The Antiquities Hunter

by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff

  “What?” I asked next.

  “Stalking.”

  This went on the board too, under the appropriate heading.

  People who have watched me do this exercise may employ their own serving-man: Why? Why do I use stickies on a whiteboard instead of whiteboard markers? First of all, stickies take up less room, so they allow for more ideas to be trotted out. They’re also permanent—at least until you wad them up and toss them (which I never do until a case is closed). They’re easily moved from one place to another when you’re building a flow of ideas or a timeline, and if you remove one, you can park it to the side without losing it via hasty erasure.

  Oh, and they don’t smell bad and give you a headache.

  I invoked the next serving-man: “Why?”

  “Because of my involvement in a current or upcoming case? That’s the only thing that makes any sense.”

  I wrote Open case on the next sticky in the pack and popped it up under Why. “What have you got open right now?”

  Rose chewed the inside of her mouth contemplatively. She’d watched me go through this ritual before when brainstorming far more mundane matters and knew where this was going.

  “Okay, we’re looking into a theft from the Heard Museum in Phoenix.”

  “You’re the Primary?”

  “No, Greg is. I’m the Second.”

  “Okay.” I wrote Heard theft on the next slip of paper and made it the third tier below Why and Open case. Currently Investigating went under When, and Phoenix, Arizona went under Where.

  “Then there’s the Anasazi looting case. That one’s going to trial late next month.”

  I raised my eyebrows, and Rose continued: “A family affair. Daddy Blankenship and two sons caught pilfering from the Chaco Canyon ruins. I’m the Primary on that one. And chief witness for the prosecution.”

  Ah, the gun-toting miscreants. Promising. I posted Anasazi looting under Open case; Trial Next Month under When; and Chaco Canyon, New Mexico under Where.

  “Any more?”

  She sipped her coffee. “We’re putting together a sting against a small-time fence who’s been trying to raise his profile. His name’s Ted Bridges. Most of his clients are small private collectors, but he got sloppy a couple of months ago and put a few things up for auction through Sommers.”

  “What, not eBay?” I made another series of notes and stuck them on the board.

  “He’s smarter than that. He knows we snoop on eBay. To their credit, Sommers contacted us immediately.”

  “Oh, good for them.”

  Sommers was a mid-echelon auction house that had had a number of stolen artifacts turn up in sale lots over the last several years. Rose and her cohorts joked that they were coming up in the world—trying to get the same kind of notoriety in black market antiquities that the more illustrious Sotheby’s had acquired.

  “When is the sting taking place?”

  “In about two weeks.”

  This went up on the whiteboard too.

  “Then there’s the Indian cemetery desecration on the Hopi rez. Which we’re no closer to solving than we were three months ago when I left Old Oraibi.”

  That was personal bitterness in Rose’s voice, I knew. She had been the primary agent on that case, but her emotions had gotten in the way when she was unable to slam-dunk it. The desecration and looting continued, stopping when the cemeteries were being watched, picking up again as soon as everybody looked the other way—which happened whenever the Park Service decided there were simply not enough funds to keep agents on the reservation year-round.

  Rose is not the overemotional type—witness how long she’d kept mum about this stalking. And she might have been able to remain objective if her great-grandmother’s relics weren’t among the missing.

  “That it?” I asked, adding Hopi Rez, Old Oraibi, and Three Months Ago to the board.

  “That’s it.”

  “Okay, what about Dave?”

  She gave me a quizzical look. “Dave? Dave’s a school teacher.”

  “And that means he has no enemies? Surely you jest.” I’d done some thinking about this and I was half-hoping it might be the real reason for what was going on.

  “Enemies serious enough to stalk his wife?”

  “We don’t know how serious this is. It could be no more than a persistent prankster. If someone was trying to yank Dave’s chain for some reason, they might figure that they could do that by freaking out his wife. How would they know you’d keep it all to yourself?”

  Rose shook her head, sending a ripple through her long, gleaming black hair. “I’d think this was about Dave if my stalker had acne and a boom box . . . and rode a maroon Schwinn. Most of his students don’t have driver’s licenses.”

