Crossed Roads
(Steele, Scarecrow and The Beast)
By Thomas Mc

Part 11: Which Way Did they Go

9:30 pm

"We have to get back in there and find out where they went." Lee shrugged his shoulder. "But how do we get back in without alerting the guard at the front desk? We can't count on another lucky break."

Amanda reached into her pocket and produced a remote for the garage entrance. With a shrug and a self satisfied smile she announced, "I swiped this from 13C."

~ o ~

They drove into the garage entrance and parked in the empty space for 13C. A quick check verified that Catherine's car was still parked in its usual space. Soon they were both in Catherine's apartment. There was no one there. Lee checked the bedroom and found the clothes she had been wearing laid out on the bed.

"Lee." Amanda called. "She left her purse behind." She frowned. "Where would she possibly go without her purse?"

"Maybe she took a different purse." He responded.

"No all of her stuff is in here." She paused as she continued to sift through the contents. "Except her keys. She left her ID behind but took her keys." She looked around. The gun and the book had been moved over and there was a vase full of flowers on the coffee table in their place. Everything else was undisturbed . . . except. "Lee there was a large heavy duty flashlight sitting on this shelf earlier. Now it's gone."

They both stood in the middle of the apartment looking at each other. "Where did they go?" Amanda asked the world in general.

"Could they have gone to Paul's apartment?" Lee seemed to be talking more to himself.

Amanda shrugged her shoulders. "I don't think that is what she meant by 'below'."

They went down to the thirteenth floor. There was the same police officer Amanda had seen in the lobby earlier, sitting in the chair next to the door to 13C. "Nobody's been here since I left earlier." Amanda whispered to Lee as the policeman glanced up from his magazine. In a louder voice she announced. "This isn't twelve." And turned back toward the elevator.

As they waited for the elevator to return she reported quietly. "I left a light dusting of face powder on the doorknob when I left earlier and, from here, it doesn't look like it's been disturbed."

Lee glanced back at the policeman and at the door. "Smart girl." He complimented her. "So where did they go?" The elevator door opened and they stepped inside.

Amanda thought back, "You can see the elevator doors from the building's front entrance." She closed her eyes. "I saw the elevator go all the way from the top floor to the basement, nonstop, right after that creature left Miss Chandler's balcony. It never stopped on her floor" She opened her eyes. "Do you think the creature could have ridden the elevator down?"

"If he did then he must have gone to the basement." Lee responded, "She must have gone down the stairs." He looked at Amanda uncertainly. "Could 'Below' be a reference to the basement."

"There's only one way to find out." Amanda replied. She hit the button for the eleventh floor and they exited the elevator. They entered the stairwell and verified that there was no one there before they continued down. At the bottom of the stairwell they quietly entered the basement but the basement appeared to be empty.

"Lee, look at the floor. This dust has been disturbed recently." She remarked.

"Good Call." Lee complimented her with a smile.

"Hardy Boys Mysteries. Phillip and Jamie used to love them." She responded.

Lee laughed. He and Amanda followed the path of disturbed dust. They eventually found smudged patches of dried blood at three locations.

"Lee?" Amanda was getting nervous. "That is dried blood, isn't it?"

"I'm afraid so and this isn't very old." He was also getting worried. Dried blood almost always boded ill. "I wonder if it has anything to do with the shootout." He touched the normally comforting weight of his gun under his armpit. It gave little comfort though as he thought about Paul's gun sitting on Catherine Chandler's coffee table, Francine's description of the dead of the foreign hit squad from a year ago, and the image of that massive creature that they were now trying to follow.

They followed in the general direction indicated by the smudges and the disturbed dust until they ended up at the back wall. Nothing! They backtracked then carefully searched the entire basement. Except for that pathway from the stairway to the back wall and a second one from the elevator to the same back wall, there was no sign at all that anyone had been down here in months. They were again at the back wall and completely perplexed.

"Where else could they have gone?" Amanda asked. "I clearly remember her saying she would meet him below in fifteen minutes. It took us ten minutes to go from her apartment to the basement. That included about a three to four minutes stop on thirteen plus the time spent getting on and off the elevator. It took the elevator five minutes to go nonstop from the top floor to the basement. It took him two minutes to climb to the roof." She thought hard her brows furrowed. They could easily reach any place within the building in under eight minutes." She shrugged.

"It makes no sense." Lee remarked in frustration. "I don't think it's likely that they went to another apartment either. He seems to have vanished into thin air and Miss Chandler with him." Lee smacked the top of the chest high wooden crate next to him in frustration; his quarry had again vanished without a trace. "It's happening all over again, just like it did eight months ago. What is that creature that he can just vanish like that?"

