When he went back to the others, he found them huddled in intense discussion.
“Mind if I take a casual stroll down to the lab to try to get some hint about where the bereaved Mr. Haycroft might be?” Pete asked him. “I’d feel better about riding in your car if we could keep an eye on him.”
“Yeah,” Vince said. “I’ll go with you — I want to ask Mary Michaels about how Haycroft has been spending his time lately — see if he was out of the lab when those fires were started.”
“I think I’ll have a long talk with Flynn down in the property room,” Reed said. “Maybe we can let that guy who works with Tom Cassidy—”
“Hank Freeman,” Frank said.
“The computer geek?” Pete said.
“The computer
“I’ve already got him looking at Seth Randolph’s computer,” Frank said.
“I thought maybe he should take a look at Flynn’s machine, too — see if there’s any reason Haycroft knows who checks out the evidence from the Randolph case.”
“If all that’s okay with you, Frank?” Vince asked uneasily. “It’s your case.”
“I think I’ll talk to the chief about changing that,” Frank said.
“You want off the case?” Pete asked.
“No. I want to stop working solo.”
45
Friday, July 14, 9:25 A.M.
Paul Haycroft ’s Residence
The plan was in motion. Everyone knew their role, their place in the activity that centered on Paul Haycroft’s home. Convincing Chief Hale that a killer worked in his lab hadn’t been easy, but once convinced, Hale had the zeal of a convert. He offered personnel and resources — and made sure that the search warrant, faxed over while they were setting up the operation, was worded so that they were given plenty of latitude.
The entire block was cordoned off and evacuated. There were patrol cars everywhere — as well as vehicles belonging to the bomb squad, the SWAT team, and a medical emergency team. The SWAT team, dressed in full tactical gear, carrying Heckler & Koch assault rifles, had taken up their initial positions. This was their part of the show — and as calm as most of them appeared, Frank knew their adrenaline was pumping.
His own was, even as he stood next to Pete, studying the house while they waited for it to be cleared.
“Big attic area,” he said to Pete.
“I noticed that, too. It’s too big, don’t you think?”
A group from the SWAT team cautiously approached the house carrying an “Arizona toothpick” — a four-foot- long metal device, about two inches in diameter, with a claw on one end and a narrow point at the other. Avoiding the doormat — which might have been a pressure-sensitive trigger for a booby-trapped door — they knocked and shouted their warning.
They did not wait long for a reply. The toothpick made short work of the door and they were in, quickly sweeping through the house. The bomb squad was on their heels, dogs in harness. Within minutes, the leader of the SWAT unit came back out to talk to Frank.
“There’s no one in there, but we’ve found an entrance into the attic that looks as suspicious as hell. It’s not your usual crawl-space access. It’s some kind of specially built door, and it’s got an alarm on it. I’m going to order a portable X-ray so that we can take a look through the roof before we go in that way.”
“How about the vent?”
“Sure,” he said with a smile. “Crude but effective.”
They brought a ladder up to the side of the house, attached one end of a chain to the vent, and hooked the other end to the rear bumper of a patrol car. “Stand back!” a SWAT officer warned, removing the ladder and making sure no one was beneath the vent. He then signaled the driver of the car.
“Wagons ho!” Pete said as the car moved forward and the vent came out of the wall with a bang, bringing stucco, the heavy chain, and a cloud of debris with it — and leaving a rough-edged observation port below the roofline.
The ladder was repositioned. Another SWAT team member climbed it, took a cautious look through the hole, then radioed that the attic was a finished room — it appeared to be an office with a workbench of some kind. Someone brought a fire ax to him and he quickly enlarged the hole.
“Our dogs aren’t hitting on anything on the first floor,” a member of the bomb squad said. “We’ll check out the attic next.”
“Can your dogs climb a ladder?” Frank asked a member of the bomb squad.
“Oh, yeah. Part of their training. Mine doesn’t like it much, but he can do it.”
Frank’s cell phone rang. “I’ll get things started on the ground floor,” Pete said.
Frank nodded to him as he answered the call.
“Frank — it’s Reed. Thought I’d let you know what we have so far. Haycroft was seen at the airport this morning. Got there really early, then aborted a flight. Apparently he drove off after he decided not to fly. He’s got a little Cessna. The chief got a search warrant for it, and Vince is going over it now. Vince says it has some kind of special storage lockers on it.”
“Any news on where Haycroft went after that?”
