by Frank Zafiro
“What else, Eric?”
Eric’s brow furrowed. “What else what?”
“What else do you need to tell me?”
He gave Elias a confused look. “That’s all. Look, I know I’m going to get fired and everything, but it’s the truth.” He glanced to Finch and back to Elias. “Am I going to jail?”
“What if the thief knew Eric was sleeping the night away most nights?” Elias asked Finch in the hallway. “He could even have made a trial run or two to make sure.”
“That’s pretty risky. If the kid wakes up within two hours of the theft and changes the tape, the guy is nailed.”
“Maybe he had a contingency for that.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know exactly. Steal the tape or something.”
Finch clicked his tongue, nodding. “Okay, so are we agreed the kid wasn’t in on it?”
“Ninety-nine percent, yeah.”
“And the professor?”
“Last horse still in the race.”
“Agreed. So that leaves Leavitt, Moore, and the janitor.”
“Let’s hit Moore first. He’s the one with the bad alibi.”
Moore sat on the bench in the empty waiting area, hunched over and kneading his hands. “Why couldn’t we do this in my office?” he asked.
Because we don’t want you getting comfortable, Finch thought.
“Police reasons,” Elias said.
Moore scrunched his brow. “I never heard of any kind of reason not to interview someone in their office.”
“Well,” Elias said briskly, standing over him, “you’re not the police, are you?”
Moore’s features darkened. He glared at Elias but said nothing.
Finch sat next to Moore on the bench. “What are we going to find when we pull your application file, Tony?”
Moore swiveled his gaze to Finch. “Huh?”
“You applied to River City PD,” Finch said evenly. “You were turned down. What are we going to find when we have Records pull your application and we review your background? Or when we read the oral board interview results?”
Moore shrugged. “Pull it and see.”
“Why don’t you just tell us?”
He smiled sourly. “I’m not the police.”
Finch ignored his tone. “No, but you are the head of security here. That’s a position of trust.”
“So?”
“So, trust requires honesty. And you haven’t been honest with us. So we’re trying to figure out if that was part of the reason you didn’t get hired by the police.”
He shook his head. “I’ve been honest with you. I want to find the mummy. I’ll probably lose my job over this.”
“Maybe you should,” Elias observed coldly.
Moore eyes snapped to Elias. “What’s your problem, man?”
“I don’t like liars.”
“Well, I didn’t—”
“We talked to your wife, Tony,” Finch interjected. “She told us when you got home.”
“I got home at midnight,” Moore insisted.
Finch shook his head. “No. You woke up Angela when you got home at two.”
Both detectives watched Moore as his face changed from anger to denial to realization. “Two?” he finally rasped.
Finch raised his eyebrows and gave a short nod.
Moore remained silent for several seconds. Then he said, “She was probably drunk. She thought it was two but it was really twelve.” He considered that for a moment, then nodded his head. “That must be it.”
“No,” Finch said. “She may have been drunk, but she’s sure it was two. Tony, do you know what that means?”
Moore didn’t answer.
“Near as we can tell,” Finch continued, “the mummy was taken about one in the morning. And since you know the codes and since you didn’t get home until two—”
“And since you lied,” Elias added.
“—that makes you a prime suspect,” Finch finished.
Moore stared at his hands. Finch and Elias remained quiet, giving him a few moments to stew. Finch noticed that Moore’s hands were trembling.
“Can you guys keep a secret?” Moore finally asked.
“It depends on the secret,” Finch told him.
“It’s got nothing to do with this museum or any of this that you’re investigating.”
Finch gave a half-shrug. “Then probably we can.”
Moore sighed. “The reason I wasn’t home until two is the same reason I lied to you guys about it. I was with someone.”
“Someone?” Finch asked.
“My girlfriend. Tina.”
Elias groaned.
Finch leaned forward and caught Moore’s eye. “You spent last night with your girlfriend?”
“Yeah. Well, till two.”
“And then you went home?”
“Right.”
“And this girl Tina will back that up?”
“She should,” Moore said. “At least, as long as she doesn’t think it’ll get me in trouble.”
“Why’d you lie about this?”
Moore turned his hands up in surrender. “I didn’t want you to tell my wife. She’s about to divorce me anyway. This would put things over the top.”
Finch didn’t even consider exploring the relationship dynamics any further. If it were a rape or a homicide, they might be key components, but he didn’t sense the whys of the situation mattered much. “Is that why you got bounced on your oral boards when you applied to the police department?”
