CHAPTER 7. CRYSTAL COVE, January 20, 1951

January 1951 was very cold and wet for California standards. The ocean was stormy and it rained constantly so it wasn't a typical mild Californian winter. But it was typical for Crystal Cove for some reason.

Sheriff Terrence Layton got used to this type of anomaly after more than two years of his service. Born and raised in Crystal Cove, he was immune to the quirks this place was famous for, simply trying to serve as best he could. One evening he sat in his office, reviewing reports on damage caused by recent storms and on road accidents on the road to Gatorsburg, a tourist town southeast of Crystal Cove. The room was half-dark, brightened only by a desk lamp and in almost complete silence which was disrupted only by a ticking clock and the wind whistling in the window.

It was about ten o'clock in the evening, when the silence was broken by a telephone ring. Sheriff promptly took the call:

"Sheriff Terrence Layton, I'm listening."

On the other end of the line, he heard a familiar voice. It was Vivian Blake, wife of Nedley Blake, a local industrialist.

"Sheriff! A terrible tragedy!" the woman cried with anxiety. "Miss Gluck's house is on fire! You must come here immediately."

"Did you call the firefighters?"sheriff asked soberly.

"Yes, just a moment ago." Mrs. Blake said. "But I wanted also to tell you about this, because I know that you... well, you look after her."

"I'll be there soon." sheriff said and added: "Please call Mrs. Blanchard-Mayer."

"Doing it now, sheriff." the woman replied.

The man hung up, put on his hat and stood up from the desk. At that moment, his deputy, Adam Fleach, came to his office:

"Fire on Heathercliff Drive, Sheriff!"

"I know, Adam. Mrs. Blake just called me."

"It's not a perfect end of the shift for you today..." the deputy said sympathetically.

"It's my duty as a sheriff." Layton said with a straight face. "Besides, I once promised Mr. Burlington something..."

Having said this, Layton left the police station, got into the police cruiser - a 1949 Hudson Commodore and drove with the siren on to the hills in the northwest part of the city. While driving, he started to recall memories of the past...

He remembered the day when he picked up Abigail Gluck from German prison as an US Army officer. That's when he saw her for the first time. Mr. Burlington was with him then and it wasn't a coincidence. His father was a long-time trusted business partner of Oswald Burlington, so his family gained the trust of the railroad mogul. Therefore, when Burlington learned where Abigail was being held, he used his influence in the army's command to let him and his men storm the prison.

When the war ended, Mr. Burlington brought Abigail Gluck back to Crystal Cove. She wasn't very enthusiastic about it, but it was the only place she could be safe, because returning to Germany would mean returning back to prison. Burlington used his influence once again, so that the American authorities would stop being interested in her. She settled in the former family estate her father had built after his immigration from Germany and becoming rich in America. It was located in an elegant neighborhood, where the other members of the Benevolent Lodge of Mystery, including Burlington, once lived. They've also met there as children. Although the main family house of the Burlington family was located in the mountains in the state of Washington, the Lodge used to return from time to time to Crystal Cove until their collapse, when they finally scattered around the globe. Their families did the same and their former residences were left empty, falling into disrepair. The Glucks Mansion was no exception. Located on the top of a cliff, a large Victorian mansion with a porch and a tower above the entrance portico was almost a ruin in 1945 and it was getting worse every year. Layton knew it, because, as a policeman, he used to bring sick Oswald Burlington to visit Frau Gluck. Anyway, "visit" is a bit too much said. Abigail never let Oswald inside, she usually welcomed him with a brush stick and unpleasant words. She often called him a persecutor or a maniac. Speaking of manias, since she returned from Germany, she began to behave strangely, disturbing the neighbors and disappearing for long periods, probably deep inside of her ruined house. But even so, Burlington didn't stop trying to make contact with her, without success. He still hoped that he would manage, as he used to say, to convince her to offer him the last sign of peace before his death. He didn't. Oswald Burlington died on March 16, 1948, without reconciliation with Abigail, his former friend.

When Layton passed the Darrow University building, built just eight years earlier, he could see a glow illuminating the night sky. It was very bad. When he got there, he realized that the flames had enveloped the entire house which looked more like a giant torch. Sheriff got out of the car and walked through the crowd of onlookers to get closer. An unbearable heat killed the chances for saving anything. He asked the commander of the fire brigade if they had get Mrs. Gluck out of the house, but he shook his head helplessly. Then, there was a loud crack - the burning mansion was beginning to collapse. The nearest standing firefighters began to escape. In a few seconds the entire building collapsed like a house of cards, turning into a pile of burning rubble.

