He didn’t know how the anonymous caller had obtained his cell phone number, but he was even more concerned about the fact that he knew about the watch — the caller had been right, it was a detail of the Lefebvre investigation that had not been released to the public. Perhaps the caller had learned of it through a careless comment by a property room clerk, or more seriously, a deliberate leak within the department. He felt almost certain that the caller himself was not a member of the department, because he had asked Bredloe to come here alone.
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.