“This is a big chance; it’s your life.”
“I know that, and I’m telling you I can handle him. The alternative is to let him go on killing until we can catch him at it. How many lives of innocent women might we have to sacrifice?”
Hurd slumped. “When do you want to do this?”
“As soon as we can get the equipment in place,” Lauren said. “Holly is going to call Jane Grey and have her tell Jimmy his car has to be serviced or inspected, so we can get hold of it for a day. All we need is to set the day.”
“Let me make a couple of calls,” Hurd said.
Holly sat in her office and called Lance. His face came on the screen.
“Yes?”
“Lance, I’ve got one suspect for our man, but I have no evidence to back up my suspicions.”
“I’m not intending to try him,” Lance said.
“I went into his house this evening. I found nothing except a large safe with an electronic lock. If there’s anything that will prove or even indicate who he is, it will be in that safe.”
“You’ve been trained to open it,” Lance said.
“If I do that, I’m going to need an electronic device that Tech Services can supply. They call it an electronic combination resolver.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes, time to get into the house and do the work. I got lucky tonight; he wasn’t there.”
“You’ll have the device tomorrow morning,” Lance said.
“All right, but understand this, Lance: I’ll do the black-bag job, but I’m not going to go further than that. If you want something more done, you’re going to have to send someone else.”
“You’re such a sissy,” Lance said, chuckling. “Just get into the safe. All I need is confirmation of his identity, and then you’re out of it.”
Holly sighed. “All right,” she said. She ended the call.
54
Holly woke up to the sound of the doorbell, alone, since Josh had worked a night shift at the hospital. She got up, struggled into a robe and walked downstairs. Daisy was already sitting in front of the door, on guard.
“Stay, Daisy,” she said. Through a glass pane beside the door, she could see a black car. She looked through the peephole and saw a man, his back turned to her, wearing a black windbreaker and a black baseball cap. Guard, Daisy,” she said. Daisy stood up and gave a low growl.
Holly put the chain on the door and opened it a crack. “Yes?”
The man turned around. He was young-midtwenties-and wearing dark glasses. “Ms. Barker?”
“Yes.” Holly put her foot tight against the door, ready for his shoulder against it.
He held up a small package. “I have a delivery for you.”
“From whom?”
“From your friend in Virginia.”
Holly slumped. “God, I didn’t know who you were.”
“That’s kind of the idea,” he said. “Nobody is supposed to.” He held out the package, and Holly took it.
“I’m supposed to tell you, you should take very good care of that and return it when you’re finished; it’s not supposed to get lost.”
“I understand,” Holly said. “Thank you.”
He turned and walked back toward his car.
“It’s okay, Daisy,” Holly said, locking the door behind her. “He was a friend.”
Daisy relaxed.
Holly got a kitchen knife, cut the packing tape and removed the item. It was smaller than the one she’d trained with at the Farm, about the same size as a personal digital assistant, with a small LCD screen on top and a keyboard at the bottom. It could have been mistaken for a calculator. A wire ran from its base, ending in two very small alligator clips.
The box also held a sheet of folded paper. She opened it to find six photographs. A title read: “Six most widely used electronic locks,” and there were arrows drawn, showing where the wires should be connected. Also in the box was a small pair of wire stripper/cutters.
She put everything back in the box, closed it and locked it in her small office, then went back to the kitchen, put the coffeepot on and began making breakfast.
She had gotten lucky the day before; was she going to be lucky enough again to find Jack Smithson out of his house? She had a feeling this was going to take a stakeout, and she hated stakeouts.
She ate her breakfast while glancing through the paper, then showered and dressed, slipping on a pair of rubber-soled loafers. Then she took the box from her office, called Daisy, got into her car and drove to Vero Beach.
Teddy Fay packed and sealed the two cardboard boxes, put them into the trunk of his car and locked the front door to his house. He got into the car and drove out from the driveway, turning north on A-1A, headed for the airport.
Holly had been sitting in her car, a block to the south, for less than an hour when she saw Smithson’s silver Toyota pull out of the driveway. She waited for a while, until he had driven away from her, then started her car and turned into his driveway. She had been here before, for dinner, and she remembered seeing the driveway sensor planted just inside the entrance. She checked again to be sure that it was still there. It would give her a warning if he returned.
She checked the second hand on her Rolex as she passed the entrance, then drove down the narrow road to the guesthouse at a normal pace. She drove past the little house, checking her watch; just over a minute. She drove behind the house and parked so that the car was headed toward the beach but concealed from the drive by the house.
She left the engine running, tucked the box under her arm, then went to the front door and picked the lock. Leaving her shoes on the porch, she went directly to the study and opened the closet door that concealed the big safe. Using the sharp end of the wire stripper/ cutter, she popped off the cover of the electronic lock, exposing the battery and the electronics, then she opened the box, retrieved the combination resolver and unfolded the sheet of photographs.
She compared the photos to the lock on the safe and immediately saw the correct one. Then she took the wire strippers and cut through the insulation on the two wires indicated on the photograph. She pushed back the insulation an eighth of an inch and attached an alligator clip, then did the same on the other wire. That done, she switched on the resolver. A message appeared: “How many digits?”
She looked on top of the safe, saw a yellow pamphlet and picked it up. It was the instructions for changing the combination for the safe. Of course, one needed the original, five-digit combination to change it, but all she needed was the number of digits. She entered 5 into the resolver.
A stream of numbers began scrolling up the LCD display, and at the top, a clock, indicating the time required to try all possible six-digit combinations for the lock: an hour and six minutes, and counting. That was the maximum length of time; the resolver might hit the right combination at any moment.
She set the instrument on top of the safe and had another look around the study. She tried the computer again, hoping he had left it on, but as it booted up, it required a password again. She shut it off and began going through the desk drawers again, finding only a telephone book. She imagined that Smithson kept his personal phone book on the computer.
Teddy was admitted through the airport gate and drove out to his airplane. He stowed the two boxes in the luggage compartment, then, using a 12-volt hair dryer, stripped the old registration numbers from the aircraft and affixed the new ones. The task had taken less than half an hour. He got back into the car and headed home.
Holly was startled by a sudden, electronic beep. The driveway sensor! She went to grab the resolver and heard a noise from the safe, the bolts opening. The beep had signaled only that the resolver had found the combination. She checked the clock: it had stopped on 83220 after fifty-one minutes.