?Maybe not fast enough for you,? Hazard predicted.
At the front of the church, teased by a draft, votive-candle flames squirmed in ruby glasses. Chameleons of light and shadow wriggled across a sanctuary wall.
?What?re you going to do?? Hazard asked.
[244] ?Reynerd?s shooting will be in the morning newspaper. They?re sure to mention his mother?s murder. That?ll give me an excuse to go to Kesselman, fill him in on those packages Reynerd has been sending to Manheim. He?ll have read the partial screenplay-?
?About which you don?t know jack,? Hazard reminded him.
?-and he?ll realize there?s an ongoing threat to Manheim until the professor is identified. That?ll accelerate the investigation, and I might even get police protection for my boss in the meantime.?
?In a perfect world,? Hazard said sourly.
?Sometimes the system works.?
?Only when you don?t expect it to.?
?Yeah. But I don?t have the resources to investigate Reynerd?s friends and associates fast enough to matter, and I don?t have the authority to dig through his personal records and effects. I?ve got to rely on the system whether I want to or not.?
?What about our lunch today?? Hazard asked.
?It never happened.?
?Someone might?ve seen us. And there?s a credit-card trail.?
?Okay, we had lunch. But I never mentioned Reynerd to you.?
?Who?s going to believe that??
Ethan couldn?t think of anyone sufficiently gullible.
?You and I have lunch,? Hazard said, ?I cook up a reason to visit Reynerd the same day, and it just so happens he gets killed while I?m there. Then it just so happens the shooter?s getaway car belongs to Dunny Whistler, your old buddy.?
?My head hurts,? Ethan said.
?And I haven?t even kicked it yet. Man, they?ll expect us to know what?s going on here, and when we claim we don?t-?
?Which we don?t.?
?-they?re going to be sure we?re lying. I was them, I?d think we were lying.?
?Me too,? Ethan admitted.
[245] ?So they?ll dream up a screwy scenario that sorta-kinda explains things, and we?ll wind up accused of offing Reynerd?s mother, wasting Reynerd, pinning it on Hector X, then popping him, too. Before it?s over, the bastard D.A. will be trying to pin us for the disappearance of the dinosaurs.?
The church didn?t seem like a sanctuary anymore. Ethan wished he were in another bar, where he might have a chance of finding solace, but not a bar that Dunny, dead or alive, would be likely to visit.
?I can?t go to Kesselman,? he decided.
Hazard would never sigh with relief and concede the intensity of his concern. A mirror held under his nostrils might have revealed a sudden bloom of condensation, but otherwise his relaxation of tension was marked by only a slight settling of his mountainous shoulders.
Ethan said, ?I?m going to have to take extra measures to protect Manheim, and just hope Kesselman finds Mina?s killer quickly.?
?If the preliminary OIS opinion doesn?t move me off the Reynerd case,? Hazard said, ?I?ll turn this city inside out to find Dunny Whistler. I?ve got to believe he?s the key to all this.?
?I think Dunny will find me first.?
?What do you mean??
?I don?t know.? Ethan hesitated, sighed. ?Dunny was there.?
Hazard frowned. ?There where??
?At the hotel bar. I only noticed him when he left. I went after him, lost him in the crowd outside.?
?What was he doing there??
?Drinking. Maybe watching me. Maybe he followed me there, intended to approach me, then decided against it. I don?t know.?
?Why didn?t you tell me first thing??
?I don?t know. It seemed like one ghost too many.?
?You think it all gets too rich, I won?t believe it? Have some faith, man. We go back, don?t we? We been shot at together.?
[246] They chose to leave the church separately.
Hazard got up first and moved away. From the farther end of the pew, in the center aisle, he said, ?Like old times, huh??
Ethan knew what he meant. ?Covering each other?s ass again.?
For such a big man, Hazard made little noise as he walked from the nave to the narthex, and out of the church.
Having a reliable friend to watch your back is a comfort, but the consolation and support provided by even the best of friends is no match for what a loving wife can be to a husband, or a loving husband to a wife. In the architecture of the heart, the rooms of friendship are deeply placed and strongly built, but the warmest and most secure retreat in Ethan?s heart was the one that he had shared with Hannah, where these days she lived only as a precious ghost, a sweet haunting memory.
He could have told her everything-about the phantom in the mirror, about his second death outside Forever Roses-and she would have believed him. Together they?d have sought some understanding.
