Condemned to Repeat
Page 22
His eyebrows shot up, and he closed the passenger door.
“There shouldn’t be anyone up there at any time,” I whispered, “and that just doesn’t look like a safety light to me.”
“Me either,” Steve agreed. “Thing is, there is not a lot we can do other than phone it in.”
“Is Iain on duty tonight?”
“You think he’d like to be called out to investigate a potential break and enter? We’ll be lucky to net a peace officer.”
“Really? In a provincial historic site, on campus, just weeks after the death of two people involved in history and archives? I think it might be a bit more of a priority.”
“It’s just about time for the bar patrols on Whyte and Jasper Avenues to begin. Sending a car out to check on what might possibly be a workman’s light left on or a safety light is not going to be a priority in anyone’s mind.”
“What about us?”
“What do you mean ‘us,’ Kimo Sabe? I am off-duty and you are, if you recall, a civilian. A civilian dressed as a cat burglar. Try to imagine the headlines if a patrol car did manage to arrive to check out the light.”
“Okay, so what do we do?”
Steve shrugged. “I guess we could inspect the perimeter and check for any break-in that we could then report.”
“That sounds good. Let’s go.” I made to stride off toward the front doors, but Steve caught my arm.
“Not in the light. Come this way.” We turned away from where the car was parked and headed south down the street the way we’d come. When we got to the lane that led to the parking lot between St. Stephen’s and the Education Building beyond, we ducked into the shrubbery and hostas next to the building. There was a door halfway visible at the basement level, and Steve clambered down five stairs to try it out. It was locked, and the windows beside it looked sturdy and painted shut. We sidled on around the back of the building.
Here, too, the windows we could reach were closed tight, in the way of modern buildings. The college had been retrofitted, but surely in that way not for the better. Windows that could open were something I craved in a building. I was pretty sure they hadn’t retrofitted corresponding air conditioning into St. Steve’s when they sealed out all the air.
Whatever the case, no one had gained entry through a window.
Steve was checking the annex, hanging back a bit from the wall jutting out so as not to obliterate any footprints there might be. There were no doors to check, so we walked a bit further out.
It made me nervous not to be hugging the building, as this way we were more obvious to passersby and could be reported as suspicious ourselves. Mind you, we could claim plausible deniability if we weren’t creeping along, too, so it was a classic six of one, half a dozen of the other toss-up.
Steve stopped still as we got to the corner of the T-shaped annex that jutted out the back of the college. I butted into him slightly and he held his hand up to keep me from saying anything. He pointed ahead of us.
The fire escape ladder had been pulled to the ground. Someone was in St. Stephen’s College. Someone who had no business being there.
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I looked at Steve and could see him mulling over all the arguments he had made against calling in the mysterious light. We had found evidence of a possible breaking and entering or, on the other hand, an instance of negligence by custodial staff, or even a malfunctioning element of an elderly building. The fire escape could have slipped down on its own.
And I could be Laura Secord. As far as I was concerned, there was nothing about this situation that could be explained away. Someone had broken into St. Stephen’s College. Worked up as I was against people breaking into places, I didn’t even weigh the odds or take time to consider the fact that I don’t like ladders all that much.
I put my hand on a rung above my head and began to climb.
I heard Steve mumbling something into his cellphone below me, and he hissed at me to wait a second. I quietly clambered up another three rungs so he couldn’t pull me down from my perch. Maybe we could write it off as youthful Hallowe’en hijinks if we were discovered. I just hoped I’d put on enough moisturizer this morning to pass for youthful in the dark.
I felt the ladder shudder and realized that Steve had begun to climb as well. I started up again.
“So help me, Randy, this is not going to end well,” I heard him whisper. There was nothing I could say in reply, and the whole situation was too scary to do anything but concentrate on the metal rungs under my gloves, flaking paint and rust into my nostrils.
So I stayed silent and I climbed. The ladder went on through a hole in the fire escape balcony at the third floor. I stepped off it gingerly, testing the metal of the flooring. It seemed sturdy, and I could see an open window, two over from the ladder. This was where the entry had been made. I waited for Steve to reach me, which didn’t take long. I pointed to the window and he nodded. Somehow, we had moved to hand gestures for communication without consultation. I held up my hand to stop him, pulled my phone out of my pocket, and turned it to silent. He nodded again and smiled grimly. He pointed to himself and then me, and I agreed to that order of entry. Taking a deep breath, Steve moved toward the window. He stood beside it, and then peered in before climbing over the sill.
I followed suit. We stood in darkness, with some ambient light flowing in behind us from our access point and some further ahead coming from the transom window above the door. We were in a very small room, one of the abandoned dormitory rooms, from what I could figure. There was an alcove that must have been the closet, and some pretty beaten-up linoleum on the floor. The door was halfway open and possibly jammed on the bubbled-up flooring.
