Primary Justice (Ben Kincaid series Book 1) (12 page)

Ben tried the next one. Same song, second verse.

“Damn,” he said, clenching the key in his fist.

“Don’t get frustrated,” Christina whispered. “Try the next one.”

The sound of crunching gravel told them that a car was driving along the road in front of the building. They froze. What if someone noticed their car parked on the shoulder? What if someone was coming?
Oh, hi, we just dropped by for a casual visit in our burglar clothes.

The crunching sound faded. Apparently, the car had driven on. Ben exhaled audibly.

He tried the next key. The lock clicked open. “Success,” Ben whispered. He pushed the door forward several inches—and stopped. They had not noticed before because of the smoked glass, but the door was chained and padlocked from the inside. There was enough room between the doors to reach through and open the padlock. If you had a key.

Ben groaned. “That’s it. I don’t have any keys that would open a lock like that. Let’s split.”

“Don’t give up so easily,” Christina said. She pushed the doors forward. They gave enough to create a gap of about six or seven inches. “Not chained very efficiently. I suppose the guard gets tired of going through the routine, especially since he knows he’ll be back in twenty minutes. We can get through this.” She turned sideways and poked her head through the gap in the doors.

“Are you kidding?” Ben exclaimed. “I’m a lot thicker than that.”

“Only in the fatty places,” she said, edging her body into place. “Fat can be squeezed through.”

Christina took a deep breath, crouched under the chain and eased herself between the doors. Most of her generally slim body passed easily, though she had to wriggle and twist to get her hips through. But she made it. In fact, Ben thought, she made it look easy.

“Here, give me your hand.”

Ben did as he was instructed. Her hand was warm. He could feel her pulse thumping.

Following her lead—head first, wriggling midsection, legs last—he slid in beneath the chain and pulled himself through the narrow space.

They walked into the main lobby. Ben’s sneakers squeaked on the tile floor. Almost immediately, he heard a soft but insistent electronic beep, sounding about every three seconds.

“Is it an alarm?” Christina asked. She was still holding Ben’s hand.

“I don’t think so,” he replied. “If Greg is to be believed, the beeping means the timer on the noise alarm has been activated. We probably have one minute to find the control box and shut it off before it turns into a piercing alarm and automatically dials the police. It’s designed to allow people who are supposed to be here a chance to deactivate the alarm.”

“Then don’t waste time talking. Find that box!”

They scanned the spacious lobby. There were a million possible places. Elevators, hallways, receptionist stations.

“Over here,” Ben said hurriedly. He ran toward a booth in the front left corner of the lobby. “This is where the security guard was sitting when I came to see Sanguine earlier today. It’s the logical place for the alarm control box.”

They examined the security booth. The beeping noise seemed louder here, but Ben could see no control box. He dropped to his knees. On the underside of the desk, he saw a small box with a red light flashing in time to the beeps. A digital display showed eleven seconds, then ten, then nine. Next to the display, there was a keyhole.

Ben tried the first small-size key on Adams’s keychain. It would not go in.

Suddenly, the beeping noise stopped. “It’s about to blow,” Ben muttered.

He inserted the second small key and turned. The red light shut off.

Christina put her arm on Ben’s shoulder. “Hey,” she whispered, “once you get into the spirit, you’re a natural at this breaking and entering.”

Ben declined to respond.

Quickly, they sprinted up the emergency stair to the second floor. From the outer hallway, they entered the office bearing Adams’s nameplate. The door was not taped or locked. Rather than turning on the lights, something the guard was bound to see, they used the flashlight Ben brought.

“All right,” Ben whispered, “we’ve got maybe ten minutes.”

They began searching, Ben at the desk, Christina at the bookshelves and credenza. Ben noticed that the office, although considerably larger than Ben’s at Raven, was not one of the larger offices he had seen in this building. In fact, it seemed amazingly small for the vice president of new developments.

The desk was light brown oak—at least in color. Probably a nouveau antique, Ben mused. A framed photograph of Bertha that must have been taken forty years ago rested on top. Ben examined the desk drawers. The desk was not locked, mercifully sparing Ben another agonizing key search. He systematically, if hurriedly, combed through everything, but found nothing helpful.

