“But a hidden hallway would explain what Joe saw, that woman who went into a room but never came out,” Felipe added, tracing the space with his finger. “And it’s on the floor below it?”
“Yes, and the main floor, but...” Oliver flipped to the drawing of the basement Joe had made. When he aligned everything with the elevator, it was clear that the rooms Joe had drawn were crowded to one side of the building. The kitchen, the locked supply rooms, the elevator, they barely took up more than half of the building’s footprint. He could understand the uppermost floor not using all the space available but not the basement. Tapping the blank part of the page, Oliver added, “That hallway, if it goes down to the basement, would run here.”
Oliver pulled the pencil off Felipe’s notebook and lightly traced the hallway. Returning to the uppermost floor, Oliver drew in the hidden door.
“There was no door there,” Ansley said at Oliver’s other shoulder, making him jump.
He hadn’t realized he had even gotten up. Inching closer to Felipe, Oliver swallowed hard and straightened the papers.
“I saw it today. Jenkins was talking to a woman, a Mrs. Bellamy. I think she’s Dr. Yates’s sister. She was complaining that her daughter was having treatments, but they wouldn’t let her see her.”
Felipe shuddered but said nothing.
“While I was waiting to make the appointment, they came through the paneling. It wasverywell hidden. I wouldn’t have seen it without them coming through it. There’s probably a spring closure on the office side.” Tapping the space they came from, Oliver frowned. “I couldn’t see what was on the other side, but I assume it leads to a hallway or another room. There was also a queer sound, like another elevator. A mechanical whirring and grinding.”
“Where would that hall be if it was on the floor with Yates’s office?” Felipe asked.
Oliver realigned the papers and held them up to the light, the lines suddenly becoming clear. “It would start a few feet before where the false door is.”
“And your mystery elevator? Where does that fit?” Ansley asked incredulously.
Swallowing hard, Oliver bit his lip and stared at the papers when Felipe’s hand gently closed around his shoulder. Felipe believed him. Felipe knew that when he heard or smelled things others didn’t, they were real. The lines on the other half of the institute were too tight for an elevator, and for him to hear it, it had to have been close to the office. As he switched between floors, Oliver’s eyes snagged on a square at the end of the hidden hall on the men’s floor. The gap was more obvious there, wider than he had made it on the women’s floor. What if the closets weren’t as deep as he thought or one was a false door? Joe had said some were always locked. Flipping back to the main floor, Oliver adjusted another closet and the wall of the cafeteria.
“The elevator is what’s at the end of the hall. Hidden amongst the treatment rooms, no one would notice the noise, and on the first floor, it runs behind the cafeteria. It leads down to the missing side of the basement.”
“May I?” Felipe asked, nodding toward the papers. When Oliver handed them over, he studied the drawing of the basement for a long moment before tapping a doorway Joe marked aslocked storeroom. “That’s how the doctors get whatever ‘waste’ they have to the incinerators without drawing too much attention. It’s direct access, and if the door to the incinerator and boiler room is closed and locked, no one will know they’ve come and gone. I think our priority when Joe gets us in is to get into the locked side of the basement and into those halls.”
“This is a lot of conjecture,” Ansley said, flipping through the papers with a shake of his head. “You want us to build our whole plan on something that may not even exist.”
“Frankly, it’s the best plan we have. Sneaking up the main corridors or trying to use the elevator with everyone in the building is too risky. If the hallway and elevator do exist, which I think they do, they give us near direct access to Yates’s office and his secretary’s. You wanted documents showing where the money comes from and where it goes, right? Then, it should be there. This way, Oliver and I get our murder investigation, and you can rummage through desks to your heart’s content. I doubt Yates or any of the doctors has those passages guarded if they think no one knows they’re there. I assume you can pick a lock if you have to.”
Ansley rolled his eyes. “Yes, I can pick a lock, Galvan. I’m not totally useless.”
Biting his lip, Oliver did not mentionhecouldn’t pick locks, but if there was something regarding dead bodies or evidence of a murder, he would at least be of use tagging along. “There’s one thing. There may be rooms upstairs as well that we haven’t seen. Mrs. Bellamy and Mr. Jenkins came from somewhere, and if the basement is where they deal with the bodies of the people who have died or been killed, I doubt they came from there.”
“It could be a records room,” Ansley said absently. “I didn’t notice many filing cabinets sullying the secretary’s office.”
“Or a waiting room for Mrs. Bellamy or a room for her daughter. I doubt the dear doctor would want anyone knowing his niece was there for treatments. Surely, that would sully his image.” Returning to his chair, Felipe sighed and ran a tired hand over his face. “That poor child. I can only imagine what she’s been subjected to if what Joe says is any indication. It shouldn’t be legal.”
Do no harmwas a farce. Oliver had seen firsthand how the Hippocratic Oath could be twisted to meando what you please. If a doctor had a theory that every piece of evidence said shouldn’t work, they could try it anyway, kill people, and say, “Well, now, we’ve proven with absolute certainty it doesn’t work.” Others would find people they didn’t consider human or capable of feeling pain to torture or maim in the name of medicine. It was too easy to forgive those people when something wasgainedfrom it, even at the expense of others. Yes, there were good doctors and scientists who only wanted to help, but the foundation was rotten. And Oliver didn’t know how one went about fixing that or living with it once they knew.
“I need to think,” Ansley said, breaking Oliver from his reverie. “I’m taking everything to an archivist to copy. I’ll send the notes through the tube when they’re done. We’ll reconvene tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow’s Saturday. Some of us have plans, you know.”
Ansley scoffed and waved a dismissive hand. “In the morning then. I’ll find you.”
Before Oliver or Felipe could reply, Ansley hastily gathered the piles of papers and strode out the door. Oliver stared at the empty table where his notes had once been. Ansley wouldn’t lose them, but he hated having them out of his possession. Beside him, Felipe shrugged and pushed back from the table. At least whatever ill will there had been earlier between Ansley and Felipe had fizzled out.
“I know it’s not our usual day, but what do you think about going to the Tam Noodle House for dinner tonight?” Felipe asked.
An instinctivenorose to Oliver’s lips at the thought of having to leave the Paranormal Society again and being surrounded by people. Even if they had dinner in the private dining room upstairs, it would be noisy and crowded on a Friday night. But when Oliver saw the careworn lines around Felipe’s eyes, his protests crumbled. He wasn’t rigid. Ansley wasn’t right. His relationship wouldn’t implode again because he refused to be flexible.
“Sure,” Oliver replied, forcing a smile he didn’t feel, “let’s go.”
