Depth

FIFTEEN

OUTSIDE, THE DARK CLOUDS had reached the city, and a light rain began to patter on the windows. Caroline walked around the room, shutting the open windows. Then she came back to Simone. Simone ignored her and the EMTs who were trying to give Misty a shot of tranquilizer before taking her back to the hospital.

“You keep staring at that thing like you understand it. If you want to know where it marks, we have to find an old map and compare it to the new map to see where it is now.”

“No we don’t.”

“Why not?”

It was a painting of a smiling young couple looking at each other lovingly. The woman proudly held out a key. Her hair spun out around her and turned into streets. His jacket did the same. Parts of their bodies were missing, replaced by map, but their expression was clear, as was the loading dock in the background with the shipping crate on it—the box clearly marked with the C-Rail logo. It wasn’t a lot to go on, but, with the water at their feet, Simone could see how people could think of this painting as a treasure map. There was one other thing that was perfectly clear: his boots—old-fashioned rain boots, bright blue, with little ducks on them.

Behind her, Simone could hear Misty murmuring, “Nononononono.”

She called Danny. He didn’t pick up, but she left a message: “Can you find me the address for Louise Freth? ASAP. Thanks.” She hung up and turned around. Caroline was glaring. Behind her, Misty was backing away from an EMT with a jet injector. Simone knew she should help them—help Misty—but her body felt too heavy, almost soggy with sadness. She hadn’t expected much from Linnea, but it was a lot more than this. She had liked Lou, too. Maybe thought that when she was older, grayer—if she even lived that long—she’d be like her. Sad, maybe, but tough, and smoking real tobacco cigarettes.

Simone explored the room further. The dresser had some clothes in it, and a drawer with two plane tickets to the EU for Misty and Linnea Frost. Matching fake IRIDs, too. Good quality. Simone put them back and took a deep breath.

“You said you’d stop hiding things,” Caroline said. Simone turned around. The EMTs were closing in on Misty.

“I know. I’m just sad is all.” The EMT lunged at Misty with the injector; Misty dodged, but the other EMT grabbed her. She struggled animally, her moans primal and terrifying as the wail of a storm. Simone turned away.

“Who’s Louise Freth?”

“Henry’s partner. Older woman. I liked her. That’s her in the painting. I think that tunnel, if it exists, is in her apartment building.”

“So how does that tell you who killed Henry?” Simone made the mistake of looking back at Caroline. Behind her, the EMT with the injector pressed it to Misty’s throat, and she fell back limp in the other’s arms. Simone looked down to avoid watching them lift her body.

“Wait,” Simone called to the EMTs after she’d heard the knock of them laying Misty’s body down on a gurney. She walked towards them as they glanced up, then looked over at Caroline. They knew where the power was. “Can you put a sheet over her? And under the gurney, can you hide these?” She gestured at the forged paintings. “We need to smuggle them out.”

“Why?” Caroline asked. She was getting angry again.

“Because if I were Dash, I’d be following me. And all he wants is the painting. We’re going to smuggle all these out. Dash’ll come in, assuming we found the paintings, and not find them—I’ll take the chance to lose him. I’ll call Peter and have him meet you and the EMTs at the hospital to recover the paintings. Then you can decide what to do with them. I’m going to go see Lou.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to know why she did this. I want to give her a chance to turn herself in.”

“She did it because Henry stole the painting from her, if it’s hers,” Caroline said, putting her hands on her hips.

“She’s not someone who would kill over a painting,” Simone said. Her earpiece buzzed, and she answered without checking the ID. Caroline crossed her arms.

“Danny?”

“Who is Danny?” came deCostas’ voice. “Should I be jealous?”

Simone sighed. “I can’t talk right now.”

“Okay, I just want to see if you got my last message with the buildings?”

“I need to go.” Simone hung up with a tap of her earpiece.

“So you’re going to confront a murderer because you like her?” Caroline asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I guess so.” Simone shrugged.

“Alone?”

“She’s an old woman.”

“She’s killed once already. I’m coming, too.”

“Why?”

Caroline paused, thinking of a reason, then smiled. “So that if there is an underwater tunnel, a city representative will be on hand to figure out how to deal with it.” She folded her arms over her chest, chin up, proud of her reasoning.