“Bertha said that the night he was killed, Jonathan never came back from the office,” Ben whispered to Christina. “So if he set up a meeting, he probably did it here. I hoped we’d at least find some kind of note or a scrawled address or phone number.” He picked up a thick memo pad from the desk. The top sheet was barren. “A total blank.” Disgusted, he dropped the pad back onto the desk.

“Wait a minute,” Christina said. She took the memo pad, and held it up to the moonlight. She tilted the pad at different angles, catching the light. Then she took a pencil from the desk and lightly sketched over the top sheet of paper. A white impression resembling words or numbers began to appear.

“It’s the imprint of whatever Adams wrote on the sheet of paper above this one,” Christina murmured. She finished sketching and scrutinized the result. “Hmm. It worked a lot better for Sherlock Holmes.”

Ben looked at the pad. Only a few letters were clear. A
p
and an
a
, and after that, something indecipherable. Below that, an
a
, followed by either an
f
or an
r
, followed by a
c
.

“Archer,” Christina said. “It’s an address on Archer Avenue.”

“His body was found in an alley off Archer,” Ben said. “You might be right. What’s the p-a? Parent maybe?”

“Maybe he was saying he found Emily’s parent on Archer Avenue,” Christina suggested.

Ben snapped his lingers. “Or
p-a
could be part of the Red Parrot Café. That’s the bar across the street from where Adams was found. Maybe he planned to meet someone there.”

“Could be,” Christina murmured. “Or perhaps
p-a
is part of Sapulpa or St. Paul—or the Panama Canal, for that matter—”

She stopped short. Footsteps. In the outer hallway by the elevators.

Ben shut off his flashlight. They dropped to the floor and hid behind the desk.

The footsteps grew louder at a steady but unhurried pace. Ben and Christina could see a light come on in the hallway in the airspace beneath the door. The footsteps slowed. A door opened, then closed.

“Is it the security guard?” Christina whispered.

Ben shook his head. “It’s too soon for him.”

The footsteps began again. They were heavy and drawing closer.

Christina held her breath. The door to the office opened. A light flickered on.

Ben and Christina did not move, or breathe, or think. They were completely hidden by the oak desk, or so Ben thought. If only whoever-it-is doesn’t look behind the desk.

An eternity passed in what was probably a few seconds. Ben’s entire life (past, present, and future) unreeled before his eyes—including his expulsion from the bar and a long prison sentence.

Then the light went off, and the squeaky office door closed. Christina looked at Ben, and together they quietly exhaled. The footsteps moved away at an intolerably slow pace. Finally, the stairwell door opened, and they heard the visitor walk away.

Christina started to stand up, then noticed Ben staring at the underside of the desk. “What is it?” she whispered.

Ben pointed to the bottom of the middle desk drawer, the one he had last opened before they dropped to the floor. A medium-sized manila envelope was taped to the bottom of the drawer.

“I can’t believe the police missed this,” Ben muttered.

“They probably weren’t crawling on their hands and knees when they searched the place,” Christina replied.

Ben reached up and removed the envelope.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Christina whispered. She stood up and tried the window behind the desk. “Locked,” she said. “But not hermetically sealed.” She flipped the latches on both sides of the window and pushed. The window opened.

“You can’t be serious,” Ben said.

“We don’t have any choice. With this mystery man creeping around, our previous plan is unworkable. Besides, we’re only on the second floor.”

Ben gazed out the window. There were few lights on the back side of the building, although there was a half moon. Where is the security guard? he wondered. He realized that he simply had no idea. He had lost all sense of the time scheme.

He looked down. The window was twelve, perhaps fifteen feet above the ground. She was right, though. They had no choice.

He pushed Christina aside. “Time for some macho posturing,” he said. “I’ll go first.” He put his feet through the window first, hung with his hands on the sill for a few moments, then dropped.

He landed off-balance on his left leg. The impact of the fall drove his knees into his chin. He fell onto his back. He blinked, then took a personal inventory. His teeth felt like mashed potatoes, but he was all right.

