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Alison was always discussing her ideas with him, pitching angles to him for his reaction, using him as a sounding board. But she hadn’t mentioned this.

He shrugged it off, and headed on to his next assignment with one of the other reporters.

‘Y
ou’re going to have to excuse me, Alison. We’re taking our young charges here on a walk through the parkway, along the old canals and the aqueduct, down to the river and back. Big hike, we do it a couple of times a week.’

‘Go for it. And thanks for your time today, Nancy.’

‘Never a problem.’

‘Would you mind if I hung around here for a while and took a good look over the place. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do.’

‘Of course. You never did get to film that video tour with Matthew. Take your time. Relax.’

Alison watched as Nancy, the counsellors and the young people headed off.

Carpenter would not be declared legally deceased for another four years. However his will stated that should he be unable to attend to his own affairs for any reason, then Nancy was to be his executor. At her discretion, his house should be used to set up and run a halfway house and rehab retreat for young people who were trying to find their feet after beating drug withdrawal. He’d known it was a long road. The fight didn’t end just because health authorities said you were clean.

Nancy had been running the place for a year now, after handing over the running of the Initiative office to another administrator.

Alison felt a pang of guilt for deceiving Nancy, but she cast the feelings aside quickly. She had to do what she had to do.

She looked about at the spacious living area and adjoining balcony. She tried to imagine the speakeasy that operated here in the 1920’s – the bar, the lounges, the dance area, the smoke, the gaiety, but somehow she couldn’t fully picture it. Everything was so different now.

Instead her gaze was drawn to the painting above the mantelpiece. A moody swirl of colors depicting a chameleon as its skin color shifted, adapting to its surrounds.

Her mind was cast back to her memories of that day with Matthew Carpenter, the interview, his fingers gracing the etched image of the chameleon on his silver medallion. He’d said: ‘We all have to be chameleons from time to time.’

Alison made her way down to the basement. It, too, was spacious, and was now used for storage.

This was where the illicit liquor would have been stored in that bygone era. And where, she guessed, it had been brought into the house.

She took a short, solid piece of wood that she’d had hidden in her oversize handbag.

She knelt down on the plush, carpeted floor and slowly but steadily, inching from one side of the room to the other, she tapped the wood on the floor.

It was solid.

She was more than two thirds of the way across, in the northeast corner, when she detected the hollow sound beneath the carpeted floorboards.

She felt her pulse quicken.

It didn’t surprise her then to notice the very thin join in the carpet that ran just to the side of this spot.

Alison pushed down on the left side of the seam and felt the slight rise it caused in the board underneath. She used the wood to press down harder and now the lift under the seam was enough for her to get a handhold.

Using both hands she pulled back and a detract-able slab of carpeted floorboard lifted up.

She was startled by the voice behind her.

‘So you did have an ulterior motive,’ said Nancy.

Alison turned. She wasn’t the kind to embarrass easily but on this occasion her face blushed with a sunset red. ‘Nancy-?’

‘I don’t know quite what it was, but I had a sense there was something you weren’t telling me about your visit. It was kind of nagging at me. Before I’d gone too far I thought – damn it! – I’ll just head back in and ask you straight. The kids are fine out there with their counsellors.’

‘Nancy, I apologize, I-’

‘Oh, no need for that, Alison, it’s all fine and dandy.’ Nancy gave her a knowing smile. ‘You’re a smart cookie, you’d clearly figured something out,’ she indicated the dark area beneath the floorboard, ‘something the rest of us should’ve also figured, something right beneath our noses. We just weren’t thinking or looking in the right direction. A tunnel. It leads down to the river, I suppose?’

‘I looked back on the research I did three years ago on the history of this neighbourhood. One of the previous owners of this house, a councilman named Rogerston, ran a Prohibition speakeasy here-’

‘And something triggered your suspicions,’ Nancy cut in. ‘That corrupt old politician built a tunnel that linked the riverside docks to this house.’

