Chapter 10
Rapid-set hydraulic cement doesn't wait. The moment moisture touches the aluminate binders, an exothermic reaction kicks off, generating intense heat as the chemical crystals knit together.
I didn't have a trowel. I didn't have a mixing paddle.
I plunged both of my bare, chemical-scalded hands directly into the bucket.
The pain was beyond anything I had ever felt.
The caustic lime in the fresh mortar bit instantly into the open blisters and raw flesh of my palms, searing like red-hot iron. I bit my lower lip until warm blood ran down my chin, forcing my fingers through the thick, heavy gray slurry, churning the powder and water together in frantic, desperate circles.
The gray paste thickened with terrifying speed. Within thirty seconds, it was the consistency of heavy oatmeal, steaming faintly in the freezing crawlway air.
*Pour it.*
I hoisted the heavy five-gallon bucket with both hands, my forearms trembling violently under the forty-pound deadweight.
I shoved the lip of the bucket deep into the opening of the galvanized return duct, right against the bulging, plastic-wrapped contour of the bundle.
I tipped the bucket.
A massive, gray wave of thick, wet mortar poured down into the galvanized channel.
*Gloop. Squelch.*
The heavy slurry cascaded over the top of the polyethylene wrap, sliding down into the narrow gaps between the wrapped bundle and the sheet-metal walls of the duct.
It worked.
The heavy, dense paste was filling the voids, pushing the foul air out of the duct, surrounding the plastic cocoon like a stone sarcophagus.
I grabbed the second bucket.
*Crack.* The lid came off in two jagged halves.
I dumped the remaining water into the powder, churning it with the dry handle of an old framing hammer I found in the dirt, the gray slurry turning dark, viscous, and boiling-hot to the touch.
Outside, a loud, metallic screech tore through the crawlspace.
Miller’s pry bar.
He was at the rear bulkheads—less than twenty feet away—jamming the steel claw between the padlocked cellar doors, trying to force the rusted latch.
“It’s rusted shut from the inside, Hank!” Miller shouted, his voice muffled by the heavy timber framing. “Give me a second with the cheater pipe! If this wood gives, we can get the dogs down through the cellar stairs!”
*They’re breaking in.*
A blind, suffocating panic took over my hands.
I lifted the second bucket and inverted it entirely into the duct opening.
The wet concrete surged forward in a massive gray tide, gurgling and sloshing as it engulfed the front of the wrapped mass.
The heavy mortar rose like an encroaching tide—four inches, eight inches, twelve inches deep—completely submerging the lower half of the bundle, creeping up to meet the jagged edges of the sheet-metal hatch.
The heat radiating from the setting cement was intense, warming my face in the freezing crawlway. The chemical crystals were already expanding, locking the bundle into a five-hundred-pound tomb of solid stone.
The smell of blood was disappearing.
The caustic, mineral stench of curing limestone and wet masonry was drowning out the coppery sweetness of Marcus’s remains.
“Die down there,” I wept through gritted teeth, using the flat of my raw, cement-caked hands to slap the heavy mortar flush against the mouth of the galvanized duct, smoothing the wet surface into a solid, impenetrable plug. “Stay down there. Don't let them find you.”
The mortar was already hardening. Beneath my palms, the wet paste was turning firm, stiffening into unyielding granite. In three minutes, not even a pneumatic chisel would be able to breach the duct without waking the entire county.
It was over.
The evidence was gone.
And then, as I pulled my hand back to wipe the sweat from my eyes, my work light caught something glinting in the narrow space between the galvanized lip of the duct and the floor joist above.
Something that wasn't wrapped in the plastic.
Wedged into the wooden notch of the sill plate, right at the mouth of the air duct, was a small, square piece of electronic equipment.
It had been crushed—its gray polycarbonate housing split down the center—but a tiny, recessed liquid crystal screen was still glowing with a faint, pulsing amber light.
It wasn't a tool.
It wasn't Marcus’s voice recorder.
Stenciled across the cracked faceplate in sharp, white lettering was a label:
*NONIN MEDICAL – PULSE OXIMETER & DIGITAL AIRWAY MONITOR.*
A thin, transparent wire led from the shattered unit, running directly beneath the hardening crust of hydraulic cement, disappearing into the dark folds of the bundle I had just buried.
My heart skipped a beat.
*A medical monitor?*
Why would Marcus have an airway monitor?
My hand moved involuntarily to my sweatpants pocket.
My fingers, stiff with drying cement and dried blood, closed around the hard rectangular edges of the other device I had shoved into my fleece an hour ago.
The voice recorder.
The battered, soot-stained Dictaphone I had dragged out of the foyer debris.
The casing was smeared with gray mortar dust. The toggle switch on the side was jammed forward, stuck between *STOP* and *PLAY*.
Outside, the heavy wood of the cellar bulkhead gave way with a deafening, splintering *CRACK*.
“We’re in!” Miller roared from the storm cellar. “Hank, bring the dogs down the stone steps! Watch your footing, it’s slick as grease!”
The hounds bayed inside the cellar walls—a deafening, thunderous roar that shook the very floorboards above my head.
I didn't move.
I couldn't move.
With the quick-dry hydraulic cement already gurgling and hardening down the crawlspace vent to bury the final bloody bundle forever, I brought my trembling, cement-crusted thumb down upon the battered playback button of the crushed voice recorder.
The tiny, rusted speaker hissed with a burst of fierce, crackling static.
And then, through the tinny grill, a voice tore into the darkness.
It wasn't Marcus.
It was my own voice—ragged, hysterical, and sobbing with absolute, desperate terror from eight hours ago:
*“Breathe, Marcus, goddammit, keep breathing! I’ve got the airway open!”*
