Chapter 12 - Warehouse 17
The storage facility stood beside an abandoned rail yard near the southern edge of Blackridge.
Warehouse 17 had been rented under a false name three months earlier.
By the time federal agents obtained access, the unit had been emptied.
The floor showed marks where a large steel chest had rested.
Burned paper filled a metal barrel near the rear wall.
Most of the documents were ash.
One fragment remained readable.
Property transfer approved pending removal of surviving claimant.
The document was dated 1957.
Nora stared at the words.
“Surviving claimant could mean Everett.”
Evelyn nodded.
An agent photographed the fragment.
Pike searched behind the storage shelves.
He found an oxygen tank, unopened medical supplies and several cans of nutritional formula.
“Someone elderly was being kept here,” he said.
Nora remembered Emily’s words.
The old man.
“Everett would be ninety-seven.”
“Possible,” Evelyn said. “Unlikely, but possible.”
An agent called from the office area.
They gathered around a dusty computer terminal.
The storage facility’s camera system automatically saved low-resolution images whenever motion was detected.
Most had been deleted.
A technician recovered three.
The first showed Mason entering with Sheriff Cresswell.
The second showed them carrying film canisters from the steel chest.
The third showed a wheelchair.
A thin man sat beneath a blanket.
His face was turned away from the camera.
But his coat was visible.
Dark green wool.
Brass buttons.
One button was missing.
Nora took the button marked E.H. from her pocket.
Nobody spoke.
Pike zoomed in on the image.
The man’s right hand rested on the wheelchair arm.
A ring circled one finger.
Nora recognized it.
Her father had kept an identical ring inside a small wooden box.
A black stone carved with the Hayes family mark.
“Where did they take him?” she whispered.
The technician examined vehicle records from the gate camera.
“A black medical transport van entered at 6:14 last night and left at 6:32.”
“License plate?”
“Obscured.”
“Direction?”
“North.”
Pike pulled out his phone.
“There are only three roads north from here.”
Evelyn stopped him.
“Cresswell controls the county dispatch system. Do not broadcast this.”
The federal agent agreed.
“We’ll use state channels.”
Before they could leave, Nora noticed something beneath the desk.
A child’s wooden toy.
A small carved fox.
She picked it up.
Her father had carved one exactly like it when she was six.
On the bottom was a fresh inscription.
Nora,
The mountain has two graves.
She showed Evelyn.
“This was left for me.”
“By whom?”
“The handwriting resembles my father’s.”
“That is impossible.”
Nora turned the toy over again.
Beneath the message were coordinates.
May you like
They pointed to a location twelve miles north.
An abandoned section of Cresswell Mountain.