Moore nodded glumly. “Like you guys don’t fool around.”
Finch ignored that and handed Moore his notepad and a pen. “Write down her number.”
Finch dropped the phone onto the cradle and frowned. “She backs his story, one hundred percent.”
“Which puts him neck and neck with the professor for last in line.”
“Can we stop with the horse-racing metaphors?”
“Would you prefer chariots? Since we’re dealing with a mummy and all that.”
Finch ignored the question by asking one of his own. “The janitor?”
“Yep.”
“I knew you guys’d be back,” Michael Booth told them, putting down his magazine.
“Why’s that?” Elias asked.
Booth smiled humorlessly. “Cops always come back.”
“Profound,” Elias muttered.
Finch pulled a plastic chair from the corner of the room. He sat near Booth and regarded him quietly for a moment. Booth stared back at him, unfazed. Finch continued to stare.
After about a minute, Booth shrugged at him. “What?”
“You are the only person in this investigation with a criminal record,” Finch said.
“So what? That doesn’t make me the only criminal.”
“What’s that mean?” Elias asked.
Booth glanced up at him. “What, I spoke Portuguese?”
Elias’s face flushed and his jaw clenched.
“What are you driving at when you say that?” Finch asked.
“Simple,” Booth replied. “Someone else took the mummy, right? And that guy’s a criminal.”
“What if that guy was you?” Finch asked him.
“It wasn’t.”
“But what if it was?”
Booth shrugged. “What if daisies were dollars?”
That one surprised both detectives and they gave him questioning looks.
Booth smiled broadly. “Well, if that were so, I’d have a million dollar field growing right in my front yard.”
“You think this is funny?” Elias asked.
“No,” Booth said. “But I know I didn’t do it. And my answer will be the same no matter how many times you ask.”
Finch tried a different tactic. “If you didn’t do it, then you wouldn’t mind taking a lie detector test, right?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t believe in them,” Booth said.
“Ah,” sa
id Elias, giving Finch a wink. “A skeptic.”
“They’re not admissible in court, anyhow,” Booth went on.
“A skeptic and a legal scholar,” Elias observed. “When did you get your law degree, Grisham?”
“I spent some time in the law library when I did my stretch. Keeps me from getting jerked around by cops.”
“We’re not jerking you around,” Finch told him. “We’re trying to find the mummy.”
“I didn’t take it.”
“So take the polygraph.”
“Like I said, I don’t believe in them.”
Finch shrugged. “It doesn’t matter if you believe in them. We do.”
“That’s your problem.”
“Look, if you take the polygraph and pass, we believe you. If you take it and fail, it’s not admissible in court. How can you lose? Take the test and clear your name.”
Booth shook his head. “No.”
“You know,” Elias said conversationally, “if the museum thinks you had anything to do with this, they’ll fire you.”
“So? It’s a janitor job. And it’s contract work, anyway.”
“So maybe they’ll dump the contract.”
“Let ’em.”
Finch rubbed his chin and sighed. “You know, if I owned a janitorial service and some employee caused me to lose a contract, I’d fire him.”
“And blackball him so he’d never get work in town again,” Elias added.
Booth’s smile returned. “You’re breakin’ my heart, guys. I’ll never work in this town as a janitor again? Boo-hoo. I’ll work construction. Better money, anyway.”
All three men fell quiet for a moment. Booth watched both men, his face a mask of calm bravado.
Finch broke the silence. “Are you still on probation, Mike?”
Booth shook his head in disgust. “I wondered how long it would take you to get around to that. No way is my probation officer going to violate me because I won’t take a lie detector test.”
“Probably not,” Finch said. “But no one is perfect. Everyone screws up, especially when they’re bound by all sorts of rules.”
“Like a guy on probation,” Elias said.
“Sooner or later, a guy is going to screw up. Might be something small, but still a screw-up. And if anyone is watching that guy when he screws up…” Finch shrugged nonchalantly.
“He gets hammered,” Elias finished.
“So, should I give your P.O. a call?” Finch asked.
Booth’s gaze went back and forth between the two detectives. Then he sighed. “Why are you guys hassling me? I didn’t take the mummy. I don’t know anything about it.”
“You’re hiding something,” Finch said. “That’s why.”