During the five years that she?d been gone, he had never missed her more than he missed her at this moment. Sitting alone in a silent church, keenly aware of the soft beating of the rain on the roof, of the lingering fragrance of incense, of the ruby light of the votive candles, but unable to detect the faintest whisper, whiff, or glimmer of God, Ethan longed not for evidence of his Maker, but for Hannah, for the music of her voice and the beautiful geometry of her smile.
He felt homeless, without hearth or anchor. His apartment in the Manheim house awaited his return, offering many comforts, but it was merely a residence, not a place endeared to him. He had felt the tug of home only once in this long strange day: when he?d stood at Hannah?s grave, where she lay beside an empty plot to which he held the deed.
CHAPTER 37
FROM ALTERNATING BRONZE-BALL AND BRONZE-flame finials, from cast panels of arabesques, from darts and twists and frets and scallops and leaves, from griffins and heraldic emblems, black and silver rain dripped and drizzled off the Manheim gate.
Ethan braked to a stop beside the security post: a five-foot-high, square, limestone-clad column in which were embedded a closed-circuit video camera, an intercom speaker, and a keypad. He put down his window and keyed in his six-digit personal code.
Slowly, with the Expedition?s headlight beams rippling across its ornate surfaces, the massive gate began to roll aside.
Each employee of the estate had a different code. The security staff maintained computerized records of every entrance.
Remote-control units such as typical garage-door openers or coded transponders, assigned to each vehicle, would have been more convenient than a key-entry system, especially in foul weather; however, such devices would have been accessible to garage mechanics, valet-parking attendants, and anyone else in temporary custody of a vehicle. One dishonest person among them might easily compromise the security of the estate.
[248] If Ethan had been a visitor lacking a personal gate-entry code, he would have pushed the intercom button on the post and would have announced himself to the guard in the security office at the back of the property. If the visitor was expected or was a family friend on the permanent-access list, the guard would open the gate from his command board.
As he waited for the massive bronze barrier to roll out of the way, Ethan was under surveillance by the camera on the security post. Entering the property, he would be scrutinized through a series of tree-mounted cameras angled in such a manner as to reveal anyone who might be lying on the floor of the SUV to avoid detection.
All videocams included night-vision technology that transformed the faintest moonlight into a revealing glow. A sophisticated bit of software filtered out most of the veiling and the distortion effects produced by falling rain, ensuring a clear real-time image on the security-office screens.
Had he been a repairman or deliveryman arriving in an enclosed van or truck, Ethan would have been asked to wait outside the gate until a security guard arrived. The guard would then look inside the vehicle to ensure that the driver was not, under duress, bringing any bad guys with him.
Palazzo Rospo was not a fortress either by modern definition or by the moat-and-drawbridge standards of medieval times. Neither was the estate a cupcake served on a plate to be easily plucked by any hungry thief.
Explosives could bring down the gate. The property wall could be scaled. But the grounds couldn?t easily be entered by stealth. Intruders would be identified and tracked almost at once by cameras, motion detectors, heat sensors, and other devices.
The thirty-foot-wide bronze gate, more solid than open, weighed over eight thousand pounds. The motor that operated the chain drive was powerful, however, and the barrier rolled aside with apparent ease and with more speed than one might expect.
[249] A five-acre plot qualified as a large piece of land in most residential communities. In this neighborhood, where an acre could bring upwards of ten million dollars, a five-acre property was the equivalent of an English country estate of baronial scale.
The long driveway looped around a reflection pond in front of the great house, which was not Baroque, like the bronze gate, but a limestone-clad, three-story Palladian structure with simple classic ornamentation, huge yet elegant in its proportions.
Just before reaching the pond, the driveway split, and Ethan took the branch that led around to the side of the house. When it split again, one artery led to the groundskeeper?s building and the security office, while the other led down a ramp to the underground garage.
The garage had two levels. In the upper, the Face stored thirty-two vehicles in his personal collection, ranging from a new Porsche to a series of Rolls-Royces from the 1930s, to a 1936 Mercedes-Benz 500K, to a 1931 Duesenberg Model J, to a 1933 Cadillac Sixteen.
The lower garage housed the fleet of workaday vehicles owned by the estate and provided parking for cars belonging to employees.
Like the upper garage, the lower featured a beige matte-finish ceramic-tile floor and walls of glossy tile in a matching color. Supporting columns were decorated with free-flowing mosaics in various shades of yellow.
Few high-end automobile sales facilities, catering to the very wealthy, were as beautifully appointed as this lower garage.
The pegboard for car keys hung on the wall outside the elevator, and Fric sat on the floor under the board, holding the same paperback fantasy novel that he?d been reading in the library this morning. He got to his feet as Ethan approached.