Forty Thieves (13 page)

“Okay,” Sid said. “Do you have your phone?”

“Yes. I’ll call it in.”

While Ronnie called 9-1-1, Sid plotted a route to the office building. In this part of the city the zoning prohibited office buildings over four stories tall, so the shooters were only about sixty feet up. Their view was probably hampered by the upper boughs of the tall trees in the neighborhood, and even by some of the newer houses, all of them two-story mini-mansions built to nearly cover their lots, and shouldering right up to each other.

Ronnie’s voice came to Sid. “I called it in.”

Sid said, “I think once we’re out of this yard we can make it to that office building without giving them a shot at us.”

“I’ll meet you at the far side of the Fogels’ house.”

Sid moved into a spot where he was out of the shooters’ view behind the hedge on the right side of the yard. He saw Ronnie emerge from the shadows, run along the side of their burning house, then into the hedge. It looked as though she had merged with it, but he knew she had reached in among the leafy branches to clutch the chain link fence and pull herself up and over it.

There was another shot, and bark sprayed from the tree that Ronnie had just left. Sid backed into the area along the front fence, sidestepping to keep from separating from the foliage or presenting a human shape to the shooters on the office building rooftop. He knew he would be visible for a second or two when he reached the bare iron gate.

Sid reached the end of the gate and crouched beside the electric motor. He heard the distant sirens of the fire trucks and police cars and knew that this was the moment. The shooters would be distracted for a few seconds, looking for the emergency vehicles. He flipped the manual switch to engage the motor’s battery power, and as the gate rolled along its track to the side, he ducked low and slipped out.

He ran eight steps along the sidewalk before the shots began. There was automatic rifle fire, a burst of it chipping the sidewalk behind him at first and then adjusting to hit the pavement ahead of him, but always to his left. Apparently the shooter had only had a glimpse of him as he cleared the gate, but the tops of the magnolia trees along the street had given him cover the rest of the way.

The fire engines were not far off now, and their sirens were making dogs all along their route answer them with
howls. Sid and Ronnie ran along the dark space between two houses onto the next street. A hundred feet beyond it was the boulevard.

Sid and Ronnie turned toward the office building and made their way along the lighted boulevard, past closed stores and coffee shops. They put their guns in the backs of their waistbands under their shirts and hurried along. Sid said, “Keep your eyes open for anybody coming this way carrying anything, and look at every car. They could be hoping to shoot us out here.”

“I am,” Ronnie said.

They reached the front door of the office building, found it locked, and kept going to the side. At the rear of the building was an alley with an entrance to the parking lot that took up the ground level. The entrance was covered by a steel cage for the night, but around the rest of the lot, there was only a four-foot concrete wall.

The Abels went over the wall into the lot and ducked down immediately to keep from being seen. They crouched, ran to the wall of the building, and found the door to the stairwell. Sid ran his hand along the edge of the protective plate over the lock. “It’s been jimmied,” he said. “The plate’s bent outward.”

Ronnie said, “This looks like the only way in. I hate doors that are the only way in.”

“Me too,” he said. He tugged on the door, but it didn’t open, so he reached into his pocket, opened the pocketknife on his key chain, pushed it into the crack between the door and the jamb where the plate had once protected it, depressed the spring, and tugged the door open.

They stepped inside and closed the door without letting it make a noise, then climbed the staircase as they had been trained to do, one of them aiming a weapon upward between the railings of the staircase while the other climbed up one flight and then waited on the landing to cover the other, making little noise and listening for more sounds from above them in the building.

Sid and Ronnie climbed the next flight quickly, turned at the landing, and then saw the door to the roof at the top of the next flight. The door was propped open, so they could see the starlit sky. They moved upward and stepped out onto the roof, looking over the sights of the pistols they gripped in both hands ready to fire.

The roof was deserted. Sid ran along the roof to a raised section that shielded a second door. Sid flung the door open and took the stairs downward, then came back up. “There’s another staircase that goes to the back of the building. They must have left this door open to draw everybody’s attention away from that one. They’re gone.”

