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The car was the same, but now it was parked on the same street where the Stutons used to live. The man inside was also the same, only now he was eating a hot dog.
He had taken his time to get there, knowing that they wouldn't immediately find it. Some things could not be rushed.
This time he had parked further away. He didn't need to get too close. The signal from the camera he had left hidden in the basement of number 82 had a fair amount of reach and from where he stood, it was working just fine.
In front of him, on top of the black dashboard, was a small portable TV set. The man took a bite of his hot dog and watched the grainy black and white image of the four detectives in the basement of the house. Taylor had looked directly at the camera and had failed to see it.
The driver smiled. They were good, but he was better. The device was well hidden.
He patiently watched as Taylor found the edges of the trap door and, with Flack's help, raised it from the floor, revealing the hidden chamber and the bunker's entrance. On the silent screen there was a moment of silence, while the four of them discussed their next move, the man guessed. He had no sound, so he had to imagine their dialogue.
The detectives looked like those actors from old days' movies, the black and white ones, before sound. He was almost expecting to see the image be cut away and briefly replaced by a lines card, cluing in the audience on the words being said.
He could read in their expressions when a decision had been reached. The women, in particular, had very expressive faces. He could see that they were excited with Mac's discovery and that they wanted to further explore. Still, underneath the shiny eyes beaming with promises of solving the case, there was an underline concern, a suspicion in the air.
The man inside the car laughed. Wouldn't that be ultimate irony… his whole plan, ruined by female intuition.
He put that concern aside. They were after all, at this point, pondering weather or not to go inside a dark hole in the ground. That would give anyone pause for thought.
Then he saw the tall detective talk briefly on his radio, probably informing the men posted above about what they were doing. They were going in.
The man tossed the rest of his uneaten hot-dog out the window, cleaned his hands on a paper napkin and reached inside his pocket for a cell phone. On his TV screen, Taylor disappeared down the hole first, only his hands visible as the older woman handed him one of the large silver cases containing their field kits. She lowered herself next down the ladder. Burn followed her, while Flack stood watching them from above.
The man waited a couple of minutes, hoping that the remaining man would go down as well. When it became apparent that Flack wouldn't move, the driver pressed a series of numbers on his phone and hit the call button.
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Standing outside the hole, Don's heart threatened to jump outside his chest when Margaret's phone started to ring again.
It took him a second to locate it, standing on top of Aiden's field kit case inside a bag, time enough for the radio signal to travel from the cell phone to the device hidden in the bunker's opening. Flack moved closer to look at the phone' screen to find out who was calling the dead woman.
The signal triggered a small explosion that raised more dust than it did damage. When Flack recovered from the scare and the dust settle enough for him to see, it was already too late.
The phone's battery had finally died and the bunker's opening was now sealed shut, with no way of opening it from outside.
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