The woman nodded. Christina and Ben rose.
“Leaving so soon?” Emily asked. “We could play pat-a-cake.”
“Not today,” Ben said, smiling at her. “But later. I promise.”
He rubbed the top of her head affectionately. He felt compelled to be nice to her. Foolish, he thought. I’m trying to make a favorable impression, but the minute the door closes behind me, she won’t even remember that she’s met me before.
Ben stopped at the door. “I’m going to do everything I can for you, Mrs. Adams. You and Emily. Really.”
Bertha nodded slightly, then turned away.
Ben and Christina let themselves out.
14
“HOW MUCH LONGER?” CHRISTINA whispered. “It’s as dark as it’s ever going to get.”
Ben glanced at his watch. It was still a few minutes before midnight. He stared out the window of his car at the tall glassy office building across the street. As long as they stayed in the car, they couldn’t be arrested for anything. But as soon as they stepped out …
“Talk me out of this, Christina.”
“No way, boss. It’s for a good cause. Remember the Alamo.”
Ben nodded nervously. They had been sitting in Ben’s Honda Accord for over an hour. As far as they could tell, there was but a single security officer watching the place, and he alternated between prowling through the building and prowling around the grounds. The man moved in cycles of about twenty-five minutes inside, twenty-five minutes outside, and so forth. About half the outside cycle was spent in the wooded area behind the building.
As near as Ben could tell through his binoculars, the security guard plodded through his routine like a sleepwalking zombie. That was fortunate. He also appeared to be an older man. That, too, was fortunate. Alas, he was making his rounds with a Doberman. That was unfortunate.
They had their routine planned in detail. Obviously, they needed to pass quietly through the front door while the security officer and his dog were in the back. Then they could search Adams’s office freely for about twelve minutes or so until the man came back inside. They’d hide while he made his cursory indoor sweep and leave when he returned to the wooded area in the back. They could be in and out in under an hour. It should work. Really, it should, Ben kept telling himself.
“We’ll enter as soon as the guard comes outside and goes to the back. Be ready. We won’t have a lot of time to mess around.”
“Aye, aye, Cap’n,” Christina answered.
Ben examined and reexamined the twenty-odd keys on Adams’s keychain. Based on their varying sizes, shapes, and logos, he had selected five that appeared to be keys that might open the front office doors. Assuming Adams had a key to the front door.
That left the question of an alarm. There were three small keys on the ring of the sort that Greg said usually controlled alarm systems. Or opened suitcases. Or briefcases. Or diaries. Ben wiped his brow. He felt extremely warm.
“Have you ever done anything like this?” Ben asked, eyes glued to the building.
“Nope. You?”
“Not really. I mean, when I was with the D.A., I went on a few police stakeouts, but that was different. Then I knew where the police were. They were right in front of me. On my side.”
“Yeah,” Christina said. “Well, try to relax. You look tense.”
“Imagine that.”
“Concentrate on something else.”
Ben continued to stare at the office building.
“How did a nice guy like you ever get into law?” Christina asked.
“Well, what I really wanted to do was pitch for the Cardinals, but I kept breaking training.”
“Ahh,” Christina replied, “an athlete.”
Ben laughed. “Hardly. I was the most miserable athlete that ever was. Voted Least Valuable Player year after year.” He glanced away from the building. “Some of my most miserable childhood memories revolve around my pathetic efforts to curry favor by going out for sports. Only thing I could play at all was baseball, and that only barely.”
“Mom wanted her son to be a jock, huh?”
“Mom didn’t care. It was—” He stopped short. “But that’s another story.”
He shifted in his seat. “I remember playing Little League when I was in grade school. They played me at second base—you don’t need a great arm, and the ball doesn’t come your way that often. We had this one coach, a short, skinny psychopath named Shedd. God forbid, he must’ve been some poor kid’s father. He used to throw baseballs at us if he didn’t think we were hustling enough.”
