On the Hook Page 19

  “It’s chilly,” Westen said to make her feel better.

  The sergeant made a face that said she’d rather be outside even if a blizzard was battering the town.

  “Typical New England spring,” Westen disliked the mundane conversation but since working at the pet shop she’d realized it was people’s way of breaking the ice. “My snowdrops don’t seem to mind, they’re poking through the mulch anyway.”

  “Mine too. I have some pink daffodils blooming out front of my apartment.” The sergeant tucked unkempt hair behind one ear and stepped around the desk to shake hands with Smith and then Westen, who made the introductions.

  “We have been asked to investigate the theft of the Picasso lost en route from Buffalo to the museum here in Concord.”

  “You working for Kendra Jean Valentine?”

  “Yes,” Smith said, “but don’t let that color your judgment.”

  Westen nearly laughed. She’d caught the change in the sergeant’s tone at the mention of the painting too. She wondered if the overheard comment about finding it had been related to the theft. If so, she was under great pressure, which should work in their favor.

  The mousy haired woman smirked, then grinned. “She drives me crazy. Almost drove me to violence yesterday.”

  “Was that violence toward her?” Smith said. “Happens to me every time I see her.”

  “Any idea where she is?”

  “Not really,” Westen said, “we met up with her at the airport in Philly. We were on our way back from Buffalo.”

  “Damn her. She was told not to leave town.”

  “We figured she was following—checking up on us. She wasn’t happy when we wouldn’t check in with her every five minutes,” Westen said.

  “And we mean every five minutes,” Smith added.

  “Did she say where she was heading?” The sergeant motioned to a sofa and two chairs near the side wall. Smith and Westen took the sofa; she perched on the arm of one chair.

  “No,” Westen answered. “We figured she followed us from Buffalo.”

  “Can’t be. She was here in town yesterday morning.” The sergeant raked hair off her face. “Which means she was heading west.”

  “You think she’s skipping out?” Smith asked.

  The sergeant heaved a sigh. “I don’t know.” She looked at the watch on her left wrist. “Guess I’ll have to track her down. In the meantime, what can I do for you?”

  “In Chicago and Buffalo, we talked to anyone we could find related to the case. We inspected the tractor, and an identical trailer to the one used. And came up with nothing,” Smith said.

  The sergeant nodded. “Did you trace the route they took from Buffalo?”

  “No,” Westen said. “Since they didn’t stop anywhere, we assum—”

  “So they say.”

  “Well,” Smith said, “unless KJ, four guards and two truckers are in on this together, I can’t see how that could work.”

  “Stranger things have happened. The painting is valued at a hundred million dollars. Even selling it to a private buyer, they could each be set for life.”

  “I have to admit,” Smith said, “it’s the only theory that makes sense but I guess there’s not enough information to arrest her, right?”

  “No. Frankly, I’m not a hundred percent convinced she’s guilty. But my captain...he is. He wants me to put in some legwork… Get this case closed and Ms. Kendra Jean Valentine locked up.”

  “Do sergeants do that?” Smith asked. “Put in the legwork?”

  “Sure. Especially when they’re taking the lieutenant’s exam in four months.”

  Smith nodded as if she experienced this all the time. She got up and paced a few steps.

  “I ran a bunch of ridiculous ideas through my head,” Westen said. “One was that somebody stowed away on top of that trailer, climbed through that hatch in the front of it, then passed the painting to somebody in a separate car. I know, I know, the scenario precludes being seen by at least a dozen people, first and foremost the drivers.”

  “The painting couldn’t fit through that hatchway,” Smith said.

  “But the frame could be broken apart and the pieces heaved out the opening,” Westen said. “Passerby—even KJ herself—would just think it was trash flying around.”