Sheriff looked away and saw Vivian Blake helplessly leaning against his son, Alfred. He went to her to make sure she was fine. Abigail Gluck was her neighbor and Mrs. Blake was the only person in town Abigail would talk to. She also trusted her personal doctor, who used to come to her from Los Angeles and Marianne Blanchard-Mayer, who lived in San Francisco. She was the longtime friend of Abigail, they knew each other from the childhood.

"She was inside, sheriff!" Mrs. Blake wept, after he approached her.

"How do you know that, madam?"

"A few hours ago, I saw her picking up a delivery in front of her house and then she sealed herself there again. Besides, as you can see, her car is still in front of the house... Or what's left of it..."

Layton looked around. Indeed, Mrs. Gluck's old 1920's jalopy was still standing near what had once been the Glucks mansion.

"What delivery?" he asked her insightfully.

"I don't know, to be honest." the elderly woman replied, shaking her head. "Recently, there were various vans and trucks parking in front of the house. I don't know who those people were. The only ones I recognized were from grocery and hardware stores in Crystal Cove.

Sheriff wrote that in his notebook.

"Did you see anything else what made you suspicious?"

"Anything else...?" Mrs. Blake repeated, thinking. "Yes. I think so... I think so..."

"Please, proceed."

"I saw a car drive up to her house and stand for a long time. Today either. Four men got out of it and then they surrounded the house."

"Why didn't you call the police? Or me directly?"

"I don't know, I was shocked by what I saw. They left very soon and..."

The old woman cried again.

"They... They probably killed her and burned her house, sheriff..." she mumbled through tears.

"I'll take care of this, madam." Layton said. "Please go home. Until we find anything confirming the worst, Abigail Gluck is considered missing."

He turned to the car, but then he stopped, remembering something."

"Did you call Mrs. Blanchard?"

"Yes, she should come in the morning..." Mrs. Blake said.

Sheriff nodded.

"Nevertheless, good night, Mrs. Blake." he said. He got in the car and drove towards the town. The situation was beginning to bother him. Did he fail to secure Abigail Gluck against the world... or herself?

XXX

When Sheriff Layton came back to the fire site the next morning, the firemen were still pouring water on the steaming ruins. The daylight showed that the Glucks mansion was burned down completely, and Layton's task was to explain - why? He instructed the police and the firemen to sweep the ruins to find anything that could be evidence in the case and to determine if Abigail Gluck was at home at the time of the fire... When they began to search the rubbles, a big, black Cadillac arrived. The chauffeur got out of the car and opened the door of a thin elderly woman seated in black. She looked extraordinarily beautiful for her age, but also extremely sad. The view of the burnt house shocked her. She stood completely still with tears in her eyes. Layton approached her.

"I'm sorry that we meet in such circumstances, Mrs. Blanchard..." he said sadly.

"You can't even imagine how painful this view is for me, Sheriff..." Marianne Blanchard answered. "I spent the best years of my life in this house... With my best friends... Doing a lot of good for the world... And now all is gone..."

Sheriff didn't know what to say. After a while Marianne continued:

"And also my best friend... Is she...? The old woman looked him straight in the eyes.

"We haven't found her yet. She's unofficially declared as missing." sheriff replied quietly.

Tears started to trickle down Marianne's cheeks.

"Ah, Abigail ... What have you done?"

There was a moment of silence, but Layton decided to break it:

"What has she done?"

"Cutting herself from the rest of the world, holding old grudges, not allowing me or anybody else to help, asking for trouble - so typical of her, that's what. And that obsession with the treasure..."

"The treasure?" sheriff asked.

"The Treasure of Crystal Cove." Mrs. Blanchard said. "I don't believe that the Sheriff of Crystal Cove has never heard of it.

"I've heard. But it's just a legend, madam."

"Non... It's not a legend." the old lady said quietly, making herself even more sullen. "It's been fifty years since we've found out that it really exists, there's written evidence for it. And the same evidence says it's more than a treasure. It's so terrible that it should never be found..."

The sheriff didn't know what to say. But before he could say anything, he heard his deputy, who was searching the ruins:

"We've got a body here, sheriff!"

Layton ran toward the ruins. After a while, he saw a charred corpse crushed by elements of the house's construction. He ordered to remove them to take a closer look at the body. Actually, it wasn't much more than a burnt skeleton. After a second he turned back and realized that Madame Blanchard had gone after him to the ruins.

"Please leave, this is the investigation area...!" Deputy Fleach called to her, but Layton interrupted him:

"Let her stay, she'll help us identifying the body." and he said to Marianne: "Don't worry, I will be with you all the time, madam."