Ronnie moved to the edge of the roof near the waist-high wall and looked over it at the pavement below. As Sid approached he could see that a few feet to her right there was a scattering of brass casings. He picked one up. “Nine millimeter. Same as the last time, except this time they used full auto.”

“Oh my God.” Ronnie looked over her shoulder at him, and then pointed.

The fire at their house was visible through gaps in the trees. The flames were steadily devouring bare, blackened studs and piles of half-combusted rubble. Fire trucks and police
cars had arrived and firefighters had run hoses through the front gate, but all they were doing was wetting down glowing spots on charred lumber. Police cars blocked the road to protect them.

“My house,” she said. “I can hardly believe it. I loved that house.”

Sid said, “It’s hard to figure out what these people are trying to accomplish.”

“Other than killing us? Nothing comes to mind.”

10

Sid and Ronnie rented a car at the Burbank airport, then drove it to the office of their insurance agent on Riverside in Burbank to break the news about their house and their car. Their third stop was at a gun store a few blocks east on Magnolia, where the owner knew them. They bought a supply of 9mm ammunition for their Glock 17 pistols, a new cleaning kit, and six spare magazines. Just down the street they bought two new laptop computers.

As they drove west, Sid said, “You’re thinking about the house, aren’t you?”

“Aren’t you?”

“You want to drive by there and look?”

She looked at him in mild irritation. “It’s gone, Sid.”

“Houses can be replaced.”

“I was happy there for over twenty-five years. We picked it out together, and worked together there. We raised our kids there. They brought the grandchildren there to see us, so it’s the place they’ll remember us in. The place wasn’t fancy or even very pretty, but I would have liked to die there.”

“You had your chance last night.”

“You couldn’t resist that?”

“Sorry. Look, the only way either of us is going to feel better about it is if we get the people who did it. First we find a comfortable hotel, so we have a place to sleep for now. Then we get started.”

They checked into a hotel in the western part of the Valley in Calabasas using a credit card in Ronnie’s maiden name, pulled their car around to the rear of the building, and backed into a parking space near the center of the lot so it was unlikely that they would be blocked in. They didn’t like being right next to the building. In an emergency they could push another car out of their way, but they couldn’t batter down a wall of the hotel. They went into their room and began the process of searching the Internet for a rental house.

It took three days to find and rent the right one. The house was a small two-story building with white clapboards on a street that ended in a cul-de-sac. The house was furnished, and the yard was small and dominated by a rose garden, but it was shaded by trees and looked pleasant to Ronnie. As soon as they signed the rental agreement in the real estate office, they drove to another electronics store and bought two more sets of devices. One was a six-camera all-weather surveillance system that could be monitored and controlled from a computer based anywhere. The other was an array of tiny pinhole cameras, each with its own battery-operated transmitter.

When they reached the house they installed the internal cameras first. They trained one on the front entryway, one on the kitchen door at the back of the house, and one on the upstairs hallway that led to the two bedrooms. Next they
installed three cameras outside—one on a tree limb aimed at the back of the house, one under the eaves of the garage to cover the driveway and the side of the house, and one on the roof aimed down toward the front walkway and the lawn. The cameras were not large or obtrusive, but the Abels made an effort to make them difficult to notice.

When they finished with the outdoor cameras, they spent much more time and effort installing the pinhole cameras. Sid removed a strip of crown molding in the living room, drilled holes near each end, aimed the lens out one, fitted the transmitter into a space he cut in the underlying wall, and put the molding back up. He and Ronnie placed other pinhole cameras in other spots in various rooms. There was one in a box of cereal on a shelf in the kitchen, and one had its transmitter inside a sound system speaker with the camera lens looking like part of the manufacturer’s logo. Others sat in glass-fronted cabinets, bookcases, or under pieces of furniture. One was inside the keypad for the alarm system. Sid opened their computer, signed into the monitoring site for the larger cameras, looked at each image one more time, and then repeated the procedure for each of the pinhole cameras. They made a few adjustments to the angles of the cameras to provide the best coverage of the interior of the house.