Amanda glanced at the large crate he had just hit. "Lee, look at that. Is that a hand print on the side of that box?"

"It sure is." He examined the hand print. "This is also dried blood." He looked at Amanda. "There has to be something, some clue around here as to where they went. I'm sure Dimitri, Paul and that creature all disappeared to the same place." Lee immediately began searching the area but with no success.

After a while Amanda stopped him. "Lee this is no good, you're just getting upset. Stop and look at this logically, examine the evidence we do have." She smiled. "Hardy Boys, again."

Lee stopped and thought for a while then he examined the hand print. It was just below waist height with the fingers pointed downward. He realized that there was no natural way to arrange his hand in the same place while facing the box. "OK let's look at this. You're on the run and you are bleeding. If you were leaning against this box your fingers would point up with your thumbs inward or your fingers would point down with your thumbs outward . . . unless . . . you were standing with your back to it."

He stood with his back against the box with his hands against it. It matched and it was a more natural placement. "Those three smudges on the floor must have been where he or she fell. So you're tired or hurt enough that you are falling down so . . ." He placed his hand on the handprint with his back to the box. He gazed in the direction that he was now facing, looking for any clue. "So you're worn out and looking in this direction. What did you see?" As Lee studied the view in front of him he leaned back resting his weight against the box . . . and the box moved.

He turned around and pushed hard. The crate slid easily aside exposing a metal hatchway mounted in the wall. He opened the hatch and gazed into the opening. He found that it opened into a dark pit that looked like it went down about ten feet. There was light at the bottom. He pulled back and looked up at Amanda. "I think we've just found out where 'Below' is." He stood up and pushed the crate back into place.

"Why did you do that?" Amanda asked him.

"I think that we're going to need a flashlight." He replied. "I'll be right back." He ran back to the stairwell.

About fifteen minutes later Lee returned carrying a flashlight. He pushed the crate aside, stuck his head through the opening and examined the walls of the shaft. "There's a ladder to the right here." He backed out and handed the flashlight to Amanda. "It's only about ten feet down. You go first and I'll be right behind you."

Once Amanda was down Lee got onto the ladder then checked the hatch and the wooden crate. He was intrigued by the simplicity of the hidden hatchway. Lee pulled the crate back into position then closed the hatch then he joined Amanda at the bottom and looked around. They seemed to be in some type of small pipe room. It was hard to see to the other side because of a vertical beam of bright light. Together they moved through the beam of light and came to a brick wall with a man sized hole in it. They stepped through the opening and into the tunnel beyond.

Looking down at the ground, they saw that all the traffic seemed to be towards the right and there was a bloody hand print on the wall just to the right of the opening. So they started off in that direction, unaware that they were following the same pattern as the missing agent and the woman. Amanda kept looking around in obvious curiosity noticing the large pipes that lined the tunnel. "This must be part of the utility tunnel system I remember reading about. The article stated that they sometimes have problems with the homeless moving into them and damaging the pipes."

After about ten minutes they came to an area that was very poorly lighted and without the flashlight they would have missed an unexpected turn. Another fifteen minutes of following the path of disturbed dust and they came to an ancient spiral metal stairway that followed the outer wall of a fifteen foot wide circular shaft. "This certainly looks interesting." Lee commented as he examined it.

The center of the shaft was open and Amanda leaned against the handrail and looked down. "It's a long way down." She commented as she gazed down the Central shaft.

"It looks like that's the way they went." He pointed to the almost total lack of dust on the steps and handrail. "Shall we?" Linking arms they proceeded down. After a long descent they came to a landing and stopped to rest. There was a door sized opening in the side of the shaft at this point.

Lee peered into the poorly illuminated opening. "So, which way now?"

Amanda glanced downward into the shaft and shrugged. "The way down is better lit."

They both checked the dust accumulation on the stairs and found no definitive answer there. Finally they decided to continue downward. After a few more minutes they reached the bottom of the ancient stairway. They stood there for several seconds looking around in amazement at the large chamber they had ended up in.

They found themselves in a large rectangular chamber that was three levels high and multiple openings at all three levels.

There seemed to be plenty of ambient light so Amanda put the flashlight in her pocked as they made their way through the maze of tunnels following the path that showed signs of recent passage.

Continued in Part 12

"Beauty and the Beast" and its characters are owned by Witt-Thomas Productions and Republic Pictures. "Scarecrow and Mrs. King" and its characters are owned by WB and STM. "Remington Steele" and its characters are owned by MTM Productions and the NBC Television Network.

No infringement on copyrights is intended. This story is the property of the author and is presented merely for the enjoyment of fans. Original concepts and story elements may be used by other authors as long as appropriate credit is given.

V.12.04.06