Steve pointed at the doorway and then at himself. I nodded again. This “Me, Tarzan” concept was a little dated, but on the whole, I was not averse to letting him go first into the fray. The whole exploring of unwarranted lights in St. Stephen’s College was seeming less and less like an idea I should have pursued. Still, Steve had called it in, so presumably we would soon be joined by some sort of patrol team. We just had to keep our cool and not get shot or put a foot through a rotten floor joist in the meantime.
Steve poked his head out into the hall, listening for a noise that would tell us which direction to turn once we left the relative sanctuary of our entry room. He waved behind his back and then moved through the doorway.
Okay, so was that a wave of “stay where you are”? Or one that indicated “come on and follow, things are fine”? Words, not actions, were my business. This was why my major had been English, not semaphore. I shrugged, because action seemed called for, and followed Steve. On the whole, I would feel safer with Steve in the middle of a firestorm than on my own in the dark in a creaky old building. So, truth be known, it wasn’t an act of bravery on my part.
We crept down the hallway to the right, heading south. Since the only light we had was coming through the transom windows from the rooms at the front of the building, facing the street and its lights, we stuck to the darker side of the hall, using the light to guide us. Steve stopped as we neared the staircase, which must have been situated in one of the towers. The fire door had been wedged open with a block of wood.
Our target was either above us or below us. Of course, he or she could be right behind us, having tricked us into thinking he or she had left the floor. I thought a minute and then pointed down. Steve cocked an eyebrow at me. I nodded, more vigorously. He smiled and nodded. Down we would go.
It made sense to head downward, to the only floors where human activity took place. For one thing, anything a thief wanted would be down there, rather than up here in the deserted floors. There was nothing left here; even the toilets had been removed from the lavatories.
For another thing, we had not heard a single footstep overhead, which indicated to me that the person we were after was below us. I was just hoping our own footsteps hadn’t sounded like the baby elephant dance above the bad guy’s head.
Any minute now.
Steve had mimed the need to walk at the edges of the staircase, to minimize creaking. I followed him around the newel post and pointed back toward the darkness that denoted the second floor. The fire door here was likewise blocked open. I wondered if spare pieces of wood had been lying around on the unfinished floors, somewhere Steve and I hadn’t spotted them in the dark, or whether the burglar had brought his own shims, knowing they’d be needed. If so, did that mean that he or she had been in St. Stephen’s College before, during the day? I made a mental note to tell Steve when I wouldn’t have to play charades to do so.
By this time Steve was already through the door and into the hall. I could see a bit better on this level as the fire-exit sign above our heads produced some light, and there was a spill of light from a meeting room down the hall that was equipped with glassed-in half-walls. We went forward carefully, again trying not to announce our arrival with too many creaks and rustlings. Surely, the person we were seeking was on this floor, or else why had the door been shimmed open?
A car radio blared outdoors and a motor was gunned. It startled me, but also calmed me down a bit, making me realize we weren’t that far from the ordinary world. If we could hear that sort of noise from a demonstrative jerk outside on the road, then we’d be likely to hear something inside the building, too. We just hadn’t yet.
Steve had been trying the doorknobs of each door we passed, and none of them had yielded. We were pretty much all the way down at the north end of the hall, and from what I could tell we were alone on the floor.
An office at the end was also glassed in, possibly the bursar’s office in the college’s past. I wondered if whoever had that place now appreciated doing his or her work in a goldfish bowl. I supposed a door that closed was better than working in a cubicle.
A shadow moved on the back wall of the glassed-in office. It was momentary and when I blinked it stopped, so I wasn’t positive I’d actually seen anything. I touched Steve’s arm and pointed. His face was too much in shadow for me to read his expression, but I could sense its questioning look. If I had seen something move in there, then we had already been spotted. Otherwise, why the stillness now? And if I hadn’t, then trying to get into that office would likely create enough noise that our presence would be telegraphed to the other intruder in no time flat.
Steve backed up, motioning for me to retreat alongside.
We made our way cautiously back to the stairwell and crept down another level, to the main floor of the Heritage department. Steve pressed down quietly on the door bar, which proved to be unlocked. So, really there was no indicator to let us know whether our intruder was still up on the second floor or here with us on main. We moved to the rotunda, which had some street light spilling through the windows by the doorways and red security lights high in the corners. I wondered if our movement had been monitored somewhere, and whether security forces had been mustered as a result.
Somehow, I thought not. The fire escape, oiled and silent, and the door shims placed where they were needed made me think that this entry had been pretty well planned in advance. We had just stumbled upon it by chance, seeing a light in a window where it shouldn’t have been. I figured the red lights were likely just for fire emergencies, and moved a bit closer to Steve.
Although I had heard the street noises before, Steve was far more attuned to what he was listening for. He moved to the front doors and opened them for two uniformed policemen. Behind them, in a nicely tailored suit, was Steve’s partner, Iain McCorquodale.
Iain looked us over from head to foot and smiled broadly. We were never going to live this one down. Steve shrugged and grinned back. He moved into a huddle with the officers and briefed them on what we had discovered.
