“What’s with the second ambulance?” the guard asked the taller of the crime scene cops.
“That’s how it is sometimes, more than one ambulance shows up. Are they having a party in there?”
“It’s a memorial.”
“What’s your piece?” The first cop was nodding at the pistol on the security guard’s hip.
“Oh, just a Colt. Thirty-eight. They don’t let us carry automatics here. I don’t know why.”
“How ’bout that. I’ve got a thirty-eight as my backup.” He glanced down at his ankle. “Nice weapon.”
“Totally dependable,” the guard said proudly, pleased a cop had liked his choice of gun.
“You have a backup?”
“Me?” the guard replied with a laugh. “Not hardly.”
“Ah. Good.”
“Good?” the guard asked uncertainly, wondering why it was good. Then his mind did a leap and it occurred to him that it made no sense for crime scene officers to be here. That only made sense if—
“Tell you what,” the taller cop said. “Lift your hands out to your sides.”
“Oh, no,” the guard said miserably as he felt the other officer behind him touch a gun to his skull. “This is… shit, this is all a setup, isn’t it? You’re not cops. You’re hitting the place, aren’t you?”
“Hands,” the first one repeated.
The guard lifted his hands. He felt like crying. “You’re not going to hurt me, are you?”
The second cop—well, fake cop—pulled the .38 from the guard’s holster. His wallet too.
The first one asked, “What’s your half of the code to the special exhibit room, the one in the tower?”
The room that contained a traveling exhibition of some small but important Renaissance drawings and prints. It had taken a year to get the Vatican to agree to lend the masterpieces, and they only did it because the museum installed a special security system that required two people to open it.
“Oh, they don’t tell us that.”
A voice behind him: “Who’s the little girl in the picture?”
The guard whirled around and saw the second fake cop looking through his wallet.
“Your daughter, right? Is she at home now?”
The guard started to cry. “I only know half the code.”
“That’s all I asked for,” was the calm reply.
“One seven seven A M K question mark eight three one; the letters are caps. It’s case sensitive,” the guard blurted out breathlessly. “Please, I’ll do anything….”
The first cop jotted the code. “If this’s right, you don’t need to do anything else.” A nod, and in a moment the guard was duct taped and being dragged into the cloakroom nearby.
As they left, they shut the lights off, leaving him in darkness to consider how careless he’d been in not following the strictest security protocols. And to consider what kind of nightmare was about to unfold in the tower room.
They went by the names Bob and Frank, names that were short but, more important, distinct, so if they were working with a third person, there’d be no confusion as to who was being summoned.
The men were professional thieves. Killers too, though there’d been a major decrease in the market for hit men lately—because that job was relatively easy. Quality guns and explosives were cheap and easily available. But good thieves were hard to come by—a trace-free B and E required a lot of technical skill—so they’d reaped a windfall in fees over the past few years.
After dumping the guard in the cloakroom, they’d returned to the lobby. They were still in the crime scene outfits that had allowed them access into the museum. They wore these as often as they could on a job because the outfits protected them from sloughing off trace evidence as efficiently as they prevented cops from contaminating crime scenes.
Bob now walked to the front door of the museum, looked out, and unlocked it. He waved to their accomplices—the men posing as paramedics in the fake ambulance. One of the fake medics looked up. Bob called, “Ten minutes. We’ll secure the room and let you know when it’s clear.”
“We’re all set.”
Frank and Bob climbed the stairs toward the large room at the top of the tower. At the top, they paused only long enough to double-check their Beretta pistols and make sure the silencers were properly mounted.
Then they glanced at each other, nodded, and turned the corner, walking into the room where the guests were still assembled, talking among themselves about what had already happened that night, downing drinks to calm their nerves.
The attendees didn’t at first notice the intrusion. But then somebody gasped, somebody else cried out, and the rest of the crowd turned.
“Wait!”
“Who’re you?”
“What’re you doing here?”
Other pointless questions and screams. Emotion… such a waste of time and energy, Bob thought.