The shaky elderly woman came closer and bent over the body together with the others. Sheriff felt that something was wrong with these bones...

"It's not her..." Mrs. Blanchard said after a moment. "There are no glasses."

"Glasses could be destroyed by flames..." Deputy Fleach said.

"But it's not her. Abigail never worn jewelry!" the woman said, pointing to a charred ring on the victim's finger.

"In my opinion, this is a male skeleton" sheriff muttered. "But we'll have to wait for the coroner's report."

"It seems to be men's footwear." one of the policemen said, pointing at remains on skeleton's feet.

"What a stranger was doing at Abigail's house?" Marianne asked in horror.

"Mrs. Gluck never let anybody in." deputy said to sheriff.

"Perhaps it wasn't an ordinary fire, Adam." sheriff replied. "We may have something darker in our hands..." and ordered the others: "Keep searching!'

Everyone returned to work, even Mrs. Blanchard began to look around the ruins. Layton tried to stop her:

"Leave it to us, madam!"

"Non!" Marianne replied firmly. "Abigail was my best friend. I will not rest until I find her. This will be my last case, as a detective I have been for so many years..."

One of the policemen interrupted the conversation:

"I found some casings, sheriff." he said and pointed to the place near the body. Layton walked with the rest to the find.

"Pistol casings, to be exact..." Layton muttered and went back to the skeleton. He looked closer at the skull, there was a hole in it. Earlier, he suspected that the crumbling structure had broken it out, but he wasn't so sure. He lifted it a little. There was a second hole in the back.

"Exit wound..." he said."This man didn't die in a fire."

"Mon Dieu, Abigail..." Madame Blanchard whispered.

"Sheriff, you should come here!" Deputy Fleach called. He leaned over something, together with several policemen and firefighters. When Layton came closer, it turned out to be a large rectangular hatch leading to the basement. When he turned, he saw surprise on Mrs. Blanchard's wrinkled face.

"Did this house have a basement?" he asked her.

"No!" the surprised woman replied. "The foundations are laid in solid rock, the Glucks haven't hollowed any basement."

Sheriff ordered to remove the remains of burned wooden structure and open the hatch. After pulling a lever, it opened automatically. Then everybody could see stairs leading to a room under the house, which seemed like a hidden bunker. Layton turned the flashlight on. He could see a variety of mysterious machinery and numerous cables and pipes along the walls. All this seemed to be untouched by the fire. After the moment of hesitation, sheriff went carefully down the stairs to examine the place more closely. He looked at the machinery. These were hydraulic pumps, moving the hatch opening mechanism, as well as power generators. They all worked at full power.

"It's safe. Go down here, I'll try to turn on the light." he said up the stairs. The deputy and other officers went down to the room, as did Mrs. Blanchard. Layton found the light switch and lit up the darkness in the room. A gruesome sight appeared before his eyes. Further into the room, in front of a grating, there was a body lying in a pool of blood.

"What the hell?!" deputy Fleach exclaimed.

Layton walked to the body. It was a man in a suit and a hat on his head. There were three bullet wounds on his chest. There were also pistol casings lying on the floor close to the grating.

"This one is shot too." sheriff said. "It seems that he lies here from yesterday evening."

"It's none of Crystal Cove citizens..." said the deputy."I see this man for the first time."

Sheriff crouched and tilted the flaps of deadman's jacket. He found two pieces of paper in one of his pockets. One of them was a surreptitious photo of Abigail Gluck. The second one was a shot and blood-stained note on yellowed paper. It was written in Cyrillic. Under the text was a stamp with the emblem of the Soviet Union - the hammer and sickle.

"It's a red... A commie..." deputy said quietly.

"Mon Dieu..." Mrs. Blanchard muttered in shock, covering her mouth with her hands.

Sheriff was silent for a long time looking at both dead man and his note. Finally he ordered one of the policemen:

"Captain, call the coroner! And the FBI. Federal authorities have to know about it...

"Yes, sheriff!" Captain saluted and ran upstairs.

"We started with a fire and now apparently we have also a spy mess. There's no choice but to look further..." Layton said quietly to Fleach.

"I don't like it..." Fleach muttered.

Sheriff focused on the barred door. On the wall next to them, there were two buttons signed: "airlock" and "elevator". The sheriff pressed the first one. After a while, to the surprise of everyone, the hatch upstairs closed with a whistle. After re-pressing, it opened back.

"That's how it's been closed from the inside." sheriff said.

