by Thomas Perry
“Let’s hope it works that way,” said Sid. “It shouldn’t take a pro more than a few days to find out we’ve rented a house, and then we’ll see.”
“We should put more stuff in here so it looks as though we’ve moved in,” Ronnie said. “Of course we don’t have anything, because it all got burned up, and they know it.”
“Just the same, we’d better do some shopping and leave some new clothes and things here tonight.” Sid said. “Just don’t buy anything that you want to keep.”
They drove to a few stores where they could pick up clothing and furnishings. Everything had to be new, but it didn’t have to be expensive. They bought supplies at a grocery store, and returned to the rented house in Burbank. They hung some clothes in the closets, put the clothes they’d been wearing in a laundry basket, spread some magazines around in the living room, and put food in the refrigerator. Then they made a stop at the phone company store so Sid could replace the cell phone he’d lost in the fire, and went back to their hotel.
Late in the evening Sid looked over at Ronnie, who was lying on the bed and staring at the ceiling. He said, “I know you still feel rotten about the house, but you’ve been doing a good job, as always. You’re a pro.”
She said, “What else can I do? But I’ll feel rotten about this forever. I had things at home that I can barely even think about. Our wedding pictures. The pictures from the hospital when Mitch and Janice were born. Things like that.”
He went over to the bed where she was lying and lay down next to her. “Remember when the kids had that party for our thirtieth anniversary? Janice made all those place cards and table decorations and things from the old pictures? There must have been a couple hundred different ones, including our wedding. And there were baby pictures. She did it with a computer. I’m sure she’s still got the file with the original photographs she scanned.”
Ronnie sat up, her eyes wide. She leaned over and kissed Sid. “You sentimental old bastard. All this time you’ve been thinking about it too.”
“I remembered those pictures because the other night I just happened to be thinking about when we first got together. Somehow they were connected.”
“I’m going to call Janice right now.” She got up and went to the table to pick up her phone.
A few minutes later she ended her call. “She’s got them.”
“I thought she would.”
Ronnie looked at him from the corner of her eye. “Just which parts of when we first got together?”
The next morning they changed rental cars again at the Burbank airport and drove to the Intercelleron Corporation complex in the West Valley. As they approached the address, Ronnie dialed her phone.
“Hi, Mr. Hemphill. This is Veronica Abel. We’re almost to your company. Can you meet us outside the front gate?” There was a pause. “Good. See you in a minute.” She hung up.
Moments later, they approached the main building of Intercelleron Corporation. The building was a long and low self-consciously modern structure. It was set into a grassy hillside so it looked as though it were a taller building that had nearly completed the process of sinking into the earth. There was only one sign, an unobtrusive tan brick rectangle with script that said the single word, and it was also set into the hillside as though about to be submerged. Hemphill appeared at the glass doors in the front of the building and walked out to meet them as Sid drove to the curb in front. When he reached the sidewalk, Ronnie said, “Get in.”
Hemphill looked confused, but opened the door and got into the backseat. “Where are we going?”
“Just for a little ride while we talk,” said Ronnie.
As soon as Sid pulled away from the curb Hemphill said, “I’m glad to see you. I’ve been worried about you. The police have been here at least three times. A Detective Hebert came, and then another detective from the North Hollywood station named Fuentes, and then another from Van Nuys. One said you had been attacked, and the next said your house had been burned down.”
“We’re fine,” said Sid. “But there seems to be somebody who is very interested in this case. How are things here? Have you or any of your colleagues noticed anything unusual since you retained us?”
“I don’t think so. What sort of thing do you mean?”
Ronnie said, “Anyone watching the facility or following you. Anybody showing up from the power company or the phone company to check the wiring in your office. Somebody from your insurance company, or fire marshals who need to do an inspection.”
“Oh, I see,” said Hemphill. “You think someone might have bugged my office or phone or something. That’s why we’re out here driving around instead of sitting in my office.”
“It’s a precaution,” said Sid. “Some precautions take a lot of work and expense, and some are simple. We’re wondering if there might be a leak, because the attempts to kill us started the day after we met with you.”
“I see,” said Hemphill. “I’ll check with the people at reception, and also the security people, and see if anyone has been doing repairs or anything. But I think if they had done something in my office, I or my assistant would have known.”
“That brings up another issue,” said Ronnie. “Are the company’s security people in-house employees, or do you have a contract with a security company that provides guards and surveillance?”
“They come from an outside service, but it’s Quimby’s. It’s hardly an unknown company. They used to guard stagecoaches.”
Sid said, “Quimby’s is a famous name, about as old as Brinks or Pinkerton’s. But any company can hire the wrong job candidate.”
Ronnie said, “Do you know the guards?”
Hemphill said, “Know them? You mean personally? No. But they’re all in uniform, with ID badges. And they’re bonded. They carry guns, so I assume they’ve been trained and had background checks. Are you thinking a bogus security employee killed James Ballantine?”
