culminate on Sunday with the tolling of the bells and the falling of the ball in the square. But the squadroom was enjoying a comparative period of calm, a respite from the usual hubbub and hullabaloo that accompanied its normal pace.
Carella and Meyer sat poring over the letters Mark Ridley had written to his sister in the months and weeks preceding her death. From references he made to her own letters, it became clear almost at once that she was terribly excited about a job she’d be flying early in December, which would change her circumstances considerably, enabling her to move East, where she’d always wanted to live, be there long before Christmas, in fact. In the letter they’d already read—the one dated November 13—her brother wrote to say that the job sounded good to him, “so long as you won’t be flying anything that might get you in trouble.”
The words still rang meaningfully in the stillness of the squadroom.
On November 16, Cassandra Jean Ridley opened a safe deposit box at Banque Francaise here in this city and placed in it $50,000 in cash. Apparently, her circumstances had infact changed considerably by then. They were to change even more dramatically. Her calendar for December 7 was marked with the words “End Mexico.” On December 8, she presumably flew East again. Three days later, she placed another $150,000 in the safe deposit box. Twelve days after that, she was dead.
Their computer told them there’d been seventy-four reported incidents of kidnapping in the United States during the first three weeks of December. Most of these were abductions of children from parents in divorced or separated circumstances. Some of these cases might have attracted the attention of the FBI, in that state lines had been crossed. None of them would have warranted the attention of the Secret Service.
Yet the Treasury Department had braced a small-time burglar named Wilbur Struthers, confiscating bills he’d stolen from Cassandra Jean Ridley’s apartment, checking out the serial numbers against ransom notes used in an alleged kidnapping, and then—remarkably—giving him a clean bill of health and returning the bills to him that very same day.
Something stank in the state of Denmark.
They figured it was time they paid a personal visit to Special Agent David A. Horne.
A WHOLE LOT OF hundred-dollar bills were fanned out on Horne’s desk.
“A hundred and four thousand dollars,” Carella said.
“Some of it recovered in the dead woman’s apartment,” Meyer said.
“The rest from her safe deposit box.”
“All receipted and accounted for,” Meyer said.
“So?” Horne said.
He looked like a used car salesman who’d eaten and drunk too much over the weekend, jowly though not paunchy in a dark blue suit, brown shoes, a white button-down shirt, and a blue tie. The circular seal of the Department of the Treasury hung on the wall behind his desk, its gold shield decorated with a pair of scales representing justice, a key symbolizing official authority, and a blue chevron with thirteen stars for the original thirteen states. A little black plastic placard, with Horne’s name on it in white lettering, sat near his telephone.
“We think the eight thousand we found in her apartment is the money you appropriated from Wilbur Struthers,” Carella said flat out.
“What makes you believe that?”
“Struthers does. Apparently, Miss Ridley located him and went to get her money back. At gun point, incidentally.”
“I’m assuming Struthers told you this as well.”
“Yes.”
“A petty thief,” Horne said, dismissing him.
“Big enough to have captured your attention, though,” Meyer reminded him.
Horne looked at him. “I don’t like unannounced visits,” he said belatedly.
“We’d like to see that list of ransom-note serial numbers,” Carella said.
“As I told you on the phone …”
“We’d like to know just which kidnapping you were investigating,” Meyer said.
“I have no authority to release that information to you. And you have no authority to request it.”
“We’re investigating a murder,” Carella said.
“Top of the food chain,” Meyer reminded Horne.
“I’m sorry,” Horne said, and shook his head.
“We won’t go away, you know,” Carella said.
“Detective,” Horne said, and paused to give the word weight. “Go home, okay? Go arrest some pushers around the schoolyard. Keep your nose out of affairs that don’t concern you.”
“Gee,” Carella said, “all at once I’mreally interested.”
“Me, too,” Meyer said.
Horne looked at them both. He sighed heavily.
“I’m not free to discuss any case currently under investigation,” he said. “I can, however, show you the list of suspect serial numbers for you to make a comparison check. You’ll have to do it here in this office, under my supervision. If that’s satisfactory to you …”
“It’s a start,” Carella said.
