A Hard Rain Part 16

Dix and Bev climbed the outside steps and went inside, then climbed up to the second floor. The smell of Jessica Daniels' perfume still lingered faintly in the background. Her blood on the carpet was gone in the upper hallway. In both directions the hall seemed empty, almost forecasting how everything was going to be shortly.

"Who do you think shot Jessica?" Bev asked as they got to the top.

Dix pointed to the lack of blood spot in the carpet. "I suppose we could always go ask her. But my guess would be one of Harvey's goons trying to get Stan Hand's ledger."

Bev nodded. "So would mine."

Three of Dix's men sat in the outer office. Carter, Daniels, and Williams. "Find it?" Carter asked as all three men stood.

"No," Dix said as Mr. Data opened the door from the inner office. He no longer smelled of death and rotting flesh, but was dressed in what looked like the same suit.

"So where do we look next, boss?" Mr. Data asked.

"You know," Dix said, moving inside and hanging up his hat and coat, "I honestly don't have a clue."

He moved around and dropped into his chair as the others took up positions around the room.

Silence filled the office.

The silence of death and despair.

Dix could feel it, wanted to fight it. Yet he had nothing to hold up to stop it.

"Well," Bev said, "we're not going to find it sitting around here. Why not go over what happened again?"

"Exactly," Mr. Data said. "Go back to the crime scene to find that one clue we missed the first time. It happens a lot in detective novels."

"Mr. Data," Dix said, "this isn't a novel. And the crime scene was just out there in the hallway, remember?"

"Vividly," Mr. Data said.

"What can it hurt?" Bev said, moving over and pulling Dix up out of his chair. "Let's run through what happened one more time, just to make sure we haven't missed anything before we give up on this and try something else."

Dix let himself be pushed. She was right. Moving, acting was their only hope at this point, even though acting might solve little. At least he was doing something.

All six of them moved out into the hallway.

"This was where the Adjuster ended up," Mr. Data said. He pointed to an exact spot in the middle of the hall, right at the top of the stairway.

"And where were you, Mr. Data?" Bev asked.

"We were working to open the door here," Mr. Data said, taking ten steps down the hall toward the wall where Dix knew the door was. It was out of sight of both where the Adjuster sat and the staircase.

Bev looked at where the door in the wall was, then back at the spot where the Adjuster had sat.

"What are you thinking?" Dix asked.

Bev motioned for him to wait, then moved down the stairs, her heels clicking on the hard stairs as everyone stood in silence and watched. She stopped on the landing and looked back up at them. "How high was the Adjuster?" she asked.

Mr. Data held his hand about knee high.

The Luscious Bev started back up the staircase.

"How high was the Heart of the Adjuster?" she asked.

Date knelt and put his right hand into a fist and put it below his left. It was a pretty good approximation of how the golden ball had sat in the small machine.

Bev immediately stopped and then backed up almost to the landing. "So anyone my height, at this point, would see the Heart of the Adjuster as they were coming up the stairs."

"Exactly," Dix said.

"Were you and La Forge talking while you worked?" Bev asked.

"Yes," Mr. Data said. "We were discussing ways of getting the door open."

"So anyone coming up the stairs would have heard you, just about the time they saw the golden ball?"

"It would have been possible, yes," Mr. Data said.

"Which was why it was so easy to take," Dix said.

Bev nodded. "I understand that." She looked around the staircase, then up at Dix. "But my question is, why would anyone be coming up these stairs?"

"To see me," Dix said. "There's no office in this building but mine."

Suddenly his words, hanging in the air, caught him like a hammer. "Of course. We've been thinking that some regular thief took it and then would sell the Heart, therefore allowing the Heart to make its way up to one of the crime bosses in the city."

"Logical thinking," Mr. Data said, "because that is how all crime works in this city. It is controlled by the bosses, so anything stolen, they would know about."

Dix nodded. It was the reason they had gone after the crime bosses so hard. If something was stolen in this city, one of the bosses had it, or knew where it was. Usually that someone was Cyrus Redblock, but that wasn't the case at the moment.

"But why would a regular thief be in this old building?"

"Good question, boss," Mr. Data said.

Bev smiled at Dix, knowing he had jumped ahead of her. "What happened if whoever took it wasn't normally a thief?" she asked. "And then, if not a regular city thief, wouldn't know how to sell it to one of the bosses."

"Exactly," Dix said. He spun and headed back into his office. Why hadn't he thought of this hours ago? He had been so wrapped up in walking on one road, he hadn't noticed that there might be other roads as well.

"Where are you going, boss?" Mr. Data asked as he and the others followed Dix back inside.

"To see if I had an appointment about the time you were trying to fix that door," Dix said over his shoulder. "I want to find out who had a reason to come up those stairs."

Dix opened the top drawer of the desk in the outer office, pulled out his appointment book, and flipped it open. "Mr. Data, what time of the day would you estimate it was when the Heart was stolen?"