“No one touch a cell phone,” he called in a calm voice. “I want everybody on your knees, and lace your hands behind your head. If you don’t, you’ll get shot.”
No one did anything for a moment—which was typical—and then a bulky man, an older guy in a suit, strode his way. “I don’t know what this—”
Bob shot him in the head twice, blood flecking the wall and the clothes of those standing near. More screams and gasps.
A pretty, dark-haired teenage girl in a dark blue dress, horror on her face, ran toward the body.
Bob raised his pistol to shoot her too, but she controlled herself, dropped to her knees, then put her hands behind her neck.
Crying, gasping, begging, everyone else followed her lead.
Bob then did a fast head count. Hell … two of the guests were missing. Frank noticed the same. Bob pointed his gun at the girl again. “Where are the others?” he called to the crowd. “Tell me or I shoot her in five seconds.”
But no more bloodletting was necessary.
Just then two men turned the corner from a dark corridor leading off the tower and froze at the sight of the two intruders. Frank, the closer of the robbers, trained his weapon on them.
One of the men, whom the robber took to be in better shape than his friend, glanced at the body, then at Frank, then at Bob. They got the impression the man was quickly analyzing the scene. Bob would need to keep a special eye on him.
When the two new guests were on their knees and Bob was covering them all, Frank carefully frisked everyone. When he identified Justine Olegard, he said, “I need the second half of the code to the special exhibit room—I have the first half. The wall alarm codes too.”
“But—”
“We showed you we have no problem killing anybody. I want the code now, or I’ll kill… her.” He stepped forward and pointed the gun at an attractive thirtysomething, blond and pretty.
“No!” cried the burly man beside her.
“Don, don’t say anything to him,” she said. “Don’t make him mad.”
The guy with her, Don apparently, shouted to Justine, “Give him the code! Please!”
Justine nodded. Bob pulled her to her feet and walked her to the door of the special exhibit room. He stopped her at the keypad and typed in the first half of the code. Then she typed in the rest. A faint buzz and they pushed the double doors open, then stepped into the exhibit hall. She flicked the lights on. The place was filled with old sketches and prints that Bob knew must have been worth millions.
The crop was free for the harvest; it was time to earn his $500,000 fee.
Bob pulled a walkie-talkie off his belt and hit the transmit button. “We’re secure,” he radioed the fake paramedics.
A moment later a crackling answer: “Roger, we’re on our way.”
Bob led Justine back into the main room. He deposited her back on her knees. Then he caught a glimpse of that man he’d noted earlier, the big guy. Bob walked up to him. “What’s your name?”
“Jon Nunn.”
Bob stared down coldly at him but Nunn held his eyes witho
ut a problem. In fact he was looking back in a funny way, studying him, it seemed. With the shower hat, the bootees, the face mask, and the jumpsuit, there was no chance of getting a description. But Bob had an odd feeling that this Nunn was committing some kind of a description to memory, looking for attributes that could later be used in an investigation or at trial: how Bob walked, how he stood, left hand versus right hand, height, weight.
Time to kill this prick.
He lifted the gun. Started to pull the trigger.
Then the elevator door opened and the paramedics walked into the room.
Bob frowned. Shit, hadn’t they gotten the instructions right? They were supposed to bring the carts in to haul out the art. Time was at a premium; as it was, they’d still have to load the artwork into the ambulance and fake crime scene van.
He started, “We need the carts—” but his voice froze.
These weren’t the men he’d hired! And they were clearly wearing body armor under their uniforms.
Police! Shit!
With a slam in his gut he understood that he’d been outsmarted. Somebody had figured out that a robbery was going down and called the police. The cops had arrived silently, found the phony paramedics outside, overpowered them, then dressed two officers in medic overalls as point men for a takedown team.
Which would of course be sprinting up the stairs right now.
The two cops crouched, weapons drawn.
