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Alvarez was taking pictures of the basement for our files.
Brady said, “Sonia found Blackout’s lair.”
“It was a team effort,” she said.
“Sonia found it,” Brady repeated. “Say the magic words and show Boxer.”
Alvarez laughed and walked to the base of the long flight of stairs that ran from the trapdoor in the main room down to the basement floor. She edged in between the staircase and the furnace, then, using a spackle knife, she pried a wide, vertically placed board from the side of the stairs.
She shot a grin at Brady and said, “Open Sesame.” Then she propped the board against the wall, leaving a void where thepiece of three-quarter-inch ply had been. The narrow opening was a doorway. Reaching inside, Alvarez flipped a switch that turned on an overhead light and an exhaust fan.
What the hell?
“Our guy has been using the neighbor’s juice. Come on in,” said Alvarez. Brady and I ducked and entered a small subterranean flat underneath the staircase that extended into a carved-out section between the bookstore basement and the building next door.
I took in the compact three hundred square feet of hidden real estate, every inch of it in use. The walls were white. To our right was a bunk bed with a toilet below it. Across from the bed and WC was a kitchenette. I mentally catalogued the microwave, small sink, and a dorm-sized fridge. Above the kitchen counter were cabinets for dishware and packaged foods.
Looking ahead to the far end of the room was an office consisting of a long narrow ledge for a desk, a wheeled chair, a high-end laptop, centered on the desk with the lid open. A thirty-two-inch screen was affixed to the wall above the computer.
To the right of the laptop were a printer and a framed photo of a Venom helicopter with Marines posing in front of it. I couldn’t be sure, but the young man in uniform, standing a foot or two apart from the rest, could be Blackout.
To the left of the laptop was a fireproof box, a cube about twenty inches on each side.
“Locked,” said Alvarez. “And look here.”
A pair of black-rimmed glasses was clipped to a charging station. Blackout had left his video glasses behind, surely with the expectation that he would be back.
Brady lifted his chin, indicating the computer screen mounted on the wall.
“Boxer. This was on when we got here. It’s in plain sight, so no problem. As for the fireproof box, it’s closed and locked.”
What was inside that fireproof box? It was important enough to Blackout that he’d kept it locked even inside his cave. The press clippings we found at the old Victorian were meant to distract us. Here was where Blackout kept his treasures. I was pulled from my thoughts when Alvarez called my attention back to the computer screen on the wall.
She said, “This is going to shock you, Lindsay, but it’s a good thing disguised as a bad thing.”
Before I could say “I don’t get it,” Brady stretched out a gloved finger and touched the laptop’s “on” button and the screen on the wall lit up, displaying a grid of edge-to-edge photos, each about two inches square. It looked like a double-page spread in a school yearbook and was too much detail to take in all at once.
Alvarez explained that the photos were interactive. Tapping an image played embedded audio features. Voices. Music.
I stepped closer and saw that each photo showed a subject of Blackout’s past murders, taken with his video glasses, cut from the videos to still shots.
I said, “It’s a hit list.”
“Hammer, meet nail,” said Brady.
CHAPTER 97
I STARED AT the screen. The top row of photos documented Blackout’s murders of Catherine and Josie Fleet and his disposal of her baby and body. My eyes scanned downward to shots of the rest of his known kills and crime scenes.
Toward the bottom of the grid, the photos came closer to home: Claire at Baker Beach; Brady and Yuki holding hands as they left the Hall; Brady addressing the press; Yuki in court facing Barbara Sullivan in her wheelchair; Barbara Sullivan at home in bed, her mouth stretched wide in a scream as a blade slit her throat. It was a horrible portrait, so graphic that even in miniature I could feel her terror and pain.
There were a dozen pictures of Cindy, each one ratcheting up my overpowering fury at Blackout; Cindy with Rich at the book signing; Cindy approaching the brightly lit windows of Susie’s; hugging Claire outside the Hall; and individual shots from Blackout’s videos of Cindy, tied and gagged. Helpless.Terrified. He’d displayed that vignette in various angles; gag removed, screaming, curled under the desk.
My eyes skipped to the last line of photos on the screen. I felt Alvarez standing beside me on my left, Brady on my right.
I had chosen to look at the images in order. But now I was up against the wall. There was a shot of me in front of our apartment holding Julie, handing her to Joe, me waving goodbye as Joe’s big black car drove up Lake Street. Mrs. Rose taking Martha’s leash while I dashed across Lake Street.
Blackout had been watching us all.
