Flight ik-8

by Jan Burke

  An urgent invitation to come alone to an empty building? Only an amateur — someone who had watched too many B movies — would have issued it. No one in his department would believe for a moment that someone who had reached his rank would truly come alone. And so he had felt relieved, because the invitation must have been from an outsider. Annoying that the man — if indeed it was a man, for the voice had been altered — had discovered his cell phone number. Obviously the caller had some contacts within the department.

  He thought of the caller’s distorted voice, tried to remember all that he had said, the phrases he had used. Bredloe had tried to see if it could be traced. It was — to a phone booth outside the downtown bus station. By then, the caller was long gone.

  He might have ignored the call, considered it a crank, had it come at any other time. But the phone had rung not long after he had taken a look at some of the documents and evidence in the Randolph cases. He had been made uneasy by Frank Harriman’s questions, uneasy enough to begin suspecting that someone in his department had framed Lefebvre.

  He was convinced that the call was a crude trap, and had set a more sophisticated trap of his own. While he doubted anything would come of it, he still found himself hoping the caller would follow through. These days, most of his time was spent pushing papers, dealing with department politics, and coping with personnel problems — like the ongoing conflict between Carlson and Harriman. It was good to be involved more actively. He knew the tactical commander and others thought he had lost his mind, but that was just too damn bad. All his “political” work in the department was paying off — if, on rare occasions, he chose to do something on a whim, they had to live with it.

  Reaching the entrance to the building itself, Bredloe pushed gently at the brass handle on the old oak door. The door, which should have been locked, opened easily. He hesitated, wondering if the caller had unlocked it earlier in the day, if the construction crew had erred, or if his own team had been a little careless.

  He stepped inside, standing still while he let his eyes adjust to the darkness. Although the late summer afternoon was still warm and bright, little warmth or light filtered into the old building.

  The Sheffield Club, founded by one of the city’s leading families before the turn of the century, had once been a private establishment for the city’s wealthiest merchants. It had survived the 1933 earthquake that flattened much of downtown, but by the 1950s, the club had found other quarters, and the building had been sold to the first of a long series of practical businessmen who saw no need to preserve its original charm.

  Now the Sheffield Club was the pride of the Historical Preservation Commission, which had found a local investor willing to spend the money needed to restore it — and to retrofit it to meet current earthquake standards.

  Bredloe’s wife, Miriam, was on the commission, so he had received constant updates on the project over the dinner table at home. Although it appeared to be little more than a brick shell at the moment, he knew that workers in the building had made several discoveries. While replacing the flooring in the building’s entry hall, they had uncovered an elaborate, sunshaped mosaic depicting a golden chariot pulled by winged horses and driven by a half-clad muscular young man. Miriam had shown her husband a photograph of it one evening and assured him that the fellow could be none other than Apollo, but Bredloe pointed out his resemblance to Hector Sheffield, one of the wilder Sheffield sons — a fellow he had learned about while helping her prepare a lecture on the shadier side of Las Piernas’s history.

  Hector-Apollo had not been the only discovery, though. Just last Friday a press conference had been held on the second floor of the three-story building to show off another treasure — a mural on the north side of the second-floor gallery that surrounded the entry, a richly colored painting of a mythological figure whom Bredloe had continued to refer to as Neptune, even after Miriam told him the name of the work — according to a tarnished brass plate not far from it — was “Poseidon.” Until a few weeks ago, the ancient god of the sea and the plate bearing his Greek name had been hidden beneath some cheap paneling. When they attended the press conference, Miriam had been so relieved that her husband did not recognize a resemblance between the god and any reprobates from earlier generations of the Sheffield family, she didn’t correct Bredloe’s stubborn use of the Roman name.

  He had felt completely at ease strolling around the Sheffield Club with his wife on Friday.

  But on Friday, Lefebvre’s body had still been waiting on a mountainside, silent and undiscovered. On Friday, no one had come into his office hinting that Lefebvre had been framed. On Friday, he would not have agreed to meet an anonymous caller at the Sheffield Club, with or without the precautions he had taken today.

  He knew it was not just the coolness of the air inside the building that was sending a chill down his spine.

  “I’m here,” he announced, his voice reverberating in the darkness. He turned on his standard-issue police flashlight. Its beam glinted off the golden floor tiles. Bredloe wanted to be sure the two marksmen who had hidden themselves on the second-floor gallery knew where he was — and did not mistake him for the caller. He thought it highly unlikely that the caller was in the building.

  Still, if need be, the flashlight could also serve as a weapon — it was heavy enough to inflict damage on an attacker. He held it in his left hand, away from his body — unwilling to let it serve as a personal bull’s-eye for someone aiming a gun. Bredloe kept his right hand near his own revolver.

  Had the caller been scared off?

  He heard a sound.

  Upstairs, Bredloe thought, somewhere along the gallery. He knew the marksmen were there, but they would be silent. Was the caller up there? He didn’t like the idea of a potential enemy standing somewhere above him. He took a small step forward and moved the flashlight, directing the beam upward, near where he thought he had heard the sound. Eerie shadows cast by scaffolding loomed before him, mixed with strange gray reflections as the light played off plastic sheeting draped here and there in the entry hall. He thought he saw a face, then realized it belonged to Neptune.

