“Well, can you think of a better way?” Kate asked.
“Than breaking into Laurence’s house?” Quinn responded. “We could just ask him, you know.”
“And he’ll deny they exist,” she responded. “You’ve got exactly one person who saw him making a copy-and that’s Buzz. Is he the most credible source?”
“How do we know they are even at his house?” Quinn asked.
“Cause they aren’t in his office,” Kate responded.
“How could you possibly…”
Quinn’s voice dropped off. He looked at the two of them. He had wondered why Kate had insisted on bringing Janus along. And now he knew. Only Janus would have been crazy enough to go along with this plan.
“You broke into his office, didn’t you?” Quinn asked, looking at Janus.
“Broke in is such a strong term,” Janus said with a smile. “I prefer active investigatory intrusion.”
“Are you two nuts?” Quinn said. “He is your boss. Your boss. If he had caught you, you both would have been fired. ”
“I had a cover story,” Janus said.
“Which was what?”
There was a long pause.
“I needed a stapler,” Janus said.
Quinn put his head on the table and softly but repeatedly banged it against the ceramic stone. It felt strangely soothing. My job will be the first thing to go, he thought. He looked up and they were both staring at him. Janus at least had some vaguely apologetic look on his face, as if he were aware that some line had been crossed. Kate, on the other hand, just looked determined.
“And is that going to be your cover story when we break into his actual house?” Quinn said. “When the police show up, we’re going to tell them that the three of us really needed staplers?”
“No, I was going to go with we all were tweaked out on ecstasy and thought we were throwing a party there.”
Quinn returned to banging his head on the table.
“It’s the only way,” Kate said.
“The only way?” Quinn asked, and laughed. “Again, we could ask him. I’m just throwing out a crazy idea that instead of breaking into a house-a home I might add that we don’t even know has the letters, much less where to find them-we could just confront him and demand he give over the letters.”
“And when he says no?” Kate asked.
“Have you met Laurence?” Quinn said. “He doesn’t say no. Traveling salespeople probably come from miles around because he is physically incapable of saying no. If he were drowning, he wouldn’t say no to more water.”
“I don’t think so,” Kate said.
“I’ve known him for years,” Quinn said. “You’ve known him for like 20 minutes. Come on.”
“She’s right,” Janus said.
Quinn pointed his finger at Janus.
“You just want an excuse to break in somewhere,” he said. “You’ve been wanting to do that for ages. Remember that Cascades bar?”
Janus just shrugged.
“She’s right and you know it,” he said. “Laurence can’t say no, but he can pretend the letters don’t exist. And that’s what he’ll do.”
“We are taking way too much on faith here,” Quinn responded. “That he really did copy the letters, that he has kept them all these years, and that they are sitting at his house.”
“We have to start somewhere, Quinn, or are we just going to be wait for Lord Halloween to find us?” Kate said.
“What if they tell us nothing? They didn’t tell the police much, did they?”
Still, within two hours, Quinn found himself along with Kate and Janus outside of Laurence’s house. He had a modest enough place just outside Leesburg. Quinn didn’t know for sure, but he thought Laurence must have moved recently. The house looked relatively new and had that cookie-cutter look that most of the developers were going for.
The nice thing about the outskirts of Leesburg was that they had so much surrounding woodland still left. The three journalists positioned themselves in Laurence’s back yard and scoped out the house.
“It’s all dark,” Quinn said.
He thanked God it was October and the sun was starting to go down so early. Somewhere he could hear a dog bark and he hoped it wasn’t making noise because of them-or that Laurence owned it. At least now they could lurk around without anyone seeing them. Quinn couldn’t see why Lord Halloween enjoyed that aspect of his work. Instead of feeling invisible, he was worried any minute he might be seen or, knowing Virginia residents, shot at.
“So who’s going in?” he asked.
He shouldn’t have bothered. Once they confirmed that Laurence wasn’t home yet, Janus was already moving to approach the house.
“Does he even know where he’s going?” Quinn asked.
Kate shrugged.
They watched Janus approach the backdoor. It was a nice double door opening out to a patio. Janus tripped a motion-detecting floodlight, but clearly didn’t seem worried about it. He stood there, standing out.
“This isn’t going to work,” Quinn said.
“Could you please try and be a little positive?”
“Well, I didn’t bring up the part where we all get fired and go to jail. I thought that was pretty positive.”
Janus had pulled something out of his pocket-Quinn at first thought it was going to be his lighter, the one he carried with him everywhere. Instead it appeared to be a tool of some kind. He was using it on the door. Within seconds, the door came open.
Quinn braced himself. If there was an alarm, this would be when it was triggered. After the attacks by Lord Halloween, most Loudoun residents had bought an alarm. But he heard nothing. Instead Janus gestured back at them.
Seconds later, Quinn and Kate were through the door. The house looked nice considering he knew how little Ethan Holden paid anyone. It was possible Laurence was paid more money than most, but he doubted it. Laurence wasn’t a tough negotiator and it was hard to imagine Holden ever willingly parting with cash when he didn’t absolutely have to.
“Let’s spread out,” Kate said. “The shorter time we’re here, the better chances we have.”
“Nothing ever went wrong with that plan,” Quinn said, but Janus and Kate had already split up.
Quinn decided to stick to the back. He walked through the dining room, which looked totally bare except for a table, and then briefly stopped in the kitchen. He doubted Laurence would have any files in there. As he turned the corner, he saw a door to the basement. He felt like he was in a bad horror movie. Don’t go in the basement, he told himself. But didn’t that seem like a better place to hide files?
Slowly, he walked down the steps, taking care not to trip in the dark. When he got to the bottom, he fumbled along the wall until he found a light switch and turned it on. He hated turning on the light-what if Laurence came home-but had no choice. Without it, he was effectively blind.
The basement wasn’t as dank or scary as Quinn had feared. It was largely bare, however, with a big TV and a stationary bicycle on the far side of the wall. It didn’t look like either had been used recently. But feeling the urge to be thorough, he walked to the back of the room and found another area off to the right.
The room was an almost identical replica of Laurence’s office at the Chronicle. Two desks were pushed together and an older-looking computer sat at the direct center of one of them. He flicked on another light to get a better look. Bingo! Two filing cabinets sat by the far end of the room-just like at the office. He was just about to shout upstairs to the others when he heard something that made his blood stand still.
The front door had opened.
He couldn’t move, he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t think. He was a journalist-trained for stressful situations- but Quinn could see getting fired, possible jail time and the end of everything he had tried to build here. What paper
