"Ronnie," I said, "It's Gin."
"Ouch." He had reached up to touch a tender spot, and his fingers came away bloody.
"Don't try to sit up."
"Okay," he agreed, easing back onto the floor.
"I've going to call for help," I began, but just then an alarm went off and obliterated my words.
The intruder again, making his escape.
Chapter 24
WHILE THE NFL FILMS burglar alarm battered our ears with intermittent blasts of noise, I asked Ronnie who hit him. The police would arrive any minute, and who knew what would happen then?
"No idea," he shouted back. His head was still resting on the floor between the movable shelves, and trying to lift it made him wince. When the siren shrieked again, he covered his ears with his hands.
"Why'd you come up here?" I couldn’t blame him for not getting my question the first time; my ears were ringing, too. I yelled it again.
"To borrow last week's master tape," he answered. For me, sweet guy. "Police have the three-quarter inch copy," he finished during the next blessed silence.
"Was it there?" Confusion. "The tape. Was it there?"
"Never got that far."
"Do you remember anything about before you got hit? A sound, a smell?"
"Not really."
Too bad, and a little hard to believe. Then suddenly I got it. One of the mercies Mother Nature occasionally offered was a spot of amnesia to blot out a painful accident. So maybe Ronnie really didn't remember. And maybe, just maybe, he would never piece together the rest–the part where he almost became lunchmeat.
"You be okay while I let the police in?" I shouted over the alarm. Everyone else was gone, and clearly all of the security measures were intact.
He grimaced, but said, "Sure."
I patted his knee then departed with my hands over my own ears, reassuring myself as I found my way back downstairs that no intelligent intruder would stick around and endure this noise. Victims, unfortunately, didn't have much of a choice.
At least the dimly lighted halls no longer held any horror. I didn't even get lost. I just wished I knew what to smash to disable that damn alarm.
When the police car roared up to the front entrance, I put a magazine in the door before rushing out to greet them.
"My cousin was attacked by an intruder,” I shouted at the two officers as soon as they emerged from their squad car. “He's hurt,"
The first man reached back in to radio for paramedics, additional plainclothesmen, and a forensics unit. Meanwhile, the driver hurried inside to shut off the alarm and restore heavenly silence. I wanted to kiss him.
Several minutes later, about when my ears stopped buzzing, a fatherly type named Detective Schwartz arrived and took over. A jowly, sour-looking man, he questioned Ronnie in a way that reminded me of a junior high math teacher I detested. "Did you see the assailant?" "Any idea what he was after?" Ronnie seemed to get the answers wrong every time. It took the paramedics arrival to put a stop to Schwartz's third degree.
Even though Ronnie was up on his feet and feeling pretty decent by then, an intent young woman in a no-nonsense uniform insisted that he ride along over to South Jersey Hospital for a more thorough examination. Her partner concurred, but Ronnie went all macho on them and balked.
"Ex-jock," I explained to the woman, who rolled her eyes with disgust but certainly not defeat. Rather she drew herself up to about five-foot-four, swaggered to within eighteen inches of Ronnie's face, and punctuated the words with a finger poke.
"Listen," she said. "You need ex-rays, and I need to get back on the road. So deal with it." She wore a long French braid of brown laced with blonde, and she looked pretty cute when she was mad.
Ronnie gave her his languid John Wayne smile then tossed me his van keys with a wink.
"Guess I gotta go," he told Schwartz over his shoulder, and the cop snorted.
"I'll be along in a minute," I told my cousin's retreating back, but he and the cute paramedic were strolling arm and arm so I don’t think he heard.
The ambulance had scarcely departed before a uniformed officer bounded into the upstairs hall from the stairwell. "Looks like somebody broke into a storage area downstairs," he announced.
"Show me," Schwartz ordered, puffing his chest with authority.
Trying not to attract anyone's attention, I followed along.
The officer led us into the anteroom of the film vault. With the light on we could see that the windowed door to the vault had been broken, circumventing the security keypad with simple force.