“There’s not going to be a tunnel.”

“Other people seem to think there might be.”

“It’s dangerous.”

“You said she’s an old woman. And the EMTs aren’t going to smuggle your paintings without my say-so.” The EMTs had their eyes on Caroline, waiting for her approval. “Besides, I want to know why, too. I want to see how it ends.”

“Fine,” Simone said. “But we have to play this right. When we leave the building, look anxious, but don’t say anything. Just follow me.”

“Sure.” Caroline nodded at the EMTs, and they loaded the paintings onto the gurney. They barely fit, and the EMTs had to drape a cloth over Misty like she was a corpse to obscure them, but they were hidden. They rolled the gurney out carefully, wanting to impress the deputy mayor.

Simone called Peter.

“Please tell me there isn’t another dead body,” he said.

“No, just one that looks it. I need you to head to the rehab facility at Mercy Hospital. There’s an ambulance coming in; they have a whole lot of paintings you might be interested in.”

“Damnit Simone, if you found the painting, you need to tell me where you are. This is for the police.”

“I can’t, Peter. I’m giving you the paintings, and I’m hoping to get a confession by the end of the day.”

“Kluren is going to lock you up for tampering, you know.”

“She was going to do that anyway, sooner or later.”

“Tell me where you are.”

“I’ll see you later, Peter.” Simone hung up. The phone almost immediately rang; she waited for caller ID this time, and when it displayed Peter’s name, she ignored it. Then a message came in from Danny, with an address on the Lower East Side, a note that Lou owned the entire building, and a request to please stop bothering him while he was at work.

“Okay,” she said to Caroline. “Let’s go.”

When they left the building, Simone made a show of looking around to see if she’d been followed. If Dash was there, he was too good to be spotted, but she thought maybe she saw a pinstripe cuff on the pants of a silhouette draped in rags. She didn’t stare. She needed Dash to think she hadn’t seen him. Then she turned to Caroline and spoke, her voice soft, but carrying.

“Okay, do you want to get the police or some hired muscle to get the painting out of there?”

Caroline’s eyes widened for a moment, but she played along. “I have some family security. They’ll handle it.” She typed into her wristpiece for effect, to sell it. “I don’t want to stay here, though. Let’s go back to my place. I have some old maps there.” Simone nodded and led them to the nearest taxi-boat stand. She told the driver to go towards Caroline’s place but halfway there had him change direction, and head towards Lou’s place. Caroline was silent the whole ride, her hair whipping wildly around her in the wind and rain. It wasn’t a heavy rain yet, but the sky was dark, and it would be a real storm in a few hours. Simone hoped everything would be finished by then.

Lou was not a suspect she could have seen. She had figured it was Marina or the forger. But she’d believed Marina when she said she didn’t do it, and Misty didn’t have the presence of mind to kill someone. Lou had said she knew every piece in their inventory, but Trixie had said Henry found the painting in storage. So someone had lied. The painting was of Lou and her husband, so it would have been Lou’s—Reinel gave his paintings to his subjects—and Henry had stumbled on it and figured out what it was and what it was worth. Then he tried to steal it out from under Lou, and she tried to take it back. He’d probably been going to pick up the original painting from Misty when Lou caught up to him in the abandoned building, thinking he had the painting on him. Shot him… but the case had been empty. That was the scenario that made the most sense to Simone. But why shoot him over a painting? It was personal, clearly, but it was just an object. Simone just couldn’t see Lou pulling the trigger. It takes hardness to do that. Lou was hard, but hard in a way that endured, not in a way that killed. Killing was born out of desperation or madness. It was the act of a person worn down to a bloody shard. Lou was no shard. She was an old brick wall.

“This is it?” Caroline asked. She paid the cabbie, and they hopped out onto the bridge surrounding the building Danny had directed them to. It was one of the newer ones, built with Glassteel in place but not very tall. The architects hadn’t thought the water was going to get this high. It looked like four floors of mirror, shaped like an oval from above, flat on top. But it was in disrepair. The windows were still mirrored but stained with salt, and moss and fungus were creeping down from the roof, making it look older than it should have. There was only one bridge leading up to it, thin and old. The building was alone, overlooked, forgotten.

