Is that why he padlocked the workshop? It's consistent with that interpretation. The padlock kept you away from the garage, specifically from the section of floor where the shaft is located, and someone else has a key to that shaft. The trap door uses a different mechanism. It's not a standard lock, but yes, someone else has access to it.
Clare turned and looked at the garage at the padlock doors at the building she hadn't entered in 6 years because she couldn't find the key. He wasn't keeping secrets from me, she said. Not to Torres, not to me. Just out loud to the yard to the October air to whatever version of Daniel was still present in the space around that property. He was keeping the secrets away from me.
She turned back to Torres. What do you need from me? What they needed from her was patience. The kind of patience that comes with an active federal environmental investigation, which moves fast in the first hours and then settles into a pace that is thorough and careful and profoundly difficult to watch if you are the person whose life is at the center of it. The hazmat team arrived at 3:40 in the afternoon.
By 4:30, Alderton Road had two marked vehicles blocking either end of the block. Neighbors were appearing on their porches in that quiet, worried way people do when something official and large happens on their street. Dorothy Clare's 73-year-old neighbor who' spotted the truck walked over to where Clare and I were standing at the edge of the property and took Clare's hand without saying anything. Just held it, Clare letter. I stepped back and gave them space.
Bill Harrove appeared at my shoulder. They're saying the drainage system has been active within the last 30 days, he said quietly. Movement. Recent movement in the channel. You're sure?
The silt pattern in the accessible section doesn't match passive sediment. Something moved through there recently. Something with mass. He looked at the white hazmat van. And there's more.
What? The false floor in the garage. It's not original to the structure, but it's not new either. It was installed somewhere between 10 and 20 years ago based on the material age. This isn't something that happened after Daniel died.
Caleb, this was here when he was alive. I thought about that. He didn't build the shaft. He didn't build the shaft. Bill confirmed he found it.
I looked at the garage at the padlock doors at the whole picture. Daniel hadn't created the problem. He hadn't dug the tunnel. Hadn't hidden the shaft. Hadn't established the disposal operation.
He'd discovered it. Maybe stumbled onto it. Maybe was told about it by Evan. Maybe found it himself when something in the garage tipped him off. And then he'd spent years documenting what it connected to, what it meant, what had been moved through it, and why.