Brave bastard, was my first thought. Ronnie's attacker hadn't set off the alarm as he was leaving; he set it off smashing this door–with me and Ronnie upstairs!
So the intruder had been in at least two of the four storage areas I remembered. Possibly all four. But why?
And then I knew.
"Wonder what's in here?" Detective Schwartz mused.
"The original negatives," I said, my voice startling him as he finally realized I was there.
"All the original film," I elaborated, including the parts that didn't make it into the specials–the highlight tapes.
"Oh?" Schwartz seemed amused that I knew this. "And why do you suppose anyone would want to break in here?"
"Not just anyone. Tim Duffy's murderer."
Schwartz inhaled deeply and let it out slow. "Whooee, you sure do have an imagination."
I scowled and set my hands on my hips. "Think about it, Detective," I all but ordered the man. "Duffy was shot at Nimitz stadium right after the Tomcats/Hombres game. Doesn't that suggest that something happened during the game that set off the killer?"
Waving his head caused Schwartz’s jowls to wiggle. "Not necessarily," he disagreed.
I sighed. "You do believe Duffy was killed by somebody who attended the game?"
"Of course. One of the thirty-five or forty thousand fans, if you ask me. You ever seen those nuts on TV?" Make something of that, Missy, said his mule-stubborn face.
I slipped into girly mode and waved a dainty hand toward the broken door. "Why don’t I just look and see whether last week's cans are still here?"
“Don’t you take another step,” the detective ordered.
“Are you in a hurry, or not?”
“Do you want the perpetrator convicted, or not?” he countered, and of course he was right. Heaven forbid I should shed a strand of red hair and contaminate the crime scene.
And so it was the sleepy-eyed officer who found the smashed window who donned paper booties and rubber gloves. Switching on a flashlight, he carefully entered the cavernous room filled with rows of metal shelves stuffed with hundreds of silver, red, and blue film cans. Luckily, everything was clearly labeled so he was able to report back in less than four minutes.
This year’s Tomcats/Hombres canisters were missing.
He took a few extra seconds to check twice. Yep. Missing. Tim Duffy’s killer was way way ahead of us all.
"Give Officer Winthorpe here a sample of your hair," Schwartz snapped as if he longed to pull it out himself.
“But I wasn’t...”
The detective merely glared, so I complied without further protest.
"So now do you believe me?" I inquired without much optimism.
"Believe what?"
"That Ronnie surprised Tim Duffy's killer, who then came in here to steal some film he thinks will incriminate him?" Him, not her. I already knew how much a woman would stand out here on a Sunday night.
Schwartz wagged his head again to indicate that his patience had run out. "I believe your cousin interrupted a robbery and got his head bashed for being in the way."
"But you do agree it was the film of last week's Tomcats game the thief was after?" My own patience had also thinned.
"Mebbee. They would be valuable, what with being Duffy's last game and all."
"No." No, no, no. "I mean, yes, the film would be valuable, but don't you think the killer probably wanted it because it incri
minates him?"
Schwartz lifted his chin the better to peer at me through the lower part of his glasses. "And who exactly are we accusing of doing all this?" he inquired with a curled lip.
Even though I knew I was being prodded along a cattle chute to my own doom, I told him I had a few people in mind.
"Walker Cross got benched during that game, so gaining the yardage or catches or whatever to get a one point seven million dollar bonus suddenly became almost unattainable."
"So?"
"So he might have blamed Tim Duffy for his benching."
"Blamed the quarterback for the coach taking him out of the game? Hummm." Schwartz played with his jowls as if he were thinking.
"Yes. Cross missed a simple pass in the first quarter." More accurately, he belly-flopped to the ground like a clumsy oaf, but my listeners were already too eager to be amused, so I skipped that.
"Or Willet Smith," I told them. "Before Duffy's death he was the Tomcats' third string quarterback. Now he's second in line." Failing skills, overblown pride–for some these were the ingredients of desperation.