Christina followed close behind. She landed more gracefully, rolled on her heels, and softened the impact on her knees by rolling down onto the backs of her arms and shoulders.

“Nice job,” Ben whispered, standing over her.

“It’s the modeling training,” she murmured, taking her bearings. “Teaches bodily coordination and grace under fire.”

“You’re okay then?”

She nodded.

“Then let’s get the hell out of here.” He clasped her hand and helped her up. They started to run back around the side of the building toward the car.

Behind them, a dog barked.

“My God,” Ben said without breaking his stride. “We forgot about the dog!” They bolted toward the front of the building without looking back.

If they had looked back, they might have noticed a dark silhouette in the open window from which they had jumped. Someone was watching them.

T
HERE WAS A LOUD,
deliberate knock on the door.

The heavyset woman in the white uniform recognized his knock. She rose quickly and, after peering through the peephole, opened the door.

The man walked into the apartment and took off his jacket. “How is she today?”

The woman hesitated. “She’s … fine. Stable. Very good, under the circumstances.” She paused. “I know what I’m doing.”

The man smiled. “That’s why you get paid the big money.” He glanced down the hallway. “Get her.”

Nodding obediently, the woman walked halfway down the hall and called out.

After a few moments, there was a shuffling noise, and another woman, much thinner and younger, poked her head through the bedroom door. She had a vacant, distracted expression.

“Someone here to see you,” the nurse said quietly.

The younger woman looked down the hallway and saw the man standing in the main room of the apartment. A panicked expression spread across her face. She slammed the door shut.

The man frowned. “I’ll handle this,” he muttered. He pushed the woman in white out of the way and walked down the hallway.

“Open the door,” he said, quietly but firmly.

There was no response.

“I said, open the door,” he repeated, a little more loudly than before.

Still no response.

A sudden rage came over him. Gritting his teeth, he threw his full body, shoulder first, against the door. The door shuddered but did not open.

Even more enraged, the man began to kick the door. His pounding dented the outer wood surface.

He stopped, breathing heavily. His entire body was trembling. “All right, then,” he said, “see what you think about this.” He leaned close to the door and whispered a few brief words.

After a moment, the woman slowly opened the door. She was crying. Red blotches appeared on her face and neck just above her blue bathrobe.

“Please don’t hurt her,” she said. Her face was wet with tears.

“We’ll see,” the man said. With both hands he shoved the woman back against the bed.

He smiled. The rage had passed. He turned and looked back at the heavyset woman. “You’re dismissed.”

“But I haven’t prepared her for the evening yet.”

“I said you’re dismissed!” the man growled. He slammed the bedroom door shut.

“W
HAT IS IT WITH
you, anyway, Kincaid?”

Derek closed the door to his office and began his ritualistic pacing. Glad to see the ankle’s healed up, Ben thought.

“I asked you to try to get a kid adopted. A simple matter. The hearing is already set; you either win or lose. Except, for some reason, the next day you tell me you need a private detective to investigate the kid’s”—he hunched his shoulders together like a ghoul and rolled his eyes to the tops of their sockets—“myster-r-r-r-rious past.” He resumed his normal posture. “And now you want to hire an
accountant
, for God knows what reason. What is going
on
?”

“Mr. Derek, I think these papers I discovered are very important.” Ben neglected to mention where he discovered them.

“Why? What can they tell us that’s relevant to an adoption hearing?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Derek. That’s just it. I’m
not
an accountant. I got C’s in algebra—”

“Stop.” Derek thrust the palm of his hand forward as if he was doing a bad imitation of the Supremes. “No more.”

He sat down behind the desk. “I will tell you this one more time, Kincaid, and
only once more
, if you catch my drift.” He leaned forward and stared meaningfully into Ben’s eyes. “This is
not
a
pro bono
case, but it’s damn close. This is not a money-maker, for us
or
our client. Our client does
not
want to spend a bundle of bucks on this. All he wants is to sleep nights with his guilt assuaged because he
tried
to do something nice for an old employee’s widow. And, frankly, if we’re unsuccessful”—Derek shrugged—“well, he did what he could.”