There’s a world of difference between picking a fifteen-dollar lock you buy at a hardware store and cracking a safe. I stooped down and examined the damn thing. It wasn’t much of a safe, just one of those fireproof jobs you can pick up these days at a Kmart or Home Depot for a hundred and fifty bucks, tops. But for me, it may as well have been Fort Knox.
I sat down on the floor of the closet and leaned against a filing cabinet I was well and truly pronged, as the Brits say, and unless I figured a way out of this, then all the risk would have been for nothing.
“Bastard,” I whispered. At least, I thought, I can try to pop the filing cabinets.
I grabbed the drawer handle on the cabinet closest to me and pulled myself up. I fixed the flashlight on a shelf and focused the beam, then commenced to fiddle with the tiny lock. The filing cabinet was harder to pick because the lock was smaller and there was less room to work. It took ten minutes to pop the sucker, and I had to use three different picks before I found one that worked. I had a cramp in my shoulders that ran all the way across the back of my neck and felt like somebody’d clamped about six pairs of Vise-Grips onto me. It was stuffy inside the closet as well; sweat ran off my forehead and dripped onto the floor beneath me.
The first filing cabinet contained all of Reed’s back business correspondence, his travel schedules, diaries, and other business files. His royalty statements from Spearhead were in there as well, in addition to canceled checks, photocopies of his royalty checks, and several files that contained statements from his various stockbrokers. It’s one thing to hear about somebody hitting it that big; it’s quite another to see the figures in black and white. Seeing them convinced me more than ever that I am definitely in the wrong business.
“I got to write me one of them little books so I kin get rich, too,” I muttered, flipping through the pages in astonishment.
This was all important stuff in R. J. Reed’s life, but all useless in mine.
The lock on the second cabinet was a little more cooperative, thank you very much, and gave way in a couple of minutes. The bottom two drawers of that cabinet were empty; the top two contained copies of his press kit and what seemed to be file folder after file folder full of fan mail.
I couldn’t believe Reed would save it all; maybe the guy had a soft, sentimental side after all. But for all the good it did me, he could’ve frigging been Mr. Rogers and Captain Kangaroo all rolled into one. I glanced down at my watch. It was nearly midnight. I’d been here an hour, with nothing to show for it but a headache and a large collection of my own fingerprints I’d left lying around.
I had to find the combination to that safe. Reed and I were about the same age, give or take a couple. Guys our age have usually stopped disillusioning themselves about their ability to remember everything. Half the time I can’t remember what I had for lunch yesterday, let alone my checking-account number or my driver’s license number or any of the other strings of numbers that life requires of Americans here at the close of the millennium.
No, if I had something that was important enough to lock away in a safe, I’d by God write the number down and put it someplace that I was sure I could remember.
Reed almost certainly would have done the same.
I stepped out of the supply closet just as a beam of light ran across the window facing the street. My breath caught in my throat and I jerked the flashlight down immediately, then snapped it off.
The light was coming from outside. It ran from my left to my right, disappeared for a few seconds, then came back.
I made my way cautiously across the office to the window and plastered myself to the wall next to the frame. The light ran back across the window again and disappeared. I hooked a finger around the thick heavy drapery and pulled it aside, then carefully peeked through a crack between the blinds and the window frame.
It was a Williamson County Sheriff’s Department squad car parked in Reed’s driveway at the street, just in front of the gate. The car had a spotlight mounted on the side of the driver’s door and the officer inside was raking the house with a beam of light.
I held my breath, like that would do any good, and wondered how I’d get out of this one if he decided to come in and take a closer look. Then I remembered the Mustang was out of sight. He’d actually have to come down the driveway to see it.
If he’d just do a routine check, then leave …
“C’mon, man,” I whispered. “Don’t you need a doughnut or something?”
I stood there, sweat pouring off of me. It was that kind of gamy sweat that came from taut nerves rather than exertion, the kind that would take a ton of soap and water to kill off. The kind that would hang in the air inside Reed’s office for a day or two. Just more evidence against me.
The spotlight outside clicked off, but the cop continued sitting there for a couple more minutes. I felt this sharp pain deep inside my gut and realized I had to go to the bathroom. I forced myself to stand there until he pulled away.
In the bathroom, I checked my watch again with the penlight. It was a few minutes after midnight. I guessed that I had at least an hour before the cop came back again. Something told me I didn’t have the nerves for career burglary.
Back in Reed’s office, I searched the obvious places. I not only checked all his desk drawers again, but I pulled them out and examined each surface for a piece of paper taped in out-of-the-way places.
Nothing.
