That’s where the BMW and O & O’s Audi were.
Griffin stopped first at the office, and flashed the FBI badge he always brought with him. It was fake, of course, but even the most knowledgeable authority wouldn’t be able to tell.
“What can I do for you, Agent?” the impound employee asked.
“I need to take a look at a vehicle in your accident lot,” Griffin said, donning his well-honed, bored-investigator persona.
“Which one?”
He made a show of pulling a small notebook from his pocket and shuffling through the pages. “It’s a…BMW.” He gave the license number Dima had provided him.
The man looked it up on the list. “Still here. And I see you’ve already been okayed by Detective Marsh.”
“Good. Wasn’t sure if he’d contacted you yet.” The real Detective Marsh had not contacted the yard. It had been Dima using O & O’s system to e-mail the appropriate clearance from what appeared to be the detective’s account.
“Sign here,” the clerk said.
Griffin scribbled an illegible signature on the sheet.
“You know the way?”
The enforcer flashed a smile. “I do.”
As he stepped outside, he pulled his collar tight to his neck, and popped open his umbrella to ward off the now steady rain. Slogging between the rows of parking violators, he made his way over to the open gate of the accident area and passed inside. It took less than a minute to locate the two vehicles from the crash. From the way the Audi’s side was smashed in, Griffin could now see why the man who’d been sitting in the passenger seat hadn’t died. The BMW had hit the back half of the car, containing most of the wreckage to the rear passenger area. As for the BMW, its damage was mostly limited to the front end — buckled hood, crunched fenders, and, by the way the vehicle was skewed, a bent frame.
If there had been any prints on the outside of the BMW, the storm had washed them away. So Griffin opened the back door on the passenger side, scooted onto the seat, and shut himself in.
The sound of the rain hitting the roof was almost relaxing, its intensity fluctuating in waves that could have easily lulled Griffin to sleep if he’d been in the mood. It was almost like music, something John Coltrane might play. An endless, intoxicating melody.
Griffin leaned between the front seats and scanned the driver area. An expelled airbag hung loosely over the steering wheel, but everything else looked almost normal. On the passenger’s side, the glove compartment hung open, and whatever had been inside was gone, confiscated by Metro Police or O & O.
What Griffin was looking for, though, was not registration papers or discarded receipts or stray fingerprints. In fact, he wasn’t hunting for anything a search of all the normal places would turn up. He was looking for things not easily found, things that would clearly indicate these intruders were pros.
He ran his fingers across the carpet covering the rear footwells, and checked under the front seats. Both were clean. The ceiling liner was next. There he made his first discovery, above the front passenger’s door. Evenly spaced, and situated so that he almost thought it was part of the vehicle’s frame, was a four-piece set of lock picks.
He continued his search.
Tucked under the front dash where only his fingertips could reach, and held in place by pressure brackets, was a collapsible, four-inch hunting knife. Not far from it was an extendable baton. There was no question now. Pros for sure.
He checked the air-con vents, the radio speakers, and the door panels, but the three items he’d already found were apparently all that was hidden in the cab. He stuffed his discoveries into the pockets of his overcoat, and climbed back out of the car.
The crunched hood of the BMW had been turned into an inverted V, creating a gap that allowed him to look inside the engine compartment. Nothing jumped out at him, but he knew any thorough inspection would necessitate using equipment to rip the hood off first. He had neither the time nor the inclination for that.
He moved around to the back of the car. From the scratch marks along the lip of the trunk, it was clear the police had used a crowbar to dislodge it. He gave the lid a test, and was happy to see it rise.
The trunk was messier than the car had been. There was no cargo to speak of, but the carpet that had covered the cargo area had been ripped away and pushed to the back. He revised his earlier thought and decided it probably wasn’t the police who had searched the vehicle, but O & O. At least they saved him having to rip the damn carpet out himself.
Leaning inside, he studied the metal surface, his hand darting out on occasion so that he could rub his fingertips over anything he found suspect. It was along the wall on the driver’s side that he discovered a trap — a vehicle hidey-hole.
The seam delineating it was nearly imperceptible — the paint and molding jobs top-notch. He moved his fingers along it, hoping the release would be in the same area, but knowing it wasn’t likely, given the quality of the workmanship. He finally discovered the release several feet away, right below the taillight, disguised as a rubber electrical system cap.
To be sure he was right, he turned it so he could see the backside. Embedded into the rubber was the thick, braided wire he knew from experience would be connected to the latch holding the trap closed. He was about to give it a pull when he spotted something else. Another wire had been braided into the main one, clinging to it like a remora on a shark. Together they disappeared behind one of the metal brackets.
Griffin frowned. There was no reason for them both to go to the latch.
He pulled his mini flashlight out of his pocket, closed the umbrella, and crawled all the way into the trunk. Moving as close as he could to the inside wall, he followed the wires around the corner by the taillights to the sidewall. There they split — the bigger wire continuing toward the trap, the smaller wire heading down into a metal tube that ran along the junction of the wall and the trunk floor. The tube was welded into place and painted to look like it was standard issue. It had even fooled Griffin when he first saw it, but now he was sure it hadn’t been manufacturer installed.
He traced the tube all the way to the back of the trunk, where it disappeared behind a metal plate and didn’t reappear again. Either the wire stopped there, or went through the wall into the back of the car.
With extreme care, he slid two fingers along the tube where it ducked under the plate. He didn’t get far before he hit an obstruction. He pulled his fingers out and tried again from the other sides. He closed his eyes as he traced the shape and drew a mental picture. It was some kind of junction, or relay, or…
Son of a bitch, he thought as he pulled his fingers out.
A fail-safe switch. If he had pulled the trap’s release cable, it would have triggered some kind of self-destruct system, destroying anything that was hidden inside. Okay, so how would the owner open the compartment without losing the contents? There had to be a bypass somewhere.
He searched around, his fingers hunting in the spaces he couldn’t see into.
It took him twenty minutes to finally locate it. Thank God for the rain. If it had been a clear day, one of the yard employees would have probably wandered by and wondered what he was doing.
The bypass switch was hidden under an inspection sticker along the edge of the trunk’s lid. It was a tiny, two-position switch. He moved it into the opposite position, and crawled out of the trunk, hoping he’d disarmed it instead of arming it. The only way to find out was to pull the release.
Not one to waste time contemplating the unknowable, he grabbed the rubber cap and yanked. At first it resisted, as if it were rooted in place, then there was a thunk, and the cap moved away, bringing the wires with it. There was no sudden burst of flames or smell of dissolving chemical, only a second thunk as the top of the trap door swung open.