Chapter 39
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Tacoma Brick Works
Tacoma, Washington
The old Tacoma Brick Works sprawled across ten acres in the industrial district, a maze of crumbling brick buildings and rusted equipment surrounded by the chain-link fencing Golder had mentioned.
Allie spied some of the gaps as she stood at the perimeter and watched the SWAT teams move into position, their dark figures fanning out in practiced silence.
The night air was cold and damp, and it carried the industrial bite of rust and standing water.
Somewhere deeper inside the complex, something had been left to rot for a long time.
Jason popped the trunk of his car, and they began pulling out gear.
Allie shrugged into her vest and cinched the sides, adjusting the fit, then checked her sidearm and holstered it.
Jason followed suit, threading his arms through his vest straps.
The preparation helped her focus on the task ahead, strangely masking the danger of the situation through the sheer rote of the actions.
Allie watched Marze as he stood at the command vehicle coordinating with the SWAT commander, a broad-shouldered man named Rourke.
Marze had his arms crossed and was listening without nodding.
Allie knew he was absorbing everything. When she first started with the Tacoma team, his stoicism had been a little off-putting, but she quickly grew to appreciate his efficiency.
Jason fell into step beside his partner as they moved toward the staging point. “He was here. I can feel it.”
“Yeah. Me too.” She checked her flashlight, a tactical Streamlight. It was heavy and solid in her palm.
When Rourke gave the signal, the breach team moved on the main entrance, a corrugated metal door that hadn't been secured in years.
It swung inward without resistance. The SWAT operators went through first, weapon-mounted lights slicing the darkness ahead of them in tight, controlled beams that swept and paused and swept again.
Marze, Allie, and Jason followed the tactical units inside, hanging back as protocol required. She aimed her light low, tracking the uneven floor.
The air hit her immediately. It was dense, filled with the close smell of mold and decay and the mineral dampness of concrete that hadn't seen a dry season in a decade.
In the shifting beams, the interior assembled itself in fragments: debris-covered floors, walls tagged with years of graffiti layered over older graffiti, ceiling sections that had given way and left jagged holes open to the cold.
Broken glass caught the light and threw it back in scattered points.
Coiled wire and rusted brackets emerged from the dark as she moved past them, then disappeared again behind her.
Moving through a large space lit only in moving fragments felt disorienting. Allie’s eyes couldn't settle, and the darkness pooled and thickened just beyond each beam's reach. She kept her light steady and her pace even as she focused on the operators in front of her.
The teams moved methodically through the facility, clearing rooms one by one.
Most of the buildings were empty shells, ceilings partially collapsed, windows reduced to jagged frames, and walls eaten through in places by moisture and time.
The radio traffic was constant, a steady stream of terse confirmations filling her earpiece.
East wing clear.
Loading bay clear.
Kiln room clear.
She tracked the reports without speaking, mentally mapping the cleared sections against the site plan Marze had provided.
The complex was larger than it looked from the perimeter, branching into secondary structures connected by covered walkways and open yard space.
Rourke's teams were thorough. She trusted the process, but she still hated waiting.
They moved through a section that had once been the main production floor.
The kiln chambers ran along the far wall, their iron doors hanging open and each one large enough to stand in.
Allie swept her beam inside the nearest one.
Brick walls scorched black, a floor thick with ash and old debris.
Empty. She moved to the next. Empty. The SWAT operator behind her was already at the one beyond that.
Thirty minutes in, a different voice came over the radio.
“Commander. We've got something in the back storage building.”
The SWAT team was already moving. Allie and Jason followed them across the yard, their boots finding uneven ground in the dark, threading between stacks of rusted equipment and collapsed wooden pallets.
She kept her flashlight trained on the ground ahead of her and resisted the urge to hurry ahead.
The back storage building was set apart from the main complex, a low single-story brick structure with a rusted metal door hanging open on one hinge.
Two SWAT operators stood outside. Neither spoke as Marze approached.
Inside, the room was small, with a dirt floor and stone walls that had absorbed decades of cold. Four SWAT operators were positioned around the perimeter, their weapon lights still on, angled down toward the floor now that the space had been cleared.
Allie stopped just inside the doorway and let her own beam move across the room.
In the center of the floor sat a metal chair.
Beside it, cut rope lay in a loose coil, the ends frayed where it had been sawed through rather than untied.
Against the far wall, a wooden table held three items: a fixed-blade knife, a portable electric branding iron, and a stack of documents.
Everything was arranged with a compulsion that had nothing to do with efficiency.
The documents were squared to the table's edge.
The knife lay parallel to the iron. The iron's cord was coiled in an even loop beside it.
Her flashlight beam settled on the floor between the chair legs and remained there.
The dirt told the rest of the story. Drag marks cut across it in two directions, something heavy pulled toward the chair, and later, something heavy pulled away.
Dark stains had soaked into the earth and spread outward in an irregular pattern, old enough that the color had gone from red-brown to nearly black.
This was where he had killed Sarah Park.
Allie stared at the chair. She thought about Park, her firm handshake, her dark hair pulled back, the visible strain she'd carried even in those early days of the investigation. She thought about what it meant to sit in that chair knowing what was coming.
Jason moved past to examine the table without touching anything. He stood over the documents for a moment and trained his flashlight on the neat rows, then looked back at her. His face was still, but she knew him well enough to read the tightness around his jaw.
“He organized it.” Jason's voice was low. “Even here.”
Marze turned to Rourke, who had come up beside him.
“Facility otherwise clear?”
“Yes, sir. Every structure on the property. Nobody's here.”
Marze nodded once. He looked at the room again, then back at Rourke.
“He left his iron behind,” he said. “Which means he might come back to it. I want a surveillance team posted. Unmarked vehicles hidden away, rotating shifts, and full coverage on every access point. If he sets foot on this property, I want to know before he gets near that door.”
“Understood. I'll start coordinating positions.”
“Make it discreet,” Marze said. “He's careful. He'll notice even the smallest thing that looks wrong.”
Rourke stepped away to begin the logistics. Marze remained in the doorway a moment longer, then turned and moved back toward the main yard. His footsteps faded across the gravel outside.
Jason came to stand beside Allie. For a moment, neither of them said anything.
One of the SWAT operators shifted position near the door, and the angle of his weapon light changed, pulling the shadows on the far wall in a new direction.
The table emerged differently in that light, the documents almost white against the dark wood, the knife a clean, cold line.
“She didn't have a chance,” Jason said.
“No.”
He exhaled slowly. “We're going to get him.”
Allie didn't answer right away. She was looking at the chair again, the dull metal of it, the worn legs sunk slightly into the dirt from the weight they'd been made to hold.
The cut rope. The obsessive order of the table beside it, every item placed with care by a man who needed the world to conform to his internal logic even when he was doing the worst thing imaginable.
“We're close,” Allie said finally. “We just have to wait.”
Jason didn't argue with that. He knew, the same as she did, that the surveillance team was their best play now. Pym had found this place for a reason. It was isolated, accessible, contained. He'd used it once. If they were patient and quiet, he would come back.
Outside, Allie walked a few paces into the yard and stopped.
Around her, the complex was dark, no floodlights, no work lights set up near the windows.
Rourke had been clear about that in tonight’s briefing with the surveillance team.
Nothing that could be seen from the road or the fence line.
Anyone approaching the property needed to see exactly what they expected to see: an abandoned building in the dark.
Allie listened to the low sounds of the team taking their positions. Their voices were barely audible as she heard the soft creak of a gate swinging back on its hinge.
She resumed walking, making her way toward the command vehicle, where Marze was already on his phone. When Pym came back, she intended to be here waiting for him.