Deadline(135)

            “One of us up high, one low, while Virgil climbs up the ladder and looks for the chip. You know where the ladder is?”

            “Still in the auditorium,” Virgil said. “The crime-scene guys were processing it, and I told them to leave it.”

            —

            AT THE SCHOOL, Virgil said, “I haven’t seen his truck.”

            “Probably wouldn’t show it,” Shrake said. “But he’d want to have it close, in case he had to run—so he’s probably not here yet.”

            “Probably at home, eating chicken,” Jenkins said.

            Virgil took the truck into the student parking lot, then swung onto the track that took them behind the school by the baseball practice diamond, then across some grass and right up to the back door. They piled out of the truck, jacking shells into their shotguns, and Virgil knelt below the windows in the door, and fitted the key into the door lock.

            “Okay,” he said, and turned the key and the lock popped. The door was sheathed in thin steel; good against a shotgun, but not against a deer rifle. He pulled the door open, staying behind the door, waited, and then crawled inside, felt for the light switches, turned on five or six of them at once.

            The lights flickered down the long hallway—which was empty. Jenkins and Shrake moved inside, and Virgil pulled the door shut. They walked cautiously forward, spread across the hall, their shotgun muzzles at chest height.

            Fifty feet in, Shrake said, “Door on the left.” Virgil saw the crack between the door and the jamb. He and Shrake kept their weapons pointed at it, while Jenkins kept his tracking down the hall. As they came up to the open door, they moved to the door side of the hall. As they got to it, Virgil called, “If there’s anybody in room 120, you best come out, because we’ve got three shotguns pointed at it.”

            There was no response, no sound, no feel of presence. Virgil, closest to the door, moved up and pushed it open with the muzzle of his gun. When it was fully open, he reached around the jamb, felt the light switches and turned them on. A conference room—empty.

            They continued down the hall, around a corner, turned on more lights. Moving faster now, with the feeling that the building was empty. They turned the last corner, and Virgil said, “Auditorium is straight ahead, on the left.”

            They continued, looking for open doors, Shrake now walking backwards, watching their backs, past the burned-out district offices, then into the hallway beyond, to the auditorium door.

            Again, with the door and lights: and inside, the auditorium was empty. “No wild geese,” Jenkins said.

            “Let’s get into the act,” Virgil said. “If he’s coming, he saw my truck pull around the building. Jenkins, you get up in the top row of seats, on the floor. Shrake, get between those curtain rolls at the back of the stage. Anybody hears movement, snap your fingers at me.”

            —

            JENKINS AND SHRAKE set up; Virgil waited, listening, then went to the ladder, which had been left in a corner, and with a little nervous tickle between his shoulder blades, extended it and then set it against a crossbar in the light rack on the ceiling. He fussed over it a bit, giving Laughton a little more time to show, then climbed the ladder.

            A couple of pieces of tape hung down from a crossbar where they’d mounted the camera. He muttered, “Anything?”

            Shrake said, in a nearly inaudible grunt, “Nope.”

            Virgil took a foot off the ladder rung where he was standing, then frowned: a piece of the gaffer’s tape seemed to rise above the rest. He climbed back up, pulled the tape off.

            “My goodness.” The memory card was there, stuck under the tape. Kerns must have challenged Bacon while he was on the ladder, and Bacon had popped the card and hidden it under the tape, for Virgil to find.