  “Stop being obtuse. Does Dave have any students whose parents he might have cheesed off? Any school board politics he’s involved in?”

  “No. You know Dave—at worst, his students think he’s amusingly daft. Their parents think he’s a saint. As far as politics go . . .” She shrugged. “You’re going to have to ask him.”

  I wrote: Talk to Dave on a sticky, stuck it off to one side in my “parking lot” area, then added To Do above it with a dry-erase marker.

  “Anything else? Any other areas where you’ve had difficulties?”

  “Nothing. It’s got to be one of my cases, but . . .” She looked at the slim pickings on my board. “Nothing here seems likely.”

  “What about cases you’ve put to bed?”

  She let out a big sigh, her frustration showing. “There is the Hochob investigation. A mixed lot of artifacts from an anonymous donor went to a museum here in the Bay Area via a Sommers private auction. But you know how that goes—we’ve never gotten any of the major players, and we don’t really expect to. We were only able to indict one of Sommers’s clerks.”

  “You tried to get him to roll over on his superiors, though, right?”

  “Sure. But he wasn’t talking. I expect he’ll have a tidy nest egg waiting for him when he gets out of jail. All he’d get for confessing would be the loss of his job and a vote of thanks from the U.S. Park Service and the people of Mexico and Honduras.”

  I looked back at the board. “With the museum located here, that’s the most relevant connection we’ve made so far.” I added Hochob Investigation, San Francisco, and Sommers Clerk to their respective columns. “How did you guys discover this?”

  “We got a tip from someone at a local museum. A docent who thought the items were suspect because they were mislabeled and without any proof of provenance . . . and he recognized some of them.”

  Ah, the P-word—provenance. To a scrupulous museum or auction house, a clear record of the path an artifact had taken to get from point A to point Z was absolutely essential. “All the artifacts were from Hochob?”

  “No. There were a handful from Copán as well.”

  I looked at the board. That case felt as if it weighed more than the others, possibly because of the six-hundred-pound-gorilla status of the major player—Sommers. Then again, maybe that was a red herring.

  “Let’s rank these,” I suggested. “What else floats to the top?”

  “I’d say it’s the Blankenship trial.”

  I moved Anasazi looting to the top of the column.

  “After that, the Hopi burials—although I’m not directly involved anymore, so I’d rank those at the bottom of the list. The sting . . . I don’t think that can be it, unless Bridges has figured out he’s under suspicion. His recent activities don’t suggest he has. He’s still plugging right along . . . working the greater Phoenix area and Flagstaff. I checked. And the Heard theft—hell, Tink, we don’t have any leads on that one.”

  I moved Heard theft to a position right beneath Anasazi looting.

  Rose clutched her coffee cup in both hands and leaned toward the board. “Why give that one such a high ranking?”

  “Maybe someone is trying to make sure you don’t find any leads.”

  “In Sa
n Francisco? Why would anyone follow me here? Wouldn’t they just be Snoopy-dancing over the fact that I’ve gone back to my home office and gotten out of their way?”

  I shrugged. “Okay, good point. Maybe there’s more to the Hochob case than meets the eye. You know the clerk you’ve nailed isn’t one of the major players. In fact, everyone knows that, including those same major players. Maybe someone freaked out that you’re so close to the museum they sold the lot so that you wouldn’t happen upon more information than has already been uncovered.”

  “So they’re following me just to make sure I don’t accidentally trip over them?”

  “It’s a thought.”

  I added, Possible Discovery under Why next to Hochob Investigation. I wrote the name of the Anasazi looters on a note and pasted it under Who across from the case note. While it was true that Rose hadn’t been involved directly with the Hopi case for months, it was possible someone didn’t know that or thought she was close to a discovery of some sort.

  Taking a step back from the board, we looked at what we had so far. A quick look at When caused the Anasazi looters to be the most relevant since Rose was due to testify in a just over a month. The Bridges sting was happening earlier in our timeline, but that only made Ted Bridges a candidate for Stalker of the Month if he knew when he was going to be stung—and even that seemed a stretch. The third most likely reason would be the Hochob Investigation because of its direct connection to San Francisco.

