Flight ik-8

by Jan Burke

  And then Frank heard it — softly but distinctly. Amid all the chatter and the sounds of movement on the audio track, he almost missed it. Most likely, if he hadn’t already come across it in Lefebvre’s notes, he would have never noticed the tones among all the other recorded noises.

  Do-re-mi, do-re-mi…

  They heard Lefebvre’s voice saying, “Easy… Seth, it’s all right.”

  “He said my name!” Seth shouted.

  “Let’s hear it again,” Frank said, pausing and rewinding the tape back to the point just before he heard the electronic notes. This time he tried to watch reactions, to see if the camera caught anyone moving or responding to the sound, but the camera was focused on Tory Randolph, who seemed not to notice the sound at all.

  But as he kept watching, it seemed clear to Frank that Seth Randolph had reacted to the sound. In early shots, the boy appeared uninterested — almost bored — by the press conference. After the sound was heard, he was pale, frightened, and holding on to Lefebvre.

  Frank glanced at Elena, who appeared almost as shocked as Seth Randolph did on the tape.

  On the tape, Lefebvre said, “A little too much excitement,” in answer to Tory Randolph’s anxious questions. “Perhaps it would be best if we let Seth rest.”

  The tape ended. He would watch it again later, Frank decided. For now, he focused on the boy who was bouncing around his living room, elated.

  “I’ll get a couple of copies of this made for you,” Frank said.

  “Really?”

  “Really. One for your mom and one for your treasure box.”

  “Thank you!” Seth said. “Thank you so much!”

  It was some time before he wound down enough to go to bed, but he didn’t argue with Elena when she asked him to put on his pj’s and brush his teeth. He hugged Irene, and then Frank, and then the dogs, and even Cody, who — to Frank’s astonishment — put up with it. He came back to Frank and gave him a second one, then went off to bed with Elena.

  Frank tried to think of all the things that might make the “do-re-mi” sounds like the ones on the tape. A pager, a cell phone — the alarm on a watch.

  A watch.

  “Would you mind playing the end of the tape again?” Irene asked. “There was something going on — I remember now that I wanted to stay and ask Phil about it.”

  “Yes, I think I know what it was, but I’m just not sure what it means.” He told her his theory of the alarm on the watch. He had just finished when Elena came back into the room.

  “I didn’t want to get into this in front of Seth,” she said, “but there’s something important on that tape.”

  “The alarm on the watch?” Frank asked.

  Startled, she said, “You already know about the watch?”

  “Until now, guesswork. Why don’t you tell me the rest of it?”

  34

  Thursday, July 13, 10:15 A.M.

  Chief Ellis Hale ’s Office

  “A watch?” Chief Hale asked in disbelief. “You think he was killed over a watch? What was it, a solid gold Rolex?”

  Until that moment Frank thought Hale had been softening a little. He had been unsettled by the story of the fire at Lefebvre’s condo. He had listened almost patiently when Frank explained that the person who had stolen the florist’s license plate had probably set the fires in the garage and on the staircase.

  “No, sir. A model of a Time Masters watch called Time Master Three.”

  “A Time Master?” he scoffed.

  “The watch in the evidence box for the Randolph case.”

  “You believe Lefebvre was killed over a watch like that? Before I was briefed about the one in the box, I’d never heard of them. How many of them can there be?”

  “I spoke to the manufacturer today. The answer is, over a seven-year period, about sixty-five thousand, mostly in California. Not as big as Timex or Rolex, perhaps, but too many to track their owners down one by one. Although—”

  “Why would I want to find any of them?” Hale interrupted.

  “They can be programmed so that the alarm makes a particular sound — part of a musical scale. Do-re-mi.”

  “Harriman—”

  “Humor me, sir.”

  “What the hell have I been doing so far?” he groused, but waited.