Simone and Caroline walked to the door. Inside was a glass-ceilinged stairwell, with dim light glancing through. A circular, transparent stairway rose out of the water. There was no lobby; just landings with doors, presumably to hallways with apartments.

“Not airtight,” Simone said, pointing at the waves.

“So which place is hers?” Caroline asked. Simone shrugged. They climbed up to the third floor, and Simone exited into a narrow hallway with tiled floors and a flickering overhead light. Simone knocked on the first door, which opened to her touch; inside was an abandoned apartment with a few pieces of broken furniture pushed into a corner, crept over with fungus like small, dying landscapes. The next few apartments were the same.

“No one else lives here,” Caroline said. Simone shrugged. They went back to the stairway and climbed to the top, their footsteps echoing on the glass. Above them, the sky became even darker, and rain began to pound heavily on the roof. Silence faded into the deep white noise of a storm.

The top floor had no hallway, only a small foyer with a door and the letters PH next to it. Simone tried the door. It was locked.

“This is it,” she said, kneeling down and taking lock picks from her pocket.

“Are you breaking the law in front of me?” Caroline asked.

“Turn around.” Simone picked the lock quickly, took out her gun, and pushed the door open. This apartment was furnished, if sparsely. There was a kitchen with a bowl in the sink, a bedroom with a made bed, and closets filled with clothes that looked like Lou’s. Lou didn’t seem to be at home, though.

“We should have tried the office, maybe,” Simone said, poking her head around.

“This shouldn’t be here,” Caroline said, pointing at a large column in the center of the apartment. It was big enough to be a bathroom, but it had no door.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, it’s giant, and it serves no purpose. It’s not holding the building up.”

“So it’s decoration.”

“Taking up this much space? No. This is a hiding spot. Maybe a walk-in safe.” She put her ear to the column and rapped it with her hand. Simone chuckled.

“What?” Caroline asked. “Isn’t that how you find secret panels?”

Simone walked around the column. There were a few shallow shelves set into it, holding what looked like old glass plates. They reminded her of seashells. Behind one of them was a small indentation. Simone pressed it, and part of the column wall slid open.

Simone and Caroline looked into the space. It was empty—no floor, just a long, dark shaft.

“You don’t think there’s actually… I mean, this can’t go all the way down, right?” Caroline asked.

Simone shook her head. “No way. But it is an elevator shaft—look,” she said, pointing at the sides of the shaft.

“So the elevator is gone.”

“Or someone rode it down to wherever it goes.” Simone looked down into the shaft, but it was too dark. There was a maintenance ladder along the side and she grabbed hold of it. It shook, apparently unused for years, but held. “You coming?” she asked. Caroline nodded. Simone started climbing down. After about ten feet, the ladder stopped at an old metal walkway, which turned into a spiral staircase downwards. It was narrow and dark, lit only by a few wall sconces. Caroline joined her on the platform.

“This looks unsafe,” she said.

“Yep,” Simone said, starting down the stairs and clinging to the wall. She held her gun in the hand that touched the bannister, not putting too much weight on it in case the metal gave way. Caroline followed. They walked down for five minutes, placing each foot down gently on a step before giving it their whole weight.

“Okay,” Caroline said. “We have to be below the surface by now. The building was only four stories above water. We’re at least seven stories down. It has to be real.”

“Maybe it’s just an air pocket,” Simone said, though she knew Caroline was right. They had to be below the surface. “That happens, right?”

“This is crazy.”

Simone swallowed. She leaned against the wall, feeling as though the metal stairs were shaking. She could hear her heart beating rapidly in her chest, and she was afraid that even that small vibration could bring the walls crashing down around them.

It was real. She was below the water, and she was still breathing. “Yeah,” Simone said after a long pause. “Yeah. Do you want to head back up?”

Caroline took a while to answer, and when she did, it was in a soft voice. “No.”

