Chapter 5 - The River Warehouse
I drove through the city like a man possessed, weaving the heavy Ford truck through traffic, running two red lights on Commercial Avenue, my knuckles white against the steering wheel.
The tactical situation was cascading out of control. Samuel was either dead or captured. Vance knew I was investigating the house. Richard was guarding Sophia at the hospital.
I was fighting an enemy that had local law enforcement, judicial power, and private enforcement on their side, while I was operating completely blind without a squad or air support.
I pulled into the overgrown lot of the abandoned lumber yard on 8th Street, five minutes after the phone call went dead.
The yard was a wasteland of rusted corrugated iron, stacks of rotting timber, and weeds pushing through cracked concrete. In the center stood a sprawling two-story warehouse, its windows broken out, its heavy wooden doors hanging off their hinges.
I parked fifty yards away behind a rusted gravel hopper, killed the engine, and pulled my Glock 9mm from my waist holster. I checked the magazine—fifteen rounds of hollow-point ammunition. I pulled a spare magazine from my pocket and tucked it into my belt.
I didn't enter through the main doors. That was an fatal bottleneck.
Instead, I flanked around the eastern wall of the warehouse, staying low in the tall grass, using the rusted machinery for cover. I found a broken loading bay door near the rear and slipped inside, making no sound.
The interior of the warehouse was vast, dark, and filled with the scent of damp wood and oil. Dust motes floated in the pale shafts of daylight filtering through the broken skylights forty feet above.
I moved from pillar to pillar, my weapon raised in a low ready position, scanning the floor.
Twenty yards ahead, near an old forklift, I found a pool of fresh blood.
Beside the blood lay Samuel's battered backpack, its contents spilled across the concrete: a worn blanket, a half-empty bottle of water, and a small stack of yellowed newspaper clippings.
I knelt down, keeping my eyes on the shadows above. The blood was still warm.
I flipped through the newspaper clippings with one gloved hand while keeping my weapon aimed down the main aisle.
The articles were all six months old.
CITY AUDITOR INVESTIGATED FOR EMBEZZLEMENT. JUDGE RICHARD CARTER LEADS JUDICIAL OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE. PORT AUTHORITY EXPANSION APPROVED DESPITE MISSING FUNDS.
And pinned to the back of the last article was a printed photo taken from a distance with a telephoto lens.
It showed Richard Carter standing on a private dock near the shipping terminal, shaking hands with a man in a expensive suit. Standing three feet behind the man in the suit was Detective Vance.
And standing in the background, half-hidden behind a shipping container, was my wife, Sophia. She was holding a blue folder in her hands, her face filled with shock and terror.
Sophia hadn't been attacked by a random mugger.
She had stumbled onto something her father was involved in—a massive corruption scheme involving the Port Authority and local law enforcement. She had gathered evidence. And when she confronted her father at our house three nights ago...
Crunch.
The sound of a boot crushing broken glass echoed from the upper catwalk forty feet above me.
I rolled instantly to my left, diving behind a stack of oak pallets just as a burst of suppressed automatic gunfire tore through the concrete where I had been kneeling a second ago.
Dust and stone chips sprayed into the air.
"He's behind the lumber stack!" a voice shouted from above.
I didn't wait for them to pin me down. I leaned out from behind the pallets, spotted a figure in a black tactical vest moving along the steel catwalk, and fired three rapid shots.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
The double-tap hit the gunman square in the chest. His body slammed against the steel railing, flipped over the edge, and crashed forty feet down onto the concrete floor with a sickening crunch.
He was wearing heavy Ripstop canvas. The same dark blue fabric I had found in my back door latch.
"Flank him!" another voice roared from the shadows ahead. "Don't let him reach the vehicles!"
I scrambled backward, crouching low, heading toward the rear exit. I was outnumbered in an open, unfamiliar space against opponents equipped with automatic weapons. Basic urban warfare doctrine: break contact, regain the initiative, choose your own battlefield.
As I reached the rear loading bay, I saw Samuel.
He was slumping against a wooden crate near the exit, his chest stained red, his eyes barely open.
"Ethan..." he gasped, coughing up blood.
I grabbed him under his arms, hauling his weight up, pulling him behind a steel dumpster outside the door just as a volley of bullets ripped through the wooden doorframe behind us.
"Hold on, Samuel," I grunted, pressing my gloved hand against the gunshot wound in his side.
"The folder..." Samuel whispered, clutching my jacket collar with surprising strength. "Sophia... she hid it... under the floorboards... in your study..."
He choked, his grip loosening, his eyes rolling back.
"Samuel!"
He went limp in my arms. I checked his carotid artery. No pulse.
Behind me, heavy footsteps were approaching the rear loading bay.
I lowered Samuel gently to the ground, pulled his dead body behind the dumpster to protect him from further desecration, and turned toward my truck.
I had the key to everything now.
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The evidence wasn't at the hospital. It wasn't at 4th and Elm.
It was hidden inside my own house.
