A Fatal Frame of Mind (25 page)

But if they had been landing in an enchanted place, there would have been some mystical way to put the plane on the ground. Right now, Gus would have been thrilled to see the few clouds in the bright blue sky form into a giant hand that would snatch the jet out of the air and set it down.

Because there didn’t seem to be any place for their plane to land. There wasn’t a field that stretched longer than a few dozen feet before it was broken by a hedgerow, and the roads barely seemed wide enough for a compact car, let alone the jet’s wingspan. Gus tried to comfort himself with the thought that it looked like this only because they were so far up in the air, but if that was the case, then the sheep grazing below had to be forty feet tall.

And then he saw it—just what Shawn had predicted. A long, unbroken stretch of field bisected by a straight road that led to an oversize barn.

“We’ll be landing in just a minute.” Malko’s voice came over the intercom. “Please make sure your seat belts are securely fastened. This may get bumpy.”

Gus braced himself for a hard landing, but Malko was apparently a much better pilot than he gave himself credit for. The wheels touched down with a whisper, and the jet braked easily as it traveled down the asphalt road. It purred down the tarmac and then through the wide doors into the barn.

Kitteredge had his seat belt off and was standing by the door as soon as the engines shut down. Gus was rising to follow him when Shawn grabbed his arm and pulled him back into his seat.

“Do you have a plan yet?” Shawn said.

“I’m working on it,” Gus said, which was technically true as long as panicking over not having a single idea could be considered a kind of work.

“Keep working,” Shawn said. “That way, if you come up with one, you can compare it to the one of mine we will already have used.”

It took Gus a moment to work through the logic behind the grammar. “You have a plan? What is it?”

“Watch and learn,” Shawn said, then reclined his chair and closed his eyes.

Gus didn’t want to watch. He didn’t want to learn. What he wanted was to wake up in his seat in the Bijoux Theatre to discover that he’d fallen asleep in the middle of
Dangerous Indiscretion
and there were only three more features to go before the festival was over. But since that didn’t seem likely, he waited in his seat, wondering what it was he was waiting for and if there was any chance it wouldn’t make everything even worse than it already was.

He didn’t have to wait long. After a moment, the cockpit door swung open, and Malko went over to Kitteredge.

“I hope you enjoyed the flight, Professor,” Malko said.

“Your flying is even more graceful than your minuet,” Kitteredge said, and Gus was surprised to see a tinge of red coloring the hunchback’s cheeks.

Malko reached past Kitteredge and hit a few buttons on a console. There was a thunk as machinery whirred into gear. The cabin door swung open, and a flight of stairs extended into the darkness of the barn’s interior. Kitteredge squeezed Malko’s outstretched hand and then disappeared down the steps.

Malko waited by the open door until it became obvious that Shawn and Gus were not going anywhere. Then he turned and walked heavily back to their seats.

“End of the line,” he said. “Everybody out.”

“That’s true in so many ways,” Shawn said, cracking one eye open but refusing to raise his seat back. “Just not in the one you’re thinking of.”

Malko lifted his lip in a sneer, and Gus thought he was actually going to growl like a dog. Instead, he spoke clearly and forcefully. “Both of you, out of the plane now.”

“Listen, Malk,” Shawn said. “Mind if I call you Malk? Mal? Ma?”

“Out.” This time it was less a word than a bark.

“I understand that you’re fond of the professor,” Shawn said as if he hadn’t noticed the hostility coming from the other man or remembered how handy he was with a shotgun. “But there’s something you’ve got to understand. He’s nuts. Absolutely stark raving insane. I’m pretty sure your master doesn’t realize this, or he never would have sent us all off like this, but—”

“My
what
?” Malko said. To Gus’ ears it sounded less like a question than a death threat.

“That’s the guy,” Shawn said. “Your master. You know, the one who orders you around and shoves torches in your face when you don’t obey.”

“Flaxman Low is my employer,” Malko said quietly, but with an undercurrent of bloodlust in his throat. “I was hired through a top-flight recruiting agency and work under union contract.”