"About five in the evening in this city's time," Mr. Data said, "give or take fifteen minutes. I do not believe I can be any more accurate than that, boss, considering the circ.u.mstances of the reality of this world."

"Close enough," Dix said.

He flipped to the right page and scanned down the mostly empty appointment book. There were only two names anywhere near that five P.M. time. The first was Arnie Andrews, the husband of actress Marci Andrews.

Marci, one of Dix's favorite actresses in the city, had been killed at her stage door, and he had been working on his own to solve her case, talking to both her husband and her ex-lover, Brad Barringer. It seemed he had had an appointment with Arnie Andrews at 4:45 that day.

Dix, of course, had not made it to the appointment, due to other outside problems, but had Arnie made it? That was a critical question.

The other name on the list was a one-word name, circled, with the words "Dinner with wife" scrawled out beside the name.

Bell.

Five P.M. appointment.

Detective Bell, his friend.

Dix just stared at the name, not really believing it was possible.

Yet there it was.

Detective Bell had been scheduled to come up those stairs right at five, right at the time the Heart of the Adjuster had been stolen.

If Bell had taken it, what did they now need to do to get it back?

Dix stared at the names for a few long seconds, then made his decision.

"Mr. Data," Dix said, looking up at the five others in the office. "How much time do we have? Approximately."

"One hour and forty-five minutes," Mr. Data said.

Those words slammed down the fear and worry like a heavy weight, pressing on all of them.

Two suspects and only one hour and forty-five minutes to find a golden ball. They had no choice. They had to go after both at the same time.

"Mr. Data, you and Mr. Carter and two of the others downstairs go and find Arnie Andrews and search his apartment. If you don't find the Heart, bring him back here. I don't care how you do it. Just don't kill him. We need to talk to him."

He scribbled Arnie Andrews' address on a piece of paper and handed it to Mr. Data. "Don't waste any time."

"Understood," Mr. Data said, snapping around and heading for the door with Mr. Carter right behind him.

"And what are we going to do?" Bev asked. Her face was white, the worry deep in her eyes.

Dix scooted the appointment book over and moved it so Bev and the other two could read it.

"Oh, my," Bev said under her breath.

"We're going to set up a trap for a cop," Dix said. He smiled at the Luscious Bev. "And you're going to be the bait."

Clues from Dixon Hill's notebook in "The Case of the Missing Heart"

Benny the Banger is either dead, recovering from being dead, or in jail.

Harvey Upstairs Benton did not have the ball, but managed to get both ledgers anyway.

Either Arnie Andrews or Detective Bell had the opportunity to take the Heart of the Adjuster.

Chapter Nine.

Old Cases, Old Friends Section One: Confrontation O UTSIDE D IX'S OFFICE WINDOWS, the perpetual night of the city by the bay continued. The hard rain again pounded the street and rattled the windows. It was coming down so heavy that it was impossible to see more than twenty paces between the buildings.

The gutters were filling up as the rain came down faster than the drainage could take it away. Every so often a burst of wind would swirl the rain, sending it sideways across the window instead of down to the street.

Inside, the night's chill had backed off some as the old radiator cracked to life and worked to fight the dampness. Dix sat alone, thinking, letting the last minutes of this city tick past slowly, grinding their way toward the end of everything he knew and cared about.

A few minutes earlier Bev had made the phone call to Detective Bell like a pro, sitting on the edge of his desk, her legs crossed, her smile firmly in place. Her voice had had just enough panic in it to make it believable, yet calm enough to make herself understood. Dix was convinced she could have been a great actress if she had wanted to go that way.

While she had talked, Dix had sat behind his desk and smiled back at her, listening to her every word, nodding at how perfectly she worked the bait.

"Detective Bell, this is Bev, the friend of Dixon Hill's." Her voice had been hurried and insistent, just as it would have been if Dix had really been hurt.

She listened for a very short moment as Bell said something Dix couldn't hear.

"No, you don't understand," Bev had said, making her voice sound as if it might break. "Dix was. .h.i.t when we were trying to get away earlier. I don't think he's going to make it."

There had been another pause on Bev's end as Bell reacted. She had winked at Dix, then focused back on the call.

"We carried him back here. He wants to talk to you. He's been asking for you when he is awake. I thought I'd better call you at once. There isn't much time left."

There had been another short pause as she listened.

"We're in his office. Please hurry."

Pause again.

Dix had watched as she nodded to something Bell was telling her.

"Thank you, Detective Bell."

She had reached across and dropped the phone in its cradle like it was some sort of garbage that she didn't really want to touch and was tossing away.

"He's on his way. Five minutes tops he said."

"You're good at that," Dix had said as he stood and moved around the desk.

"I'm a woman," the Luscious Bev had said, smiling at him and batting her eyes.