twelve

Bear and I found Cal Clemens in the break room with a fresh pot of coffee. When Bear walked in, Cal poured him a cup. While he was scrounging for cream in a small refrigerator, Larry Conti walked in carrying a file folder.

“Detective Braddock?”

“Yeah, Larry, what do you need?”

“I thought you’d want to see this right away.” Larry handed him the folder. When he looked at Cal, he cocked his head and gave
him the once-over. After a long moment, he grinned. “Hey, aren’t you Calloway Clemens, the Blues Man?”

Calloway the Blues Man?

“Yeah, that’s me.” Cal cracked a smile. “Do I know you?”

“No, no, but I know you.” Larry thrust a hand out and almost wrenched Cal’s arm off. “I listen to Remember When every weekend. I don’t think I’ve missed more than three weekends since the Kit Kat opened. You sure can play.”

“Play?” I watched Cal’s face light up. “Bear, are you hearing this? Cal’s famous.”

Cal had always been a loner. He was an honest cop but not one of the first-call guys on Bear’s team. He was more of a constant, steady hand—not the firebrand, go-getter type. If you gave him the task, you could trust it to get done—as long as his partner, the aforementioned Mikey Spence, didn’t derail him. Except for the occasional choir practice after work—that’s beer and bitching, not churches and singing—Cal didn’t run with anyone from the department. He did his work, paid the minimal attention to cop functions, and went about his own way.

Now I find out he’s the notorious Calloway Clemens—whoever that was.

Bear asked, “Cal, are you keeping something from us?”

“Not like you think, Bear,” he said. “I told you about my pal Keys and his band. Well, I’m in the band. We play blues and swing out at the Kit Kat West.”

“No shit?” Bear’s face brightened. “The cat what?”

“The Kit Kat West.” Larry waved in the air. “You’re kidding, right Detective? That’s the new nightclub out on Route 11 North. Been open for months and everyone is talking about it. Man, what a place—folks come all the way from DC, Baltimore, even Philly and New York. It reminds me of—”

“Yeah, right. The new club.” Since Bear didn’t have a clue what Larry was talking about, he changed the subject. “What about this file, Larry?”

“Man, Calloway blows a mean sax, too. Last weekend—”

“The file, Larry.”

Larry slapped Clemens’s shoulder again. “Okay, sure. But I gotta ask you about the band later, Calloway.”

“Ah, Larry, it’s Detective Clemens around here, okay?” Cal said. “But hey, I’ll get you the CD we just laid down. Just tell us about this file.”

“Great.” Larry nodded at the file in Bear’s hand. “Okay, listen, after your guys were done with me, I did some checking on our systems.”

“Your systems?” Bear said, throwing some unhappy eyes at him. “You weren’t supposed to touch anything, Larry.”

“Yeah, I know. But Mr. Thorne told me to get you the daily reports from the building access control systems. That includes alarm system, the CCTV system, and the access control system.” Larry waited for Bear to nod his approval. “So, I did some extra checks. Take a look.”

Bear opened the file and scanned over the pages that had “Sancus Security Systems, LLC” in a marquee at the top of each. I peeked, too, and zeroed in on several yellow-highlighted entries on two computer printouts on top of the stack. Bear read them twice and looked up at Larry.

“Do I read this right? There were alarms at one thirty, two fifteen, three fifteen, and another at three fifty-one?”

Larry shook his head. “Not alarms, Detective—just activations of the rear employee door—the door opened, that’s all it tells us. It was opened four times between one thirty and three fifty-one. If you look, the building alarm was set at seven thirty last night. The main vault was locked down and alarmed earlier at six, as always.”

“Okay, I’m following. Go on,” Bear said.

“The Chairman entered the annex again at eleven forty-five p.m.—the rear door was opened and the alarms deactivated. I know that because his access card was used on the doors and it was his pin code used to deactivate them. We track employees that way.”

I looked over the pages as Bear re-read them. “Looks like someone came in and out a couple times. And what about that other annotation there?” I pointed to an entry on the printout that showed a five-digit code in red.

Bear asked Larry and Larry held up a finger. “That’s a power flux. The main power went off for almost a minute and then back on. The alarm system sent a signal to the security company, but it reset right away. So, while Mr. Mendelson was in here, the power went out and came back on about a minute later—at one twenty.”

“Hold it.” Cal made notes on his notepad now. “The old man arrives at eleven forty-five and unlocks the offices. His access card and pin were used, right?”

“Exactly,” Larry said. “But not in the bank—just here at the annex.”

Cal jotted more notes. “Then more than an hour and a half later, the power goes off and on. Ten minutes later, the employee door opens—but no one’s access card was used, right? So that means Mendelson opened the door from the inside and let someone in?”

Larry nodded. “Right, I figure he didn’t leave because his card wasn’t used again to re-enter.”

“Then at two fifteen, the door opens again without an access card,” Bear said, reading the printout, “so Mendelson went out, because an hour after that, the same door opens using his access card—he came back in. And then again forty-one minutes later the door is opened without an access card, so whoever was in here left. Is that it?”

Larry nodded. “That’s right. Of course, all I can tell you is that the Chairman’s card was used to enter, not that he used it.”

Bear’s face tightened a little as he read over the printout. His left eye always twitched and almost closed when he was deep in thought—or when his beer was too warm. “What was William doing at that hour of the morning?”

“And how did that get him killed?” Cal asked, looking at Larry. “You got any idea, man?”

Larry shrugged. “If someone propped the door open, say, to let someone come in without an access card, we wouldn’t see that here. And there’s more. The CCTV system went down last night and never came back up.”

“Terrific.” Bear flipped through a couple pages in the file and found the printout marked “Security Surveillance Report.” He looked at the entries and found the last one time-stamped 0119. He looked up at Larry. “The cameras were turned off after the power flux?”

“Yes.” Larry’s voice was excited now. “Someone tripped the power at the main control box and stopped the system from recording. The cameras were still on when the power came back on, but they didn’t record anything after one twenty this morning.”

Cal looked at his notes. “Just in time for whoever to join William in the annex. So, let’s see what was recorded before then. Like if anyone came into the building with William the first time.”

“Can’t,” Larry said. “Someone took the hard drive that records everything.”

Bear cursed. “Any backups?”

“Nope—too expensive. We run the cameras and record over them every other week.” Larry headed for the coffee pot. “The cameras are recorded around the building on hard drives. That time of night, only the entrances and vaults are recorded. Office areas turn off when
the alarms are activated and turn back on if the alarms go off. They were recording when the Chairman came back into the building just before midnight. Whoever turned off the recordings took the hard drives.”

Cal said, “That would be William Mendelson—it would have to be. He was the only one in the building during the power flux, right?”

“Maybe not,” I said. “William might not have come into the annex alone at eleven forty-five, or maybe he let someone else into the building. That person must have taken the CCTV recordings because they showed his or her identity.”

Bear said as much, adding, “And that someone murdered William Mendelson.”