Christina giggled softly.
“Shedd was bad news in the locker room, too. ‘Hey, look everybody, Kincaid’s gonna do a strip show for us.’ Cripes, what a jerk. Used to give holy hell to this inept little Jewish kid—only guy on the team worse than me. He couldn’t control his bladder—always used to wet his pants during practice. ‘Get a load of Litvack,’ Shedd would say. ‘The widdle baby wet his pants again. Awww!’ ” Ben shook his head. “Man, I hated that bastard.”
“Sounds like the kind of trauma that eventually causes people to shoot total strangers at the A & P.”
“No, that would be the tap-dancing lessons,” Ben said. He was becoming more animated. “One afternoon I’m at home peaceably munching potato chips and trying to watch Daniel Boone, when my parents come in and announce that I’m going to take tap-dancing lessons. ‘But why?’ I kept asking. I was sure it was a sinister plot to complete the total humiliation of Benjy Kincaid before his peer group. If my parents had given me a choice, I’d have opted for castration.”
He turned toward Christina. “Enough about me,” he said. “Now you tell me a story of childhood mortification.”
She placed a finger against her lips. “That’s hard. I was always sort of an outsider in my neighborhood.”
Ben wondered if she had dressed then like she did now.
“I always had the feeling everybody else knew something vitally important I didn’t know about. Heard some kids mention fucking one day in the third grade. Hadn’t the foggiest notion what they were talking about. Some kind of sport maybe, I thought. So I asked my mother.” She pressed her hand against her chest. “I thought she was going to have a stroke right then and there. I suppose I should’ve waited till after the Bridge Club meeting.”
They both laughed. Christina wiped a tear from the corner of her eye.
“My mother would have died,” Ben said. “On the spot. Mother was very big on appearances. Was, hell, is. She especially worried about me because I’m partially colorblind. Can’t distinguish subtle gradations of some colors. No big deal. When I went away to college, though, she pinned little notes on all my clothes to tell me how to match them up: I would look delightful with your blue sports coat or, for more casual occasions, your green corduroy slacks.”
“You’re kidding!”
“Nope.” Ben crossed his heart. “Strange but true tales of suburbia.”
“As long as we’re playing This Is Your Life, Benjamin Kincaid, let me take a wild guess, based on the few days I’ve known you and on my profound understanding of human nature. You got into law because”—she took a deep breath and affected a stiff British accent—“you wanted to help people.”
“That’s what Derek said! Is this engraved on my forehead or something?”
“Let’s say I can see it in your eyes.”
“I can’t deny it. I was out to save the world. Raised on Owen Marshall, Counselor at Law. First, I gravitated toward environmental law. Save the trees, the rain forests. Then I thought, maybe the public defender’s office. After I got out of school, I worked for over a year at the D.A.’s office.”
“So what happened?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean what are you doing at Raven? Public defender is a far cry from corporate defender.”
Ben returned his gaze to the office building. “I don’t know. Things … happen. I seem to have a hard time standing still.
“I thought I’d be happy at the D.A.’s office. But I wasn’t; I felt like I was taking the easy way, not challenging myself. I got very little satisfaction out of the work. Putting pathetic wretches behind bars. Plea bargaining. No prestige. No money.”
“So you came to Raven,” Christina said, filling in the blanks.
“And I’ve been here a little over a week, and already I wonder if I’ve made a mistake. I miss the idealism of the D.A.’s office. Pompous or not, at the D.A.’s, everyone saw the law as the strong lance of the crusaders. At Raven, everyone pokes fun at that. At Raven, the law is bubble gum and mirrors.”
Ben looked back at the office building. He could tell from the movement of the flashlight beam in the windows that the guard was heading downstairs. Soon it would be time to go in.
“So enough of this poor-me routine. Tell me about yourself, Christina McCall.”
“Oh, not much to tell.” She waved her hand with a flippant air. “I’m thirty-one—an older woman—devastatingly attractive, dressed in solid black clothes, and getting ready to break into a corporate office building.”
