Gus quickened his pace, nearly running into the next gallery. There he saw Professor Kitteredge standing next to a young Japanese couple and gesturing toward an ornate painting of three young girls in period dress playing in a fountain. The professor kept talking to the young couple despite the fact that they both had earphones clamped over their heads and in fact were looking at a different painting.
Gus rushed over to Kitteredge. “Professor, what are you doing here?”
Kitteredge jumped, then realized who it was who had come up to him. “Mr. Guster?”
“Yes,” Gus said. “Gus. The police are searching for you.”
“They’re not the only ones,” Kitteredge said. “I don’t have much time.”
“I can’t believe you’ve made it this long,” Gus said. “Somebody is going to report you.”
“I’m safe for the moment,” Kitteredge said. “No one ever notices a museum docent.”
“But the staff all know you,” Gus said, checking the gallery doors to make sure none of them were closing in.
“Museum staff particularly never notices a docent,” Kitteredge said. “Because the docent’s favorite trick is to introduce the staff member to his tour group, and then ask him to take over the lecture. Whenever a staffer sees a docent in a gallery he’ll cover his head and run out as quickly as possible.”
“What happens when the museum closes?” Gus said. “We’ve got to find a place for you to hide.”
“Professor Kitteredge can’t leave the museum yet,” Shawn said, stepping up to them. “Not until he’s seen what he’s come to see. And it’s not in this room. Which means that hiding out here isn’t doing you any good at all.”
Kitteredge, who had been holding himself up proudly, deflated like a beach ball under a truck tire. “I’ve got to get another look at The Defence of Guenevere,” he said.
“Professor, I understand how long you’ve wanted to see this painting, but this is not the time,” Gus said. “After we clear your name, you’ll be able to study it as much as you want. But now we’ve got to go.”
“That’s the problem,” Shawn said. “That painting is the only way to clear his name.”
Kitteredge looked at Shawn as if revising an earlier opinion of him. “The painting is the reason Filkins was killed,” Kitteredge said. “I’m convinced it contains essential clues to the identity and purpose of this global conspiracy. That’s why it’s been held in secrecy for so many years. Now that it was finally going to be made public, they knew I would be able to decipher its secret message. They had to shut me up, so they killed poor Clay Filkins and framed me for it.”
“The picture’s a hundred and fifty years old,” Gus said. “Even if it does have all those clues in it, how is it going to help you identify the actual murderers?”
“I’ll know when I have a chance to study it,” Kitteredge said. “Last night, I was only able to get a quick glimpse. And now the gallery where it’s hanging is closed and there’s a police officer guarding the door.”
“Just one?” Shawn said. “We’re in.”
Chapter Thirteen
Carlton Lassiter had never noticed just how lovely the veneer on the chief’s desk was. Although he knew it was really just a microscopically thin layer of walnut glued over particleboard, it still managed to convey the sense of prestige, power, and authority that came with the office.
It surprised him that he’d never noticed this before. All the times he’d sat across from Chief Karen Vick as she gave him assignments or accepted his debriefing or just talked about the state of the department and the world with him, he’d never let his gaze drift away from her face long enough to appreciate the special quality of the wood surfacing.
But for the past fifteen minutes he’d had the chance to give the grain the kind of study it deserved, and he felt he now knew it well enough to draw its pattern from memory if he needed to.
Somewhere, in some part of his brain that wasn’t completely occupied with the office’s furniture, he was aware that the desk’s occupant was talking to him. Apparently Chief Vick has been speaking the entire time he’d been staring at her desk. Her voice sounded sympathetic and yet with an undertone of steel, which was, he realized, not unlike the composition of that desk.
“No one blames you for this, Carlton,” Chief Vick said. “As this process moves forward it’s important that you understand that.”
Lassiter felt his head nodding. Apparently some part of him was aware of what the chief was saying, or at least could figure out the correct response from her tone of voice.
“But it’s also crucial that the Santa Barbara Police Department understand exactly what went wrong here,” Vick continued. “We’re not looking to point fingers or find a scapegoat. We just need to know if there are problems in our procedures that need to be fixed to make sure nothing like this ever happens again.”
Whatever part of him that was controlling his muscles made Lassiter’s head nod again.
“And the first tool we need to use in our study of this incident is going to be the report of the officer who was at the center of it,” Vick said. She opened a file that was lying on her desk and pulled out a single sheet of paper. “That’s why I need you to rewrite this.”
She pushed the paper across the desk at him. His eyes, attracted by the movement, shifted up to see that it was a report form with a couple lines of type on it. He vaguely remembered having turned in a similar form a short while before.
“That’s my report,” Lassiter said, shifting his gaze back to the comfortingly familiar sight of walnut grain.
Chief Vick picked up the paper and sighed heavily. “This is the report you want to turn in?”
“It’s the truth,” Lassiter said.
“Detective Carlton Lassiter failed in his duty and allowed the suspect to take him hostage, shaming not only the Santa Barbara Police Department but every law enforcement agency everywhere in the world,” she read. “The entire fault rests with him. The only mistake made by any other member of the force was in opening the car trunk in which Detective Lassiter had been locked instead of leaving him there to suffocate.”
“Is there something in there you disagree with?” Lassiter said. “I think it sums up the situation pretty well.”
Chief Vick let out a deep sigh and shoved the paper across the desk at him. “I can’t give this to the police commission,” she said. “And I won’t turn it over to Internal Affairs. I will not let you destroy your career over this.”
One of Lassiter’s hands reached out and took the paper. “What do you want me to say?”
“You’ve written a million reports,” she said. “You know what has to be in it. I need a complete accounting of everything that happened, starting with your arrival at the museum and ending with your rescue.”
Lassiter stared down at the paper in his hand. He read the words over again. It said everything there was to say about the incident. “So you want me to pad it out?” he said.
“I’ve told you what I expect, Detective,” Chief Vick said, the edge of steel now rising above the sympathetic tone. “And I expect it no later than tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” He knew what that word meant-a day that would begin when this one was finally over. But he couldn’t quite imagine it ever coming, because he was pretty sure that this day would never actually end.
“Tomorrow, Carlton,” Vick said, her tone softening again. “Right now, what I want you to do is go home and get some sleep. The next couple of days are going to be rough. Internal Affairs will need to do a thorough review, and the press is going to be all over this. Our departmental therapists are excellent at dealing with post-traumatic stress, and I strongly urge you to take advantage of their expertise. But first you need to go home and get some rest.”
“I need to work,” Lassiter said. “I need to catch Kitteredge.”
“You don’t need to do anything but rest, Detective,” Chief Vick said. “Juliet O’Hara is leading the search for Kitteredge.”