“We don’t have any idea who killed Mr. Ballantine,” Ronnie said. “Right now we’re just trying to figure out how a pair of shooters turned up behind us the first day after you hired us. Knowing that might tell us more. We’d like you to be observant, and see if there’s anything that’s not normal.”
“This is getting terrifying,” said Hemphill. “I don’t know where to look.”
“Wherever you can,” said Ronnie. “Think about your office and your house, and search them thoroughly. Look for anything that’s plugged into an electrical outlet that you didn’t put there, anything new that you see in the phone junction box on the outside wall of your house. Look around the neighborhood for people who just moved in and have a view of your house, or any parked vehicle that could be used to watch you.”
“We don’t want to scare you,” said Sid. “But maybe somebody isn’t happy about the company’s decision to pursue this. If you find a suspicious device or notice somebody following you or paying too much attention, call us, and we’ll come right away.”
“All right. What else can I do?” said Hemphill.
“One thing we missed in the packet you gave us is a list of employees,” Ronnie said. “We need their names, phone numbers, and addresses. Maybe you could get us a copy of the company directory.”
Hemphill frowned. “I don’t know. It’s against company policy, and they’re very touchy about the directories. If I were caught carrying one off the premises—”
“All right. Don’t try. Lay it out on your desk, open it, and take pictures of it with your phone, two pages at a time. Send them to my phone.” She handed him a business card.
“Anything else?”
“Don’t tell anybody what you’re doing. Observe the people around you, and let us know anything that catches your attention.”
“What should I be looking at?”
“Everything that isn’t the same as it was a month ago.”
11
Ronnie came out of the shower in their hotel room, and put on a pair of sweat pants and a T-shirt. She saw Sid
sitting at the table near the windows looking at the screen of the computer. “What are you looking at?”
Sid said, “I’m just going over the images from the surveillance cameras we installed in the decoy house.” He turned it so she could see the screen was divided into six images. He clicked on the fast-forward arrow and the images stayed almost exactly the same, but the lighting on the six scenes changed simultaneously and rapidly, the shadows moving across each scene, melting into darkness, and then brightening again when the sun came up and the light shone through the windows. The play of lights and shadows went through another cycle to night.
The camera mounted on the tree caught a set of headlights that stopped in front of the house, and a second later, backed out of the frame.
“Hold it!” said Ronnie.
Sid stopped the video, backed it up slowly, and froze it. “They stopped and then backed up to get out of sight. Do you think they saw the camera?”
“In the dark? They’d have to be pretty good.”
“They are pretty good.”
He tapped the brightness adjustment on the computer a few times and then reversed the video and brought the car to its farthest point forward, where it stopped. There were the two headlights and the front bumper and the hood, but the windshield carried only the reflection of the streetlamp across the street. Sid brought the car forward and back a couple of times.
Ronnie said, “Maybe somebody can clean it up and get an image of the driver through the glass.”
“I see a Toyota symbol on the hood, the thing that looks like a T with turned-up arms in a circle. I can’t read the plate, though. Can you?”
“No. The glare from the headlights washes it out.”
“If it’s them, it’s probably a stolen plate anyway,” he said.
He let the recording go forward. For a few minutes, there was no change in any of the six images, so Sid sped up the video again. Then the image from the tree camera went black.
Ronnie said, “They found that one.”
“That was the delay. They must have walked around behind it to unplug the camera, so they wouldn’t be recorded while they did it.”
One by one, the other two exterior images went black. No image of a person had appeared on any screen. Then in a single stroke, the three interior cameras went black. “They must have turned off the power to the house.”
Sid sighed. “It’s okay, that’s what we expected, remember? We put that set of cameras in so they’d have something to find and think they’d gotten everything.”
“I didn’t actually think they’d do it without ever showing up on a screen.”
“Let’s see how we did with the pinhole cameras.” He closed the link to the first camera system, and then went into the computer’s memory and selected the pinhole camera he had designated pinhole 1. The image on the screen was a plain gray with a couple of horizontal white lines.
“Oh, crap,” said Ronnie.
“Wait. That’s the one I put inside the alarm system keypad housing.”
“Fast-forward and see if anybody opens it.”
Sid sped up the recording. After a while, the horizontal white lines became bright. “There,” he said. “Somebody is in the house at this point. They turned on a light.” The light remained on for a while, and then went out again. It stayed out until the recording slowed when it reached the present. “Okay. They didn’t open the keypad.”
Ronnie said, “They didn’t have to, since they already fooled the alarm system. But I’m thinking we may still get them. We just saw that the pinhole cameras were transmitting. Even if these people found them all, they’d have to go back in time to keep their images from being recorded while they were dismantling them. Now that we know they were in the house and turned on the lights, we know we’ve got something.”
Sid switched to pinhole 2, which was in the kitchen. It provided a clear, bright, well-defined shot of the back door, a few feet of counter, and a Viking stove. The image was dark, and then it lightened, with a square of sunshine appearing through the east window on the floor, showing the shadow of wooden divisions between panes. The shadow moved across the floor and disappeared again, and then reappeared, but no human figure ever came across the screen.
