here," Rourke said. "The actual vault is here. Can we see your blueprint, Captain Orozco?"
Orozco, who was built like an inverted pyramid, broad shoulders over thin hips, unrolled his drawing across the top of the DWP print. It was a copy of the drawing Avery III had shown Bosch and Wish earlier.
"Three thousand square feet of vault space," said Orozco, indicating the vault area with his hand. "Small private boxes along the sides and free-standing closets down the middle. If they are under there, they could come up through the floor anywhere along these two aisles. So we are talking about a range of about sixty feet in which they could come through the floor."
"Now, Captain," Rourke said, "if you pick that up and we look back at the DWP chart, we can place that breakthrough zone right here." With a Day-Glo yellow under-liner he outlined the floor of the vault on the utility map. "Using that as a guide, we can see the subterranean structures that offer the closest proximity. What do you think, Mr. Gearson?"
Gearson leaned over the car hood another few inches and studied the utility map. Bosch also leaned in. He saw thick lines he assumed indicated major east-west drainage lines. The kind the tunnelers would seek. He noticed that they corresponded to major surface streets: Wilshire, Olympic, Pico. Gearson pointed out the Wilshire line, saying it ran thirty feet below ground and was large enough to drive a truck through. With his finger, the DWP man traced the Wilshire line east ten blocks to Robertson, a major north-south stormwater line. From that intersection, he said, it was just a mile south to an open drainage culvert that ran alongside the Santa Monica Freeway. The opening at the culvert was as big as a garage door and blocked only by a gate with a padlock on it.
"I'd say that's where they could've come in," Gearson said. "Like following surface streets. You take the Robertson line up to Wilshire. Take a left and you're practically here by your yellow line. The vault. But I don't think they'd dig a tunnel off the Wilshire line."
"No?" Rourke said. "How so?"
"Too busy is how so," Gearson said, sensing he was the man with the answers as nine faces peered at him from around the car hood. "We got DWP people underground all the time in these main lines. Checking for cracks, blockages, problems of any sort. And Wilshire's the main drag down there, east and west. Just like up top. If somebody knocked a hole in the wall it'd get noticed. See?"
"What if they were able to conceal the hole?"
"You're talking about like they did a year or so ago in that burglary downtown. Yeah, that might work again, maybe somewhere else, but there is a good chance on the Wilshire line that it'd be seen. We look for that sort of thing now. And, like I said, there's a lot of traffic on the Wilshire line."
There was silence as they took time to consider this. The engines of the cars ticked away the heat.
"Then where would they dig, Mr. Gearson, to get into this vault?" Rourke finally said.
"We got all manner of linkups down there. Don't think us guys don't think of this from time to time when we're working down there. You know, the perfect crime and all that. I've hashed stuff like this around, especially when I read about that last one in the papers. I think if you are saying that's the vault they want to get into, then they'd still do just like I said: come up Robertson and then over on the Wilshire line. But then I think they'd move down one of the service tunnels to sort of stay out of sight. The service tunnels are three to five feet wide. They're round. Plenty of room to work and move equipment. They hook up the main artery lines to the street storm drains and the utility systems in the buildings along here."
He put his hand back into the light and traced the smaller lines he was talking about on the DWP map.
"If they did this right," he said, "what they did was get in the gate down by the freeway and drive their equipment and all up to Wilshire and then over to your target area. They unload their stuff, hide it in one of these service tunnels, as we call 'em, and then take their vehicle back out. They hike back in