‘He copied the operations of the speakeasies in Jersey and Chicago. They used a network of underground tunnels to move the alcohol from the ships in port to their nightclubs. It wouldn’t have been too hard for Rogerston. There were already disused, closed-off tunnels running from the old canals. He just tapped in to those, and worked from down here, under the house, at a time when this suburb was much more secluded than it is now. He would’ve been able to bring in a bunch of workers and do it without raising suspicions.’

‘Living in this house, obviously at some point Matthew discovered the tunnel.’

‘You don’t seem too surprised,’ Alison said.

‘A part of me, like yourself I suppose, has always hoped Matthew was out there somewhere. I remember I once said to him that he was in such a rush, that he needed to pace himself. He was a young man, he had time on his side to build and sell his proposal. And you know what he said? He said he felt he was running out of time. That once his Initiative began to attract real support he’d be pretty much in the crosshairs of the drug gangs. Outside of that one time, he never talked about it, but he was quietly conscious of it.’

‘He thought the gangs would silence him,’ Alison said.

‘Yes. But Matthew was a smart man. Perhaps he intended all along to walk away before that happened.’ Nancy’s eyes moved from Alison to the opening in the floor. ‘And he did just that, didn’t he?’

‘I’d say so,’ said Alison. ‘Why don’t we check out exactly where it goes?’

Armed with flashlights, they stepped down into the opening of the tunnel.

It was roomier than they expected, but then it had once accommodated men hauling boxes crammed with bottles of liquor. It was dusty, the passageway cut roughly into the rock, and they made certain the uneven path ahead of them was well lit by the flashlight beams as they inched forward.

‘When I looked back over my notes,’ Alison said, ‘I started to focus on the fact that Matthew had no family, no romantic relationships, that when he wasn’t out campaigning he stayed in the house, alone. Except, on those occasions, I don’t think he was in the house. I think he used the tunnel to come and go, taking parcels of cash with him each time. I think maybe he was out there, setting up bank accounts and ID, establishing another life and another home, under a different name.’

‘You think that when he finally left here for the last time,’ Nancy said, ‘that he simply went to his other life permanently?’

‘It makes sense. A life with no connection to this one, and would never be tracked by the drug lords or by anyone else. It meant he would be safe, but it also meant that he could never confide in anyone, not even you, Nancy.’

‘I guess he knew his disappearance would confound the gangs, create an ongoing fascination for what happened, and keep national focus on the Initiative.’

They hadn’t gone much further when Nancy suddenly stopped. Alison’s comment on how she believed Matthew had used the tunnel to come and go, building another life, nagged at her. ‘You believe he’s somewhere very close, here in DC?’

‘Yes. Hiding in plain sight, close by where no-one is looking.’ Alison reached out, took hold of Nancy’s wrist. ‘Come on.’

They kept walking, and as they did Alison imagined Carpenter making his way through this same tunnel for the very last time. What had he been feeling?

The tunnel ended in a wall of stone and above this, cut into the roof, a metal plate with large drop-down handles.

‘Help me,’ Alison said. She and Nancy each took hold of one of the handles and pushed up. The plate rose slowly, and easier than Alison had anticipated, assisted by a simple spring mechanism that released when pushed and gave support to the lift.

There were rough footholds in the wall, enabling them to step up. The metal plate opened up only partially, leaving a narrow space through which they could push themselves.

‘This must’ve been one of those old, disused drain coverings,’ Nancy said.

‘An easy thing for Rogerston, way back in the 20’s when the area was largely unused, to convert into a hidden entrance point.’ Alison was first through. She helped Nancy up behind her.

The surface of the metal lid was covered over with long grasses, set behind a clump of trees in a wooded strip that was off the main trail. When fully opened, all those years ago, there would’ve been just enough room for men at the top to pass down the boxes to men underneath.

‘Matthew found this, made it operational again,’ Nancy observed.