I went through the credenza, opened the photocopier and searched inside it I went through the filing cabinets again and flipped through his appointment books. I even tried to move the safe, thinking maybe I’d just haul the sucker with me. Luckily it was bolted to the floor. Even Reed’s wife would think ripping off a safe was a little over-the-top.
It had to be somewhere, damn it. I’d spent nearly another hour trying to find the combination, all the while with my eyes and ears on alert for the patrol car. I didn’t know how often the guy’d be back but knew he would. It was just a matter of time, and I didn’t have a hell of a lot of that left. The batteries on the flashlight were even going.
Frustrated and increasingly fatigued, I sat down in Reed’s chair, flicked off the dying flashlight, and stared into the darkness. This was useless, I told myself. Reed probably had the safe combination written down on a slip of paper in his wallet. And who would even know where to find a dead man’s wallet?
I shook my head, trying to clear it and ease the spikes of tension in my neck. The headache was getting to me and I was cold and clammy all over.
“Okay, R. J.,” I said out loud in a normal voice. The silence of the room seemed a broken spell now. In the very act of talking, I’d dissipated some of the tension.
“Where the hell is it? Where’d you put it, bud? Talk to me.”
My eyes adjusted to the darkness and I could see the dim outline of the bookcase on the wall in front of R.J.’s desk. I imagined him sitting here after all those years of frustration and disappointment and failure. I imagined him soaking in all this adoration and wealth and trying to figure out how to make it last, how to get even more.
Erica Benedict said he’d laughed at Karl Sykes. He must have figured he had it sewn up, whatever it was he was trying to do. He must have figured it was a done deal and no one could stop him. And all as a result of one little book.…
Book.
Books.
“No,” I said out loud. “You wouldn’t …”
I stood up from behind the desk. No, surely he wouldn’t. It’d be too much like the movies. I mean, come on, R. J., you’re supposed to have this incredible imagination. Tell me you figured out something more clever than—
What did I have to lose?
I got up, switched the flashlight back on, its dim yellow light flickering weakly through the darkness. I didn’t care; if I had to, I’d turn on the house lights.
I stepped over to the bookcase and started in the upper-left-hand corner. I pulled each book out, opened it toward the floor, fanned the pages, and carefully slid it back onto the shelf. I didn’t pay much attention to the titles, but most of them were non-fiction: books about writing, business, investments, real estate. My movements were efficient, automatic, quick. I was midway through the third shelf when I pulled a black hardcover off the shelf, opened it, and my thumb caught on the pages.
Something didn’t feel right. I jammed my thumb into the side of the book; the pages were stuck, maybe glued, together. I braced my hands and peeled the front cover off.
Reed had cut away the middle of the book’s pages, creating a rough box-shaped empty space inside. A folded slip of paper sat alone within the secret space. I unfolded the scrap of paper. There were numbers inside: 26-8-54. I committed the numbers to memory and placed the paper back inside the book.
I turned the book over and in the dim light read the spine. The author was Brooke A. Wharton, and the title was The Writer Got Screwed. I grinned.
“You son of a bitch,” I muttered. “I think I like you after all.”
I stepped back into the supply closet, palms sweaty and cold, and sat cross-legged on the floor. I spun the tumbler to the left a few times and stopped at twenty-six, then back to the right past the first number, stopping at eight. Then back to fifty-four and twisted the handle …
The door opened.
I let out a deep sigh that seemed to have been trapped inside me for hours. My watch said 1:45. If the sheriff’s department was on a two-hour schedule, I had barely minutes left.
The safe was jammed with file folders, but the flashlight was about dead, so it was hard to read. I flicked it off and pulled out the penlight, turned it on, and stuck it in my mouth. I jerked the stack of file folders out and squinted to focus on the tabs.
HARVEST MOON, the first one read.
If there was a bull’s-eye anywhere in this house, something told me I’d just hit it.
Twenty minutes later, I was coasting down Reed’s driveway. I’d thought of turning on his photocopier and copying the dozens of pages in the files, but there wasn’t time. I threw the files in my shoulder bag, loaded up the rest of my gear, wiped the place down as best I could, and booked the hell out of there. I didn’t know what was in the files and didn’t know what I’d do with them once I did know. I only knew it was time to go.
The Mustang’s engine idled roughly in the cold, damp night air. There wasn’t time to let the car properly warm up. As I approached the end of the long drive, the electric eye caught the car and began opening the gate. I was through it in a heartbeat and gone to the left. I turned on the headlights with a shaking hand and tried to drive slowly and steadily. The last thing I needed was to get pulled over.
I made it past the polo field and back to the main highway. As I turned left on Hillsboro Road and headed back into Nashville, my breath came a little easier. And when that Williamson County Sheriff’s Department patrol car passed me heading in the other direction, I didn’t even flinch.