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“Will you tell me what is going on?” Chu said, annoyed.
“I’m afraid you’ll see for yourself in less than a minute,” Pro said, her voice tense. She walked up to holding cell number three, which was to the right at the corner where the hallway split.
It was empty.
Chu looked in the unoccupied cell. “So, Jacobs got the wrong number.”
“I’ll wait here. Go and check at the processing desk.”
Chu shook his head and walked to the locked door which was opened by the officer on the other side. He walked to the processing desk. Behind the counter were monitors with a camera trained on the ten different-sized cells in the holding area.
“Where did Max Martin end up?” Chu asked the man behind the desk.
The officer had gray hair and a heavy mustache and seemed to think he was the Latin-lover type with his slicked back hair. “Him?” the man said with a slight accent. “He ended up in a nice solo—holding cell three.”
“He’s not there,” Chu said.
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“Yeah, right,” the man chuckled. “Don’t tell me, he disappeared. Come on, detective, I got work to do.”
“I’m serious,” Chu said. “The cell is empty.”
The man’s demeanor changed and he grew serious. He rose from the desk and grabbed a set of keys. “Hey, Tony, I gotta check somethin’.”
The man stood and came through a nearby door, as Tony took his place at the desk. He joined Chu and the two went down the hall to the locked door and soon stood before the empty cell with Pro.
The processing desk officer, who wore sergeant stripes and a name tag that read “PALOS,” used his keys to open the door and the three cops stepped into the empty cell.
“Geez!” Palos said. “I thought you guys were pullin’ my leg.”
Pro stepped past the befuddled sergeant and went right to the bed that was bolted to the wall. It appeared rumpled, and she quickly pulled it up. Under the mattress she located the brown jacket and the turtleneck Max had been wearing.
“That guy really was a magician,” Sergeant Palos proclaimed. “He just friggin’ disappeared!”
8. Book Test
Within fifteen minutes, a hastily assembled group had been formed that included Pro, Chu, Officer Jacobs, as well as Sergeant Palos. Since there had been such a breach of security, Lieutenant Dunton had also been called in.
Pro had promised an explanation. She sat in front of the monitors as a man sitting at the computer keyboard replayed several videos from earlier.
“It was the pants that clued me. I didn’t think anything of it when we picked him up at the crime scene, but once we got him into interrogation, I knew there was something wrong with them. Play the tape of the interrogation,” she said to the man at the keyboard.
It showed Max talking to Chu.
“There, freeze it,” Pro said. “Look at his pants. Can you blow that up?”
The image grew larger.
“Look at the color. It is a dead-on match for NYPD Blue, the standard issue uniform used all over the city. I don’t know where he got it, maybe went to a uniform store or something. And look at the stripe down the side.”
“I can barely see it,” the Lieutenant grumbled from the back of the room.
“It isn’t very obvious, even when a cop is in full uniform,” Pro said. “Now play the video of holding cell three.”
The image was of the front of the cell, and Max was brought in by Jacobs; Max’s hands were restrained in front of his body with plastic cuffs.
“Hold it,” Chu said.