This area, near the river, with its hiking and bike trails, was now a busy thoroughfare for walkers, joggers and riders, mostly keeping to the well-worn tracks and trails.

‘Even if someone stepped back here,’ said Alison, ‘and happened to detect the metal beneath the tall grass, they’d simply see it as a rusted old drain covering and take no further notice.’

‘Why do you think he left that night?’

‘I think he intended to vanish as soon as he’d done the Senate speech, at the height of media interest and before the gangs came for him. That’s why he responded so quickly to my proposal, that day. It meant I had the interview, and the footage before and after the speech, to make the news special. As it turns out, that show also covered his disappearance.’

‘The Feds had intel from an informer,’ said Nancy, ‘that one of the cartels was targeting Matthew, coincidentally, that same night.’

‘And even though there was no evidence, they believe that was what happened.’

It was a short walk from there to the riverside, or to the streets that led to the harbor, or the bridge that spanned the Potomac.

From here, Matthew Carpenter had quietly walked away to his other life, never to return.

‘If you broadcast this story,’ Nancy said, ‘then there’ll be a whole new search, focused on what we’ve found, and this time he’s likely to be found. He’d be exposed to-’

‘Nancy,’ Alison cut across her, ‘I won’t be running this story.’

‘You won’t?”

‘Matthew’s secret will always be safe with me.’

S
ome of the greatest news stories have come from a journalist with a hunch.

Alison had known her share of those, and this was a hunch that wouldn’t quit, wouldn’t let her sleep, even though it was a story she could never tell.

She was certain Carpenter wouldn’t risk having further involvement with anti-drug crusading. But he couldn’t stop being the kind of person he was, a man with a passion for helping others.

She spent weeks researching, under the guise of doing a story on the many and varied people who worked in welfare. She managed to gain access to the employment records from every hospital, school, nursing home, rehab centre and every counselling operation in DC and surrounding States.

She devoted her own time, evenings, weekends, telling no-one – not even Nancy – of her true intent.

It was another late night, and the portable TV in the corner of her home study, permanently tuned to the station she worked for, went to a news break that caught her attention.

‘…and in news just to hand, after a two year investigation involving undercover police, Federal authorities have indicted Ricardo Guitterez, the multi-millionaire businessman long suspected of being a major narcotics kingpin…’

Alison reached for the remote and muted the sound. The Guitterez cartel was the one rumoured to be involved in Carpenter’s disappearance.

Alison turned her attention back to her research. She was half asleep, scrolling through endless columns of data, and she almost missed it. Something sparked in her mind – what had she just seen?

She scrolled back.

And there it was.

Just across the Potomac River from Georgetown. A school for disabled children in Arlington. One of the employees, a 35-year old teaching aide and carer, who’d been employed three years earlier.

Matthew Carter.

The Christian name and the initials were the same. He rented an apartment near the school, lived quietly, and was doing an evening course in counselling.

He’d been involved in approaching the council for increased funding for the school.

Her intuition screamed out at her that this was him.

Hiding in plain sight.

L
unch hour, and the kids were out playing in the fenced-in yard, some of them in wheelchairs.

There was a bluff on the street that approached the school, and Alison sat on the grassy rise, beneath a magnificent old tree and she looked down and across to the yard.

There were three adult carers in view. Two were women, the third a man that could have been him. The hair was much darker and styled differently and he sported a beard.

It could have been anyone.

Alison watched closely. There was something familiar in the man’s mannerisms.

She was certain it was Matthew Carpenter.

She wanted to go across, shake his hand, hug him, talk to him about everything that had happened, and about what he was doing now with his life. But she knew that even the slightest contact could potentially one day expose his true identity, subject him to threat from the cartels, force him to run again, and destroy the martyrdom that had built up around the Initiative.

Damn it, she thought.

Just one meeting
.

No one need ever know. She was certain she wasn’t being followed or watched.

She stood up and at that moment the man in the schoolyard looked up and across, his gaze levelling on her.