CHAPTER 6: THE BASEMENT

The old hospital basement smelled like rust and decay. Mercer had been down there twice before, following Ghost Reid's vague suggestion that something in the area was significant. He'd found nothing both times—just concrete and pipes and the hollow echoes of a building that had stopped serving its purpose decades ago.

But on the third visit, he found something.

He was alone this time. It was midnight, and he'd left the precinct without telling anyone where he was going. The rational part of his mind—the part that was still capable of rational thought, which was increasingly small—knew this was wrong. Breaking into a condemned building, searching without a warrant, pursuing a hunch that probably meant nothing. But the rational part of his mind had been getting smaller every day.

Jimmy Walsh had come with him the first two times. Jimmy was the young patrol officer who'd volunteered to work the case, who still had hope in his eyes, who hadn't yet learned that hope was just another way to disappoint yourself. Mercer had sent him home tonight, had told him to get some rest. He didn't want witnesses to what he was about to do.

The basement was a maze. Old corridors branched off in directions that seemed designed to confuse. Mercer had a flashlight, and he moved through the darkness with the deliberation of someone who'd decided to cross a line and was trying to do it quietly, so nobody would notice.

He found the locked door on his third pass through the corridors. It was in a section of the basement that would have been part of the old psychiatric ward, a place where troubled minds had been kept and broken further. The door was locked from the inside, which was unusual. Most doors in a condemned building had been left open or broken by vandals. This one was deliberate.

Mercer broke the lock with a crowbar he'd brought for exactly this purpose.

The room inside was prepared. That was the first thing he noticed—it wasn't a random space, wasn't a place that had been left to decay. It was organized. There was a mattress on the floor, blankets, bottles of water. There was rope coiled in a corner. There was duct tape and other supplies arranged on a shelf. There was a box of children's clothing, neatly folded, sized from six to ten years old.

Mercer's heart was racing. This was it. This was proof. This was the place where the children had been kept before they died.

He documented everything with his camera, taking photographs of the room, the supplies, the evidence of preparation and care. He didn't touch anything. He was smart enough to know that if he touched things, they'd be contaminated, rendered inadmissible, worthless in a courtroom. But photographs were okay. Photographs wouldn't hurt anything.

He called Chen from a phone booth outside the building.

"Meet me at the old hospital complex," he said. "Bring someone from forensics. Bring a warrant if you can, but bring them regardless."

"Mercer, what did you do?" Chen's voice was awake now, alert to the fact that he'd done something that couldn't be undone.

"I found him. I found where he keeps them."

By the time Chen arrived with a forensics team and a captain, the sun was rising over the city. The gray morning light filtered through the broken windows of the condemned building, illuminating dust and debris and the small locked room that contained the history of murders not yet solved.

The room had been photographed professionally now. Samples had been taken. Everything had been documented and catalogued and prepared for evidence. And it was all inadmissible. Every bit of it, worthless in a courtroom, because Mercer had found it during an illegal search of a condemned building without a warrant.

Shaw arrived as the forensics team was finishing up. He looked at Mercer with an expression that mixed fury and resignation.

"You broke in here," Shaw said. It wasn't a question.

"I found evidence of the killer's location," Mercer said.

"You broke in without a warrant. You contaminated the scene. You did exactly what I told you not to do."

"I found where he keeps the children."

"Kept," Shaw said. "You found where he kept them. And now, because of what you've done, nothing in this room can be used in court. Every inch of this has been compromised by your illegal search. A defense attorney will argue that you planted evidence, that you contaminated the scene, that none of this can be trusted. And they'll be right."

Mercer wanted to argue, but he couldn't. He knew Shaw was right. He'd destroyed the investigation in the process of pursuing it.

"We can still process it," Chen said. "If we're careful, if we document everything properly, we can build a case from the evidence we find here."

"With what," Shaw said. "No chain of custody. No warrant. No legal foundation. Everything's tainted."

They did it anyway. They processed the room carefully, gathered samples, documented everything. And they found traces of the children—hair follicles, fibers, tiny fragments of evidence that suggested they'd been in this space. But none of it would be admissible.

Mercer was placed on suspension immediately. Shaw told him to go home, to stay home, to not contact anyone involved in the investigation. He was instructed to surrender his badge and his gun. He was informed that an internal investigation would be conducted. He was told that he might face criminal charges for breaking and entering.

Mercer didn't protest. He took his badge and his gun and he walked out of the precinct and he drove to his apartment and he sat in the dark and he understood, with perfect clarity, that he had destroyed everything. He'd destroyed the investigation. He'd destroyed his career. He'd destroyed any chance they had of successfully prosecuting the killer.

All in service of obsession. All in service of the conviction that the rules didn't apply to him, that he was operating at a higher level of necessity that transcended procedure and law.

Chen visited him that evening. She looked exhausted, disappointed, angry.

"You knew better," she said. "You knew that would contaminate the scene."

"I knew we were running out of time," Mercer said. "I knew the killer was preparing something. I knew—"

"You knew you were desperate. You knew you couldn't catch him the right way, so you decided to catch him the wrong way. And now we have nothing."

"We have the room."

"We have a room that any defense attorney will claim you planted evidence in. We have nothing that will hold up in court. We have nothing that will stop him from walking free when we do find him."

Mercer didn't have a response. Chen was right. He'd destroyed everything.

She left without saying goodbye. Mercer sat alone in his apartment and drank bourbon and tried very hard not to think about the fact that his actions had just given the killer a free pass. Somewhere in the city, the killer was preparing to take another child, and Mercer had just ensured that when that child was found, there would be nothing they could do about it.