Island of Thieves

by Glen Erik Hamilton

  “Only the family and I have admission,” Anders said. “Which is why I wanted you to review the security features today. Tomorrow there will not be time.”

  Suspended track lights inside the gallery switched on as the men entered, adding to the illumination from three skylights above. The single room was forty feet square and fifteen tall. Whitewashed wooden planks covered the walls in vertical stripes. The floor had been paved in tiles of carmine-colored stone. Each skylight was an opaque white. Shaw guessed the glass had been treated to shield the art from UV radiation.

  He had seen only one piece from Rohner’s acquisitions, the Egyptian statue of the underworld baboon who devoured the souls of the unworthy. Now he realized that the piece was part of a whole.

  The gallery held thirty or more cylindrical pedestals, just like the one at the Droma campus. Each pedestal held its own small statue of stone or ceramic. A handful of additional figures occupied wall cabinets made of white oak. Shaw knew a small amount about art from working with his grandfather—Dono had enjoyed a short run of heisting midcentury modern paintings when those had been in vogue for Seattle’s elite—but his experience didn’t extend to statuary.

  He couldn’t get a sense of a unifying theme. There were two pieces that could be Egyptian, like the baboon, one with a jackal’s head and one of a bird. The most colorful was a seated Buddha in glazed ceramic. A crude bronze Nordic figure might be the oldest. The most valuable, to his eye, was a dark stone statue of a multiarmed feminine entity, probably East Asian. The figurine’s little platform and headdress were set with rubies.

  Shaw pointed to Anders’s suit pocket and the silver wand. “How many of those are programmed for gallery access?”

  “Three, currently. Mine, Sebastien’s, and Sofia’s.”

  “And the unprogrammed ones?”

  “None of this type on the island.” Anders tapped the silver tip of the wand. “I have four spare black wands in a safe, in my room, in case one of the wands for the staff stops working or”—he indicated Shaw—“if a new person joins us.”

  “How are they programmed?”

  “By me, using my computer. Which is also kept in the safe when not on my person.”

  “What about your head of security? Why doesn’t he or she handle that small stuff?”

  “The Rohners prefer that I do so.”

  Shaw raised his eyebrows at the evasion. “Can the black wands be programmed to open these doors?”

  “I don’t understand your concern. Your focus should be on this room.”

  “The easiest way into a locked room is to have the key. If I were a thief—”

  Anders frowned at that.

  “—my first choice would be to obtain or reprogram one of the wands. Much easier to pick Ms. Sofia’s pocket than to break in,” Shaw concluded.

  “I see. The answer is no. The silver wands have hard-coded encryption that allows particular access points, as well as climate control and other features not available in the simpler version.”

  “Climate? The wands change room temperature?”

  “For the family members. If they are alone in an area of the estate, the rooms will adjust to their preferences.”

  Shaping the world to suit them, Shaw thought.

  The soft spot was how well the principals kept track of their silver wands. He could believe that Anders was diligent. Sebastien and Sofia Rohner might be easier targets.

  “Tell me about the alarm system,” he said.

  “Breaking one of the doors or the skylights”—Anders pointed upward—“activates the alarm. Entirely wireless. I receive the signal on my phone and on any of my computers, as do Sebastien and all of our security personnel.”

  “Police?”

  “The closest are in Friday Harbor. County officers. Warren Kilbane, our security head, and his team are best prepared to handle any trouble.”

  “How many on the team?”

  “Is that relevant?”

  “It is if we have to watch the gallery around the clock.”

  “That level of scrutiny won’t be required. But there are three security officers on the island this week, counting Warren.”

  Shaw examined the contact points on the doors and the little transceivers above the door frame on each. He knew the make. American, reliable, working off an encrypted cellular signal exchanged constantly with a central hub.

  “Where’s the control panel for the system?” he said.