They spiraled downward for what seemed like an hour, the only sound their footsteps and breathing and the pale noise from the storm so far above. When Simone heard the music, she thought at first it was her mind playing tricks on her. But then Caroline hissed, saying she heard a bass. Simone nodded and put her finger to her lips. They walked down more quietly now, their feet light on the metal, as the music grew louder and clearer. It was something with bass and saxophone—old music with sweeping riffs performed by brass orchestras—the sort of music that felt like the happiest moments of life before the flood. A brighter light shone on the floor where the stairs landed. There was an elevator car there, with fogged glass. The shaft opened in an archway, from which a dim light poured through. Simone stopped at the edge of the archway and motioned for Caroline to stop behind her. She poked her head around.

It was a train station. Huge, with platforms and tracks that went on for the length of a cruise ship before stopping at towering sealed metal doors. The walls of the station looked like glass, curving upwards into an arc until they met a strip of metal at the top, where a chandelier hung. Outside the glass, the light from inside spilled into the ocean a short way, and Simone could see fish swim by and, in the distance, the bright green dots of the algae generators on the surface. From here, they looked like stars. It couldn’t possibly exist, but it did, and Simone was in it, under the water, looking up at the city she thought she’d known her entire life.

The station wasn’t being used as a station, though. Someone had set up sofas, a large bed, a table, floor lamps, even a TV and speakers, which was where the music was coming from. One of the sofas was positioned so that anyone sitting on it could gaze through the glass at the ocean. And Lou was sitting in it, humming along with the music. Simone raised her gun and stepped out into the station.

“I know you’re here,” Lou said, turning around. “A bell sounds whenever anyone opens the shaft upstairs. You could have just called the elevator.” Simone walked towards Lou, her gun still raised. Caroline stepped out behind her and gasped at the sight of the station. Lou turned around and smiled at Simone. She looked different down here. Maybe it was the light or the water casting strange, moving lines on her, but she seemed softer. “Do you have it?” Lou asked. “Do you have my painting?”

“The one you killed Henry for?” Simone asked. Lou’s face wavered, and she looked down.

“He stole it from me,” she said. It wasn’t a defense, just an explanation. “For years my husband and I had it down here.” She gestured at the large metal doors, and Simone could see there was a space where it looked like a painting had been removed, its outline left in dust. “But when he died… I didn’t want it down here anymore—not for a little while, anyway. Until it hurt less to look at. So I took it to the warehouse and hid it there, so I wouldn’t have to look at it. But Henry found it, and instead of asking me what it was—and he knew it was mine, anyone could tell that—he didn’t ask… he just took it. Can you imagine? We’d treated him like family, and he stole it from me—a painting of me and my husband—so that he could make some money telling people about this.” She gestured to the ceiling, her fingers outstretched, her palms curved like a halo. She laughed. “Whoever built this place never finished it. If you open those doors, the whole place floods and it becomes just like anywhere else in the city. But we found it, after everyone else had left. We stayed, and we found this secret place. Useless, but… beautiful. We lived here, under the waves. It was our home. And Henry wanted to sell it.” She frowned again and looked at Simone sadly. “So yes, I killed him. Do you have my painting?”

“The police have it,” Simone said. Lou looked as though she’d been slapped across the face and was about to cry, but looked down instead. “I came here so I could take your confession and bring you in. They’ll go easier on you that way.”

“Everyone is going to know about this place now, aren’t they?”

“Probably,” Simone said.

“It’s amazing,” Caroline said. She was walking along the other glass wall, dragging her hand across it. “It’s unreal.” Lou looked up and nodded.

“You should take a moment,” Lou said. “You should look around, and enjoy it. Then I’ll come with you.” She turned around and sat back down on the sofa. Simone lowered her gun.

“It’s pure Glassteel,” Caroline said. “Molded without a base structure underneath.”

“We think it was supposed to be a showpiece,” Lou said, still gazing out at the water. A family of fish swam by, then darted off into the darkness. “The chandelier, the glass walls. It was supposed to be some sort of demonstration of how the rich could weather the floods, how they could create underwater cities.”

“But they never finished it,” Caroline repeated. “Or something went wrong.”

“When we found it, there were some plans. Apparently beyond that door there was supposed to be another station to offload large shipments, and the tunnel would go back to the mainland and to other spots in the city. There was even a station at the edge of the city marked ‘to Europe.’ They had big ideas.”

