They put him in the backseat of the unmarked car and drove to the rear entrance of Area Ten Headquarters to avoid any reporters out front. They almost got the kid upstairs unnoticed, but a stray reporter standing at the front desk spotted them.
“Hey!” he yelled. He ran toward them. “Have you arrested Judge Meade’s son? What’s going on?”
People gaped at them. Turner and Mike Meade continued up the stairs. Fenwick barred the reporter’s progress.
“Why are you bringing him up the back way?”
“To avoid any questions from dopes like you,” Fenwick said.
“Why are you avoiding questions?”
“Look,” Fenwick said, “he’s helping us with the investigation. We’re taking all the help we can get. What’s wrong with the son helping us?”
“I think I’ve got a scoop.”
Acting Commander Molton hurried down the stairs. “Problem here?” he asked.
“Why have the police arrested Judge Meade’s son?”
Molton said, “No one has been arrested. No arrest is imminent. We are getting help from as many people as possible.” Molton drew the reporter away from Fenwick, allowing the detective to hustle up the stairs as fast as his bulk would allow. As Fenwick climbed, he heard Molton making soothing noises at the reporter.
On the third floor Turner was hunting in a storage room for a VCR that worked. He’d already rolled a cart with a television on it next to their desks.
“Where’s the kid?” Fenwick asked.
“I arrested him.”
“Funny.”
“I proposed marriage, and he said yes.”
“Unlikely.”
“He died.”
Fenwick said, “You’ve got him on the fourth floor in one of the conference rooms.”
“If you knew that, why did you ask?”
“Habit? I wanted to exercise my jaw? I want to win the Carruthers-Is-Stupid prize?”
Turner walked out with a VCR He brought it over to the television and rested the VCR on the shelf below the television on the cart. He plugged the machines in, hooked them up, put in one of the tapes, and pressed play. Turner and Fenwick placed their chairs so they could both watch it at the same time.
They recognized the empty corridor as that of the Kennedy Federal Building. In the distance they could see cars going by on Dearborn Street. The film had a time display/counter in the lower-right-hand corner.
Nothing moved in the corridor. “This is boring,” Fenwick said. He picked up the remote control and pressed fast forward. Twice they saw the security man, Leo Kramer, doing a high-speed Charlie Chan imitation. The guard never looked up at the camera, but his general body structure and his little white goatee made it evident that it was he.
Rodriguez walked up behind Turner and Fenwick. He watched the screen for a few minutes as the film of the empty corridor whizzed by He said, “I’ve seen this before. The bad guys get caught, but before they do, they rescue a baby whale from evil adventurers so, before the hero machine-guns them, he forgives them.”
“That’s the sequel,” Turner said, “this is the original.”
Rodriguez stooped closer and peered at the screen. “I think you’re right,” he said. “You guys hear who won the pool?”
“No,” Fenwick said.
“It just got announced downstairs. Some uniform on the admitting desk is up five hundred bucks. It was some nerdy blond named O’Leary who’s been out of the academy less than a month. There is no justice.”
“Life’s like that,” Fenwick said.
“You’re cute when you’re profound,” Rodriguez said. He pointed at the television set. “Much as I hate to miss any of this, anybody seen what’s-his-name? Molton told me I wasn’t supposed to let him out of my sight.”
Turner and Fenwick shook their heads. They knew he meant Carruthers. Rodriguez wandered away.
They watched seven full tapes of nothing flash by. A third of the way into the eighth, a figure hurried out of the building. Turner stopped the tape and ran it backward. He put it on normal speed and let it run. They saw a well-muffled man with his back to the camera. All the film showed was that he came in to the camera’s range and walked out the door.
Turner pressed freeze frame. “This is who?”
Fenwick put his face inches from the screen. “Can’t tell really. Sort of has Mike Meade’s build.”
‘Time says nine thirty-nine.”
“Kid said his dad followed him to the bar.”
“No, he said he presumed he followed him. He looked up from his dancing and there he was.”
“So, dad and son took a side trip to the Federal Building. Why?”
“Or the kid is lying.”
“We’ll have to ask him.”
“I’ve got that list from Janice Caldwell.”
Turner opened his briefcase, shuffled through several papers, and came out with the list. He glanced down it. “Note here says no one had signed in. She didn’t know who this was.” Turner peered at the screen and checked his notes. “The
time’s about right. I don’t see another person. Carl Schurz said he heard voices, plural. I only see one person hurrying out.”
“Schurz lied or the tapes are totally screwed up.”
“I’m not going to court with this as identification.”
“Tell me there isn’t another way in or out.”