  The sergeant’s face scrunched while she mulled over the idea, kicking the side of the chair with her heel. “That could work, I suppose, but it rules out a bunch of things. First, no way they could clean up every single piece from the trailer floor. State police and none of the forensics teams found anything. Nada. Admittedly, the frame could’ve been tossed out along with all the wrappings—the velvet bag, the bubble wrap and whatever else but I can’t imagine that KJ, who swears she didn’t take her eyes off the trailer for eight hours, would miss something like that. Third, if the thing is going sixty-five to seventy miles an hour, whoever’s on the roof would be swept off. I don’t care if James Bond does it in the movies, it’s against the laws of gravity.”

  “Would it be all right if we went to the impound lot to look the trailer over?”

  “I don’t see why not.” The sergeant got up with a grunt and made a call. She returned after scribbling directions to the impound lot and handing the paper to Westen.

  “What if…” Smith resumed her seat on the on the arm of the chair, “the person wasn’t stowed away on top of the trailer. What if they jumped from an overpass or something? If it was done in heavy traffic, in a city where they’d be going slower, maybe KJ wouldn’t notice.”

  “I’m doubtful that could be done without her seeing. But I suppose, with the right planning and a bucket-load of luck, it could work.”

  “Besides, you’re in a bind to close this thing and don’t have any other ideas,” Smith said.

  “Right you are.”

  “So…if you were us,” Westen said, “where would you start?”

  “I think I’d backtrack over the route from—”

  “It’s an eight hour trip if you drive straight through!” Smith exclaimed.

  “Remember I mentioned renting a car and doing this on the way home,” Westen said softly.

  Smith’s “Oh shut up,” brought a wide grin from the sergeant, who shrugged. “I’d get a detailed map and figure out the locations where this might work.” She counted on her fingers. “They’re traveling during the day. Anything they do could be spotted, so I’d leave out rural areas. I’d find an overpass leading into a fairly busy town so the truck isn’t going seventy miles per hour, a place where nobody would notice stuff blowing off a roof. The guy would have to have an accomplice, somebody who followed KJ’s car and stopped to pick up the painting when it was thrown out.”

  “She wouldn’t have paid attention to anyone following them,” Westen noted.

  “That’s right. All she cared about was anyone getting inside or disabling the trailer.”

  “I don’t see how this scenario could work,” Westen said after a bit more thought. “Surely either of the drivers would notice somebody climbing through that opening in the front of the trailer.”

  “Got any better ideas?” the sergeant said.

  “No.”

  “Wait,” Smith said. “What if they’re in one of those trucks that has a camper attached?”

  “You mean a sleeper?” Sergeant Bartowski offered.

  “Right. Because of its shape and size, I bet they couldn’t see if somebody was there.”

  The phone rang. The red light on the front made the sergeant scowl. She gave a dismissive, “Let me know how things go?”

  Westen performed a Girl Scout salute. They let themselves out of the office as Sergeant Bartowski answered the phone with, “Yes, Captain.”

  The door was no sooner shut when Smith leaped in the air and kicked up her heels. Two passing officers laughed and stopped to watch. “I can’t believe our good luck.” At the sound of the words echoing down the hallway, Smith waited till they were outdoors to finish the thought. “How easy was
that? I can’t believe we’ve got that ally I was talking about yesterday.” She got into the passenger side of Westen’s car. “It’s almost like being in heaven—that she hates KJ too.”

  “Come on. KJ’s not a bad person if you can get past her self-absorption.”

  Smith screwed her face into a deliberate smirk. “This coming from you? Have you forgotten what she did to you back in high school?”

  “Same thing—self-absorption.”

  Smith waved off discussion of KJ. “You realize that we have this thing almost figured out. Hey, can I drive?”

  Westen wanted to ask if she had a license but it probably wasn’t the wisest idea to show distrust of her new partner so soon. She passed the keys into Smith’s hand as they changed places. Westen liked the sound of the word partner. She had serious doubts a relationship between them could be a permanent success; there were no two different people on this earth. But for a moment, Westen let herself revel in the dream that they managed to find the Picasso and she retired happily in the Bahamas. With an optimistic heart Westen was going to jump in and find out if opposites really did attract.