Booth stared at him for a long while. Finally, he asked, “Look, if I tell you the truth, can I get a pass on some misdemeanor crap?”
Finch and Elias exchanged a glance. Elias gave Finch a short nod.
“Probably,” Finch told Booth. “Depending on what it is.”
“It’s got nothing to do with this mummy or anything like that,” Booth said.
“Then what?”
Booth sighed. “Follow me.”
He led the detectives out of the utility room and down the hallway. Elias leaned close to Finch’s ear. “Be careful he doesn’t turn and rush us,” he whispered.
Finch nodded. “At least if he does, we’ll have a better story than last time.”
Elias winced and grinned at the same time.
Booth pushed open a door marked “Employees Only—Men.” Light reflected off the bright tile on the locker room floor. A long row of blue lockers stood along the wall. A bench ran the length of the lockers. Booth stopped in front of number twelve. He turned to face the detectives, his face grave. “I’m trusting you guys here. I’ve been screwed over by cops before.”
“We just want to find the mummy,” Finch said. “What is it?”
“The thing is,” Booth said, “I’ve got a lot of joint pain. Lifting weights in the pen got me really big, but then I didn’t stick with it after I got out. There’s a lot of pressure on my joints, but the doctor won’t prescribe anything harder than Tylenol for it.” He shook his head. “He sees ex-con, same as you, and probably thinks I’m scamming to get some OxyContin or something.”
“What’s this have to do with the mummy getting stolen?”
“Nothing,” Booth said. “But—”
A Nextel phone on Booth’s belt chirped. A tinny version of Moore’s voice echoed in the locker room. “Mike? Where are you?”
Booth cursed and spoke into the phone. “Locker room.”
“You with the detectives?”
“Yeah.”
“Be there in a couple.”
Booth cursed again, replacing the phone on his belt. “If he finds out about this, I will get canned.”
“Finds out about what?” Finch asked.
Booth pointed to locker number four. A piece of masking tape on the front bore the name “Mike” in black marker. “That’s my locker there. This one here”—he pointed to twelve—“is supposed to be empty.”
“But it’s not.”
“No. It’s not.” Booth slipped a key into the lock and opened it. Then he stepped aside for the detectives.
Elias stepped forward first and examined the interior of the locker. He let out a long, loud sigh. Then he stepped aside for Finch.
Finch looked inside the locker. At first sight, it appeared empty. Then his eyes lighted onto the upper shelf. A rolled baggie of marijuana the size of two thick cigars perched halfway to the rear of the locker.
Finch groaned. “This is about some marijuana?”
“Yeah,” Booth admitted. “I smoke it for the pain in my joints. I don’t sell it, man. I just use it, you know, medicinally.”
“Why is it here?”
“My P.O.,” Booth explained. “He visits my house and tosses the place. And he comes here sometimes, too, and searches my locker. So I use the spare locker to store my stuff. Before I go home at night, I take a little with me. Just enough to get through.”
“Great,” muttered Elias.
“Are you guys going to arrest me on this?” Booth asked. “Because if you do, my P.O. will probably violate me. I’ve got seven months left to go on my sentence.”
“Close that,” Finch told him.
Gratitude flooded Booth’s features. He shut the locker and snapped the lock into place. “Dude, thank you. Really. I mean it.”
Finch ignored him and went to the sink, where he splashed some water on his face. Behind him, he heard Booth thanking Elias. Elias grunted.
When Finch turned back around, Moore strode through the door. Adam trailed behind, carrying a notepad.
“What are you guys doing here?” Adam asked. “I’ve been looking for you.”
“The acoustics are better in here,” Elias said.
Adam smirked at him. “Whatever.”
“What do you have, Adam?” Finch asked.
Adam’s smirk melted into a proud grin. “Something interesting. I cross-checked all of the door contacts against the alarm disables.”
“If the alarm is off, how did you—”
“The current still runs through the contact on the door,” Adam explained, “even if the alarm is disabled. Breaking the contact just doesn’t set off the alarm, that’s all. It still registers in the system as a contact break.”
“Meaning you can tell when a door was opened, even if the alarm was off,” Finch concluded.
“Right.”
“Why didn’t you check this earlier?” Elias asked.
Adam scowled. “The software doesn’t display it. I had to go into the programming language and identify—oh, never mind. You wouldn’t understand.”
Elias opened his mouth to protest. Before he could, Finch asked, “What did you find?”
