“Is that what I think it is?” Nicholas asked.
Mike smiled. “If you’re thinking it’s a relay capacitor for an EMP, yes.” She turned to Bo. “Where did you get this?”
“Turned up in a sweep of the basement. This is how the thief turned off the power yesterday.”
Mike cocked her head to one side, looked back at the fake Koh-i-Noor, tossed the relay into the air and caught it, then murmured, “Five floors away.” She looked up. “I realize the most likely scenario is that the thief stole the Koh-i-Noor during the five-minute power outage, which means he or she had an inside helper, someone who could have attached this very effective device to the museum’s electrical grid to shut everything down while the thief was switching out the diamonds. I’m thinking we have to look at everyone again, not only the people with direct contact with the diamond.”
Bo grinned like a bandit at her. “Smart as a whip,” he said to Nicholas. “You’re exactly right, Mike. We’re not talking about a dozen or so staff, we’re talking the whole ocean of Met employees. We’ve pulled the files for every employee within spitting distance of the exhibit, but it isn’t a small group, believe me, and then there are the delivery people and students and the public who are in day and night. Cross-referencing our security video from the museum with the FBI’s new NGI program—next-generation identification facial-recognition technology—will at least get us in the ballpark if there’s anyone with a record who’s been in and out of the museum around the time of the power outage.
“And another little spanner in the works: we realized the five-minute power outage also wiped the tapes of at least a minute before everything went black, so checking the basement stairs probably won’t show us our inside guy. But we’ll see. Can you handle integrating the NGI system with our video feeds, Nick?”
“Not a problem.”
“Good. Victoria, your job is to make sure no one suspects there’s a problem. This is business as usual, a last-minute test of all our security systems before the gala tonight. Would you please get the video feed from the day of the power outage for Nicholas and Mike so they can get started matching it to the NGI database? See if we’ve hosted any criminals over the past few days.”
Victoria said, “I’ll let you know when it’s ready.”
Nicholas wasn’t blind. He quirked a brow at Mike. “Any trouble with me finding criminals with you?”
She narrowed her eyes but said, “Of course not. But remember, the system is pretty new, and we’re talking a lot of people, which means we’ll probably have a lot of false leads.”
“I know a few tricks that might save us some time.”
Nicholas ignored her raised eyebrows and reminded himself where he was. Best not to share with her his less-than-legal skills.
Bo said, “Good, good. Mike, did you enjoy meeting Sherlock last night?”
“I’ve gotta say, sir, Sherlock is pretty impressive, what with her ability to reconstruct a crime scene. We’ve got what happened at Inspector York’s apartment pretty nailed down.”
“Don’t call me sir. I’m Bo to you now. Maybe something neither of you know. Savich designed the base programs we used for VICAP and CODIS, in addition to adapting the facial-recognition program developed at New Scotland Yard for the FBI.” Bo rubbed his hands together. “He and Sherlock are solidly in the loop. They’ll be a great resource for us.”
Nicholas said slowly, “I didn’t realize he was responsible for developing the base programs. Not bad, not bad at all.” He grinned. “Don’t worry, I’ll continue to go easy on him, Uncle Bo.”