“That’s possible.”
“This sucks,” Fernandez said. “Big time.”
Thorn nodded. “Yes. It does. It’s not right. But it’s the way things are. I’m just telling you what I’ve been told. Our job was to catch him. We uncovered him. We’re supposed to shut up and leave it alone from here on in.”
That pretty much ended the meeting, with nobody happy — especially Thorn. As the men left, Thorn stopped Fernandez. “Julio, can I see you a minute?”
“Yeah. What’s up?”
After the others were gone, Thorn told him. It surprised Fernandez, but it didn’t take five seconds for him to nod his agreement. Thorn had been pretty sure he would go along. They thought alike about this particular subject. Thorn’s grandfather had taught him that the law and justice were distant cousins; that when you were forced to make a choice between them, it was better to choose justice, even if it might put you at odds with the law. Laws changed, they shifted according to the whim of those who made them, and people sometimes made mistakes — just look at what the white man had done to the red man or the black man — genocide and slavery, and all of it perfectly legal at the time. There was the letter of the law, and then there was the spirit, his grandfather had taught him — it didn’t take an eagle to see which was the right path.
So Marissa’s story about the snow runners applied here. Maybe, just maybe, there might be another way.
36
Howard was cleaning out his temporary desk. The situation with Cox was effectively over, as far as Net Force was concerned. Jay was still doggedly trying to decode the file, and searching high and low for anything else that might swing the decision to back off in the other direction, but Howard knew a done deal when he heard one.
Sometimes you won, sometimes you lost. That was how it went. Losing this one, however — not only his last one with Net Force, but one with such a personal element, too — was going to be hard.
He looked up and saw Abe standing in the doorway.
“They are covering their tracks,” Abe said.
Howard said, “Yeah?”
“Natadze’s house just blew up. Pretty much leveled the sucker.”
“Really?”
“Our surveillance people have been long gone, but the local police are investigating it. First reports say it was probably natural gas, but I wouldn’t bet on it being an accident. Soon as the arson boys check it, I’m betting they find evidence of a trigger, even if it was a gas leak.”
Howard shook his head. “I don’t suppose Natadze was in the place when it went up?”
“No signs of a body. I’ll keep you posted, if you want.”
“I’d appreciate it, Abe.”
“You looking forward to the new job?”
“Yes and no. It’ll pay better. My wife will sleep easier. But it probably won’t be as much fun.”
“Anytime you want to come back and do a ride-along, let me know. You’ll always be welcome”
“Thanks. I appreciate it.”
Abe left, and Howard finished his packing. He was going to miss this, no question. But better-paid and safer had their appeal.
37
It had been dark for hours, and the neighborhood was quiet. Natadze’s stomach churned and sent bile into his throat as he approached what was left of his house, slipping from shadow to shadow in the night, moving with great caution.
He had driven past once earlier in the rental car, and what he had seen had twisted his bowels and thrust a shard of icy fear into his soul. His house was gone.
He had one hope. The safe.
The gun safe — a Liberty Presidential model with Quad-fire protection — had been in the basement. If it had just been a fire, he wouldn’t have worried as much. The salesman had shown him pictures of a safe like his that had been in a building that burned to the ground, and the contents, which included valuable documents, had not even been singed.
He’d had to hire a crew to take out part of the house’s wall in order to install the safe, a massive, hollowed-out chunk of insulated steel that weighed fifteen hundred pounds. Natadze had the interior of the box redesigned so that he could squeeze five standard-size guitars into it, with room left over for his Korth revolvers. He always kept the Friedrich locked away when he was gone, as well as his Hauser; others, he rotated in and out. Currently, there was an Oribe, a Ruck, and a Byers in it. Less than a third of his collection.
The room in the basement in which the safe had stood was insulated and humidity controlled, with an automatic fire-retardant system that used carbon dioxide. The other guitars had been in their cases in that locked room, and, under normal circumstances, relatively protected. But when he finally arrived, having walked there from three streets over where he had parked his car, he knew there was no hope for anything outside the safe. The entire house was gone, save for part of the chimney, and the basement was hollowed-out and black. Even in the dark, he could see that.
Most of his collection of fine instruments — among them, an Elliott, a White, a Schramm, a Spross, and the new Bogdanovich, were gone. Blasted to splinters, burned to ashes.
It was like a hammer blow to his heart.
It was not the money. He could buy new ones, maybe even better than the ones he’d had, but there would never be others exactly like them. Those instruments had been unique, each with its own special voice, and those voices were now stilled forever. Murdered — because it had not been an accident. Somebody had blown up his house and the precious instruments in it. Somebody. And who knew it was his house? Who stood to profit if he were to be killed in an explosion?
This was not how the authorities did things in the United States. They would confiscate the house and what was in it, sell it all, make a profit. Not blow it up.
It made him want to cry.
Natadze stood in the shadows for half an hour, watching. It was late, there was yellow police tape strung, but no sign that anybody was there waiting for him. What would be the point in watching a burned-out house?
After he was sure he was alone, he moved stealthily, and climbed down into the rubble that had been his home.
The natural gas main had been in the basement. The force of the initial explosion had knocked the safe onto its side, hinge down. The paint had been burned off, but there was enough left of the steel dial to work. He used his tiny flashlight to look at the numbers as he input them.
The safe was designed to protect the contents against temperatures over fifteen hundred degrees Fahrenheit, according to the tests he had been shown, keeping the condition inside well below the flash point of paper for more than half an hour at extreme external temperatures. A normal house fire would never reach that. While it might get hot enough inside to damage the finishes, which was bad, there were partitions between each instrument so that falling over shouldn’t bang them together. Only the Byers, which was up top and angled, was likely to move about much.
But — how much concussive force might have been transmitted into the safe? An explosion powerful enough to blow away most of a house and to knock a fifteen-hundred-pound safe onto its side was not a small matter.
His mouth dry with fear, he finished the combination and retracted the bolts. He nearly wrenched his shoulder lowering the door to the floor. He found he was holding his breath as he shined the light into the box…
The Friedrich was in the middle, next to the Hauser. He took the Friedrich out first, and a great sense of relief washed over him. It was okay! The finish was smooth, unblemished. He carefully replaced it, removed the Hauser, and it, too, was undamaged!