Private: #1 Suspect

CHAPTER 101

Scotty got a leg across the low wall at the edge of the roof, pulled himself up and over, gave Cruz a hand up, and did the same for Del Rio, who rolled onto the tar paper, saying, “Everybody down.”

The three men hunched behind the wall, got their wind and their bearings.

Del Rio counted off a couple of minutes in his mind, then stood up, located the skein of electric lines running from the pole on Anderson to the roof, and severed them with his wire cutters, causing a blackout inside the warehouse.

The alarm was cut off, as were the motion detectors, the telephone backup, everything-but, shockingly, the alarm sounded again almost immediately.

Startled, Del Rio ducked from pure reflex, then said to the others, “They have a battery backup. To the alarm. It’s gotta be wireless.”

Cruz said, “Let’s get out of here.”

Then the alarm halted midshriek.

Del Rio said, “That’s Bosco shutting it down, thinking that’s enough of this noise tonight. Emilio, we’re okay. We stay put. Make good and sure no one is coming.”

A long ten minutes went by, then Del Rio got up, paced off twenty feet in from the Anderson side of the building, eyeballed approximately the same distance from Artemus, took his eighteen-volt battery-operated Sawzall out of his bag, and flipped it on.

It made a little bit of a racket, but not the kind of thing that would wake up any watchdogs in the neighborhood or even cause anyone driving by to notice.

Scotty and Cruz stood by as Del Rio sawed through the tar paper, the old layers of asphalt roofing, and the plywood below that, cutting through sheetrock that had little resistance to the blade.

Roofing fell through the opening and clattered down. They listened to the ensuing silence, and then Scotty opened his bag of tricks.

He put on his miner’s lamp and took out a thirty-five-foot length of marine-grade one-inch poly line. He tied one end to a brick chimney, put some knots into the rest of it, and approached the hole.

Del Rio said, “Take it slow, ” and Scotty grinned, jazzed up with nervous energy.

He pulled the knotted rope taut, then lowered himself down from the roof to the kiln room, where the clay pots were fired. Del Rio followed and Cruz was last to come down the line.

As soon as his feet touched the floor, Cruz went to the office and found the wireless alarm backup system next to the circuit box. He took out the batteries and set up the cell phone signal jammer in case the wireless signal went active again.

Del Rio, meanwhile, left the kiln room and went to the back-right-hand corner of the warehouse proper, where Scotty had seen the van. But Del Rio didn’t see a van. He saw racks and racks of flowerpots.

He didn’t want to believe this.

Private investigators had watched the damned warehouse, three shifts a day every day, for the past week. Had the van been dismantled, taken out in parts, or driven intact into a big rig?

Del Rio was ready to call Jack, when Scotty walked past him, catlike on rubber soles, and showed him where the van was hidden behind the racks, pretty much barricaded in.

Scotty said, “What do you think, Rick?”

Relieved that Jack wasn’t going to have to tell Noccia that the van had disappeared, Del Rio said, “We’re good.”