  “I want you to take a look at this.” Frank plugged in the AV cart he had rolled into the chief’s office — over an aide’s objections concerning the potential ruin of Hale’s carpet — then put the Logan tape into the VCR. To his relief, both the VCR and television worked — never a given with the aging department equipment. The tape was cued up to the moment just before the watch sounded. He explained to Hale where he had obtained the tape. “You’ll hear the sound I’ve told you about. I want you to notice Seth Randolph’s reaction to it.”

  Hale watched in brooding silence. Frank rewound the tape and played it again. Then he waited.

  “Could be a coincidence,” Hale said. “Something else in the room — or someone else — could have upset the boy.”

  “But not Lefebvre. You saw how the boy turned to him.”

  Hale frowned.

  Frank told him about Lefebvre’s notes and what Elena Rosario had said about Lefebvre’s attempts to discover the identity of the owner of the watch.

  “And the reason she didn’t come forward? Or Matt Arden? For God’s sake — if she didn’t know any better, he did!”

  “They didn’t think they would be believed.”

  “Nonsense!”

  Frank met his stare.

  Hale lowered his eyes, frowning.

  “The watch supposedly left in the evidence box by Lefebvre had signs of wear on it, but it had never been worn by Lefebvre. Lefebvre wore an old Omega inscribed to him from his sister. I know about that because Ben Sheridan took cadaver dog teams up to the mountains a couple of days ago and found Lefebvre’s watch near the wreckage of his plane.”

  “Maybe he had two watches—”

  “You don’t believe that, do you? I checked on it anyway. Dale Britton did the original examination of the Time Masters watch. He was vague about the alarms — said the watch made ‘various patterns of musical notes.’ I suppose he was more interested in clues about the man who wore the watch — so he used the wear marks on the band to figure out where it had been fastened and took some measurements. That allowed him to estimate the size of the man’s wrist. I’m sure the idea was that, if Lefebvre was caught, they could prove it fit him.”

  “Well? What of it?”

  “It’s too bad Lefebvre wasn’t arrested before he reached Seth Randolph’s room. Maybe he would have been shown to be innocent then and there, and lived. Ben gave the watch he found to the coroner, but being a forensic anthropologist, he couldn’t let it go without making every possible observation about it that he could. I called him late last night and asked him to look at his notes on the watch — especially the size of the metal wristband.”

  “That wouldn’t be accurate,” Hale said. “A metal band can stretch.” He pulled on the segments of his own watchband to illustrate his point.

  “Yes, but it can’t shrink down past a certain size. Take your watch off.”

  Hale did.

  “You see? When the tension is off the segments, they close up to a fixed size. A person with a larger wrist than yours might be able to wear your watch. But if a person with a smaller wrist than yours put it on, it would slide around on him. The wear pattern on the Time Masters watch indicated a man with a smaller wrist.”

  “So it wasn’t Lefebvre’s watch in that evidence box. That doesn’t mean he didn’t put it there.”

  “I think that’s unlikely. Lefebvre only saw that box once, very briefly, and not long before he was murdered.”

  “No — you’ve got that much wrong. His name was on the evidence log twice.”

  “His name, but not his signature. The first signature was forged. Ask Flynn if you don’t want to buy that off me.”

  “Flynn? How
the hell many members of this department have been hiding this for the last ten years?”

  “Flynn just discovered the forgery on Monday. He got curious about people who had looked at that evidence box, because Bredloe had looked at it just before he went to the Sheffield Club. And Bredloe was asking Flynn questions — wanted to know who in the department knew what was in that box.”

  “Damned near everybody, unless I miss my guess.”

  “Flynn said as much to Captain Bredloe.”

  “So what are you going to do? Go around making everyone who was at that press conference try the watch on? It will probably work something more like O.J. and the glove than Cinderella and the slipper.”

  Frank shook his head. “Even if I had that original Time Masters watch, people gain and lose weight over ten years.”

  “What do you mean ‘that original’?”

  “Someone replaced that watch since Lefebvre disappeared. The one down in the box in Evidence Control isn’t the one that Lefebvre saw that night.”

  “Replaced? Why?”