  We turned our attention, finally, to How—specifically how a stalker involved in each of those scenarios gained anything from trailing Rose Delgado around the Bay Area. Two themes floated to the surface: intimidation and surveillance.

  “How do the Heard thieves gain?” I asked. “I mean look, if I were dealing in black market relics, and brought them to San Francisco only to discover a familiar NPS agent was now on the job there, I’d just fence them in a different city.”

  “Unless,” Rose mused, “you’d struck a deal with someone for major money before you did the job. And that someone just happened to be in San Francisco. In which case, you’d want to keep an eye on me until the deal was complete.”

  “Okay.” I moved the Heard theft up. I frowned, looking at both the Heard theft and the Anasazi looting case. “These are both pretty high profile, aren’t they?”

  She nodded. “Yes, and in both cases there’s the potential for a stiff sentence. Of course, we only have suspects for Anasazi. I suppose the idea might be to intimidate me into retracting my testimony, which would leave the prosecution with nothing but circumstantial evidence.” She shook her head. “On the surface that makes sense, but whoever this guy is, he hasn’t made any threatening moves. I’ve gotten no notes, no phone calls, no text messages, no emails. Nothing to indicate anyone is lobbying for me not to testify. And I can’t imagine anybody else from Arizona sending someone all the way to San Francisco to follow me around.”

  “What about this guy you’re going to sting—Bridges? He’s still in Arizona, but couldn’t he have hired someone to follow you?”

  “Maybe.” She looked doubtful. “But like I said, he’s still dealing. You’d think if the guy suspected he was under investigation, he’d lie low. Maybe even disappear completely.”

  I studied my stickies. “Sommers,” I said. “That name keeps coming up.”

  Rose snorted into her coffee cup, shooting steam past her ears. “That name always comes up. And it always will as long as there are black marketeers who want to sell to less than scrupulous private—and public—collectors with a lot of working capital. We know Bridges has approached Sommers, but they’re showing every indication of cooperating on that case, especially since losing a clerk in the Hochob case.”

  “So it’s Ted Bridges or the Blankenship family looters.”

  “Looks that way.”

  I picked up my lucky wire and started pulling apart the knots. “Well, there’s one way to find out.”

  The Plan was for Rose to go jogging the next morning with nothing but Hoho for protection (which, as much as I hate to say it, means no protection at all), while I followed at a distance by bicycle, providing another set of eyes and backup, if it proved necessary. She took our usual route up Liberty Ship across Bridgeway to Filbert, from there up Napa to cross Bridgeway again into Dunphy Park.

  I pedaled along on my ten-speed, a bottle of Evian riding in my water bottle holder, wearing spandex everything and one of those space-age bike helmets and a pair of mirrored goggles. My lucky Caddie wire now bobbed on a silver chain around my neck—stylishly kitschy, I thought. I fancied I looked just like any young executive on her way to work. Apart from the baby blue titanium .357 Magnum tucked into my fanny pack. I hear most young female execs favor the plain, but always tasteful, stainless steel.

  My eyes caught on anything that was even remotely dark red. I was pretty amped up, but no one would ever guess that to look at me. I have a way of going into a sort of Zen bubble when things get fraught or tense. One of my COs on the SFPD was from Georgia. He described it as “hesitatin’.”

  “Miyoko,” he’d say, “I notice that whenever things get hot and heavy, you start hesitatin’. Why is that?”

  It was pure instinct, I told him—or maybe something I learned by osmosis from Dad. If you look like you’re twitchy, it could give everybody around you the yips. In police work, you don’t want anybody to get the yips—good guys or bad guys.

  Keeping an eye on Rose, I knew she was trying hard to act casual too, but I couldn’t fail to see the stiffness in her neck and shoulders, or that her hands were balled into fists. We were both on edge.