“The entry was on the third floor, rear, and we think we may have seen movement in a closed office on the second floor, but the door was secured and we backed off. We haven’t yet searched this floor.”
“We have a car at the rear of the building, so if anyone has made a break for the fire escape, we’ll have them. Let’s see whether we can flush out any quail,” Iain said. “Any idea who or what they’re looking for?”
“No.” I shook my head. “But with all the incidents around historic sites, to see a break-in here seemed a bit too weirdly coincidental.”
“Right. Well, even if it’s a squatter, we have to deal with that. This old place could go up in smoke with the wrong usage.” Iain deployed the two uniformed policemen to search the main floor and then meet him on the second floor. He must have radioed the security people to overwrite the alarms, because we walked up the north staircase, where a sign warned us the doors were alarmed—an anthropomorphic choice of words that normally amused me.
I pointed the way to the office where I had been sure I had seen movement. The door was still closed, so Iain, using his master key, opened it carefully. He had his Taser holster open as he moved into the room, reached the desk lamp, and flicked it on. He looked around and then beckoned us in.
“What do you see? Can you say anything is missing?”
We joined him in the middle of the office. It would be impossible to tell whether someone had ransacked the place or not because of all the paper piled everywhere. There were at least seven piles of file folders stacked on the desk, two more on each of the four filing cabinets along the wall, and three boxes stuffed with rolled-up maps and posters beside the desk. A visitor’s chair had a stack of books on it. Two filing drawers were open. One desk drawer was slightly open as well.
I stepped back and almost knocked over another pile of books behind me.
“You’d have to get in touch with the person whose office this is to tell you that.”
Steve laughed. “How can anyone get anything done in this sort of disorganization?”
“Well, not to defend a packrat, but there may well be some sort of organizing principle here that we just can’t see.”
“Really,” said Iain. I was betting this sort of mess made Iain’s skin crawl. I had once seen the glove compartment of his car, and it was indexed.
“Well, it’s possible that whoever works here does know where everything is.”
“Okay, I’ll grant you that. But you looking around, do you think your intruder was in here?”
Maybe I’d watched too many Hammer horror films in my lifetime, but I wasn’t positive I hadn’t seen a shadow move when I was in the hallway. If I was correct, then the source of the shadow had to have been standing right by the open file drawer. Steve agreed with my estimate and Iain wrote something in his notebook, saying he would make sure they contacted the owner of this office to come in and inventory things from that area specifically.
All three of us left the office. Iain’s cellphone vibrated and he answered. He listened for a minute and then swore.
“The officers found a window in the basement that had been forced open. It must have coincided with us turning off the security, which the perpetrator may have been counting on, or it could have just been a nice little gift. Whatever the case, you were on the money and there was a break-in. I’ll call in a forensic team and secure the place now. You can give your statements tomorrow if you like. I assume”—he smiled, looking at me—“that your prints are on file?”
“Yes,” I grimaced. “Staff Sergeant Keller insisted the last time.”
Iain and Steve laughed at my discomfort.
“Well, some government wonk is going to thank you tomorrow for being so observant tonight.” Steve patted me on the shoulder and then squeezed me to him. “Cheer up, Randy. Keller already has your picture on the boards for both murder investigations. This is just going to be gravy.”
They weren’t making me feel any better. Their boss looked daggers at me any time I got mixed up in an investigation. A look from Keller was deterrent enough for me. They should just put threate
ning pictures of him up all over the subways and bad areas of town, a surefire way to keep crime down.
Steve and I left by the front doors this time and headed for his car.
Once inside the car, I pulled off my tuque and scratched the top of my head. We were not that far ahead in any way. I was still camping at Steve’s place. We had added a wrinkle to the puzzle rather than solving either crime currently clouding my world. And on top of everything, my job was still on the line, with no word from Marni.
Steve was pulling into the underground parking of his building when I realized that Marni might have called me while we were cat-burgling. I reached into my long trouser pocket, where I’d slid my phone, keys, and debit card. I pressed the button on my phone to light up the face of it, and noticed a couple of text messages. The first one was from Marni and said cryptically, “Call me in the morning.” That could mean anything. Worrying about that all night wasn’t going to make for an easy sleep.
The next text message was even more unsettling. It came from an unlisted number and was a combination of photo and text, which would incur me an extra charge. I was curious, though; I rarely got anonymous spam on my phone, since very few people had my number and I never gave it out to businesses. I clicked it open. The picture showed Steve and me in the hallway of St. Stephen’s College. He was looking to the right and had his hand out, pointing toward the stairway door. I, on the other hand, seemed to be looking straight into the camera, like the proverbial deer in the headlights.
The light was low and the image was dim. The text was crystal clear, though. It said, “Keep out of my way.”
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Steve sent the photo immediately to Iain’s cellphone, along with a terse explanation, and to the forensic team at the station. We were told to bring my phone in so they could try to trace the sender, though they were holding out only faint hope. Burner, or disposable phones, something I had only ever heard about on The Wire, were becoming more and more popular with both travellers and criminals right across North America.