  “I’m not sure. All I know is that the watch that was substituted for it is newer. From the looks of it, it hasn’t ever been worn. And when I spoke to Time Masters this morning, I learned that this one was made seven years ago. They could tell by the serial number and by the ‘China’ stamp. They were making them in the U.S. until then.”

  Hale sat down heavily in his chair, his face set in stubborn lines. But he said nothing. As he watched the chief, Frank took hope from that silence. He knew that Hale was going over all that he had said, looking for holes, for weaknesses. Hale was the bishop in this little cathedral, and the man clearly didn’t want to change religions at this point — for ten years, Hale had knelt at the altar of Lefebvre’s guilt and preached it to not only his congregation, but city hall, the press, the public.

  “Whatever else you want to believe about Lefebvre,” Frank said, “you know he couldn’t get up out of that wreckage to go buy a watch, then stick it into an evidence box before heading off for his final reward.”

  “Don’t get cocky. It may have been impossible for Lefebvre, but it was nearly as impossible for anyone else to do so, with security cameras, and—”

  “Seven years ago, sir.”

  “Oh, back to calling me ‘sir,’ are you?”

  “Seven years ago.”

  Hale’s face reddened. “Don’t push me, Harriman.”

  “Seven years ago, sir, Flynn was not in charge of the property room. Five years ago an investigation into the theft of drugs and other materials from the—”

  “Yes, yes, you’ve made your point. There were no cameras before Flynn, and we did have problems with evidence control.”

  Hale stood up and began pacing.

  “Whom do you suspect?”

  “No one in particular yet, sir.”

  “So you’re telling me that you’ve spent your first week creating chaos.”

  “I wouldn’t put it like that, sir.”

  Hale stopped pacing. “No. Neither would I.” He paced again.

  “I want to talk to a couple of commissioners today, sir.”

  “Police commissioners? About this? At this stage of your endeavors? Don’t be an ass.”

  “No, sir, about Trent Randolph. I need to know who in this department identified him as an enemy.”

  “Maybe you’re still looking at Dane, you know. Dane hated him, and while I will admit that there appears to be insider help here, we’ve always known that Dane must be getting at least some assistance from someone in this department.”

  Frank said nothing.

  “You don’t believe it.”

  “Why would Dane frame himself?”

  “If he knew he would have insider help getting out of trouble, he might have found it all a pleasant game.”

  “He wasn’t at the press conference.”

  Hale sighed. “I’m not happy, Harriman. I’m not happy at all.”

  “No, sir. But you’ll do what’s right.”

  Hale smiled a small, quick smile. “That sounded more like hope than certainty to me.”

  “If I doubted you, I’d be talking to the attorney general instead of you, sir.” He kept to himself the fact that he had looked up the number this morning but hadn’t called.

  Hale gave a bark of laughter. “Laugh, Harriman, because that had better be a damned joke. I don’t want you to talk to anyone. Not anyone. Not even Pete Baird.”

  “I’d rather you didn’t ask that of me. Pete can be trusted to keep it to himself. As it is — I like working with Pete, sir. He knows about Elena Rosario and her son, and—”

  “And your partnership is feeling the strain of this case,” Hale said. “I’ll think about it. With Rosario and her son under your roof, you’ve probably blabbed to your wife — did you swear her to secrecy?”

  “She won’t talk to the paper about it, if that’s what you’re asking — sir.”

  “Which commissioners do you want to talk to?”

  “Soury and Pickens.”

  “Hmm. You’ll get very different views of Randolph. Be sure to tell them this is in the strictest confidence.”

  “Yes, sir. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll be on my way—”

  “Not so fast. One other thing you should know.” He tapped the ends of his fingers together, looking suddenly ill at ease. He cleared his throat, then said, “When someone is appointed to a commission that will be reviewing highly sensitive materials such as those seen by the police commission, we very naturally do a background check on that person.”

  Frank waited. There was something slightly defensive in Hale’s tone.

