Yarmark stumbled through the weeds, shouting for Norman and Gross. Somers barely heard him; his attention was focused on the opening in front of him. He could make out very little; the July sun was still too bright, and the darkness inside too deep. He could tell that he was looking into a large space, though; to his right, massive double doors farther down this same wall provided another access point, although one that was clearly meant for industrial use. He guessed that he might have been looking at the final stage of the production line. Somers followed the outer wall until he came to the huge doors, and then he toed the weeds until he found the iron rails embedded in the ground. Either they had loaded the finished cars onto siding here and then moved them out to the main Missouri Pacific lines, or they had accepted raw materials here, or both.

By the time he got back to the exit door, Yarmark was there, his neck patchy with a flush.

“They said radio in every fifteen minutes.” He juggled the pepper spray and looked longingly at the Glock in Somers’s hand. “Do you think—”

“Not until you hear me fire a shot,” Somers said. “After what I saw today, that stays in the holster.”

“I’m a full officer—”

Somers rounded on him, and Yarmark swallowed and took two steps back.

“Yeah, man,” Yarmark said. “I mean, yeah, um, Detective Somerset. You’re the boss.”

Grabbing one of the flashlights Yarmark held, Somers headed into the building. He thought he sounded a little too much like Hazard when he muttered, “For fuck’s sake.”

The space immediately inside the building confirmed Somers’s initial impression: it was enormous, and it had obviously been where the final stages of the assembly process were performed. Sexten Motors had been closed for almost a hundred years, though, and in that time, scavengers—both sanctioned and unsanctioned—had stripped away anything that might have been of value. What was left was bleak: a brick shell with narrow, glass-block windows; a cracked cement floor, in places broken by weeds or, where water must have dripped down from the damaged roof, a nest of mushrooms; and trash. Someone had dragged an old mattress near one of the windows; next to the mattress, discarded needles and an empty tin of camp-stove fuel showed at least one unsavory habit that had been practiced within these walls during its century of neglect. A pizza box was propped open on the other side of the room, and next to it lay the broken-down cardboard packaging for a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon. When Yarmark stumbled on an uneven patch of cement, something small and dark shot out of the pizza box, and Yarmark let out a cry and stumbled toward Somers.

“Rat,” Somers said quietly.

Yarmark wiped his face with the back of a hand—he didn’t have a choice because he was still carrying the pepper gel in one and the flashlight in another. After a moment, he nodded.