  Anders went to one of the oaken cabinets. It swung away from the wall on a hidden hinge. A small white case like a fuse box jutted at chest height. Anders took a key from his pocket and unlocked it. A touchscreen and the black brick of a twelve-volt battery were bolted within.

  Shaw tapped the screen. The maker’s logo appeared, and then a menu of options for testing and configuring the system. He flipped through the selections. Standard fare. Rohner apparently hadn’t customized the setup.

  “I saw the solar array on the way in,” he said. “Does that supply all the island’s power?”

  Anders nodded. “There are backup generators and batteries in case of interruption.”

  “What about juice to the alarms in here?”

  “They receive power from the main system but have batteries as well, as you can see.” He indicated the twelve-volt. “If either the power or the cellular signal is interrupted for more than five seconds, the alarm is activated.”

  “Same for the cell tower? Does it have its own batteries?”

  “Yes.”

  Shaw looked at the panel again. Checks and balances. Interrupt the power, the alarm goes off. Interrupt the signal to any one of the contacts, the alarm goes off. You could knock out the cell tower entirely, but even that might not be quick enough.

  Pretty good. Not perfect.

  “Anything else?” he said. “Pressure plates under the statues? Hidden cameras?”

  “The family has chosen not to install cameras on the estate.” Off Shaw’s doubtful look, Anders added, “This is a home, and a place for honored guests.”

  Foolhardy, Shaw thought. Putting appearances over millions in irreplaceable art. Maybe it was some sort of flex.

  Anders closed the control panel and swung the wall cabinet back into place. He touched the tip of one long finger to the blue-tinted statue in the cabinet. A man with four arms, holding a shell and a discus among other things.

  “Sebastien’s humor,” he said. “A protector god.”

  “Vishnu,” said Shaw.

  “Yes.” Anders showed a hint of surprise. “Do you need to know anything else?”

  “Yeah. I’d like your best guess as to who I’m looking for.”

  “I would not know.”

  “You know who’s attending the conference. If one of them is planning to lift one of these trinkets, you must have an opinion. Who’s the number-one contender?”

  “Really.”

  “Then forget our mystery burglar for a minute. Tell me about them as business associates.”

  “Mr. Shaw, your questions are immaterial. Sebastien wants assurance that his collection is secure. That will be satisfactory.”

  Shaw folded his arms. “You don’t believe there’s going to be a theft.”

  “I believe your job here is complete.”

  Anders opened the door to the outside and motioned for Shaw to exit. After a moment he did.

  “The Rohners have invited you to dinner this evening,” Anders said. “Apart from that event, I expect you to allow the guests their privacy. There is little for you to do. You may stay in your room to write your analysis of the system here. If you wish to be outside, you will remain near the maintenance buildings on the south side of the island. An appropriate place for our presumptive facilities manager.”

  On the opposite side of the estate from the gallery. Short of marooning him in a dinghy offshore, Shaw couldn’t be placed much more out of the way.

  “As to Sebastien’s concerns about theft,” Anders continued, “should you have an
y suspicions, you will bring those to my attention and my attention alone. Are we clear on the point?”

  “Crystal.”

  Anders stalked away in the direction of the main house. Shaw watched him go before heading down the slope, to where the waves lapped at the rocky shore.

  It struck him, as he walked, what the statues in Rohner’s collection had in common. Deities. Each one an idol of a major or minor god to their culture. All of them objects of worship.

  At one time, maybe millennia past, someone had knelt and prayed to every piece in that gallery.

  Olen Anders reached his room—the only private room in the main house not given to a Rohner family member—and sat at his desk. He looked at the small metronome that had once been his father’s.

  Anders was not given to mementos. His father, Klaus, had been a piano teacher, and when Klaus died, the device had passed to his second son. Anders had found its ticks soothing as a boy. He’d decided to keep the metronome. Over the years it had become habit to take it with him while traveling. Especially on important trips. He was self-aware enough to know that its mere presence quieted his mind. He freed the metronome’s pendulum and slid the weight to the top of the rod. Its slow beat filled the room.

