Харлан Кобен - Win

Ian Cornwell slumps into a chair across the table. “It was a traumatic experience.”

I wait.

“I’d rather not talk about it.”

“Professor Cornwell?”

“Yes.”

“My family lost two priceless masterpieces on your watch.”

“You’re blaming me?”

“I will if you refuse to cooperate.”

“I’m not refusing anything, Mr. Lockwood.”

“Terrific.”

“But I also won’t be bullied.”

I give him a moment or two so as to save face. He will capitulate. They always do.

A few seconds later, he offers up a contrite “I don’t know anything that will help. I told the police everything a hundred times over.”

I continue undaunted: “You estimated that one of the two men was five nineish with a medium build. The other was slightly over six feet tall and heavier set. Both were white men, and you believe that they were wearing fake mustaches.”

“It was dark,” he adds.

“Your point being?”

His eyes go left. “None of this was exact. The height, the weight. I mean, they could be accurate. But it all happened so fast.”

“And you were young,” I add, “and scared.”

Ian Cornwell grabs hold of these arguments as a drowning man does a life preserver. “Yes, exactly.”

“You were just an intern hoping to make a few extra dollars.”

“It was part of my financial aid requirement, yes.”

“Your training was minimal.”

“Not to pass the buck,” Cornwell says, “but the school should have provided your family with better security.”

True enough, though many things about the case and the investigation bothered me. The painting had only been scheduled to be on loan for a short time, and the dates were fixed only a few weeks in advance. We had indeed added security cameras, but this was before the days of storing digital video in the cloud, and so the recordings were kept on a hard drive on the second floor behind the president’s office.

“How did the thieves know where to find the hard drive?” I ask.

His eyes close. “Please don’t.”

“Pardon?”

“You don’t think the FBI asked me all these questions a thousand times back then? They interrogated me for hours. Denied me legal counsel even.”

“They thought you were in on it.”

“I don’t know. But they sure acted like it. So I’ll tell you what I told them — I don’t know. I was duct-taped and cuffed in the basement. I had no idea what they’d done. I spent eight hours down there — until someone came looking to replace me in the morning.”

I know this, of course. Ian Cornwell had been cleared for a lot of reasons, the biggest being that he was only a twenty-two-year-old research intern with no record. He simply didn’t have the brains or experience to pull off this heist. Still, the FBI kept surveillance on him. I, too, had Kabir go through his bank records to see whether a late windfall came into his life. I found none. He seems clean. And yet.

“I want you to take a look at these photographs.”

I slide the four photographs across the table toward him. The first two are blown up from the famous photograph of the Jane Street Six. One is of Ry Strauss. The other is Arlo Sugarman. The next two are the same photographs but using a new age-progression software program, so both Strauss and Sugarman look some twenty years older — in their early forties — as they would have at the time of the art heist.

Ian Cornwell looks at the images. Then he looks up at me. “Are you kidding?”

“What?”

“That’s Ry Strauss and Arlo Sugarman,” he says. “You think they—”

“Do you?”

Ian Cornwell looks back down and seems to be studying the photographs with renewed vigor. I watch him closely. I need to gauge a reaction, and despite what you may read, no man is an open book. Still, I see something going on behind the eyes — or at least I imagine that I do.

“Hold on a second,” he says.

He reaches into a cabinet near the bookshelf and pulls out a black Sharpie pen. He gestures toward the photographs. “Do you mind?”

“Be my guest.”

He carefully draws mustaches on the male faces. When he’s satisfied, he straightens up and then tilts his head, as though he is an artist studying his handiwork. I don’t look at the photographs. I keep my focus on his face.

I don’t like what I see.

“I couldn’t swear one way or the other,” he pronounces after he’s taken some more time, “but it is certainly possible.”

I say nothing.

“Is there anything else, Mr. Lockwood?”

“Just the statute of limitations,” I say.

“Pardon?”

“It’s up.”

“I don’t understand—”

“So if you had something to do with the robbery, you couldn’t be prosecuted. If you, for example, gave the thieves some inside information — if you were an accessory of some sort — it’s been over twenty years. The statute of limitations for this type of offense in Pennsylvania is only five years. In short, you’re in the clear, Professor Cornwell.”

He frowns. “Clear for what?”

“For the Lincoln assassination,” I say.

“What?”

I shake my head. “Now do you see my issue with you?”

“What are you talking—?”

“You just said ‘clear for what?’ when it is so obvious that I am referring to the art heist.” I mimic him and repeat: “‘Clear for what?’ It’s overkill, Ian. It’s suspicious behavior. Come to think of it, everything about your testimony is suspicious.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“For example, the two robbers disguised as police officers.”

“What about them?”

“That’s precisely what happened in Boston during the Gardner Museum heist. Two men, same heights you describe, same build, same fake mustaches, same claim of needing to investigate a disturbance.”

“You find that odd?” he counters.

“I do, yes.”

“But the FBI believed that it was the same MO.”

“MO?”

“Method of Operation.”

“Yes, I’m aware what the term means, thank you.”

“Well, that’s why there are similarities, Mr. Lockwood. The theory is that the robberies were done by the same team.”

“Or,” I say, “that someone, perhaps you, wanted us to believe that. And a ‘disturbance’? Really? Late at night in that closed building across the green? You were working there. Did you hear a disturbance?”

“Well, no.”

“No,” I repeat. “Did you report one? Also: no. Yet you just unlocked the door to these two men with fake mustaches. Don’t you think that’s odd?”

“I thought they were police officers.”

“Did they have a police car?”

“Not that I saw.”

“And that’s another thing. There was working CCTV on the campus entrance and exits. Yet no one saw two men dressed as police officers that night.”

This is a lie — the campus didn’t have that kind of surveillance back then — but it’s a lie that draws blood.

“I’ve had enough,” Ian Cornwell snaps, rising to his feet. “I don’t care who you are—”

“Shh.”

“Excuse me? Did you just...?”

I stare him down. If you want to change someone’s behavior, remember this and this only: Human beings always do what is in their self-interest. Always. That’s the sole motivator. People only do the “right thing” when it suits those interests. Yes, that is cynical, but it is also true. If you want to change minds, the secret is not being thoughtful or respectful or conciliatory or presenting cogent indisputable facts to show that said mind is wrong. And for those truly in the naïve camp, the secret is not trying to appeal to our better angels or “humanity.” None of that works. The only way to change someone’s opinion is to make them believe that siding with you is in their best interest. Period. The end.