“And I’m sure he’s a great boss,” Gus said quickly, before Shawn could ask if Malko had answered a want ad specifically asking for someone to dig up dead bodies for parts. “He’s also a great friend to Professor Kitteredge. I’m sure he doesn’t want to see any harm come to him. And that’s what this is all about.”

Gus glanced at Shawn, hoping that this was indeed what it was all about. He was beginning to have a glimmer of Shawn’s plan, and while it was pretty flimsy, it wouldn’t get any stronger if Gus cut its legs off.

“Exactly,” Shawn said. “We’ve all been wrong about the prof. He’s seriously sick, and he needs help. We need to take him back to Santa Barbara and get him into a hospital for observation. Once the doctors rule that he is mentally ill, his lawyers can get him a deal. But we need to get him back home first.”

Gus watched Malko’s face carefully as he listened to Shawn. At first it looked like the hunchback was simply going to order them off the plane again. But as Shawn went on, Malko’s features began to soften.

“I have to say I was worried about the same thing,” Malko said. “Mr. Low gives him the benefit of the doubt when he talks about this Cabal, but I studied psychology in college, and I recognize the symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia. It pains me to see him this way.”

“Then you’ll help us?” Gus said. He couldn’t believe it was going to be this easy.

“I’ve got to refuel the jet, and that’s going to take a little while,” Malko said. “That gives you two some time to come up with a story that will get him to agree to return. If you can do that, I’ll do whatever I can.”

“Thank you,” Gus said.

“I’m doing it for Professor Kitteredge,” Malko said, and turned to walk to the door.

Gus undid his seat belt and waited for Shawn to do the same. “That was your great plan?” he said. “To ask for help?”

“It’s not the complexity of the plan, but how well it works,” Shawn said. “Besides, I like to keep the tactic of sincerely telling the truth in my toolkit. It isn’t the right thing very often, but once in a while it comes in handy.”

Gus led Shawn to the jet’s door and then down the short flight of stairs into the darkened barn. He peered into the gloom but couldn’t see Kitteredge anywhere.

“Professor?” he called.

There was no answer.

“Professor Kitteredge?” he said again as Shawn stepped down next to him. “Langston?”

“I’m afraid Professor Kitteredge can’t talk right now,” a man’s voice said from somewhere in the darkness.

“Did that sound like Malko to you?” Shawn said. “Because I don’t remember him speaking with an English accent.”

“Who’s out there?” Gus called. “Where’s Professor Kitteredge?”

“Who I am is of no importance right now,” the voice said, sounding much closer to James Mason than to Malko. “As for the professor’s whereabouts, you can see for yourself.”

A row of fluorescent lights across the barn’s ceiling flickered on. Gus blinked against the sudden illumination, then opened his eyes. They were standing in what appeared to be a traditional wooden barn, aside from the substitution of the private jet for a stack of hay bales. One wall was covered with farm tools hanging from hooks, and the other was hidden behind a series of stalls.

It was the nearest of those stalls that caught Gus’ eye. Because Professor Kitteredge was standing in its doorway. And behind him was a man in a pinstriped, three-piece suit. A man whose face was completely covered by a black ski mask.

And he was holding a gun to the professor’s head.

L
assiter was shocked at how easy it had been to get in to see Hugh Ralston, the museum’s executive director. He and Henry had spent twenty minutes talking about what to do if they were asked to produce a badge, and the closest they got to an answer was a mutual agreement to improvise.

But Ralston’s secretary didn’t ask for any identification. She took one look at the men standing across from her desk and hit the intercom to let her boss know that there were two police detectives to see him.

If only the next part of the interview had gone as well. Not that Ralston wasn’t cooperative. He seemed almost desperately eager to please.

It was just that he didn’t know anything. They’d started out by asking standard questions about Clay Filkins—friends, enemies, home life, financial troubles. All the things that Juliet O’Hara had undoubtedly already asked in the course of the official investigation. Ralston didn’t have any objections to answering them again; he just didn’t have any information to give the police. They’d worked together for a couple of years, and Ralston had held Filkins in the highest regard professionally, but they’d never spent any time together outside of work, and all their conversations in the office had been strictly business. Not that they objected to speaking personally; it was just that there was so much about the museum they both found fascinating that there was never a need to change subjects.