“Shoot, shoot, shoot!” Bob cried to his partner, who started firing toward the two officers, the ring of brass on the stone floor nearly as loud as the silenced report of his Beretta.
Bob’s strategy was to wound as many in the crowd as he could, forcing the tactical team to stop and give them aid. He could get out through the back, via an emergency route he’d planned earlier. Frank too, if he was able, but that was up to him.
The cop closest to him had his back turned, aiming at Frank. Bob lifted his gun to shoot the cop in the spine, but as he did, he heard a slap of feet behind him. And thought, Oh, hell…
An instant later he was tumbling to the floor after a shoulder caught him low and hard, right in the kidneys. A flash of yellow light burst in his eyes, an explosion of pain. Bob gasped, breath completely knocked out of him.
Nunn—of course it was Nunn—ripped the pistol from his hand. As Bob, writhing on the floor, reached desperately for the weapon, Nunn delivered an elbow to his nose. He collapsed, stunned and groaning in pain, blood spewing from his nose. Frank noticed him and spun around, shooting, but his aim was wild and he missed his target, instead shooting his partner, Bob, in the chest.
Nunn stood his ground, drew a target, and dropped Frank with three well-placed rounds. Then he immediately spun back to cover Bob, but Bob was already dead.
Being a cop is more about talking than shooting or chasing down criminals.
Well, not just talking: asking questions.
The next day, Jon Nunn was at the museum again. Captain Harvey Meyer, who was leading the investigation into the previous night’s attempted robbery, had called him earlier in the afternoon. The two men had known each other back when Nunn was still at the SFPD, and when Meyer heard Nunn had been there last night during the attempted robbery, he asked Nunn to be present while he questioned Justine Olegard at her office in the museum. Nunn knew from his time on the force that Meyer had a reputation for the unconventional and didn’t bother to question why Meyer would want an ex-cop there, he just showed up.
Justine, it seemed, had called both Tony Olsen and, to Nunn’s surprise and dismay, Stan Ballard to her meeting with Meyer. Justine explained Ballard’s presence by saying he was the only lawyer she knew. She hadn’t been accused of anything per se, but the number of felonies that had gone down in the tower yesterday meant that there were plenty of penal-code violations to go around for everyone. Nunn hadn’t even been aware that Justine and Ballard knew each other and realized it must have been from her time with Christopher Thomas. Still it was odd that Ballard, an estate lawyer, would agree to be there and not refer her to someone else. But Nunn suspected Ballard was there for Ballard only.
Justine was going out of her way to be cooperative, but there didn’t seem to be anything she could add to what Meyer already knew.
“I’m sorry,” Justine said. “I spent all night looking through security tapes and poring over reports about, you know, people casing out the museum over the past few months. I couldn’t find any pictures or descriptions of them.” Her voice was soft, eyes distant, and Nunn knew it was because she’d had to use as references the pictures shot last night of the dead thieves. Her boss, Alex Hultgren, had also been killed.
“Who called the police?” she asked Meyer.
Meyer pointed to Nunn.
Nunn explained how he’d been near the staircase after Haile had been hurt and looked down into the lobby and thought it was odd to have crime scene officers there. Then he heard the screams in the tower room and realized the museum was being hit.
Meyer asked Justine, “Are you sure you’ve never seen those men before?”
“I don’t think so. I’ve looked at those pictures so many times I can’t be sure of anything anymore.”
Meyer looked at Nunn questioningly, but Nunn’s mind was elsewhere. He kept thinking about the text message he’d received earlier in the day. It didn’t seem possible.
His BlackBerry buzzed, Nunn picked it up, then he looked at Meyer. “Can I talk to you outside for a second?”
They stepped out into the hallway. “Look, on my way over here I got a text from a friend which gave me a new theory about what happened here last night.”
“And?” Meyer asked.
“You’re going to think I’m nuts, Harvey.”
“Tell me.”
“My friend’s down in the lobby. I’m going to have him come up here. I’ll let him tell you. It’s quite a story.”
27
KATHY REICHS
Staccato footsteps clicked across marble.