  He had allowed the criminal Shaw to agitate him. The man was different from what he had expected. Not a lout, skilled with his hands but dull in reason. Sebastien had told him Shaw was blunt, even rude, but intelligent as well. Anders had assumed that Sebastien was simply giving the thief the benefit of the doubt in his desire to move ahead without delay.

  Shaw was impertinent. Sebastien had been correct on that as well. Even the scars that marred the man’s face so dramatically lent him something of a mocking look. Anders felt certain that his orders that Shaw remain at a distance from the art gallery had fallen on selectively deaf ears.

  He and Sebastien wanted Shaw on the island, a memorable presence to be seen by the guests. Shaw’s absence later would be similarly noted. That was the sum of the man’s purpose. To be noticed and then suddenly gone. Sebastien—and himself, too, Anders admitted—had assumed that Shaw would pass the days on the island as idly as possible. That he would gladly accept an early departure with his payment, hurrying off to squander the money in due speed.

  But if Shaw persisted in lurking about the gallery at all hours, trying to prevent a crime that would never come, he might create trouble. Perhaps irrevocably.

  Steps must be taken to limit Shaw’s movements, sooner than originally intended.

  Anders silenced the metronome and reached for his phone.

  ELEVEN

  Shaw returned to his room to unpack. Nearing the door, he heard the bolt unlock automatically, a trick of the magic wand in his pocket. As an experiment he backed away. After a count of three, the door locked again. Convenient.

  Room 8 looked out on the courtyard with its bare rosebushes. He felt exposed, like being in a first-floor motel room next to the parking lot. Shaw switched on the lamps and pulled the curtains.

  Anders’s obstruction had pissed him off. But more than that, the chief of staff’s attitude had been perplexing. Showing Shaw the art collection and then all but threatening to fire him if he took reasonable steps to protect it.

  Before he left the room again, Shaw made some subtle adjustments to the clothes in the dresser and the gear inside the duffel. A T-shirt had the top position on the pile. Shaw pinched the left side to create a single shallow divot in the fabric. Then two more divots on the right. In the duffel he overlapped the coils of a light extension cord so that the third loop was slightly higher than the others. He moved two power tools apart exactly the width of his thumb.

  Tiny changes, but effective. Even if someone searching his things were careful to replace everything how they found it, at least one crease or loop would be out of place, if only by a few millimeters. As good as a neon sign.

  He had decided to walk the island’s boundary before the guests arrived. He left the south wing to cross the courtyard and enter its twin. A wide hall running down the center made the north wing simple to navigate. The long building had been divided into three distinct parts. Kitchens at the end nearest the passage to the main house, dining areas at the center—Shaw noted that the walls between areas could be removed, to make a single space large enough for a basketball team to play half-court—and guest suites and conference rooms on both floors at the end. The Rohners had enlivened the wing with art reminiscent of Northwest Coast tribes, including a life-size orca in carved relief, hung as an archway above the doors to the suites.

  Shaw walked past an unattended housekeeper’s cart in the corridor, then backtracked for a second look. A clipboard hung below the cart’s push handle. The top sheet on the clipboard was a checklist of supplies and cleaning steps for each room. Down the left-hand side of the sheet was a list of guest names and their room assignments.

  A door opened down the hall. It was one of the household staff in the unofficial uniform of robin’s-egg blue, exiting a guest room carrying a stack of magazines and newspapers. Before she could turn in his direction, Shaw snatched the sheet out of the clipboard and escaped down a side hall.

  Outside, he walked the length of the estate. The flagstone path followed the natural dips and rises of the land and curved to avoid humps and rocks, closer to a trail than a sidewalk.

  He passed the art gallery and the main house. When the path ended, he cut down the steep slope and kept walking. The beach of the north shore was craggy and strewn with mussels and sea kelp. Twice Shaw had to jump over deep fissures. Though the water was low, the power behind each wave signaled that the tide was flowing. Before dark the crevices in the rock would fill again, bringing fresh food for crabs and other creatures.