“Caldwell says all the exits and entrances have security cameras, but only one was supposed to be unlocked at that time. We should have everything, but she was double-checking.” Turner reached for the phone and dialed the Kennedy Federal Building. When he got through to Caldwell, he asked about other possible exits.
“In those tapes you have,” she said, “there’s supposed to be one of a small private elevator the judges can use to go directly to the parking garage. They have a special section reserved for them. They don’t have to check in or out. You have to have a special card to enter or exit. You just insert the card, and the gate goes up and you can enter or leave. You don’t have to pay.”
“Meade could have gone out that way?”
“Or in,” Caldwell said. “You could also walk in through the parking garage.”
“There was more than one entrance unlocked?”
“I’m sorry, yes. I should have made it clearer sooner. If you aren’t in a car, you don’t need a card to open the gate. It’s a bit of walk, inconvenient, but not difficult.”
“We didn’t find any tapes of a back elevator.”
“You were supposed to have them. I’ve checked here carefully. I’ll look again, but if you don’t have them, that probably means the tapes are gone. Or maybe they were never working.”
“Or someone tampered with them or took them.”
“Maybe, but as you know, we’ve had glitches with this building. For a week, the metal-scanning device at the entrance worked only sporadically. We had to use hand-held scanners. The lines were horrendous. It could simply be gone or never been working in the first place.”
“You can’t mean you’re missing a whole series of tapes.”
Turner glanced at Fenwick and shook his head.
“Missing or never taken. Either way, I’m sorry. I’m sure they aren’t here, but I promise I’ll check again.”
Turner told Fenwick the news.
“Maybe Leo Kramer took them and destroyed them,” Fenwick said.
“Possible.”
“Who’s in charge of them?”
“Caldwell claimed she’d investigate.”
“Maybe she’s covering up for somebody,” Fenwick suggested.
“For who?”
“One of the judges?”
“Wadsworth or Malmsted come to mind. One of them the killer? Or maybe they’re in a conspiracy?”
“Don’t start that conspiracy shit,” Fenwick said. “I hate conspiracy shit. There are no conspiracies. It’s just assholes being stupid.”
“I don’t picture Caldwell being part of some evil cabal. She seemed solid, sensible.”
“So, maybe Carl Schurz wasn’t lying. We’ll have to find him to ask him which entrance he was near.”
“Maybe this isn’t Meade?”
“Who then?”
Turner shrugged.
Carruthers bustled into the room and hurried over to them. “I hear you guys arrested Judge Meade’s son. It’s on all the newscasts. The kid did it. Wow! Can you prove it? You better be careful. Look what happened to those cops in LA when they screwed up a high-profile case.”
Fenwick stood up, put his arm around Carruthers’ shoulder, and shouted directly into his ear, “Fuck off.”
Carruthers jumped. He backed away. “Hey, what’d you do that for? I was just trying to be friendly and supportive.” He cupped his hand over his ear, listened for a moment, and shook
his head. “I think you hurt something permanently.” He twisted a finger in his ear. “Hey, that wasn’t very nice. I was trying to help.” He stalked away.
“I think I may have gone a bit far that time,” Fenwick said.
Turner said, “You’ll have to apologize.”
“No.”
“I think so.”
Fenwick grumbled deep in his throat, “After this case is over.”
They went back to viewing the tapes. The only person who wasn’t a security guard was at that one spot. For half an hour, frame by frame, they ran that portion of the tape backwards and forwards. They got no nearer to identification than before.
“Let’s turn this over to the electronics experts at Eleventh and State,” Turner said. “Maybe they can get something. For all we know they may have the dates or timing wrong. Somebody could have doctored it. Maybe this isn’t what we needed at all.”
Fenwick nodded agreement.
“We let the kid go?” Turner asked.
“We have a choice?”
Turner shook his head.
They met with Mike Meade in the gray-painted conference room on the fourth floor.
“Are you going to let me go?” Meade asked.
“If your dad followed you to the bar, how come we have you on tape at the Federal Building?”
“You couldn’t have. I wasn’t there. Let me see it.”
They took him to the third floor and showed him. “That could be anybody.”
“You said he followed you.”
“That’s what I figured. I wasn’t monitoring his movements that night. I just went to work.”
He stuck with that story and a half hour of questioning got them no further.
Minutes later they hustled Mike Meade into the back of an unmarked car. They took him to his mother’s house. They said little to each other on the way over.
On the return trip Turner said, “I still think he’s lying.”
“Sure is possible. We’ve got to prove it.”
“We’ve got to find Carl Schurz.”