"Um humm," Schwartz mused.
Trying not to make Roger Prindel’s bad habit sound like a slanderous accusation, I worded what Pamela Wilkinson said about him carefully.
"Also, I was told the offensive coordinator likes to gamble–but not on football."
"You don't say."
"Yes. And for a billionaire, Bobby Frye is very careful with his money."
"And you know this because...?"
"I had lunch with him last week. "
"You had lunch with Bobby Frye." Schwartz had been leaning on the hallway wall, but now he stood up and paced. "Are you friends then?"
"No. I just met him that day."
"And he invited you to lunch, just like that."
"No. I invited him first."
"Begging your pardon, of course, but why do you think he agreed to go?"
I wasn’t at all happy with Schwartz's attitude, but it was important for him to hear all this. He was the one investigating the break-in, after all.
"I'm a stockholder," I explained, grateful once again that it was true, "but that's not the point. The point is he's cheap, especially for a billionaire. If he is a billionaire. You know he's being sued, right?"
"And why’s that?"
"Mismanagement. Alleged mismanagement of one of his holding company's companies."
"No," Schwartz corrected me. "Why do you say he’s cheap?"
“Because he wouldn't pay for a soda that the waiter didn't bring.”
Schwartz and Winthorpe exchanged a look.
"Can't say I blame the guy," Winthorpe remarked.
"Well, no," I agreed, although I was disappointed to think that wealthy people still worried about every penny, "but he didn’t want to pay Walker Cross’s bonus either, and maybe Duffy threatened to tell the press that was why Cross got benched. With two games left in the season Frye wouldn’t have expected the public to pick up on the financial reason behind that."
Schwartz’s lips twitched. "So what'd you and Frye have for lunch, filet mignon?"
I huffed with frustration. "No. I had chicken salad and he had the Jewish Mother's Club."
"Well then," Schwartz said through a twitchy smile. "That proves he's our man."
I folded my arms hard across my chest and pressed my mouth tight. I only asked the question because I had to.
"Why?"
The detective's nose crinkled as if tickled by carbonation. Then in anticipation of more pleasure at my expense, he met my eye. "Because guilt is the Jewish mother's club."
His laughter broke loose at last and leaped onto Winthorpe.
I squinted into the shadows, watching my dignity disappear.
Sobering abruptly, Schwarz returned to fatherly condescension. "Go home, Ms. Barnes," he told me. "We have work to do here."
Chapter 25
A QUICK CALL TO THE hospital where they’d taken Ronnie informed me he was still being observed in the ER.
Outside I located his van and got going. The rain had finally quit, and the quiet, twenty-minute drive through the nighttime streets offered a welcome respite. At 2 A.M. even the inside of the emergency area seemed hushed.
A nurse with a diamond stud in her nose showed me where my cousin was sleeping and brought me up to speed. Apparently, the doctor was worried about a concussion and wanted Ronnie to remain at least until around mid-morning.
I couldn't quite bring myself to nudge him awake, so I waited, and in a few minutes an intern about eight inches taller than me came in and did it for me.
"Mr. Covington. Hi there. You okay? How many fingers am I holding up?"
"How many am I?" he replied. Fortunately, the woman wasn’t a prude.
"Don't stay long. He needs his rest," she addressed me over her shoulder.
"Is that what you call this?" the patient muttered.
“He’ll be out of here soon,” the intern told me as she tugged the curtain shut.
I eased around so Ronnie wouldn't be lying on his sore spot while we talked. Finding the push button that operated his bed, he raised himself until we were more or less eye to eye.
"Find out anything?" he asked, his concern showing through.
"Yes, but it’s not good," I all but whispered. The cubicle was bracketed by two walls and two curtains that rendered privacy a thin illusion. "It looks as if our guy got his hands on last week's negatives."
Ronnie swore. The negatives were sacred, the genesis of everything the company did. After they had been developed and printed, they were scarcely touched.