Everyone’s eyes swung toward a figure framing up in the door.
The man wore a Duke sweatshirt and cargo pants tucked into platform boots. His left hand gripped a leather briefcase that looked as if it left Spain before the civil war.
Nunn made introductions. “Gentlemen, Justine—may I present Dr. Ignatius McGee.”
McGee was leading-man handsome, with a square jaw, blue eyes, and hair that left Brosnan in the styling-gel dust. Only one unfortunate base-pair sequence barred him from a star on the Hollywood walk. If he stood ramrod straight, which he was, Ignatius McGee was no more than four foot six. Two of those inches belonged to the boots.
Palms were pressed, then the group sat. McGee too, left ankle crossed onto opposite knee, right foot not quite touching the floor.
Everyone dragged chairs into a semicircle, grad-seminar style, except for Stan Ballard, who was leaning against the wall, stone-faced.
Nunn got right to the point.
“Dr. McGee is a forensic anthropologist. Everyone clear on what that is?”
“Bones,” Justine Olegard said. “But not old ones.”
Nunn swept an upturned palm in McGee’s direction. “Take it away.”
“The answer’s spot-on,” said McGee. “I’m a specialist in the human skeleton.” The accent was blue-collar Boston, the voice surprisingly deep for a man McGee’s size. “I work the dead too far gone for a Y incision—the burned, mummified, decomposed, dismembered, mutilated, and skeletonized. I dig ’em up, ID ’em, determine how they bought it and when.”
Olsen rocketed forward, fingers squeezing his armrests. “You exhumed Christopher Thomas.”
McGee studied him, then slid his eyes left.
“An exhumation wasn’t possible,” Nunn explained. “At my request, Dr. McGee analyzed the dossier compiled at the time of Thomas’s death.”
“Wasn’t everything written in German?” Olsen asked.
“I had the reports translated,” McGee said.
“And you found
proof of Rosemary’s innocence!” Olsen said.
Irritation filed the edge of McGee’s rich baritone. “Who else thinks he knows how my movie ends?”
Olsen flicked an angry glance at Nunn. Who the hell is this guy?
Nunn raised two placating palms. “Let Dr. McGee walk us through his findings without interruption. Then you can ask all the questions you want, okay?”
Face locked into neutral, Olsen settled back.
Twisting sideways, McGee swung his case to the desktop and withdrew two folders, one brown and battered, the other bright pink and OfficeMax new. Setting the former aside, he flipped the cover on the latter.
“The original paperwork is here if anyone sprecht Deutsche. My comments will focus on my interpretation of the evidence.”
Not pausing to gauge reaction, McGee pulled a multipage document from the folder.
“According to the pathologist”—he flipped to the back—“one Bruno Muntz, the remains were soup and bones, rendering visual identification impossible. Most of the teeth were toast.”
McGee’s gaze crawled the faces of those fanned out before him. Frowning, he ran a hand across his perfectly formed jaw. “Muntz was unable to determine cause of death. Understandable. Due to decomp and damage inflicted by the maiden, the body was hamburger. No Germanic pun intended.”
The corners of McGee’s mouth twitched in what might have been a grin.
No one smiled back.
“Where Muntz erred big-time was in failing to solicit the opinion of a specialist. In going solo on the anthro he jumped into dung way over his head.”
McGee took a mustard-colored envelope from his briefcase, unwound the string, and fanned out a dozen autopsy photos onto the desktop.
Four chairs scooted forward as one.
“Fortunately, Muntz had a kick-ass photographer. This is a close-up showing what remained of the victim’s left hand. Missing from each digit is the distal phalange, the little arrow-shaped bugger that underlies the fingertip.”
McGee rotated a print for the benefit of those opposite. “Anything strike you as odd?”
No one ventured an opinion.
Snatching up a pen, McGee pointed to the tubular bones that had once formed fingers. “Look at the first four sets of phalanges.”
No Rest for the Dead Page 19
