I shook my head.
Sandy looked at me, her head tilted. “What?”
“Aw, nothing. I’ll tell you later.”
“That seems to be a habit of yours.”
“Hey now…”
“Hey now your own self.”
“Listen, I’d like for you to go back to the shop, take everyone’s notes and get them into the computer. The victims, their families, their co-workers, friends, neighbors, witness statements, all of it. This is all connected somehow. You’re the one with the psychology degree. See if you can psychologize some sense out of it all.”
“I don’t think that’s a real word. In fact, I’m sure of it.”
I gave her my best fake smile. “I know. I was trying to be charming.”
“Keep trying. See you tonight?”
I leaned in close, smelled her hair and whispered in her ear. “Count on it. I’ll let you psychologize me.”
“Like we’ve got enough time for that.”
“Hey…”
I had a thought and punched Rosencrantz’s number into my phone. “Still at the bank?” I said when he answered.
“Aw fuck, who ratted me out?”
“No one. I’m psychic. Are you still there or not?”
“Yeah. What’s up?”
I took the key that Murton left on the bar out of my pocket. “Let me talk to Margery for a minute, will you?”
“She’s in the can, freshening up. We’re uh, gonna have a late lunch. Wait a minute, here she comes.”
“Have her pull up the records for their safe deposit boxes. See if one of them belongs to Murton Wheeler.” I listened to Rosie repeat my instructions and then I heard the clacking of a computer keyboard. A few seconds later I had the answer.
“No Murton Wheeler listed.”
“How about anyone with the last name of Wheeler?”
I listened again to the sounds of the keyboard before he told me there were no Wheelers listed at all. After thinking for a moment, I asked him to have her try Samuel Pate.
“Sorry Jonesy. No Pate listed either.”
I was about to hang up again when I thought of one more thing. “Ask her if she can identify a safe deposit box by the code stamped on the key.”
A few seconds later he said, “She says the keys are code stamped to match the boxes. If you have a key she can match it to the box, then check the box against the owner to get a name.”
I gave him the code and waited while he repeated it to Dugan’s assistant. When Rosencrantz came back on the line his voice sounded flat, like he was talking to me on the other side of a glass wall. “What the hell is going on, Jonesy?”
“What do you mean?” I said.
“That key code you gave me belongs to a box currently shown as being rented to you. You know those signature cards they make you sign so they know it’s your box? I’m looking at yours as we speak. It’s your signature, man.”
When I arrived at Sunrise Bank, Rosencrantz was waiting for me at the entrance to the executive offices. He stood leaning against a marble tiled wall, a half eaten apple in his hand. When he saw me, he pulled the signature card out of his breast pocket and handed it to me without saying anything. I studied the card for a moment then looked back at him. “What do you think?” I said.
He took another bite of the apple and thoroughly chewed, then swallowed before he answered me. “I think we should go see what’s in the box, Sherlock,” he said.
I let the focus drain out of my eyes before responding. “As long as we’re on the same page, then.” I took the apple from his hand and took a bite before I gave it back. “After you,” I said.
We found Margery, who introduced us to an account manager named Beth, a heavy breasted, dark haired woman who reminded me of my first grade teacher. She took us downstairs to the safe deposit box area and I had to sign the signature card to demonstrate that the box was mine, even though it was not. When she compared the signatures she looked at me, looked at the card again, then back at me. “You say you never rented this box?” she said.
“That’s right,” I said.
“Well, that is weird, isn’t it? I mean, your signature matches perfectly. I’m probably breaking some rule by allowing you access to this box, but you guys are the good guys, right? And with what’s happened to Franklin, I don’t think anyone would object, do you?”
Rosencrantz dipped his chin and looked at me. I frowned at him, then gently took the bank’s master key from Beth’s hand and inserted it into the top lock on the box, turned it counter-clockwise and heard it’s tumblers ratchet into place. I then took the key Murton had left for me at the bar and placed it in the lower lock, but before I turned it, Rosencrantz’s hand clamped around my wrist like a pair of vise grips. “Tell me again where you got the key,” he said, the look on his face one of intention.
“From Murton Wheeler. He’s the one I asked you guys to run the sheet on.”
“Yeah, I just put that together,” he said. “This is the guy that almost got your bacon fried outside Kuwait, right?”
“Something like that,” I said. “He also saved my life. I took some shrapnel. He pumped me full of morphine and blood expander until the medics arrived. I would have bled to death. You can let go of my wrist now.”
“I will, but don’t turn that key.”
“Why not?” I said.
“What was Wheeler’s specialty in your unit?”
It was one of those questions that make you doubt yourself and wonder if perhaps you might have chosen the wrong line of work, the way a surgeon must feel the first time he commands an operating theater and holds a scalpel in his hand, knowing he must slice into human flesh and explore the physical depths of the human body. “He was a demolitions expert,” I said. “It was his job to blow the Iraqi ammo dumps.” I felt myself swallow, then I let go of the key as carefully as I could.
The three of us stood there and stared at the box in the wall. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Beth put a hand to her throat then whisper ‘oh my God.’ I turned and looked at Rosencrantz and said, “Let’s clear this building and get the bomb squad down here.”
But as I soon discovered, you do not clear an operating bank during business hours as quickly as you would like, no matter the reason. The bank’s in-house security had to be notified, the main vault locked down, the teller drawers locked, the computer’s had to be shut down, and all of that took most every employee in the building working together almost thirty minutes. I wondered what they would do if a fire broke out. When I asked the security chief that very question he looked at me with an expression that seemed to indicate I might not be operating at full speed. “We’d get the hell out,” he said. I stared at him until he shook his head and walked away.
When the bomb squad technicians arrived, Rosencrantz and I showed them the safe deposit box, then we walked across the street and waited inside a coffee shop. I bought two large cups of coffee from a purple haired teen age boy who had enough piercings on his face to set off an airport metal detector. A college text book lay on the counter next to the cash register entitled ‘Ethical Issues of Molecular Nanotechnology.’ He saw me looking at the book and said, “Yeah, it’s pretty heavy stuff, man. Did you know that it won’t be long before they’ll have computers so small you’ll need a microscope to see them? They’ll put them inside little capsules you can swallow that’ll cure cancer and all kinds of shit. Isn’t that something? Say, you want cream or sugar for your joe?”
I wasn’t sure which question to answer, so I handed him a ten dollar bill and told him to keep the change. When I handed Rosencrantz his coffee, he said “I almost forgot. Your boy Wheeler? He came up blank.”
“You must have missed something then,” I said. “He’d be on record with the V.A. Plus, he was busted for assault. He did time in Westville.”
Rosie shook his head. “I think you misunderstood what I said. Everybody’s got something, right? A traffic ticket, a divorce settlement, a beef with the IRS, whatever. I wasn’t saying he comes up with no record. I’m saying he doesn’t come up at all. We checked Federal, State, local, the service, everything. There’s nothing there, Jonesy. He doesn’t exist, at least on paper anyway. You know how hard that is these days?”