The time has come for the second button. After pressing it, a machinery started to work above them. After a minute, an elevator cabin appeared behind the grating.

"I feel we're getting close to figuring out what's going on here." Layton said. "Come on, Fleach!

"Let's take Sergeant Tailor with us." Deputy Fleach suggested.

"No." sheriff said. "Sergeant Tailor will keep eye on the corpse until the coroner's arrival." And he turned to Mrs. Blanchard: "Come with us, Madame."

Everyone was surprised by sheriff's idea, including Marianne herself, but after a while she nodded and got in the elevator with sheriff and his deputy. Layton closed the grating and pressed the "down" button. The cabin started to move down the elevator shaft.

With every second of the ride they were getting more and more surprised that something so big was hidden from the world under the house of a sick elderly woman. The shaft inside the solid cliff rock seemed endless. They didn't know it was just the beginning.

The elevator finally stopped and after they left it, they saw an extraordinary view - they were in a giant cave. It was concreted to half of its height and illuminated by electricity. There was a large pool with water and a dock stretching to the wall opposite the elevator. It was like a hidden base for submarines, but without access to the ocean. Workshops, tool cabinets, welding stations and large tanks with distributors were set up along the walls. It looked like a factory for dozens of workers, not a basement in the old lady's house. Their attention was caught by strange human-like machines. They were over two meters high and had Stahlhelms on their heads. They just looked like mechanized German soldiers. They also seemed broken, each one lacking different parts, nevertheless they were making them feel bit anxious.

"That's unbelievable ..." sheriff said to Mrs. Blanchard.

"To be honest, I'm not very surprised, Sheriff." replied the elderly woman. "Abigail is an extremely talented constructor." She pointed to robots and the rest of the cave: "But I never thought that she would be able to build all this alone in such an elderly age... Unless..."

Deputy Fleach interrupted her:

"I found some documents, sheriff!" he called from the other end of the cave.

He was standing at a desk full of disorganized papers.

"Maybe they'll reveal where Abigail is?" the woman said.

Sheriff took one of them. It was a receipt for a ton of canned meat and cereals. On another one, there was an order confirmation for 20 tons of steel. There were more orders - for huge amounts of copper wires, relays, bulbs, grease, more steel, also a blueprint mentioning a submarine called "Mr. Peaches"...

"How did she manage to hide something like this from the world?" Fleach asked in shock. Nobody had any idea how to answer.

There was another document - a handwritten note with quantities of steel from a freighter called "Townsville".

"Townsville..." Layton said, recalling something. "It was an Australian cargo ship which went missing three years ago, shortly after leaving San Francisco..."

"But what it has to do with Abigail?" Marianne asked.

"I can only guess..." Layton answered uncertainly and added after a moment: "All of these documents have one thing in common: they mention something called "The Midnight Zone". It's probably a place, but there's no information what that place exactly is and where it is, there are no coordinates whatsoever...

Deputy Fleach interrupted him:

"I think I found something again, Sheriff."

Layton put down the papers and approached him. His deputy was bending over a console near the desk. There was a lever switch on it. They looked at each other with no idea what to do next. After a while, sheriff shrugged his shoulders and decided to pull the lever. Then, a siren went off and everything began to shake. One of the cave walls began to open like a gigantic gate and daylight came in, blinding them for a moment. When the huge doors opened, they could hear the sound of waves. There was the Pacific Ocean as far as they could see. However, there was no sign of Abigail.

All three remained silent for a long time, stunned by everything they just saw. However, after a few minutes, sheriff Layton cleared his throat and said to his deputy:

"There's no time to wait, Fleach. Go up and call the rest of the officers. Then order the Coast Guard to search the area within the radius of 30 nautical miles of Crystal Cove. When the FBI arrives, take Tailor and go to the town to interview store employees who have issued these receipts we found. These measures should allow us to track Abigail Gluck and to find out what really happened yesterday evening...There's a lot of work ahead of us. Communists won't play havoc in Crystal Cove on my watch. We're going to solve this case quickly...

"Yes, sir!" Deputy Fleach nodded and walked toward the elevator.

Layton sighed and looked back toward the sea. Despite what he just said, he doubted that it would be possible to close this case quickly, if at all. He felt it in his bones...

"I think I know where Abigail is..." Marianne said out of sudden after a moment of silence.

"Really? Where?" Layton asked with surprise.

"Oui... Far away from here, in a place whose location is known only to her. In a place we never believed it exists..."

Soundtrack: The Man in the High Castle OST - Juliana's Letter YT: watch?v=8z4-ViVtk7E