When they finished, Ronnie and Sid walked the house again. She said, “Not bad. They’ll probably see the security cameras, and do something to disable them. While they’re doing that, the pinhole cameras will get plenty of footage of them. Even if they find all of the pinhole cameras, some of them will have recorded them tearing the place apart.”

“Let’s hope it works that way,” said Sid. “It shouldn’t take a pro more than a few days to find out we’ve rented a house, and then we’ll see.”

“We should put more stuff in here so it looks as though we’ve moved in,” Ronnie said. “Of course we don’t have anything, because it all got burned up, and they know it.”

“Just the same, we’d better do some shopping and leave some new clothes and things here tonight.” Sid said. “Just don’t buy anything that you want to keep.”

They drove to a few stores where they could pick up clothing and furnishings. Everything had to be new, but it didn’t have to be expensive. They bought supplies at a grocery store, and returned to the rented house in Burbank. They hung some clothes in the closets, put the clothes they’d been wearing in a laundry basket, spread some magazines around in the living room, and put food in the refrigerator. Then they made a stop at the phone company store so Sid could replace the cell phone he’d lost in the fire, and went back to their hotel.

Late in the evening Sid looked over at Ronnie, who was lying on the bed and staring at the ceiling. He said, “I know you still feel rotten about the house, but you’ve been doing a good job, as always. You’re a pro.”

She said, “What else can I do? But I’ll feel rotten about this forever. I had things at home that I can barely even think about. Our wedding pictures. The pictures from the hospital when Mitch and Janice were born. Things like that.”

He went over to the bed where she was lying and lay down next to her. “Remember when the kids had that party for our thirtieth anniversary? Janice made all those place cards and table decorations and things from the old pictures? There
must have been a couple hundred different ones, including our wedding. And there were baby pictures. She did it with a computer. I’m sure she’s still got the file with the original photographs she scanned.”

Ronnie sat up, her eyes wide. She leaned over and kissed Sid. “You sentimental old bastard. All this time you’ve been thinking about it too.”

“I remembered those pictures because the other night I just happened to be thinking about when we first got together. Somehow they were connected.”

“I’m going to call Janice right now.” She got up and went to the table to pick up her phone.

A few minutes later she ended her call. “She’s got them.”

“I thought she would.”

Ronnie looked at him from the corner of her eye. “Just which parts of when we first got together?”

The next morning they changed rental cars again at the Burbank airport and drove to the Intercelleron Corporation complex in the West Valley. As they approached the address, Ronnie dialed her phone.

“Hi, Mr. Hemphill. This is Veronica Abel. We’re almost to your company. Can you meet us outside the front gate?” There was a pause. “Good. See you in a minute.” She hung up.

Moments later, they approached the main building of Intercelleron Corporation. The building was a long and low self-consciously modern structure. It was set into a grassy hillside so it looked as though it were a taller building that had nearly completed the process of sinking into the earth. There was only one sign, an unobtrusive tan brick rectangle
with script that said the single word, and it was also set into the hillside as though about to be submerged. Hemphill appeared at the glass doors in the front of the building and walked out to meet them as Sid drove to the curb in front. When he reached the sidewalk, Ronnie said, “Get in.”

Hemphill looked confused, but opened the door and got into the backseat. “Where are we going?”

“Just for a little ride while we talk,” said Ronnie.

As soon as Sid pulled away from the curb Hemphill said, “I’m glad to see you. I’ve been worried about you. The police have been here at least three times. A Detective Hebert came, and then another detective from the North Hollywood station named Fuentes, and then another from Van Nuys. One said you had been attacked, and the next said your house had been burned down.”

“We’re fine,” said Sid. “But there seems to be somebody who is very interested in this case. How are things here? Have you or any of your colleagues noticed anything unusual since you retained us?”