Chapter 11 - Under the Concrete
The deputies searched Margaret’s laundry room that afternoon.
Nothing.
Concrete floor.
Utility sink.
Washer.
Dryer.
Paint cans.
Unfinished walls.
No hidden hatch.
No obvious seam.
Cole used thermal imaging.
Still nothing.
Margaret insisted Daniel must have meant another floor.
Emma did not believe her.
Then Cole received a call from the state police laboratory.
Thomas Hayes’s corpse had been dead approximately thirty-six hours.
That meant he died after the trail photograph.
Daniel had been one of the last known people to see him alive.
Worse, Daniel’s fingerprints were on the shovel beside the grave.
A prosecutor could call that evidence.
Emma called it a setup.
Cole was less certain.
“Emma, I believe Daniel is in danger. But we have to consider everything.”
“My husband did not murder an eighty-year-old man and bury him behind a barn.”
“You didn’t know his parents weren’t his parents yesterday.”
“That doesn’t make him a killer.”
“No.”
Cole paused.
“But fear changes people.”
Emma left angry.
That evening, she stayed at Margaret’s farmhouse because deputies had secured it and her own home remained part of an active investigation.
Robert stayed too.
Margaret had been asked to remain with relatives.
She refused.
At 11:20 p.m., Emma woke to a noise.
Scraping.
She walked downstairs.
The laundry room light was on.
Margaret stood inside with a pry bar.
She was digging at the base of the utility sink.
Emma watched silently from the doorway.
Margaret turned.
They stared at each other.
“What are you doing?”
Margaret lowered the bar.
“Fixing a pipe.”
“At eleven twenty?”
“Go back to bed.”
Emma stepped inside.
“Daniel said you know the floor.”
Margaret’s expression changed.
“I told you, there’s nothing here.”
“Then why are you trying to open it?”
Margaret moved between Emma and the sink.
“Because my father hid things.”
“What things?”
“I don’t know.”
Emma reached for the pry bar.
Margaret grabbed it first.
For one moment they struggled.
Then a piece of loose concrete chipped away.
Underneath was steel.
Both women froze.
Emma knelt.
A metal plate had been concealed under a thin layer of resurfaced concrete.
Margaret whispered, “No.”
Emma scraped paint and dust away.
Numbers had been stamped into the steel.
214.
Room 214.
Margaret backed away.
“My father built this house before St. Vincent burned.”
Emma looked at her.
“What did he put under it?”
“I don’t know.”
Then the front door opened.
Robert entered the hallway.
“Emma?”
Margaret reacted instantly.
She shoved the utility sink back over the plate.
“Say nothing.”
Emma stared.
“Why?”
“Because if Robert knows, he’ll open it.”
“Good.”
“No.”
Margaret’s voice became desperate.
“If my father sealed something here, there was a reason.”
Emma laughed in disbelief.
“Your father stole babies.”
“And people died when they exposed him!”
Robert appeared at the doorway.
“What are you two doing?”
Emma looked at Margaret.
Margaret looked at Emma.
Then Emma said, “We found something.”
Margaret’s face hardened.
Robert helped move the sink.
When he saw 214, he went pale.
“Dad used that number everywhere.”
“Why?” Emma asked.
Robert shook his head.
“I thought it was because of the clinic.”
He examined the steel.
“There’s no handle.”
Emma remembered Daniel’s note.
Not a metal key.
A sequence.
The first place he told her the truth.
Lane 17.
August 17.
Daniel’s birthday.
Emma touched four small recessed buttons beside the plate.
“Eight.”
She pressed.
“One.”
“Seven.”
A click sounded beneath the floor.
Robert stared.
Emma pressed the final button.
“Two.”
Nothing.
She tried 214.
The steel plate unlocked.
Air hissed upward.
Margaret whispered, “Don’t.”
Robert lifted.
A narrow staircase descended into darkness.
May you like
And from somewhere below—
A phone began ringing.
