“I know,” Finn said. The guilt ripped at him. “I’m sorry, Devon. I didn’t know. I didn’t even think that this could happen.”
“It’s not your fault. It’s mine. All this is my fault.”
“We’ll get her back,” Finn said with false confidence.
“We will.” Devon sounded even less sure than Finn felt. “I’m gonna make sure we get her back.”
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum wasn’t far from the hospital. It covered half a block on Fenway Drive, next to Simmons College, just around the corner from the Museum of Fine Arts and Northeastern University. Across the street to the east was a patch of garden that was the last natural remnant of the swampy fens that had once covered much of the area west of downtown Boston.
Finn had never been to the Gardner before, and he was surprised by its exterior. He was familiar with the larger Museum of Fine Arts, with its towering Ionic columns and broad marble staircase leading up from the sidewalk to the main entrance. He’d been to the Boston Public Library, with its imposing neoclassical facade, rising from the center of Copley like some great mausoleum. It seemed to Finn that such pomp was a necessary hallmark of cultural landmarks. The Gardner had none of it. From the outside, the museum begged for little attention. It had gray-brown stucco sides, set flush to the sidewalk, with a stubby steel door for an entrance that for its lack of pretension could have been admitting them to a college dorm.
Finn and Kozlowski walked through the dark entryway, paid their admission fee, and walked into the main section of the museum. Upon entering, Finn felt transported. Before him was an enormous three-story indoor courtyard garden, roofed by a great glass ceiling allowing in all the sunlight of the day. Rustles of clover and ivy covered the ground surrounding an intricate mosaic that was centered under the transparent ceiling. Across the courtyard from the entrance, a large fountain with inverted Chinese fish-dragons was framed by an elaborate two-way staircase. About the courtyard were strewn various works-headless statues, urns, and obelisks-looking almost haphazard in their placement. And yet there was an order to it all, as though the informality of their selection and display was central to their purpose. Above, balconies set against huge arched marble windows observed the scene.
“Nice,” Kozlowski said.
“Yeah,” Finn agreed.
The entire building was centered on the courtyard, with galleries and halls ringing the place on every floor.
“I guess we should find out who’s in charge,” Kozlowski said. He walked over to an information desk, off to one corner of the ground floor. The woman there blended well into the place. She appeared to be in her fifties; her dark hair was streaked with gray. Her clothes were respectable, demure, and prim. They were neither expensive nor shabby. She was looking down at the desk, motionless. Finn wondered for a moment whether she might be part of an exhibit. Kozlowski walked over and stood in front of the desk. She must have seen him; he was too imposing a presence to go unnoticed. But she didn’t look up. “Excuse me,” he said in a polite tone after a moment.
“Yes?” she said. She still didn’t raise her eyes, giving the impression that whatever she was studying was far too important for her to be pulled away at the first effort.
“Can we talk to the manager?”
With the question, her gaze was drawn upward, and she looked directly at Kozlowski for the first time. Her head remained at a downward angle, as if she was still deciding whether he merited a shift in her actual body position. “Manager?” she said. “No. We don’t have a manager. We have a director.”
“He’s the person who’s in charge?”
“He is.”
“Is there any chance we could talk to him for a moment?”
This time she seemed to latch on to the we, and she craned her neck at an angle to get a line of vision around Kozlowski, examining Finn. She took only a quick look, and didn’t seem impressed. “Can I ask why?”
“We have a couple of questions about the art theft.”
With the mention of the robbery, her posture straightened. Her brow knit itself tightly and her eyes narrowed angrily. “We don’t answer questions about the theft,” she said. “Not ever.”
“Never?”
“Not ever.”
Kozlowski’s voice became serious. “My name is Kozlowski,” he said. He took out the leather billfold in which he kept his private detective’s license and held it up. It had his picture and looked official. He kept his eyes on the woman’s and she took only a glance at the identification. “We’re chasing down a lead in a more recent crime that may be related. It would be helpful if we could talk to him just for a moment.”
The look on the woman’s face soured even further. “What additional information could you people need beyond what we’ve provided over and over again? It’s been twenty years, do you really think there’s anything more that anyone here has to say to the police?”
“Please, ma’am,” Kozlowski said. “It will just take a moment of his time.”
She shook her head in frustration, but picked up the phone and punched in three digits. She turned away from the two of them as she spoke, and her voice was swallowed up in the enormity of the marble lobby. Then she turned around and hung up the phone. “It will be a few minutes,” she said. “He’s very busy.”
“I’m sure, ma’am.”
“He said you can wait for him up in the Dutch Room, if you wish.”
“The Dutch Room,” Kozlowski repeated. He turned and looked at Finn. “The Dutch Room.”
Finn gave him a blank stare.
The woman let out a condescending sigh. “Up the stairs to the right,” she said. “It’s where the Rembrandts and the Flinck used to hang before they were stolen.”
“Ah, the Dutch Room,” Kozlowski said.
Finn nodded. “Of course, the Dutch Room.”
“Thanks very much.”
She was still shaking her head as the two of them walked up the stairs. She probably would have been muttering as well, if it wouldn’t have struck her as an unpardonable breach of etiquette.
The second floor was just as breathtaking as the first. It, too, was built around the huge courtyard, and it consisted of a series of gallery rooms lined up one after another, each looking out through ornate balconies down to the garden below.
They turned right at the top of the stairs and walked along the hallway to a large arched doorway that led into a huge room paneled in dark wood. It had towering ceilings and antique chairs upholstered in heavy fabric. The walls were covered in green silk and lined with large dark oil paintings, many of them portraits. The faces of the long-dead peered out from their places on the walls. For some reason, Finn felt as though they were judging him; it made him feel depressed.
In a few spots there were empty frames hanging on the walls. The frames were, admittedly, works of art in and of themselves. They were heavy, ornately carved works painted in gold leaf. And yet, left alone, without the canvas and paint, they seemed sad and out of place.
Finn was about to ask Kozlowski about the empty frames when he noticed a man sitting in the corner of the room. He was propped up in a wooden chair, his head leaning against the wall, his eyes closed. Finn looked at Kozlowski and motioned toward the man. He wondered whether the man was dead, and walked over quietly to take a look.
He was old-Finn was guessing in his seventies-and his clothes were battered. His jacket was heavy wool, a half season too late, and the threads were fraying at the lapels. The elbows looked shot through. The man’s face was gray and his eyes were sunken back into their sockets, surrounded by dark skin. It took a moment for Finn to see the man’s chest moving ever so slightly, giving at least the suggestion of life. Finn waved his hand a few feet in front of the man’s face.
“He’s fine,” a voice said behind Finn. He turned to see a tall, trim man in his late fifties. He was wearing a tailored suit of charcoal-gray, a bright white shirt, and an azure tie with a matching pocket square. “Detective Kozlowski?” he asked, looking back and forth between the two visitors.