"killersusesewers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lewis Stafford)

three-foot walls of the ditch around the clarifier. Dave helped the girl to her feet under
the concealing arch of the walk, and supported her to make the strain on her bad ankle
lighter.

He peeked around the edge of their hiding place and grinned.

"We get a break for a change," Dave announced. "All those killers are around the man-
hole trying to see if we're dead yet."

Dave got ready to leave, then turned to the girl. "Look," he said. "There's going to
be a lot of cops here soon, and maybe some shooting, so keep under cover. If anything hap-
pens to me, have the cops check up on my boss--the big boss. The first extortion murder
failed because of lack of knowledge then the next one and this attempt show knowledge of
this plant and the sewer system we take care of. You can be sure it wasn't one of my men."

The girl smiled, saying: "You may grow up and be a detective, yet. It is the superin-
tendent of streets and sewers. I wasn't supposed to see him, even if I was about to be
killed. But I did. From what he said, you haven't even seen Bowen since before the first
murder. It was very clever of you to point out a man who had no apparent connection with
the murders. You must feel you know your men very well."

"The rub is going to be proving it," Dave told her. "If we're both killed, there isn't
much chance of his conviction."


Dave Sands climbed out of the clarifier, leaving the girl there, his wet clothes dripping
as he ran the few feet to the control building. He pushed through the swinging doors and
staked his life and the girl's on his knowledge of the sewer plant. He did it by pushing
an electric plug into a wall socket, starting an emergency siren used to call the men in
from the large grounds. Though he only used one man on each night shift, during the day
several men were often working in the large grounds of the sewage-disposal plant,

"He's in that building!" Dave heard the killers shout the moment they located the sound.
And he hoped a police prowl car would hear it. The four remaining men ran toward the con-
trol building, guns in their hands.

Dave ran into the chlorine-tank room where the deadly gas was stored under pressure in
a two-thousand-pound tank. He quickly freed the end of a short length of tubing that led
from the big tank to the feed lines, traveling to the machines that mixed chlorine gas with
the incoming sewage. He bent the tubing, so it was at about the height of a man's face, and
pointed it at the doorway through which the killers had to come to reach him. The trap was
set!

Dave Sands heard the heavy pound of running feet on the cement floor, close behind him.
He swung up on the cement base under the chlorine tank--though he knew it was too late to
hide--still keeping his hand on the handle that shut off the gas.

He saw three men crowding in the open doorway a few feet from him and wondered where
the other man was.