“If you didn’t leak anything to the paper, then someone in my department did.”
“And everyone else assumed it was you?”
“Not everyone,” Frank admitted, “but I was definitely getting the cold shoulder.”
“You were betrayed,” Bret said.
“I don’t know if I’d put it like that — it’s not that serious,” Frank said, but Bret was lost in his own thoughts.
Frank heard a beeping sound. Bret moved to the keypad, entered some numbers. The door at the top of the stairs opened. Samuel walked in, dressed in dark, damp clothing, carrying a bundle. The bundle was wrapped up in what appeared to be a yellow slicker. “LPFD” was stenciled on the slicker in large red letters. Samuel was covered with soot.
“What’s he doing up?” he asked, looking at Frank.
“Where’s Faye?” Bret asked.
Samuel laughed. “She had to go to a barbecue.”
Bret was silent, his mouth drawn tight in a line of disapproval.
“She was dead before I started the fires,” Samuel said.
Still Bret said nothing.
“She said she was willing to die with us, remember?”
“But she didn’t, did she?” Bret said in a low voice.
“I almost didn’t get out of there,” Samuel said, but no one gave him any sympathy. Sulking, he walked over to the keypad, punched in some numbers, and said, “You forgot to rearm it.”
Bret shrugged, made a show of closing up the trunk Frank had been in.
Samuel turned to Frank, pointed at him. “You cause trouble,” he said, stabbing the air with his blackened index finger as he said each word. He turned and walked into the bathroom, slamming the door shut behind him.
Frank began pacing again, thinking not of Samuel’s tantrum, nor lamenting the dead woman, but trying to recall the pattern of movement of Samuel’s hand on the alarm keypad. He drew close to the keypad, glanced at it furtively. He memorized the numbers with black smudges on them, thought again of Samuel’s sooty hand moving — upper right, lower left, lower right, middle, upper left.
Maybe, he thought, I
35
“I’M GOING FOR A WALK,” I said to Henry Freeman as we finished breakfast the next morning. Bea, who had been completely exhausted when we had arrived home a few hours earlier, was still asleep.
“But if Hocus calls—” Hank protested.
“Tell them I went for a walk.”
He handed me a lightweight cellular phone. “Take this, please.”
It might come in handy, I thought, and thanked him for it. I put it into the back pocket of my jeans.
“Where are you walking?” he asked.
“I’ll be down at the beach. I’m taking the dogs.”
It wasn’t a lie — I did what I told him I would do. I took the dogs for a walk on the beach. Dunk — Frank’s dog — wouldn’t allow Deke or me to lag behind or rove ahead but kept shepherding us into a close pack. Several times the dogs looked back at the stairs that led up to our street. Watching for Frank.
The ocean air was good for me, as was my time alone with the dogs. I mentally sorted through the last few days, all that had happened, all I had seen and heard and felt.
Over breakfast that morning I had asked Hank Freeman for ownership information on the warehouse, knowing the police would have not only that, but any architectural drawings they could lay their hands on. Hank told me the building had been purchased by a company four years ago, a business police had just this morning traced back to Francine Neukirk. The late Mrs. Neukirk, Hank said, had owned most of the buildings on that side of the block. They were sold to her as a unit — the warehouse, it turned out, had once been connected to two other buildings, both now vacant. Basement passageways that building plans had shown to be sealed off had been reopened.
I had asked Hank if anyone had been in the passageways that night.
“Only firefighters and SWAT,” he said. “We were all over the place. Even if the taker had tried to leave that way, he would have been seen by one of us.”
Hank also told me that outside of the recent construction work on the soundproof room — which had been completed about six months ago — none of the few neighboring business owners had seen anyone entering the building.
As I approached the house when we returned, I went to our backyard gate and let the dogs in through it, but I didn’t follow them, much to Dunk’s consternation. I took my keys, got in the car, and drove off.
I wasn’t around the corner before the cell phone rang. I answered it by saying, “Leave me alone, Hank.”
“I’m responsible for you,” he said.
“No, you’re not,” I said. “You’re responsible for Frank. I’m not under arrest, am I?”
“Of course not, but—”
“See you later, then. Please apologize to Bea for me when she wakes up.” I was at a stop sign. I hung up, studied the phone, found the power switch, and turned it off. I took the long way to the newspaper. It was about nine-thirty when I pulled into the parking lot. I walked past the space where Frank’s car had been left just a few days before, ignored the sudden queasiness those memories brought on, and entered the building.