"Would the outtakes from the film still be around somewhere?" I asked. That Tim's killer had taken a considerable risk to steal the negatives meant he was worried about something that never made it into the special, which meant our best and perhaps only chance of identifying the murderer lay buried in the outtakes–if they still existed anywhere other than in the stolen film cans.
Ronnie thought aloud. "Dennis might still have the print he worked on."
"Who's Dennis?"
"The guy who edited that game."
"Can we call him?"
"Right now?"
"I'm not going to sleep until I know who has those outtakes. Are you?"
Ronnie blinked himself a little more awake. "Hand me the phone." A nice serviceable instrument of communication sat right there on the food tray at Ronnie's elbow, for informing relatives of your sudden indisposition, arranging for babysitters, alerting the media. Whatever.
Ronnie dialed and waited for his co-worker to wake up.
"Dennis," he said after the groggy answer. "It's Ronnie. Listen, I'm in the hospital emergency room...Nah, just a bump on the head...but I have to ask you something important...Do you still have the Tomcats/Hombres print from last week?"
My cousin's dark eyes fluttered. "You do?" Both our faces widened into foolish grins.
"That's a huge relief," Ronnie told the editor. "But now I've got to ask a big favor. First thing tomorrow do you think you can set up my cousin to look at it?...Yeah, Duffy's murder. Gin is...she's just onto something, okay?" More listening before the men said goodbye.
"Sorry," Ronnie apologized. "I just didn't know how to explain you."
I was bouncing in my chair. "Never mind. What did he say?"
"He said he used the AVID to edit last week's game, which means he erased the outtakes at the end of the day, but he held onto the print because he expected the cops to ask for it. You know, figuring there might be something there. But he also said in all the times he viewed that footage, he didn't notice anything unusual."
I thought I understood. The AVID allowed a film to be edited the way a computer processed words. You typed in commands and the sophisticated machine cut and pasted without actually using scissors or glue. The good stuff got saved while the unwanted footage was simply deleted. Owing to Dennis's foresight, his working print was still safely locked in his office. Otherwise the killer might have found a
nd destroyed it.
"Is he really going to let me watch it?" I pressed. "On a Monday?" The busiest day of their week.
"Sure. He owes me a favor or two. Of course if I don't go in tomorrow, the shoe'll be on the other foot."
I smiled at his work ethic, one of the main ingredients to his success at NFL Films.
Ron yawned, and my eyes were drooping, too. We were both terrified that something else would go wrong before I could view the outtakes but there was only so much a person could hope to accomplish running on adrenaline. I got directions to Ron’s apartment and kissed his forehead by way of goodbye.
I slogged out into the post-rain mist and drove my cousin's van to my cousin's bed, where I treated myself to a solid six hours of sleep. Ronnie’s nurse had confessed that so far he hadn’t shown any signs of a concussion and, quite probably, could be picked up at ten. I did not want to be late.
IMMEDIATELY AFTER I ransomed Ronnie out of the hospital, we drove straight to NFL Films to descend upon his film editor. About forty years old, Dennis's fair complexion seemed reddened by an inner fire that dictated short sleeves even on December 15.
“How’s the head?” he asked Ronnie after introductions were made.
“Please,” he said. “The film cans? They’re the reason I got this lump.” He gestured toward the thick bandage on the back of his head.
With a sharp nod, Dennis proceeded to unlock his right-hand lower desk drawer and extract two beautiful blue fifteen-inch film canisters. Both Ronnie and I breathed with relief.
He immediately began to set the first reel onto an adjacent apparatus he called a flatbed, the predecessor to the more advanced AVID.
"Do you know what you're looking for?" he inquired.
"Know it when I see it," I replied.
The flatbed was a four foot wide, three foot deep tabletop supporting what looked like six record turntables, three left and three right. It had a viewing screen at the center of the back and control knobs for forward, backward, and slow motion that even I could operate. After Dennis finished threading the first reel of last week's print through pulleys, he leaned on his hands, the better to look me up and down.
A Score to Settle Page 15