  The beach gave way to dirt and grass as the land rose in height from the water. Here the tide lapped directly against a ten-foot vertical bluff. The forest trees, as if making a stand against the sea, grew as far as the lip. Shaw had to stomp through a low blackberry thicket along the forest’s edge to create a path into the evergreens. Fewer brambles and ferns grew beneath the thick forest canopy—less sun, less abundance—and he was able to continue hiking westward without many sidetracks. Insects buzzed and rattled in a constant symphony. The forest floor was almost like carpet, softened by decomposing leaves and pine needles and dirt that may have never felt human tread.

  It took him half an hour to reach the far side of the woods. The western terminus of the island was the tip of the curved knife, the farthest point from Rohner’s showpiece pavilion. To Shaw’s right he saw the last few trees of the forest. To his left the beginning of the long, barren shore on the island’s southern edge.

  At the island’s tip, the vertical drop to the beach was only five feet high. Shaw jumped down and headed back along the southern shore toward the estate. The height of the bluff increased rapidly until it leveled off at about thirty feet above the beach. A few hardy scrub trees grew from splits in the cliff face, their lean trunks curving upward toward the light.

  It was faster going on the bare bedrock. The only hindrance was the wind pushing against him. Within ten minutes of walking, he saw the gray dots of the first maintenance sheds and the toothpick-slim line of the floating dock. The seaplane was gone. C.J. must have flown to pick up the guests.

  He passed the solar panels and the flagpole to arrive at the square concrete slab. His guess had been right about its being a helipad, and a work in progress. Eight stainless-steel lights had been placed around the landing pad’s border, looking like small cooking pots around a table. The lights weren’t bolted to the concrete slab, not yet. They sat loose on the ground, sharing a single power cable, a string of cheerless Christmas lights. The cable snaked off through the grass toward the nearest maintenance shed.

  Shaw wondered if the landing lights had been hastily placed, in the event that the Rohners or their guests decided to travel by helicopter at the last minute. Nice to have options.

  As he came abreast of the main house
, he saw Sofia Rohner walking past one of the grand picture windows. She looked up, and their eyes met. As smoothly as if she’d been expecting his visit, she motioned for him to approach.

  She came out onto the veranda at the front of the house and waited by the railing while he walked up the grassy slope. He stopped on the narrow strip of manicured lawn at the side of the house.

  “Good evening,” said Shaw.

  “Mr. Shaw,” she said. “I didn’t realize you were on the island.”

  “I came in to get acclimated before the guests arrive. It’s quite a place.”

  “Thank you. We’re not the first to live on Briar Bay. There was a settlement here briefly in the nineteenth century, searching for limestone deposits as on the larger islands. Their speculation wasn’t rewarded, unfortunately.”

  “I hope you’ll have better luck.”

  “What has my father asked of you this week?”

  “Asked of me?”

  “Your duties. As a . . . facilities manager, being so new to the grounds.”

  On the porch her feet were level with Shaw’s head. He wondered if that had been an intentional choice of the architect, elevating the masters of the estate.

  “Mostly to see if the guests require anything that isn’t already here,” he said. “Looking for possible improvements.”

  “Do those improvements include our art collection? I noticed Olen taking you inside.”

  Shaw paused. “I have some background in security systems. Part of why Mr. Rohner hired me.”

  “To evaluate whether the gallery is safe.”

  “Yes.”

  “And is it?” Sofia said.

  “Your alarm setup is very good.”

  “But not impregnable.”

  “No system is. Are you concerned someone might break in?” he said. Perhaps Sofia Rohner knew more about her father’s little contest of acquisitions than she’d let on.

  “No. I don’t imagine we’re at risk of burglary. But when it comes to our artwork, I am personally invested.”