“I wanted facts, not self-parody. Married?”
“Not anymore.”
“No kids?”
She hesitated a moment. “No.” Her face bore an odd expression, but it passed quickly. “No, I’m over thirty, single, and working as a legal assistant with a slew of filthy rich lawyers. Obviously, I am stalking a husband.” She laughed, a bit too heartily, Ben thought.
“But why be a paralegal? Not that there’s anything wrong with it, but there must be more rewarding careers.”
Christina pushed herself back in the seat. “Well, I’m not what you’d call well educated. I was a whiz in high school—really, all A’s and B’s—but then I married Ray and ended up not going to college. I bet that surprises you, doesn’t it?”
Ben shrugged noncommittally.
“Most people think I’ve been to college. I’ve taken night-school short courses at TJC. Trying to improve myself.”
“You should have skipped the class on French phrases.”
Christina looked astonished. “What do you have against French? I consider it sort of my trademark. My way of making people sit up and notice.”
“It does do that.”
“I had to find an occupation where I could make some decent money without a college education. For a while, I tried modeling. That was a disaster. Too much boob, not enough leg. I tried being a secretary, but I never managed to work a week for a boss I didn’t end up wanting to kill. I decided paralegaling would be better.”
“You never considered being a housewife?”
“With my ex-husband? Ray? Cheez—fat chance.”
“Where is he now?”
“Oh, somewhere in OKC. He’s remarried, some blonde bimbette, just out of high school—just like me twelve years ago. Last I heard, he was trying to get into night dental school.” She laughed again. “It figures. He’s married to me, he drives a delivery truck. He marries her, he’s a friggin’ dentist.” She took a deep breath, then mumbled something under her breath.
“What was that?” Ben asked.
Christina looked up suddenly, as if she wasn’t aware she was speaking aloud. “Oh! I was chanting.”
Ben stared blankly at her.
She added: “That’s how I relax myself. I induce a self-hypnotic state.”
Ben’s eyebrows raised. “Really? You can do it that quickly?”
“After a while. Not the first time.”
“Really. Self-hypnosis. Do you do astrology, too?”
Christina gave Ben a look that could chill a supernova. “No. I’ve lived several past lives, though, if that makes you happy.”
“Past lives? You’re not serious.”
“After you’ve heard yourself on tape talking for two hours about your former life in ancient Mesopotamia, it’s kind of hard not to take it seriously.”
“Who have you been?” Ben asked. “I see you as sort of the Madame Curie type.”
Christina looked past him through the car window. “He’s out,” she said simply.
Ben turned and saw the guard and his dog emerge from the building. After a few minutes of wandering around out front, they walked to the left side of the building and out of sight.
“This is it,” Ben said. His voice trembled embarrassingly. “Time to go.”
Christina got out of the car first and started across the street. Ben followed, bringing the keys and a flashlight. They both moved quickly, running bent at the waist, as if they were afraid of enemy strafing. To avoid attracting attention, they had both dressed head to toe in black, like cliché cat burglars in a situation comedy. They had, however, resisted the temptation to wear black stocking caps.
A large fluorescent light illuminated the front of the building but did not penetrate the shadow cast by the orange and white awning over the front doors. Ben and Christina skittered through the lighted area and took shelter in the shadows surrounding the two smoked-glass paneled front doors.
Without pausing, Ben shoved the first key in the door. The key went in, but he couldn’t turn the lock. Was it the wrong key, or was it one of those stubborn keys that never work easily? Ben tried to force the turn.
“Give it up,” Christina whispered. “If the key breaks off in the lock, we’ll never get inside. Try the next one.”
Ben tried the next one. Same song, second verse.
“Damn,” he said, clenching the key in his fist.
“Don’t get frustrated,” Christina whispered. “Try the next one.”
