“Okay, why don’t you folks look around? Let’s find out what’s missing.”
The thieves had taken Alex’s collection of Meridian coins-about two thousand years old but not particularly valuable-and a few first editions. Nothing else seemed to be gone.
The officers linked Jacob to a portable power source, and the lights came back on. Alex activated him and asked what he remembered.
“Have I really been off-line?” he said. “It appears I’ve lost two hours, forty-six minutes.”
“Not that long after we left,” said Alex.
We watched while the AI produced pictures of the missing books and coins. The officers asked about estimated value, and they seemed to have an idea how the thieves would get rid of the property. “Anyone who’s shown an unusual interest in any of this stuff?” the female asked. She looked puzzled.
We couldn’t think of anyone other than Alex who had even seen the coins during the last year, although they’d been in plain sight in one of the upstairs rooms. As to the books, everybody knew about them, but they, too, weren’t all that valuable.
“Mr. Benedict,” said her partner, “am I safe in assuming that you have some jewelry on the premises?”
“Yes, I do. But it’s still there. I checked it.”
“Anything else you’d describe as a likely target for thieves?”
He thought it over. “Just the collectibles. Fortunately, it doesn’t look as if they knew what they were doing.”
“You mean they missed the good stuff.”
“That’s exactly what I mean. There are other things, a lot easier to carry than books, that they might have taken.” There was, for example, a Kulot bowl and a recorder from ancient Canada, both in the living room, and in the study a necklace worn at the beginning of the century by Anya Martain. Not to mention the Polaris glass and Maddy’s jacket. All in plain sight.
“Odd,” he said.
Alex shrugged. “If they were smart, they wouldn’t be thieves.”
The intruder had cut through the back door, which would have to be replaced.
The male took a deep breath, suggesting a world-weariness. “You have the nicest house in the neighborhood, Mr. Benedict. If a thief is going anywhere, he’s coming here.”
“I guess.”
He slapped the cover shut on his notebook. “I think that’s about all we can do for now. If you find anything else we should know, get in touch.” He handed Alex a crystal. “Here’s a copy of the record, with your case number.”
Alex managed a smile. He was not happy. “Thanks.”
“No trouble, Mr. Benedict. We’ll keep you informed. You can keep the generator until you get up and running again.” They wished us good evening and got back into the cruiser. “I don’t think you need to worry,” he said. “They never come back. But keep your doors locked anyhow.”
I went out onto the roof, hauled the dish back up, reset it in its housing, taped it down, and was gratified to see that it worked. “It should be all right for tonight,” I said.
“We’ll want to get somebody over in the morning to take a look at it.”
We sat down and began running pictures of the house, room by room, on a split screen, as it had been at the beginning of the day, and as it was now, to see whether we’d missed anything. But everything looked unchanged. Cushions were arranged as they had been, kitchen chairs were in the same positions, a cabinet door left half-open in the dining room remained half-open. “It doesn’t look as if they were very serious,” he said.
“Maybe they’d just started when we arrived and scared them off.”
“That can’t be. Jacob says he was down well over two hours.”
“Then they must have known exactly what they wanted.”
He frowned. “The coin collection and The Complete Fritz Hoyer? ”
“Yeah. I don’t understand it either.”
The kitchen before and after flashed on the wall screen. The dining area. The living room.
The living room had four chairs, a sofa, a bookcase, and side and coffee tables.
A book lay open on one of the chairs. The drapes were drawn. Vina, the pagan goddess of the Altieri, stood fetchingly atop a globe representing the world, her long arms outstretched. The book was My Life in Antiquity, and it was open to the same page in both displays. Pictures were distributed around the walls. These were of Alex’s father (whom he had never known) and Gabe, of Alex and some of his customers, and a couple of Alex and me.
Finally, he sighed, told Jacob to shut it down, and we took to wandering through the house, studying drapes and windows and tables and bookshelves. “They went to a lot of trouble,” he said. “There must have been a reason.”
So much of the stuff should have begged to be taken, onyx religious figurines from Carpalla; a ninth-century drum from the obscure rhythm group, Rapture; a set of eight-sided dice from Dellaconda. “Don’t know,” he said. “Makes no sense.” We gave up finally, went back to the office, and sat down.
We sat there for a couple of minutes in puzzled silence. It was late, and I was ready to go home. He was looking at Maddy’s jacket.
“Gotta go, boss,” I said, getting to my feet and pulling on my coat. “Tomorrow comes early.”
He rose also, nodding, but paying no attention. Instead he walked over to the case holding the jacket, stared at it for a minute, and tried the lid. It was still locked.
“You look surprised,” I said.
The lock was electronic, designed to keep children or idle adults from handling the contents. It wasn’t the sort of thing that would have deterred a burglar. He opened it and pursed his lips. “They’ve been into it,” he said.
You already know the angle of the imager didn’t give us a picture of the jacket as it had appeared earlier. But it was still folded. It looked okay to me. “Alex,” I said patiently, “if they’d done that, they wouldn’t have gone to the trouble to put it back.
And relock the case.”
“You got me there, love.” He grimaced. “This is different from what it was, though. Look at Maddy’s name.”
It had been clearly visible before. It still was, actually, but it was partially around the fold. “This isn’t the way it was,” I said.
“No. They took it out, refolded it, and put it back.”
“That can’t be right. Why would a thief do that?”
“Why would a thief leave the jewelry? Or the Sujannais?” He walked over to the bookcase, turned its light on, and looked at the long-stemmed glass. The lock was an old-fashioned one requiring a metal key. It could have been opened, but, unlike the display case, not without breaking it. “It hasn’t been touched,” he said.
Advanced Electronics showed up next day, shook their heads a lot, and wondered that we’d left so much to chance. “Well, no more,” they told us. “From now on, anybody tries to knock out your dish, you’ve got a serious backup. Anybody manages to break in, Jacob will call the police, and the intruder will be lying on the floor when they get here.” They collected the police generator and announced they’d return it.
That was the day we started the paperwork to implement the idea about doing some radioarcheology. But Alex was distracted by the break-in. “We better assume,” he said, “that they got into the records.”
“Did you ask Jacob whether he can make a determination as to whether that happened?”
“He says he has no way of knowing. So we have to assume the worst.”
“Okay.”
“Chase, we need to inform everyone with whom Rainbow has done business recently, say, the last two years, that the details of all transactions have been compromised and may be in the hands of thieves.”
While I was taking care of it, he went to lunch with someone, and I got a call from Fenn Redfield. Fenn was a police inspector, and also a friend. He’d handled the original burglary years before. “When you get a chance, Chase,” he said, “you and Alex might want to drop by the station.”
“Alex isn’t here,” I said. “He’s off working with a client.”
“Then yourself will do fine.”
Fenn has an unusual history. In another life, literally another life, he’d been a small-time thief, apparently not very competent. In the incident that ended that career, the owner of a house he was burglarizing walked in on him. There was a struggle, the owner got pushed through a second-floor window and died of his injuries. Fenn, who had a different name in those days, was caught leaving the premises. The jury found him guilty, a fourth conviction. The judge pronounced him incorrigible and a danger to society, so they’d done a mind wipe and a personality adjustment. Nobody in Fenn’s new life is supposed to know that. He didn’t even know it. He received a new identity, a new address halfway across the country from where the crimes occurred, a new set of memories, and a new psyche. Now he had a wife and kids and a responsible job. He worked hard, seemed to be competent, and showed every sign of enjoying his life.