Дэвид Балдаччи - Redemption

Well, the fact that someone tried to kill her demonstrated that she was certainly right to be anxious.

He picked up her purse, which was on the nightstand. Inside were her wallet, a set of keys, and a building security access card. He pocketed those items and walked back into the main area to find that Natty had left to go back to the police station. The forensic team was finishing up and Kelly Fairweather was packing up her kit.

“Find anything of interest?” asked Decker.

“Just blood. And the bullet. It went into the couch.” She held up a small plastic container with a lid on top.

Decker took it and looked at the bullet, which was in pristine condition.

“Seven point six two,” observed Decker of the round’s caliber.

She nodded. “Right. It’s called the NATO round. Lots of military forces use it, including ours. If that had hit her in the head instead of the shoulder, she’d be in the morgue, not the hospital.”

Decker looked at her strangely.

“You okay?” she asked.

“I’ll be okay once we solve this case.”

He left and hit the street. He had another place left to check where Katz might have kept something of value. Her office. It was only a few blocks from her apartment, so Decker was just going to walk.

When he got there, he found the door to the building locked. He took out the key card, held it over the card reader pad, and the door clicked open. He checked the lobby marquee for Katz’s office number and rode the elevator up. He strode quickly down the hall to her office door. All the other offices he’d passed had standard metal doors. Katz’s office had a far more expensive solid wood door with matching trim. Knowing how she liked things just so, he wasn’t surprised.

He tried several keys he had taken from her purse until one worked. He unlocked the door and went in. He decided to use his Maglite instead of turning on the office lights. There was a front reception desk, and a short hall off to the left. Two offices were off this hall and then a kitchen/workroom with a door that opened back into the reception area. The security pad was hung on the wall next to this door, its light glowing green.

He went back to the first office and opened the door. This was clearly Katz’s office. It was larger than the other one and outfitted with custom shelves, a seating area with plush chairs, and a handsome partners desk. The shelves were lined with business memorabilia, photos of Katz with various city officials and others he assumed were her business partners. There were also photos of what looked to be her various properties and commercial projects. In each photo, Katz was smiling broadly, looking triumphant and happy.

And yet as Decker peered more closely, it appeared to him that the looks were hollow, that an underlying melancholy was present in each image. Maybe that was just him imposing what he knew now onto the woman’s photos. Or maybe not.

Then he noticed the power cord lying on top of the desk. It was for a laptop, but there was no computer there. And there hadn’t been one at Katz’s home either. He opened some file drawers and his suspicions were heightened.

Someone had done a very good job of searching the office without seeming to have done so. He closed the drawer and looked at the shelving system built into the wall. He recognized it, since Katz had an exact duplicate in her condo.

But not exactly exact.

He stepped closer and noted a panel set between two open shelves. This same type of panel had been in her condo as well. But there was a difference. The one in her condo had a knob on it. Decker had presumed that was because the panel was actually a door and there was storage behind it. He had found this actually to be the case because he had looked inside it.

Yet there was no knob on this panel. He stepped back and looked at the unit again. He took the template from his memory of the one in Katz’s condo and laid it over what he was seeing now. The absence of the knob was the only difference.

He strode forward and felt around the perimeter of the panel, probing with his fingers. Then he pressed down on the lower left-hand side of the wood and the door popped open. Behind it was a space filled with documents and files.

He pulled them out and set them on the desk. He was about to go over them when he stopped, rose, left the office, and walked into the kitchen area. On the wall was the security pad.

Why had it been turned off?

Decker hadn’t done it. He didn’t have the code. He had known of the possibility that Katz would have her own independent security system for her office. The exterior of the building had security. The front door to her office had been locked. But the security system had not been engaged.

An oversight, or...?

The whooshing sound of something igniting and the resulting smell of smoke that reached him a few moments later definitively answered the question for Decker.

Okay, that’s a problem.

The reception area was on fire, which meant the only way out was blocked.

Decker called 911 and reported the fire and calmly asked for the fire department to get there before he was burned to nothing.

He peered around the edge of the hall to see the reception area filling up with smoke. Next, he looked to the ceiling. There were sprinkler heads mounted there. So why the hell weren’t they going off?

He coughed and fell back from the flames.

Well, this told him that he’d been right. There was something here that someone didn’t want discovered. They had searched the place, but out of an abundance of caution, they’d decided to then burn it down and somehow had disengaged the sprinkler system.

He retreated to Katz’s office and looked desperately around. He was on the fifth floor, so breaking the window and going out that way was not going to cut it.

He put all the items he’d found behind the panel in a cardboard box, ran into the workroom with it, grabbed bubble wrap off the shelf, and taped it all around the box. He rushed back into Katz’s office, ran to the window, and looked out, to make sure no one was walking down below on the sidewalk. He picked up her chair, carried it over to the window, and pounded it against the glass until the window shattered and fell away. He used the chair to scrape the rest of the glass away.

He looked down to make sure it was still clear and dropped the box. It fell to the sidewalk. He could hear the bubble wrap air pouches collectively pop when it hit the pavement. He hadn’t been concerned about anything in the box shattering on impact. Paper didn’t break. But it was very windy outside and if the box had burst open, he would have been running around the city trying to find the contents.

The problem was, his opening the window had let the wind and, with it, enormous amounts of oxygen into the space from the outside.

He turned and saw the flames right at the door of the office. Okay, this was getting damn tight.

He heard sirens and the screech of brakes from below and saw two fire engines pull up. He leaned out of the window and cried out, “The fire’s coming into this space. I need to get out. Now!”

The fireman signaled to him and four of them rushed to one of the trucks and pulled out an inflatable jump cushion, which they quickly pumped up and positioned under the window.

Decker looked down at it. From up here it seemed about the size of a twin bed.

Shit!

“Jump!” yelled one of the firemen.

“I’m a big guy. Will that hold me, or do you have a larger size?” Decker called back.

“This will hold you, don’t worry,” the fireman yelled back. “Just jump away from the building. Back to the ground. We’ll reposition if need be.”