster had drawn back the curtain to reveal what looked like a rudimentary operating room and was now standing next to a gurney. She pointed to an array of surgical instruments lined up on a table. Next to that was a portable high-intensity light. And next to that were oxygen tanks and an IV stand with empty bags hanging from it. Lined up against the wall were a variety of medical monitoring instruments.
Lancaster exclaimed, “Okay, this is freaking me out. They’re operating on people down here?” She pointed to the large sink set against the wall. “Maybe that’s where they scrub up before doing whatever the hell they do.”
Mars was looking at the racks of clothes. “They got everything here, for both men and women.” He picked up a wig. “Including these.”
Computers were set on each desk. Stacks of paper sat next to the computers. Decker picked up the top page of a stack.
“What is that?” asked Lancaster, coming over to him.
“It’s a list of forty cities across the country. There’s an X next to each city.”
He pointed to the maps on the wall. “These documents might correspond to the red and green pins on those maps. Looks like they have pretty much every major metro area covered.”
He picked up another piece of paper. “This reads like someone’s bio. Birth information, background. Work experience. Marital status.”
He looked down at the bottom of the page. He read off, “Gardiner and Associates.”