You can learn a lot if you just observe before you enter a situation. Comic Cavalcade was a standard storefront. The glass display window was filled with Spider-Man and Batman and Fantastic Four comic books, and Japanese robots and toys and greeting cards and Zippy the Pinhead tee shirts.
The kind of thing that Lindsey had loved, once upon a time. But he was a man on the shady side of thirty now, and such things were no longer part of his life. He wished they’d never been! He’d grown up surrounded by comic books and toys, and only gradually had he come to realize what those things had meant to Mother. How they had shaped her life, made her the sad creature she was now. And, at least indirectly, taken so much from him.
He tried the door but it was locked. A Closed sign hung at eye level.
He picked his way over the trash that littered the sidewalk and checked the neighboring establishments.
On one side of the comic store was a clothing shop. Through the window he saw a high-school-age girl with purple hair and studiedly tattered jacket standing behind the counter, flirting with a young man in a well-stained tee-shirt. Lindsey thought he might want to check with the girl, find out if she was on duty when the burglary—alleged burglary—took place.
On the other side of the comic store was a pizza parlor. A black man in full chef’s regalia spun a circular sheet of pizza dough, threw it into the air and caught it when it spun back down.
Lindsey took his pocket organizer out of his briefcase and jotted a note. Pizza parlor...clothing store...access to C.C. stock?
He returned to Comic Cavalcade and tapped on the door with his pen. The sound was sharp and authoritative—much better than rapping with his knuckles would have been. He pressed his nose to the glass and peered inside. A young man in a disreputable-looking shirt slouched behind the counter. He was tall and skinny and wore dark-rimmed eyeglasses. He tapped his fingers nervously on the glass counter. A police officer stood opposite him. A rack of comic books blocked Lindsey’s line of sight, so he could see only part of the officer’s back.
The young man started to wave Lindsey away, then realized who he was, came to the door and let him in. He locked the door again.
“M-Mr. Lindsey?”
“You Terry Patterson?” Bart asked.
The young man gulped and nodded. He blinked his eyes uncontrollably.
Lindsey handed him his card. He gaped at it as if he’d never seen a business card before, and continued to stare at it for what seemed an eternity before he slipped it into his jeans pocket.
He said, “Off-Officer Plum, uh, M-Mr. Lindsey is here, uh, from the insurance, uh, company.”
Officer Plum turned around, picked up a clipboard holding incident report forms, and halved the distance between them.
Lindsey realized simultaneously that Officer Plum was female and that she was black. Lindsey bit his lip. Berkeley.
The first thing they did was exchange cards. At least they did that right in Berkeley. Marvia Plum, Berkeley Police Department, was all that was printed on hers; in red ink she had added a telephone number.
“I was just leaving,” Officer Plum said. She was short and very dark. Her hair was cropped close to her scalp. The way she filled her form-fitting police uniform was impressive. Lindsey was momentarily distracted. He wondered if the department dressed female officers like that to distract criminals.
Lindsey swallowed. “Leaving?”
“That’s right.” She picked up her uniform cap and yanked it down over her wiry hair.
“But we haven’t had a chance to—”
“My work is done.” She started moving toward the back of the store and the likely rear exit, talking over her shoulder all the while. “We can’t hang around all day. I don’t know where you’ve been since Terrence called you, but we’ve checked the crime scene for evidence, Terrence has filled out the forms...I’ve got a lot of other work to do.”
“Well—well, wait just a little minute.” He strode purposefully after her, taking in his surroundings.
The main room of the store seemed fairly standard. The merchandise, cheap, glossy-covered comic books and other cheap paraphernalia, stood on display in revolving wire racks, on tables, in glass cases, and mounted in clear plastic covers on the walls.
Lindsey followed Officer Plum into a back room that held more wall displays and more glass cases. Unlike the cases in the front room with their simple sliding doors, these were conspicuously locked. Lindsey couldn’t resist inspecting the contents of a couple of them. He recognized some of the comic books—issues that he’d seen at home as a child.
Lindsey tried to keep a straight face but he couldn’t help blinking when he saw among them the crudely rendered cover illustration of Gangsters at War. A square-jawed, unshaven ruffian in a ragged set of army fatigues waved a submachine gun in one hand and a sizzling grenade in the other. His lips were drawn back in a snarl. Underneath his army fatigue jacket, through gaping holes, part of a prison-striped uniform shirt could be seen.
Lindsey peered down through the glass lid, then squatted in front of the case to get a closer look. He scanned the glossy cover, searching for the artist’s identifying mark. There it was: a circle that outlined a tiny stylized face, a heavily arched brow, a pair of mirror-image slashes that defined both the nose and eyes.
The sketch, Mother had explained long ago, was really a signature. The brow line and slashes were the initials J. L., the eye dots periods. The drawing had been done by Joseph Lindsey. Lindsey’s long-dead father.
He shook his head to clear it. He couldn’t take the time to think about Father, couldn’t mix his personal life with his professional performance. Besides, what difference could it make, when he’d never even met the man? Fatherhood, this fatherhood anyway, was nothing more than a biological function. He found his way to the back door of the shop. The hasp that normally secured the door had been pried away from the doorframe and now hung loose. Other than that, there was no evidence of forceful entry, and no disarray or physical damage within the store.
At a sound from the narrow hallway Lindsey turned. Officer Plum hadn’t left after all. She was standing with her clipboard in her hand. For the first time, Lindsey noticed that she was equipped with a full array of police paraphernalia. The wooden butt of a heavy revolver protruded from a small holster she wore on one hip. A pair of nickel-plated handcuffs hung from the other hip. A tiny two-way radio was clipped to one shoulder of her blouse.
Terry Patterson stood behind her, forehead creased with worry above his dark-rimmed, thick-lensed glasses.
“Mr. Lindsey, what’s your opinion?” Officer Plum asked.
“I guess this is where they backed the truck up. Parking lot in the back? Loading dock?”
Officer Plum said, “What truck?”
“The truck—I don’t think they could have fit it into a station wagon, do you?”
“What are you talking about, Mr. Lindsey?”
“Look here,” Lindsey said. He was getting tired of the woman’s inefficiency. Or her indifference. Whatever it was. He could understand the police not caring very much about a minor burglary, but there
