“Monday… because of Bredloe?”
“You always were a bright boy. Yes, because of Bredloe. Look at the log.”
“Jesus. Bredloe was looking at the evidence the day he was hurt. That afternoon.”
“Yes. He was agitated, you might say. People tell me you pissed him off.”
Frank smoothed his hand over the sheet. “Yes, I did.”
“Well, don’t feel bad. This whole thing about Lefebvre has been the equivalent of a departmental wedgie. The only people who can ignore it have no balls.”
Frank looked at the time on the log sheet. “He came down here after arguing with me about Lefebvre. I told him I thought Lefebvre might be innocent.”
“Is that a fact?” Flynn said, seeming amused.
“Don’t feel compelled to give me grief about that — I’m getting plenty already.”
“Oh, I’m sure you are,” Flynn said.
“So you were saying — he wasn’t in a good mood when you saw him?”
“Oh, that’s an understatement. He was in a little better mood when he brought it back. But I think someone saw him with the box and that someone had something to say to him about it — ’cause he called me a little after he checked it back in to ask who else in the department knew what was in it.”
“What did you say?”
“‘Everybody and his grandmother, and probably a few great-grandmothers, too.’”
Frank sighed. “You need to tell Hale about this.”
“Already have. You mention the ‘L’ name to him yet?”
“Lefebvre? Yes, I see your point. But maybe that will change now… Anyway, let me know what you’re getting at.”
“Well, even though Bredloe brought it back in kind of a better mood, as if — you know, as if he had just reassured himself that we weren’t hatching some monster’s egg in this box all these years — I thought it was a little strange. Your case, and he’s not usually one to butt in like that. He’s not the kind to interfere.”
“No, but like you say, this case chaps everybody.”
“Even on high-profile cases, he doesn’t try to second-guess his detectives. Something was nagging at him, you ask me. He checks out a box that only has a watch in it. And then he gets hurt. Almost killed. And that same day I’ve heard that over the weekend, you found Lefebvre’s body in the wreckage of his plane, and there wasn’t any stolen evidence with him. I start asking myself if this evidence box is like the pharaohs’ tombs or something — you know, Egyptian curse or something like that. People handle it, and” — he snapped his fingers — “so long. Your plane crashes or bricks fall on you.”
“Could be coincidence.”
“You don’t like that any more than I do.”
“No.” Frank nodded toward the other pages. “What are those?”
“Look at this one first,” Flynn said, giving another photocopy to him. “It’s a log sheet for the day Lefebvre looked at the evidence for the murders. June twenty-second.”
“June twenty-second?” Frank repeated, disbelieving. “I thought Lefebvre worked on the Randolph case. But he didn’t look at the evidence until that Friday?”
Flynn smiled. “We’re on the same wavelength. I love it when people make it easy for me. You’re right. He wasn’t really that actively involved in the case per se. I was working bunco — handling mostly forgery and fraud cases back then, so I wasn’t privy to everything that was going on in Homicide. But you know how things are — word gets around about cases that might be connected and so on. This was Whitey Dane we were about to nail, after all.”
“And lots of cases were connected to Dane.”
“Exactly. Dane had his fingers in a lot of pies, and we were interested in him in my section, too. So this case had us all hopping. Way I remember it is, we were all a little pissed off because Lefebvre was taking time off, hanging out with this kid. He was with Seth Randolph all the time. You’ve probably read the notes by now, so you know the role he played in saving the kid and all that. So here’s the department bright boy, baby-sitting when we need him in here.”
Flynn paused, mentioned the need to look good for the cameras, and took the time to point to the blueprint. Frank obliged him by appearing to focus on it, but his mind was racing.
“Funny,” Flynn said, “what questions occur to you when it’s too late. I started asking myself stuff I should have asked ten years ago. What I started wondering was, when the hell did the guy get a chance to get corrupted by Dane? In the hospital cafeteria? He’d only seen the stuff twice. Just after six that evening, and again, a couple of hours later. But then I notice something that really makes me crazy. Look at the signatures.”
Frank started to study them, but Flynn already had the tip of his pen pointing at the two examples. “Let an old man who used to work the forgery detail show you. The first time the name is written smaller than the second.”
“Not much, though,” Frank said.
“Not much to your untrained eye. Let’s call these two by the date they were made — call them the ‘June twenty-second signatures.’ The earlier one, the smaller one, we’ll call ‘Twenty-two A,’ and the other, ‘Twenty-two B.’” He flipped over the remaining stack of papers, gave them to Frank, and said, “This is a collection of Phil’s signatures, ones I took from different parts of the log, on different days. Now compare them to the ones you’re looking at there.”
Although the signatures were not identical, Frank knew that it was natural for slight variations to occur in a person’s signature. But even without closely examining them he could see that most of the examples Flynn showed him were generally formed in the same way, with characteristics that made them look more like the 22B than the 22A signature. The 22A was, indeed, slightly smaller than the others.
“That’s a sign of forgery, you know,” Flynn said. “I could show you half a dozen others in those examples — hesitations, the way the capital L in Lefebvre is formed, and so on.”
“So if someone forged his signature—”
“Someone else took the evidence.”
Frank was quiet.
Flynn said, “You’ve already come to that conclusion, though.”
“Yes. I think people in the department saw what they wanted to see, what they expected to see. So they didn’t look too closely. But this forgery of his signature might be the strongest proof of his innocence yet. Have you shown this to Joe Koza up in Questioned Documents?”
“No. He’s young and I don’t think he’s had a thing to do with any of this, but…”
Frank nodded. “I’m with you. Wait until we know more before word spreads.”
“Exactly.”
“I need to see that evidence box.”
“Just don’t forget about the pharaohs’ curse.”
“Believe me, I haven’t. But I still want to see this famous watch.”
“Not much to it. Maybe you can see something there that the last couple of fellows have missed. I hope your luck is better than Lefebvre’s or Bredloe’s. And I think I may just know the trick to help you avoid harm.”
“That rosary?” Frank asked, smiling.
“I don’t doubt it — but that’s not mine, believe it or not. One of our clerks is so spooked by what’s in that freezer, she won’t go in there unless she’s got that in her pocket. No, we’re going to change another little ritual for you.” He glanced at his watch and said, “We should be okay now. Let’s put the papers away — no one is going to believe we were that interested in a damned freezer.”
He gave all the photocopies to Frank, who folded them and tucked them inside his suit coat’s inner pocket as Flynn put the blueprint away.
“Let’s walk out,” Flynn said. “I’ll explain along the way.”