Chapter 6 - The Secondary Vault
Ten minutes later, I was standing in Detective Miller's office, slamming the green leather ledger down on his desk.
Miller jumped out of his chair, staring at the book, then at me. "Mariana! Where the hell did you get this? I told you to stay out of the investigation!"
"It was in his breakroom locker!" I yelled, my composure shattering into loud, ragged sobs. "Read the last page, Miller! Read it!"
Miller snatched up the ledger, his eyes scanning down the precise, handwritten entries. As he reached the final entry, his face turned ash-gray. He reached for his desk phone and hit a speed-dial button.
"This is Miller. I need a tactical team and a forensic unit staged at Hanover Industrial Park, Storage Facility B, immediately. We have a secondary site."
Thirty minutes later, three unmarked police cruisers and a forensic van pulled up to the security gate of Hanover Industrial Park. I sat in the passenger seat of Miller’s car. He had tried to force me to stay at the station, but I refused to move from his vehicle. I had to see it. I had to know the full extent of the nightmare I had lived through.
The manager of the storage facility, a terrified-looking young man with a keyring, guided the officers down a long, dimly lit corridor lined with corrugated steel doors.
They stopped at Unit 114.
"Stand back, Mrs. Vance," Miller ordered, drawing his sidearm while two uniformed officers flanked the door. The forensic technician used a heavy bolt cutter to snap the padlock.
Crank.
The padlock fell to the concrete floor with a loud metallic clatter. Miller grabbed the handle and pulled the corrugated door upward.
The door slid open with a screech of rusted metal.
Inside, the air hit us immediately—a heavy, suffocating chemical smell of bleach, fresh concrete, and industrial sealant.
The officers turned on their high-powered tactical flashlights, beams of sharp white light cutting through the gloom.
The unit wasn't filled with dusty furniture or boxes of old clothes. It was set up like a sterile laboratory. Stainless steel prep tables stood along the left wall, lined with gallon jugs of industrial lye, concrete mix, and rolls of heavy plastic sheeting.
In the center of the concrete floor sat two large, rectangular structures made of poured concrete and reinforced steel, each roughly six feet long, three feet wide, and two feet high. They looked like gray, unpolished sarcophagi.
On top of the second concrete box sat a small, red wooden block—a toy building block from Sofia’s playroom.
"Oh God..." I choked out, covering my mouth with both hands as my knees buckled. Miller caught me under my arm, dragging me back into the hallway.
"Get her out of here!" Miller roared to one of the officers. "Get her back to the car now!"
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As the officer pulled me away, I saw the forensic team stepping into the room with ground-penetrating radar units.
Diego hadn't stopped with Elena Vance. The apartment bathroom had merely been his primary vault—his personal trophy case. The storage unit was his warehouse.