“Do you still have the plans?” Caroline asked.

“Upstairs somewhere. We cleared them out when we made this place our home. Our private little paradise.” Lou paused. “And now it’s going to be destroyed. People are going to come down here, walk in and out. Make it a museum or science experiment.” Simone and Caroline exchanged a glance but said nothing. They knew she was right. Whoever claimed this place might even try to make it work.

Simone walked the perimeter of the room, touching the Glassteel walls. They were chilly, almost icy. In the water, just outside the perimeter of light cast by the station, she could see the silhouettes of buildings and rubble. Grit floated in the water. By the metal doors there was a control panel with light switches, a switch for the doors, and blank monitors. She stared out at the water again and looked at the shadows of buildings and the shimmer of fish. She thought of her father’s ashes, poured down here. It wasn’t a bad place to end up. She was happy about that.

“Okay, Lou, I think we should get going.” Simone said, turning back to Lou.

“I don’t think you’re leaving quite yet,” came another voice. Simone spun around to find Dash, his arm around Caroline’s neck, a gun to her head. She tried elbowing him, but he swerved out of the way with a chuckle.

“You didn’t go in for the painting?” Simone asked, raising her gun. “You followed us?”

“I always have a backup plan. That tracker I left in your hatband was fun, but when I saw your wallet—with the hole in it—how could I resist? So I put another there. I thought you’d find that one too, eventually. Or at least get the wallet fixed. But I suppose not all of us deserve our reputations.”

“What’s the point now?” Simone asked, walking closer. Dash tightened the arm around Caroline’s neck, and Simone stopped walking. Caroline screamed in frustration and tried pulling away and kicking, but Dash held her tight. “We already found the station. We know about it.”

“Yes… but I don’t think my employer will mind that you found it first. I’ll just give him a call, and he’ll send over a small army of guards. Then it’ll be his—and his discovery. So I just need you to clear out and keep quiet about what we found—which I think you’ll do, so long as I have your deputy here.” Simone had never seen Caroline afraid before. Fierce many times, and snide and condescending and amused, but never afraid. Her face seemed oddly blank, her eyes wide. Simone tried nodding at Caroline, but Dash pulled her closer so their eyes couldn’t lock.

“So, you’re going to go,” he repeated. “I’m going to call my client, and he’s going to come and take this place over, and then I’ll let the deputy free and disappear. It’s so easy, you should be paying me, too.”

“You have a gun to the deputy mayor’s head,” Simone said. “The police will hunt you down.”

“With the amount of money I’m getting for this, I won’t be around long. I’m thinking of buying one of those custom-made islands, from the Japanese fleet. Live somewhere warm.”

“We’ll still be able to take this place over,” Caroline said, her voice hoarse. “The moment you let me go, I’ll have this place swarmed. The police will get rid of whoever you tell about this place.”

Dash laughed. “You’ll stay quiet. I’m pretty sure.”

“Why?” Caroline said. Dash just smirked.

“Who’s paying you?” Simone asked.

Dash shook his head with a smile. “Do I seem like the sort who would kiss and tell? Now get on the elevator. Take the old woman, too.”

Simone lowered her gun and started walking towards the elevator. “You killed Linnea, right? That was you who left her in my office.”

“I thought leaving you flowers would be too ordinary. Plus I wanted to let you know I’d found her first. That I was a step ahead—like I always am.”

“Aren’t torture victims supposed to tell you what you want to know before they die?”

Dash narrowed his eyes. “Sometimes things don’t work out right away. But as you can see, it’s been a good day.”

“Just pointing out I’m not the only one not living up to my reputation.”

“Get on the elevator,” Dash snarled. “And you,” he said, turning his gun on Lou, who had moved from the sofa to the control panel Simone had spotted earlier. “Go with her.”

“This is my home,” Lou said, her voice cracking with anger, or maybe sorrow. “This is where my husband and I were happiest. I won’t leave it.”

“That’s sweet. But then you die here. It’s funny, really, you’ll die under the water, but I’ll still have to drag you up and throw you in to sink you.”

“We all die eventually,” Lou said, and with surprising quickness, she reached out and pressed a button on the control panel.