The third pinhole was the camera hidden behind the crown molding, and it showed a clear image of the living room. Sid rushed through the sequence from the first night and day until evening. The room got dimmer and dimmer, until most of the light came from a table lamp in the corner of the room. The table light went off, and then they saw the front door open. Sid returned the recording to normal speed.
A large, muscular man stepped into the room. He wore a black jacket, blue jeans, and tight leather gloves. Over his head was a knitted ski mask with holes for his eyes and mouth.
“A ski mask,” said Ronnie. “I guess we should have expected this. They had seen the cameras outside, so they expected there would be cameras inside too.”
“Wait,” said Sid. “He’s studying the cameras we expected him to see. As soon as he’s sure he’s disabled them, maybe he’ll take the mask off.”
They watched the man move a chair, stand on it, and unplug the camera in the corner of the room.
While he was doing it, a second person came in the front door wearing a ski mask. This one was shorter than the first. He set down what looked like a black canvas tool bag, and then stepped into the dining room and stood on a chair to unplug the second camera.
Ronnie and Sid both leaned forward and stared hard at the image on the computer screen. When the two intruders got down off their chairs and walked toward the stairs, they both realized the same thing.
Ronnie got it out first. “That’s a woman!”
Sid said, “It is.”
They kept their eyes on the screen. The man moved quickly through the house looking for more cameras, found the one that had been trained on the back door of the house, and unplugged it. He kept moving, but didn’t seem to find any of the pinhole cameras. He went out the back door, and a minute later the power in the house came on. The digital clock above the stove blinked, and when the man came back in he saw it, looked at his watch, and reset the clock.
The Abels switched back to the living room camera to stay on him. The table lamp that had been off was on again.
The woman picked up the small canvas bag she had left in the living room and followed the man up the stairs toward the second floor.
“Can we pick them up on the cameras upstairs?”
Sid clicked from camera to camera until he found the one that showed the upstairs hallway. A moment later the intruders appeared. They walked down the hallway quietly, the woman carrying the canvas bag while the man went ahead. He looked into each room he passed.
“They’re looking for the master bedroom,” said Ronnie.
Sid spoke to the screen. “How can you stand those masks? They’re hot and itchy. Come on! Take them off!”
But the two kept the masks on. They went all the way to the room on the end, which was the master, and stepped inside.
Sid was still staring at the screen, not moving.
“Well?” said Ronnie. “Switch to the next one.”
“There’s no camera in there.” He stopped the playback.
“What?” She looked at him, astonished. “You didn’t put a camera in the bedroom?”
“I only had a few pinhole cameras. They’re in the entry, living room, kitchen, upstairs hallway, dining room, and alarm pad. We’ll have to wait for them to come out.”
She punched his arm just below the shoulder.
“Ow! Why would you hit me?”
“Because I’m speechless.”
Sid started the recording again and sat rubbing his arm while they watched. After only about two minutes, the intruders emerged into the hallway. Sid adjusted the sound until the faint squeaks of the intruders’ rubber-soled shoes could be heard, but there was no sound of speech. The two passed close to the camera. “No question that’s a woman,” S
id said.
“No question,” Ronnie said. “Let’s pick them up on the living room camera.”
“Okay,” Sid said. “The time on it says nineteen thirty-two oh one.” He switched to the living room camera and clicked on the fast-forward button and watched, then paused at the matching time. “Nineteen thirty-two and one second.” He started the tape again.
The man descended the stairs first. His gun was now in his hand. While the woman came down the stairs he stepped to the front window to look out.
“Stop it again,” said Ronnie.
Sid stopped it.
“Where’s her tool bag?”
“She hasn’t got it,” said Sid. “Let’s see if she had it when she left the bedroom.” He switched back to the hallway camera.
When the two came out of the bedroom there was little light. The woman’s head was bent down slightly, and her hands seemed to be doing something. “She seems to be folding it up.” The woman stuck the folded canvas bag into the pocket of her jacket.
Sid said, “Whatever she brought with her is in that room.”
Ed and Nicole Hoyt sat in Ed’s big black pickup truck on the hillside above Forest Lawn cemetery. They found a spot that was perfectly aligned with the street in Burbank where the Abels had rented a house. Ed had a sixty-power spotting scope propped on the dashboard of his truck with a short-legged tripod to keep it stable.
He kept watch, leaning forward and resting his chin on the steering wheel to keep his eye to the scope. He could see the front of the house clearly, and the street leading up to it and away from it. The place was nice—a few big trees, a deep green front lawn that wasn’t so big it would be a chore to keep cut, and a neighborhood that had looked deserted for much of the day. The image through a high-powered scope was silent, but he could imagine the sounds of birds. He leaned back a little and looked at the clock on the dashboard. He sighed and returned his eye to the scope.
Nicole looked up from the game she was playing on her phone. “We should have got out of bed earlier. They could have gone out and come back five times by now.”