  “I’m here,” he said again, and heard the question echo back to him, his voice sounding loud in the emptiness.

  There was no answer. He took a cautious step out onto the mosaic.

  Instantly, the area was flooded with light. He crouched low, gun unholstered, then realized he had set off some sort of motion detector. Security cameras were catching his foolish reaction. If the cameras had audio capabilities, he thought, they must be picking up the sound of his heart thudding in his chest.

  He heard a brief, faint, rustling noise and saw a paper airplane sailing down from the second-floor gallery, making a vertical loop before gliding to a stop near Apollo’s golden curls.

  Bredloe stayed where he was, angry now. “All right, Tactical, so he hasn’t shown. Is this your idea of a joke?”

  The snipers slowly moved into view. “Is there a problem, sir?” one of them asked.

  The lights went out again, apparently because no further motion was detected.

  “Sir?” the SWAT officer called.

  “You knew about these motion detectors?” Bredloe called up in the darkness.

  “Yes, sir.”

  He wasn’t going to let them know he had been riled. “Nothing. Return to your posts. Let’s give him a little more time.”

  He heard them moving.

  He waited. The building was silent.

  The airplane still lay on the tile. It annoyed him to think that a situation this serious could be reduced by those hot dogs into fun and games. He walked out to the center of the mosaic, causing the motion detectors to light the entry again. Keeping his eyes on the upper level, he bent to pick up the airplane, setting the flashlight down just long enough to tuck the paper into his jacket pocket. As he picked up the flashlight, the lights above him went out again, which puzzled him — he was still moving, so the detectors should have kept them on
.

  Suddenly he heard a mechanical sound from somewhere on the scaffolding, and then a loud bang behind him. He caught a brief glimpse of shadowy objects falling from above, like bats suddenly stirring from a cave, and tried to move out of their path — but the first of the bricks struck hard on his back and shoulders, making him shout in pain. He heard the tactical team shouting from above as he moved his arms up, trying to shield his head, but this only caused his forearms to be broken and his fingers smashed, so that he fired the gun even as his hand lost its grasp on it, and dropped the flashlight almost in the same instant. He doubled over, crying out for help, stumbling forward, and still the awful rain continued, bruising and breaking him. One glancing blow to his head hit hard enough to bring him dizzily to his knees, the next felled him completely, so that he sprawled against the white wings of Apollo’s horses, staining them with his blood, and lost consciousness as tiles of the sun god shattered all around him.

  13

  Monday, July 10, 7:25 P.M.

  St. Anne’s Hospital

  Pete Baird met Frank at the entrance to the waiting room. He looked shaken, and Frank was afraid that he had arrived too late.

  Pete had been paging him, leaving messages on his home answering machine. Frank had heard Pete’s voice on the machine as he had followed Irene into the house, saying, “Bredloe’s at the emergency room at St. Anne’s — he might not make it,” and Frank had hurriedly picked up the call. Only twenty-five minutes had passed since then — but maybe it had been twenty-five minutes too many.

  Pete must have read the fear on his face, though, because he quickly said, “No — we haven’t had any more news yet.”

  “He’s still in surgery?”

  “Yeah. It’s not looking good. Head injury and all kinds of bone fractures and cuts and bruises and God knows what else. Head injuries worry them the most. Miriam hasn’t even been able to see him yet — she’s really shaken up.”

  Frank looked across the room and saw Bredloe’s wife, pale and silent, staring toward the doors that led to the surgery center. Next to her was Chief Ellis Hale himself, who sat stone-faced while one of his aides tried to calm a distraught Louise Oswald. Not far from them, several men from the division huddled together, speaking in low voices. Lieutenant Carlson, Jake Matsuda, Reed Collins, and others. They had seen him enter, but he had not been met with scowls or coldness — not even from Carlson. Like Pete, they had apparently decided to cease hostilities for the moment.

  Frank turned back to Pete. “Was Miriam with him when it happened?”

  “No — I thought she might have been, when I first heard it was the Sheffield. Captain had his picture in the paper over the weekend, ’cause he went with her to some shindig they had there on Friday. So I figured she had taken him back to the building for some reason — but that turns out not to be the case.”

  “What happened?”

  “The captain had a whole operation set up down there, and on short notice.” He described the precautions Bredloe had taken.

  “So what was this anonymous caller meeting him about?”

  “He wouldn’t tell anyone. According to the Wheeze, she came back from running an errand for him at a little after five o’clock, and he was on the cell phone with someone then. She locked her desk up and was ready to call it a day when the captain asked her to get Tactical on the line — one of many calls.” He paused, eyeing Frank speculatively. “She said he’d been acting weird ever since he talked to you.”

  “Like everybody else in the department, the captain was upset about the Lefebvre case,” Frank said. “Now that you’ve remembered I’m working it, are you going to stop talking to me?”