  “You realize that even if the scenario plays out, we’re no closer to knowing where the painting is, right?”

  “Killjoy.”

  “Okay, so I guess that means we’re on the road again.”

  On a sigh, Smith said, “Should we leave now—this afternoon?”

  “I guess we could, there’s still a lot of daylight. Any idea where we can find that map the sergeant mentioned?”

  “I bet it’s something truckers would have. Seems like they’d need to know about overpasses because of the vehicle’s height.”

  “So?”

  “Jeez, do I have to do everything?”

  “That’s a good question coming from a person who made me climb on top of a trailer and race around questioning every suspect in Chicago.” Westen spun away.

  “Wait!”

  Westen stepped off the sidewalk and into the path of an oncoming tractor-trailer motoring through the heavy afternoon traffic.

  “Westen!”

  She stood in front of the truck. When it came to a full stop and the driver was shooting her the bird out the open window, she went around to the door and called up to him, “Where can I get a map?”

  “Map?”

  “Yes, the detailed kind that shows overpasses and stuff like that on it.”

  He shook off the confusion. “Try the truck stop on 3A in Bow. Ask for a road atlas. Cost you about forty bucks.”

  She bestowed him with one of her most winning smiles. “Th—”

  Smith shot up beside her, caught hold of her sleeve, and jerked her back to the sidewalk. “Are you freaking insane?”

  “I, uh…”

  “Look, I didn’t mean anything by what I said. You didn’t have to go all radical on me.”

  Westen nearly burst into laughter but Smith was so obviously apologetic that she held it in. She waved to the helpful trucker as he roared away, then headed for her car. Since Smith still had the keys, she stood by the passenger door waiting to be let inside.

  Once buckled in place, Smith apologized again. Then said, “Look, sometimes my mouth gets the better of me. I don’t mean most of the stuff I say.” Westen met her serious gaze. Before she could reply, Smith added, “Don’t do anything stupid like that again. Okay?”

  “Okay. Where to now—the impound lot?”

  “Seems like a good idea. Except if police forensics couldn’t find anything...”

  “If we’re going to be in this business, we can’t take everyone else’s investigating for granted. On television, how often do the detectives find things the big guys missed?”

  “You know that’s on television, right? The world of ultimate fantasy and lies?”

  “Just get in the car.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Smith and Westen were admitted to the impound lot by a bulky officer with a five o’clock shadow who examined their identifications with the precision of a tool and die maker. He spent a considerable amount of time staring from their faces to the images on the IDs. Even though Westen’s license photo looked as though she was performing calisthenics with her face, it still resembled her.

  At long last, he nodded and called someone to escort them to the trailer. Naturally, it was in the far corner of the very windy, frigid lot. Westen was shivering with her whole body by the time they arrived. She craned her neck to look up, remembering how just a couple of days ago she’d been standing on the roof of a trailer just like this. She wondered if she should get on the roof of this one, then decided it would be more prudent to check the roof from inside. Outside, it looked exactly like all the other twenty-foot trailers in Starfire’s Chicago yard: same corrugated metal, same flashy logo. Westen made a circuitous route around the whole thing, running a hand along the lowest edge.

  “What are you doing?” Smith asked as Westen began a second lap.

  “Looking for hidden doors, imperfections—any way someone could’ve gotten that painting in or out.”

  “I thought we established it was done through that panel in front.”

  Westen stopped and faced Smith. The man who’d escorted them stood at the back of the trailer watching their exchange though Westen doubted he could hear what they were saying. “Just because we thought it was the most logical way, doesn’t mean that’s the way the thief did it. We have to weigh every possibility.”

  “Okay. You’re right.” With that, Smith crouched and began a careful examination of the underside. Westen refrained from reminding her they could do that from inside also.

