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Back on Cypress, I had to fend off concerned neighbors. How is Lindsey? How are you holding up? We saved your mail and newspapers. What can we do to help? Willo was that kind of place.
Then I scoped out the property, finding nothing amiss. The landscaping service had come and gone and the winter lawn looked glorious.
Inside the bedroom, I locked the door and slid a chair again
st it, set an alarm for two hours, and collapsed into the bed. For a few seconds, I looked at the stack of unread books on the bedside table. Then I was gone.
By three thirty, I was out the door in a light gray suit and navy blue rep tie. I drove over to our office on Grand Avenue and went into the Danger Room. There, I ran through the surveillance tapes on fast-forward. At two a.m. today, a dark four-door Chevy pulled sideways beside the gate and a woman emerged.
Strawberry Death.
Looking for her stones.
She was dressed entirely in black and put a dark watch cap over her distinctive fair hair. Then she stepped onto the hood, mounted the roof of the car, and draped what looked like a comforter over the spikey top of the security fence. One smooth move and she was over, pulling off the comforter and moving toward the office door. The entire maneuver took less than a minute. She had been trained.
Any passing patrol car would merely see a parked vehicle. The angle kept me from getting a tag number.
I switched to an outside camera that showed her disappear around the northwest corner of the building. The back door was secured with a heavy gate meant to defeat the most skillful burglar. Nor would that burglar find the concealed alarm box. Sure enough, she emerged on the other side in a few minutes and went to the front door.
She suddenly looked toward Grand Avenue and fell to the ground. That passing police car might have appeared. She stayed there for seven minutes, not moving.
Finally, she stood and again approached the door. I tried another camera, one mounted to the edge of the roof. She was working with small lock-picking tools. Her head swung around, then went back to her attempted break-in.
“Good luck with that,” I said out loud.
I grew more concerned when I saw a small crowbar in her hand. But she backed away and moved lithely to the edge of the building. The parking lot was already illuminated cadmium orange by two sodium lamps. A bright white spotlight joined in, sweeping the front of the building. I switched to the camera that showed Grand. Sure enough, a PPD unit had pulled in behind the Chevy.
Calling up the rear-facing camera, I watched her sprint to the back fence. It was ten feet high, but she shimmied up the steel, stood with her feet between the spikes, and launched herself into the darkness. She was in amazing shape.
I fast-forwarded the front camera. Within a half-hour, the single police cruiser had been joined by two more, then a tow truck departed with the Chevy. She lost her wheels. Was it too much to hope they had caught her nearby? Probably. But I could check with Vare on the provenance of Strawberry Death’s car.
I should have been frightened. I was elated.
I was edgy enough, though, to jerk when my phone rang. It had a Sheriff’s Office prefix.
“David, it’s Chris. How is Lindsey?”
We were so damned casual and friendly. I told him.
“I read your report. It’s exactly the kind of excellent work I expected. And I appreciate you doing this at a time of tragedy.”
I mumbled a single-syllable response, wondering if he always spoke as if he were on television.
“Let’s talk about it. I know this is a tough time, but maybe you could come down to headquarters. Better yet, I can meet you at your office in the courthouse.”
I wanted to protest but didn’t, mindful of Cartwright’s admonition. I sure didn’t want to go to the new headquarters building at Fifth Avenue and Jackson Street, in what was once the downtown warehouse district. The ninety-three million-dollar building looked like an alien battlecruiser was mating with a 1970s shopping strip. But ugly as it was, it was Peralta’s baby: he conceived it and fought for the funding and now it was Chris Melton’s temple. The idea of going inside made me sick.
“How about the courthouse?” I said.
“Does twenty minutes give you enough time?”
I told him that it did.
On the way downtown, I called Kate Vare and told her what I had found.
Her voice was icy. “Are you working my case, Mapstone?”
“No, this is why I’m calling you. I stopped by our office and checked the surveillance tapes.”
