The Thief

“Oh, God, Jane…” V groaned as he, too, found his orgasm.

The pleasure seemed to last forever, and then they were spooning in a warm cocoon, the duvet yanked over their bodies, his head on his pillow, hers on the inside of his arm.

As they lay there in the dark, Jane closed her eyes.

“What about food,” she mumbled as she started to fall asleep.

“This is all I need,” V replied.

“Me, too…”

Her last thought before she drifted off was that no, in fact this was not like it had been previously when she’d come back exhausted from work. She was tired, it was true, and it was from her job. But instead of being in here alone, she was very much in this together.

With the one she loved.

FORTY-SEVEN

“Detective de la Cruz, how nice to see you again.”

As Vitoria came forward across the gallery space, she offered the man her hand. “I didn’t expect you so soon. It’s not even ten in the morning.”

“Traffic was light.”

He was dressed in a version of what he’d had been in the day before, the blazer dark brown this time, the pants black, the shoes slush-worthy and streaked with dried salt stains. He had something in his hand, but not a notebook. A clipboard? No, it was a thin laptop.

“Would you like to go somewhere to talk?” he said.

“But of course. This way.”

As she led him over to the stairs to Ricardo’s office, she was aware of a curling anxiety. She hid it by reminding herself that if she couldn’t handle this kind of heat, she had no business thinking that she could run her brothers’ illegal empire.

And no, she was not going down to the station to meet de la Cruz. He had given her a choice of that or him coming to her. Not a tough decision.

When they were in her brother’s expansive bowling alley of an office, she walked forward to the desk—but stopped halfway there and turned on her heel.

“Here I am again, being rude. I’ve forgotten to offer you something to drink once more.”

“I’m good. Thanks.”

“As you do.”

She went the rest of the way, noting that she’d left that chair she’d sat in the previous day still out of place and turned around. Ricardo would not have approved, and she had to resettle it back where it belonged.

Smoothing her pink and black Chanel suit, she faced him. “So tell me, Detective, have you found something on the security tapes?”

“Yes. I have.”

As she stared at him, she trained her face to slowly disintegrate into an expression that approximated fear and worry. “Are my brothers okay?”

“Do you mind if I bring that other chair around so we can sit together?”

“No. Not at all.”

Feigning like she had to take a seat or she would fall down, she swept her hair over her shoulder, lowered herself into the chair she’d rearranged, and crossed her legs.

Beneath that show of femininity, she was all calculation.

De la Cruz joined her on the right side and put the laptop on his knees. “So we were able to gain access to the security footage thanks to the laptop you allowed us to take from that security room. We were very surprised how far back the recordings went.”

“How far did they?”

“Over a year.”

“A year?”

She made a show of tracing his face with her eyes, as if she were attempting to read his features. “So what did you find?” she asked in a weak voice.

“We thought that isolating the relevant footage would be a challenge, but your brother was very regimented. Every morning—right about this time, actually—he walked the gallery space below. We discovered this when we started watching the footage, and because of this habit, we were able to zero in on the night in question with some efficiency.”

“What happened to him,” she asked in a flat voice.

His brown eyes became grave. “These images are going to be difficult for you to watch. But I have to ask you if you recognize anyone in them.”

Bracing her palms on her knees, she pulled her skirt down a number of times and made a show of swallowing hard—which was in truth not an act. She was suddenly quite emotional. “I find I am nervous.”

“I’m sorry. I really am. But if we’re going to catch your brothers’ killers, we need to pursue every avenue we have. And you are one of them.”

“I don’t know anything about their business, though.”

“I understand that. But sometimes things get jogged.” The detective touched himself on the head. “The mind can recall things that we’re not aware of knowing.”

“Show me.”

He flipped open the cover of the laptop. After typing some commands, he swiveled the thing around so it faced her.

“The relevant images have been copied and merged from the various cameras. You’ll see the time counter and feed number change in the lower right-hand corner as a result of this. But just concentrate on what’s happening, okay?”

Vitoria leaned in. There was a video box in the center of the screen, showing a black-and-white depiction of the outside stoop of the back entrance of the gallery. Just as de la Cruz had said, there was a time counter in white with a roman numeral “I” next to it off to the side.

“You ready?”

“Yes.”

He hit something, and the counter started to move. “You’ll note that—”

“Shh,” she said as two figures came into view.

Men. Tall and big, with one of them dressed nicely in a fine overcoat. The other was wearing a leather jacket of sorts. It was difficult to see their faces as both were looking downward, and they stood before the closed door for just a moment before it was opened for them. They paused, evidently to converse with someone, and then they were inside—and the camera view changed, switching to out in the gallery space proper.

A man without any outerwear on walked them into where the art was and must have told them to stop where they were, as he went alone to the door to Ricardo’s office. There were two guards on either side, and after a momentary discussion, the first guard disappeared, clearly to take a message upstairs.

Thereafter, the man in the high-quality overcoat spoke to the pair of sentries as his associate in the leather jacket went on a stroll around the pieces that had been installed. And then the first man took something out of his coat—a cigar. He motioned to it and spoke as though he were asking the guards’ permission to smoke.

The guard on the left pointed to a sign and shook his head. The overcoat man asked something else. After a second, the guard on the right shrugged…opened the door to the staircase—

The attack was so swift, Vitoria’s eyes couldn’t track it. The overcoat man was suddenly on the other guard and snapping his neck—while the one in leather came over and stabbed the other one. Twice.

“Oh, God,” she said in Spanish. It was not hard to figure out where this was heading.

There was some quick conversation between the two men. And then overcoat’s henchman dragged the guard who had been stabbed behind one of the exhibits and they both disappeared into the stairwell to Ricardo’s office.

“There are no cameras in your brother’s office—or its staircase,” the detective said quietly. “So we don’t know what transpired exactly.”

The end result was obvious, however. Within minutes, the two men emerged and the henchman had someone over his shoulder.

“We believe that is your brother,” the detective said. “Ricardo.”

Yes, she thought as tears came to her eyes. She could recognize the suit, the shoes, the back of the head.

There was a pause as the men looked around, as if to ascertain whether their presence had been noted or an alarm was sounding. And then they were moving fast, entering the staff area.

“There are no cameras in that back area.” The detective cleared his throat. “But you’ll see them come out…”

And there they were. Emerging from the rear door…and disappearing out of camera range.

Vitoria sat back and did not have to pretend the upset. Putting her hand over her mouth, she closed her eyes. When she had gone to that bolt-hole up on Iroquois Mountain, and found her brother’s remains in that basement, she had had the end of the story. The detective had just provided her the beginning.