  It wasn’t until Rose swung left onto Napa Street that I caught a glimpse of a burgundy car. It was coming down Napa toward us. It was a Honda. I held my breath as the car passed Rose . . . then slowed to a crawl. Could’ve been looking for a parking space, but I didn’t think so. There was a man behind the wheel. More than that I couldn’t make out—his sun visor was pulled down, covering the upper half of his face. I couldn’t tell if he was watching Rose in his rearview.

  When he passed me a moment later, I pretended to be checking my watch, then pedaled a little faster as if I were late for something. In my rearview mirror, I saw the Honda’s license plate: KLQ 215. It took a left on Filbert.

  I missed the Bonita Street intersection on my right, what with my focus on the car. More than familiar with this neighborhood, I flew down Napa as if some of Mom’s favorite demons were nipping at my wheels. I took the next right on Caledonia Street with a squeal, hoping my gut was correct and I would be able to get eyes on him as he took Litho Street down to Bridgeway and into Dunphy Park. It’s the quickest way back to Rose’s regular route, and if this was our guy, that’s what he’d be expecting her to take.

  Looking both ways at the intersection with no burgundy in sight, I made my way to Bridgeway then to the entrance of Dunphy Park, from which I could see our favored footpaths clearly. I didn’t have to fake thirst as I chugged Evian, eyes darting around. I appeared to have made it to the park ahead of Rose and her tail, so I pulled in under the trees. This early on a Tuesday morning there were a few other joggers and cyclists about, but the park was mostly empty. The air was tangy with the scents of sea, eucalyptus, and cedar—a soothing combination under any other circumstances. Right now, my heart was galloping like a runaway horse and I was sweating in spite of the slight chill in the air.

  Rose and Hoho sailed past me a moment later on the park drive, Rose giving a prearranged hand signal to indicate she saw me. Looking behind her and up Bridgeway, my gaze followed the traffic flow, and there it was. The same Honda Accord, roughly three car lengths away. I tried to get another look as he turned into the drive but only saw a vaguely masculine shape with sunglasses and a hat. I let him cruise by, then pedaled down behind him. He bypassed all of the empty parking spots, angling for the only shady spot by the water. Lucky for us, he had cornered himself. This was a dead end.

  Rose, meanwhile, having made it off
the gravel and onto the grassy parkland, saw the direction I was headed and tacked back so we could come at the car from two different angles.

  Hoho regarded this change with amicable interest.

  As the Honda slid into the parking space (this guy was a paragon of parallel parking), I dropped my kickstand and left the bike in the middle of the lane a few steps behind me. If our mystery man tried to back out in a hurry, he’d have to either run over the bike or take evasive action, either of which would screw up his cloak-and-dagger routine. I liberated the Taurus from my fanny pack and held it at my side, the safety still engaged, my trigger finger pointed down the barrel.

  The driver’s door opened and a clean black-and-white Adidas sneaker appeared. A hand a shade or two darker than my own followed, reaching for the door handle. He paused. I held my breath, suddenly and intensely aware of the weight of the Taurus in my hand. Would he get out of the car, or slam the door back in place and try to make an exit? A difficult task to accomplish without casualties, considering that Rose and Hoho were now flanking the front of the car. The dude was surrounded (by two women and a dog—right).

  Surprisingly (which is to say wisely) the man got out, glancing quickly from Rose to me and back again. He was wearing straight-leg jeans and a pale yellow shirt that accented his bronze skin. A black San Francisco Giants baseball cap and narrow mirrored shades completed the stalker ensemble.

  He swept off his cap and shades and leaned back against the car, folding his arms across his chest. To the untrained observer, he may have looked at ease but I could tell he was hesitatin’. His lips were pulled into a smile (an attractive smile, as it happens) that did not quite reach his brown eyes, and there was a crease of annoyance troubling his brow. Dark hair curled around his ears and overran his collar. His sleeves were rolled up almost to his elbows, showing off muscular forearms. Not bodybuilder muscular, but clearly this was someone in good physical shape.

  Rose and I closed in on him, stopping when we were about a yard away—beyond the reach of arms or legs. He looked up at us through dark lashes. He was shaking his head, which made him a perfect match for Hoho, who was smiling and wagging his tail.