  They’d stopped to buy a tape measure—a good quality one because Smith claimed, 1-they’d be needing it in their new career, and 2-they had quite a lot of KJ’s money left. Smith held one end and Westen walked to the other to ensure this was a twenty-foot trailer.

  At the front, Westen checked the hatch door. It was well over six feet above her head. No way to get in. She searched and found a wooden box that she dropped on the cement beneath the door. Then she climbed up and undid a catch on the panel. At five six, she was just tall enough to peer inside. If she put a foot on the narrow metal frame, she might be able to climb in. And that was a big might. It would be impossible if the trailer had been moving. Which meant the thief, if he got in this way, was taller than five foot six.

  “Hey, climb up here, would you?” she said to Smith. “You’re taller than me. See if it’s possible to get inside. Also, make a note to buy a camera.” And a heavier coat. And maybe a fur hat.

  “Good idea.” Smith grunted as she pulled herself up, got a foothold and wiggled into the trailer. Apparently she landed hard because a loud echo, another grunt and a curse came soon after her feet disappeared through the opening.

  “You okay?” Westen called.

  She said, “Yeah,” though the word sounded forced. “Ask him to open this thing, it’s dark in here.”

  “Make another note—to buy a flashlight.”

  “Shut up and get the door open.”

  The escort must’ve heard because he unlocked the trailer and stood back so Westen could climb inside. Smith was rubbing her left shin as she turned in a circle peering at the ceiling. “I don’t see any other openings.”

  “I don’t either.”

  She’d finally come face to face with the legendary wooden crate. It appeared to be hastily thrown together. A real come-down for such a valuable painting. It was made from rough-hewn slats of pine wood. The nails were embedded deep in the wood. Westen had seen this before, when something had been constructed using a nail gun instead of a hammer. The top opened on a trio of silver plated hinges.

  Westen swung the cover all the way open until it rested against the back wall of the crate. Inside, midway along opposite walls, were two eyebolts. Attached to them with metal hooks was a wood compartment a bit over four and a half inches wide—just enough to fit the painting.

  Smith stood beside her. Together they
peered into the box.

  “Dark in there.”

  “Like I said, make a note to buy—”

  Smith jostled her arm. “Come on. Help me turn this thing upside down.”

  Together they wrestled the crate over, then tipped it so anything inside could drop out. Not that Westen expected anything, but lacking good light, it was the only option. Once the crate was on its top, they shook it back and forth, then righted it again. The only thing on the floor were some wood shavings clearly there from when it was built. So, they’d experienced another wild goose chase. Westen finished the inspection of the trailer while a dejected Smith stared into space.

  This trailer had the same wood slatted floor—no possible places for a hatchway, not even directly under the crate—as the trailer they’d seen in Chicago. It had the same wood lining the walls to a height of about four feet.

  “Here, hold the tape measure.” Westen handed the tab end to Smith and walked to the front. “Nineteen feet five inches.” They switched to measure the width. “Seven feet eight inches.”

  Westen wrote the measurements in the notebook. Next she examined the floor, this time searching for fragments of picture frame, scraps of cloth, lint, aglets, buttons—any of the things detectives stumbled over on TV. Westen found nothing. It was as if the trailer had been detailed by a professional crew.

  What a wasted effort. She’d frozen her ass off to learn things she’d already seen back in blustery Chicago. Westen accepted the policeman’s hand to get out of the trailer.

  Smith raced around snapping pictures with the cell phone. Then she jumped down on her own. They thanked the officer and left the yard, then spent time waiting for the car to heat up, Westen rubbing her hands in front of the air vent. It was blowing cold air so she turned on the seat heater and stuffed her hands under her thighs. “What’s with this weather? It’s supposed to be May. So, what’s next on the agenda?”

  “I guess we should go pack some clothes.”

  “I guess so. Why don’t we drive to your house? From there, I’ll pack some stuff and get you in an hour or so,” Westen suggested.

  “Better yet, why don’t I drop you off and come back to get you later?”