  Pete shrugged. “I wish you’d face facts, but — no, I was ready to call a truce anyway. Besides, Rachel found out I wasn’t speaking to you, and — let’s just say I thought I was going to need to check in here myself.”

  “Remind me to thank your wife the next time I see her. But tell me more about what happened to the captain. Any idea who called him?”

  “No. Pay phone at the bus station — too many prints to make it worthwhile dusting for them. The lab found one little area on it that had been wiped down and figured that the caller cleaned up after himself.”

  “So Bredloe gets a call and just trots off to the Sheffield Club?” Frank asked. “That doesn’t sound like him.”

  “No, but that’s just item one on a long list of things we haven’t figured out. We’re not even sure what happened after he was there. First, he keeps setting off the motion detectors and cameras in the entryway — all of which, we learned, was just installed today. So because of the lights attached to the motion detectors, it goes bright and dark and makes the marksmen’s work more difficult — they hardly adjust their eyes to darkness and suddenly it’s bright again. Then the captain says something that makes no sense to the marksmen — is this ‘their idea of a joke.’ Next thing they know, there’s this sound, and a pile of bricks falls down on him from some scaffolding.”

  “The building had been searched, though—”

  “All done by remote.”

  “What? Remote-control bricks?”

  “No — but there was this gizmo beneath the pallet they were on. Kinda like a miniature jack. Small, but strong enough to tip the pallet. It straightens up and suddenly the bricks are at an angle and falling. Lab hasn’t had much time to study it, but they think it’s homemade — not something commercially available.”

  “So with luck they’ll be able to track down the sellers of the components.”

  “Right. And track the buyer from there.”

  “The cameras didn’t catch anyone setting up that device?”

  “Well,” Pete said uneasily, “that’s another problem. Those cameras and motion detectors just arrived today — at the end of the day. Battery operated. And guess what was being taped on the machine? Nothing, that’s what. It was a dummy setup. I mean, the monitor worked, but the tape machine didn’t.”

  “What did the security company have to say for itself?”

  “You mean ‘Las Piernas Security’? There is no such security company. No one ordered those cameras or lights or monitor.”

  “The construction crew allowed this phony company to have the run of the place?”

  “Did a very good job of faking city papers, they claim. Apparently there had been complaints about building security all along.”

  “Not hard to see why.”

  “Something else — nobody can figure this out — there was a little remote-controlled fan.”

  “What?”

  “This other little gizmo reacts to a signal and turns a small fan on. But we can’t figure out what the fan was supposed to do.”

  “So no one saw the cameras being installed?”

  “Saw it, paid no attention. And although we got a description on the installer, it was pretty vague. White male, medium build, thirty to fifty — yeah, I know, but the age guesses were all over the place — light brown hair, brown eyes, mustache. About all we have to go on, though.”

  “What was the range on the remotes?”

  “Not all that far — lab says he was probably less than a block away the whole time.”

  They became aware of a small commotion and saw a doctor wearing scrubs walking toward Chief Hale and Miriam Bredloe. He escorted the two of them to another room. All conversation in the waiting area stopped. When they returned, it was clear that the captain’s wife had been crying. The chief’s expression was grim.

  The Wheeze moaned loudly and Frank heard the chief snap, “Get that fool woman out of here,” to the aide. The aide complied, hustling her away so quickly, she didn’t seem to notice Frank’s presence as they went past him.

  With Miriam, Hale was all solicitude, gently guiding her to a seat next to him, speaking to her in soothing tones. Frank was relieved to see her grow visibly calmer.

  “She doesn’t have any friends or family with her?” he asked Pete.

  “Her sister is d
riving down from Tulare, so it may be a few hours before she’s here. We asked about friends, but to be honest, I think she was still in a state of shock then. The chief has been good to her, and she knows we’re all here for her, too.”

  Another half hour passed. Miriam Bredloe gradually began looking around the room. She saw Frank and beckoned him to come nearer. He approached as the chief watched him with apparent interest. Frank nodded a greeting to him. The two men seldom came in contact with each other.

  “Thank you for coming here,” Miriam said. “Is Irene with you?”

  “No, I’m sorry, she’s not,” he said uneasily. She’s mad as hell at me.

  Miriam Bredloe turned to Hale and said, “Detective Harriman’s wife shares my love of old buildings. She’s written stories about the commission’s work for the Express and has done a great deal to help us save a number of Las Piernas’s treasures from the wrecking ball. We’ve become friends.”

  “You don’t say,” the chief murmured, seeming to regard Frank a little more closely. Frank wondered if Chief Hale was among those who thought wrecking balls represented progress, or if he thought Irene must be the type of woman who kissed up to the boss’s wife — an idea that would have made Frank laugh out loud under any other circumstances.

  “My husband was going to meet an informer in the Sheffield Club tonight,” Miriam said. “Louise — not that I think she’s very sensible in a crisis — but Louise seemed to think you’d know which one it was.”

  “Me? I’m sorry, Miriam — I don’t. I wish I did.”

  “Oh,” she said, clearly disappointed. “I guess Louise was mistaken.”

  “Louise sometimes…” Glancing at the chief, Frank decided not to finish the sentence.