08-20-2013, 06:57 PM
Two more days of combing the tunnels with the crew chief and some of his workers continued to turn up little by way of concrete information. No one was willing to admit having seen someone pass through with a bloody knife wound to the chest. Or anyone going the other way in a hospital gown.
It was on that second day they made a breakthrough. Another work crew reported it first, and Drayson's conscripted crew chief received word immediately. A sink hole in a nearby tunnel, one that had probably been there for years already. Those sorts of things were normal enough; old pipes burst, eroded away the earth, and part of the tunnel would give way. The weird part was the smell.
They had been concerned it might have been a gas leak, and after grabbing some safety gear they lowered a man into the hole, only to find decayed flesh and human bones.
Chief Investigator was on the scene immediately. Specialists were brought in, police assets deployed to keep the area secure, and by the end of the day some two dozen partial human remains were recovered from the hole.
From there, it only took a few hours till one of the teams picked up on something. They had busted a few gang members, and in the questioning about the bodies, they had pointed the police towards a part of the under city the gang kids had learned to avoid. Apparently the folks that lived down there had known something was up for a long time, but had chosen not to report it. Or had, and it had been lost in the system, or more likely just ignored.
Within the hour, Chief Inspector Drayson had appropriated a regional SWAT team, a heavier vest and a pair of Land Warriors from the team's spare equipment. Regular police, with city workers as guides, were cordoned around the area, with the crew chief as their resident expert for how to read the map. Most of the area in question didn't exist in the official records; it was simply too old, or possibly was illegally built to begin with. With the final signal that everything was ready, they went in.
It was on that second day they made a breakthrough. Another work crew reported it first, and Drayson's conscripted crew chief received word immediately. A sink hole in a nearby tunnel, one that had probably been there for years already. Those sorts of things were normal enough; old pipes burst, eroded away the earth, and part of the tunnel would give way. The weird part was the smell.
They had been concerned it might have been a gas leak, and after grabbing some safety gear they lowered a man into the hole, only to find decayed flesh and human bones.
Chief Investigator was on the scene immediately. Specialists were brought in, police assets deployed to keep the area secure, and by the end of the day some two dozen partial human remains were recovered from the hole.
From there, it only took a few hours till one of the teams picked up on something. They had busted a few gang members, and in the questioning about the bodies, they had pointed the police towards a part of the under city the gang kids had learned to avoid. Apparently the folks that lived down there had known something was up for a long time, but had chosen not to report it. Or had, and it had been lost in the system, or more likely just ignored.
Within the hour, Chief Inspector Drayson had appropriated a regional SWAT team, a heavier vest and a pair of Land Warriors from the team's spare equipment. Regular police, with city workers as guides, were cordoned around the area, with the crew chief as their resident expert for how to read the map. Most of the area in question didn't exist in the official records; it was simply too old, or possibly was illegally built to begin with. With the final signal that everything was ready, they went in.