“What about the deal with the painting?” Henry asked. “That sure sounds funny to me.”

“It sounded funny to everyone here,” Ralston admitted. “But some things are too good to question too closely. Clay insisted it was legitimate, and his word was sacred around here. So we took the deal, even with the strict rules about anonymity.”

“I’m sure you can see how those rules can’t stand anymore,” Lassiter said. “Your donor’s instructions matter much less than a human life.”

“I agree entirely,” Ralston said. “I’d break the confidentiality in a second if I could.”

“If you could?” Henry said, his face reddening. “My son is being hunted by the police because he’s trying to clear Langston Kitteredge’s name. If you have information that can help him, I won’t leave you alone for a second until you hand it over.”

Ralston threw up his hands defensively. “I’m sorry; I said that badly,” he said. “I mean I would give you any information I had. I just don’t have any. I went into Clay’s office, I broke into his private files, and I dug out everything he had on this picture. This is it.”

Ralston picked up a file and handed it across his desk. Henry flipped it open. It was empty. “Somebody stole his files?”

“Or he never kept any paperwork at all,” Ralston said. “Or he hid it at his home. I have no answers. I have nothing.”

“Come on,” Henry said. “There must be some other way of tracking down this donor.”

“No, you don’t understand,” Ralston said, his voice close to cracking. “I have
nothing
. All I’ve ever wanted was for this museum to thrive. Because it’s so much bigger than I am. I couldn’t even make my ex-wife happy, but this institution can touch the lives of generations. And look what I’ve done for it. Thanks to my brilliant financial skills, we’ve lost two-thirds of our endowment in the markets. Now one of the best people who ever worked here has been murdered in one of our galleries, and the painting he spent his last months acquiring for us has been stolen. Could I have done a worse job?”

If there was one thing that Henry—and every cop Henry had ever known—hated, it was whining. When you saw as many terrible things as a rookie saw in his first year, it was just too hard to listen to anyone moaning about how tough he had it. Henry would never tolerate it from Shawn, and he hated when he heard it in an interview. He glanced over at Lassiter to confirm that the detective shared his disgust. But to his shock, Lassiter seemed to be listening sympathetically. And there was something bright and shiny in the corner of his eye, which—if Henry hadn’t known better—he would have sworn was a tear.

“It’s the hardest thing in the world,” Lassiter said, “to love a job, to love an institution, and to know you’ve let her down.”

“Yes!” Ralston said in a voice that was perilously close to sobs.

“When you’d do anything in the world for that place and those people, and all you bring them is shame,” Lassiter said.

“Oh, God, yes,” Ralston said.

“And you think there’s nothing you can ever do to wipe that stain away,” Lassiter said, his voice taking on a dreamy, distant quality. “Sure, for a while you want to crawl into a hole. You want to disappear and never show your face to the people whose trust you’ve violated. But you keep on going. Do you know why?”

“Why?” Ralston choked out.

“Yes, Carlton,” Henry said. “Tell us all.”

“Because that’s what a man does,” Lassiter said. “He takes the beating, he makes his mistakes, but then he gets up and keeps working. Because if he’s a real man, he knows it’s not about him. It’s about the institution he’s sworn to protect. And if he’s failed her once, then it’s up to him to work twice as hard to make sure he never lets her down again. And to be proud he’s been given a chance to serve.”

Ralston looked at him, tears streaming down his face. “Do you really think so?”

Lassiter reached across the desk and gave his hand a firm squeeze. “I know so,” he said. “It’s what we do.”

“Thank you,” Ralston said. “Thank you.”

For a moment, the three of them sat in silence. Then Henry got to his feet. “If you come across anything you think might be useful in the interrogation, you be sure to let the police know.”

Ralston nodded wordlessly. Henry walked to the door, Lassiter right behind him. Neither man spoke until they were out of the museum.

“That was a waste of time,” Henry said as they walked down the steps to the street.