The sound of crunching gravel told them that a car was driving along the road in front of the building. They froze. What if someone noticed their car parked on the shoulder? What if someone was coming? Oh, hi, we just dropped by for a casual visit in our burglar clothes.
The crunching sound faded. Apparently, the car had driven on. Ben exhaled audibly.
He tried the next key. The lock clicked open. “Success,” Ben whispered. He pushed the door forward several inches—and stopped. They had not noticed before because of the smoked glass, but the door was chained and padlocked from the inside. There was enough room between the doors to reach through and open the padlock. If you had a key.
Ben groaned. “That’s it. I don’t have any keys that would open a lock like that. Let’s split.”
“Don’t give up so easily,” Christina said. She pushed the doors forward. They gave enough to create a gap of about six or seven inches. “Not chained very efficiently. I suppose the guard gets tired of going through the routine, especially since he knows he’ll be back in twenty minutes. We can get through this.” She turned sideways and poked her head through the gap in the doors.
“Are you kidding?” Ben exclaimed. “I’m a lot thicker than that.”
“Only in the fatty places,” she said, edging her body into place. “Fat can be squeezed through.”
Christina took a deep breath, crouched under the chain and eased herself between the doors. Most of her generally slim body passed easily, though she had to wriggle and twist to get her hips through. But she made it. In fact, Ben thought, she made it look easy.
“Here, give me your hand.”
Ben did as he was instructed. Her hand was warm. He could feel her pulse thumping.
Following her lead—head first, wriggling midsection, legs last—he slid in beneath the chain and pulled himself through the narrow space.
They walked into the main lobby. Ben’s sneakers squeaked on the tile floor. Almost immediately, he heard a soft but insistent electronic beep, sounding about every three seconds.
“Is it an alarm?” Christina asked. She was still holding Ben’s hand.
“I don’t think so,” he replied. “If Greg is to be believed, the beeping means the timer on the noise alarm has been activated. We probably have one minute to find the control box and shut it off before it turns into a piercing alarm and automatically dials the police. It’s designed to allow people wh
o are supposed to be here a chance to deactivate the alarm.”
“Then don’t waste time talking. Find that box!”
They scanned the spacious lobby. There were a million possible places. Elevators, hallways, receptionist stations.
“Over here,” Ben said hurriedly. He ran toward a booth in the front left corner of the lobby. “This is where the security guard was sitting when I came to see Sanguine earlier today. It’s the logical place for the alarm control box.”
They examined the security booth. The beeping noise seemed louder here, but Ben could see no control box. He dropped to his knees. On the underside of the desk, he saw a small box with a red light flashing in time to the beeps. A digital display showed eleven seconds, then ten, then nine. Next to the display, there was a keyhole.
Ben tried the first small-size key on Adams’s keychain. It would not go in.
Suddenly, the beeping noise stopped. “It’s about to blow,” Ben muttered.
He inserted the second small key and turned. The red light shut off.
Christina put her arm on Ben’s shoulder. “Hey,” she whispered, “once you get into the spirit, you’re a natural at this breaking and entering.”
Ben declined to respond.
Quickly, they sprinted up the emergency stair to the second floor. From the outer hallway, they entered the office bearing Adams’s nameplate. The door was not taped or locked. Rather than turning on the lights, something the guard was bound to see, they used the flashlight Ben brought.
“All right,” Ben whispered, “we’ve got maybe ten minutes.”
They began searching, Ben at the desk, Christina at the bookshelves and credenza. Ben noticed that the office, although considerably larger than Ben’s at Raven, was not one of the larger offices he had seen in this building. In fact, it seemed amazingly small for the vice president of new developments.
The desk was light brown oak—at least in color. Probably a nouveau antique, Ben mused. A framed photograph of Bertha that must have been taken forty years ago rested on top. Ben examined the desk drawers. The desk was not locked, mercifully sparing Ben another agonizing key search. He systematically, if hurriedly, combed through everything, but found nothing helpful.
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