But first he had to call Danny.
Alex called from a public booth in the library’s foyer.
“I found our victim,” Danny’s excited voice came over the wire once the call connected.
“Let me guess,” Alex cut him off. “Is it a man by the name of James Van der Waller?”
There was a stunned silence, then Danny came back on the line. “How do you do that?” he asked, his voice sullen. Alex related his conversation with Van der Waller and his suspicions about his insurance company.
“You sure Van der Waller’s clean?” Danny asked.
“Pretty sure.”
“All right. I’ll see what I can dig up on Callahan Brothers Property.”
“Hey, did you get Mary’s number yesterday?” Alex changed the subject.
“No.” Danny said. Alex was stunned. Danny had a bit of a rep as a ladies man.
“I thought she was your type,” he said. “You know, breathing.”
“She’s too much my type,” Danny said, and laughed. “The kind I could fall for.”
“Would that be so bad?” Alex asked. “Not all of us are confirmed bachelors.”
“Do you have any idea what my father would do if I brought home a white girl?” Danny asked.
Alex hadn’t thought about that. A bachelor he might be, but that didn’t mean he didn’t like women, and he took them however they came. He’d seen enough guts and brains at murder scenes to know that people were all the same inside so it always surprised him when someone thought what was outside mattered. Still, Alex knew Danny’s father, and he was someone you didn’t want to disappoint.
“Tough luck,” Alex said. “Maybe I’ll get her number.”
Danny didn’t take the bait. “Call me in the morning and I’ll give you whatever I find on the insurance company.”
Alex promised that he would and hung up.
He spent the rest of the evening at the library poring over old newspapers, looking for any signs of Charles Beaumont. Burglaries were rare. It took him three hours just to find one. In all of the previous year, only six burglaries of rich homes had been reported. Of those, the same man committed at least two of the burglaries, but he was caught and jailed. The other four remained a mystery.
Alex read each article about the four robberies several times and took meticulous notes, but there just weren’t any details that stood out in any of the crimes. The homes were in different parts of the city. One victim had paintings taken, another jewelry, yet another antique silverware and vintage wines. The only thing that connected the robberies was the thief’s obvious knowledge of high end merchandise. Knowledge that anyone who traveled in those circles would have.
With nothing to connect the robberies, Alex began scanning the police report for each day, hoping to catch a break. He did find a follow-up report on one of the burglaries that he’d missed. It summed up that the police had no suspects and no leads, but took issue with an opinion piece that had been written about the police department’s handling of the case. Without any real leads to follow, Alex located the issue with the offending commentary in it and read the short article by an editorial columnist named Walter Nash. In the article, Nash claimed that the police were lax in their pursuit of the obvious suspect in this case, the famous cat burglar known only as the Spook.
Alex had never heard of anyone the police had dubbed the Spook. He soon realized why — Walter Nash had invented the Spook to describe any robbery where the perpetrator got in and out of the dwelling unseen, even the ones where the home’s owners were not at home at the time. Alex flipped through the papers reading Nash’s weekly columns. It was mostly sensational drivel, but he seemed to pay particular attention to the robberies, detailing the facts and sensationalizing their mythical perpetrator.
Alex wanted to believe that Beaumont was the Spook, but even if he had been, knowing the name a hack reporter gave him wouldn’t get Alex any closer to finding the man.
On the other hand, all Alex had to do was follow Nash’s columns to learn when a spectacular, unsolved burglary had been committed. That would be a lot faster than going through the papers week by week.
By the time the librarian came by to throw him out, and glare at him for the mess he made, Alex had identified twelve high-end burglaries over the last three years. Each had the same characteristics: the only things taken were valuable and easy to carry, and there was no sign anyone had been in the house.
No wonder Nash dubbed this guy the Spook.
By the time Alex got home, Iggy was already in bed and the house was silent. Alex reviewed his notes at the kitchen table while he ate a hastily constructed liverwurst sandwich. He still didn’t have much. Nothing tied Beaumont to the Spook, but he had, at least, found a pattern. That was enough for one night.
Exhausted, he dragged himself to his room and stripped to his boxers. He pulled back the covers to crawl into bed, but a sudden thought made him stop. He picked up his discarded trousers and fished out his vault key. He hadn’t given the Archimedean Monograph any thought since last night, but a possible fix for the finding rune had just come to him and it wouldn’t hurt to make a few notes.
Just a few.
13
The Doctor
“Well you look like hell,” Iggy observed as Alex dragged himself downstairs the next morning. Alex grunted at him and poured himself a large cup of coffee.
“Doctor Halverson called me yesterday,” Iggy said.
“Who?”
Iggy sighed and waited for Alex to take a few slugs from his coffee mug. “Doctor Halverson called,” he said again.
“Oh. The researcher from the University,” Alex said, his sleep-deprived brain finally making the connection.
“He said they’ve identified three separate strains of the pathogen.” Iggy paused as if what he had said were self-evident. When Alex failed to do anything but stare at him blankly, he continued. “It appears the disease gets weaker with every generation.”
“So it isn’t perfect after all?”
“It’s still not natural,” Iggy said. “No disease in recorded history is fatal after just two hours.”
Alex shrugged. He wanted to do right by Father Harry, but it was Friday and if he didn’t talk to James Van der Waller’s insurance company today, he’d have to wait till Monday. Since Captain Rooney’s meeting with the Chief was at ten o’clock Monday morning, he didn’t have that kind of time.
“I’ve got a full day,” he said. “But if Halverson finds anything that can help me track down Charles Beaumont, or whoever’s behind this, call Leslie.”
Iggy promised that he would, and Alex reached for the phone on the kitchen wall.
“It’s about time you called,” Danny said once the police operator put the call through to him. “You know we’ve only got today left to save my job, right?”
“Sorry, Danny,” Alex said, feeling like a heel for spending time on the Monograph. “What have you got on Callahan Brothers Property?”
“Not much,” Danny said. “A couple of court cases where they were sued for not paying claims, but they won all of those. The rest are cases where they went after people who tried to cheat their clients. It’s all pretty regular.”
“That’s it?” Alex was astounded.
“I asked the boys over in fraud,” Danny said. “They said that Callahan Brothers recover stolen property fairly regularly. Much more often than their competitors.”
“Like maybe they’ve got a goon squad who leans on people till they talk?” Alex asked.
“Nobody knows,” Danny said. “Or if they do, they aren’t talking. I suggest you quit wasting time and get your butt over there and ask them.”