  “A couple of years before he became a commissioner,” Hale said, “Randolph had been involved with studies of the department and so on, so we were aware of him. He seemed to be a very straight arrow. He dumped his wife, but no one had ever been able to stand her, and he threw her over for a woman that had every man in the department green with envy. A real beauty — blond hair, blue eyes, gorgeous. But then, just after he was appointed, we learned that the woman he was dating was associated with Whitey Dane.”

  “Tessa Satel — the one he left his wife for?”

  “Yes. We had never observed her anywhere near Dane. We might never have made the connection except for a lucky break. One of our surveillance teams had noticed that Dane visited this one house fairly often. Turns out it belongs to an aunt of his — his mother’s sister. Good-looking woman. No criminal activity that we could discover — can’t exactly arrest everyone whose nephew grows up to be a jerk. He was over there often, though, so we started to watch the place. Every day, she picks up a little girl after school, baby-sits her until the kid’s mom comes by. Nobody stays around, nobody carries packages in and out of the house — nothing even remotely criminal.

  “So we take the surveillance off. Dane visits his aunt — big deal. Some of these creeps, you know, they’re saints in their own families. Guilty of murder, theft, drug dealing, every sort of crime you can think of — but he loves his dear old auntie — who isn’t all that old. He’s more of an auntie than she is, you ask me. Have you ever seen who works at that house? I guess you met one of his houseboys yesterday.”

  “About this relationship of Randolph’s—” Frank said, refusing to be sidetracked.

  “Oh, yes — well, I’m getting to that. One day, while I was at lunch with Trent, he told me that he felt sorry for Tessa, because she and her daughter were all alone in the world. According to him, she’s a widowed orphan and has no family whatsoever — no brothers, no sisters, no nothing. And I had this funny feeling — you know, something bothered me about this for no apparent reason.”

  “Except that if a person wants to hide her past, she might give out a story like that.”

  “Exactly. So I decided to let someone outside of Narcotics take another look at her—”

  “Why?”

  “I wanted to know more—”

  “No, I mean, why not someone in Narcot
ics?”

  Hale shifted uncomfortably. “They hadn’t done a very good job of checking her out. That’s all.”

  “And you suspected someone in Narcotics of working for Dane.”

  Hale shrugged. “Such things are always a possibility. In any case, I asked Pete Baird to see what he could learn. On the first day he followed her, guess where she went after work?”

  “Dane’s aunt’s house.”

  “Right. Because guess who did the child care for her while she played tickle the bird with Trent Randolph?”

  “The aunt.”

  “Right. And the aunt isn’t charging her a dime. Because Tessa is her daughter. Tessa is Dane’s cousin.”

  “So you told Randolph about this?”

  “Yes. That was very difficult. But in truth, I think he had tired of her. He broke up with her not long before he died.”

  “Which made you further suspect Whitey Dane of killing him.”

  “I didn’t need that to suspect him! Whitey Dane had been seen by the only living witness!”

  “Seth Randolph.”

  The chief nodded, then suddenly smiled. “So maybe you had better think of this possibility — maybe Dane put on a different watch on the night he killed Trent and Amanda. Maybe someone in our department was indeed wearing a similar watch — after all, you tell me there were thousands of these watches sold.”

  Frank didn’t say anything.

  “It’s a possibility,” Hale said defensively.

  “Why wasn’t the information about Trent Randolph’s girlfriend in the file on his murder?”

  Hale said nothing.

  “It wasn’t in there,” Frank answered, “because you wouldn’t let it be placed there.”

  “There was no need. He was on the police commission, for God’s sake!”

  “And if the public found out a pro-department commissioner might have been under the sway of a woman with close connections to a crime lord like Dane — when Dane was eluding the police, and suspicions about a leak in the department were rife — well, then, that would have made Trent Randolph’s good friend, the chief of police, look bad indeed.”

  “Don’t presume you can understand the various pressures on a man in my position!”

  “No,” Frank said, standing. “I’m sure I can’t understand them.”