“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 was a major claim now—or would be once Terry Patterson had filed the necessary papers.
The officer waited for an answer.
“Mr. Patterson says they got away with $250,000 worth of merchandise. A quarter million! How many pounds, how many cubic feet of paper does that represent?” Lindsey peered over the police officer’s head at the store owner.
Patterson was as tall and scrawny and pale as Plum was short and fleshy and black. He blinked owlishly. “Th-there wasn’t any truck here, Mr. Lindsey. I-I don’t think there was, anyhow.”
“Then how did they get away with the loot?”
“Uh, I sup-suppose they could have carried it in a corrugated carton. Or a backpack. Or—or—” He pointed at the insurance adjuster. At Hobart Lindsey! “Or, uh, somebody could have carried the comics away in a briefcase like y-yours, Mr. Lindsey.”
There was a rapping on the glass of the front door of the shop. Patterson revolved his head as if it were on a swivel. He craned his neck toward the sound, then turned back to face Plum and Hobart. “Uh, Marvia, uh, Mr. Lindsey. It’s Jan—Janice—and Linc. M-My staff. Can I let them in? Can I open the store now?” He held up his wrist, showing a digital watch. “It-It’s time to open.”
“Okay with me, Terrence.”
Marvia, Terrence, Jan, Linc. Oh, chummy, chummy. Patterson took the distance back to the front door with huge, birdlike strides. Jan and Linc, Lindsey could see, were standing with their arms around each other’s waists. Jan was Asiatic and Linc was some kind of nondescript racial mixture.
Officer Plum said, “I don’t think you understand what happened here. This wasn’t a massive theft of stock. Whoever knocked this place over knew exactly what they were doing. Terrence tells me that approximately thirty-five items were taken.”
“He just gave me a dollar value on the phone. He said a quarter million. I figured it would take a stadium full of comic books to make that much. Tons of the things. What are comic books worth? You’d have to haul them away in a truck.”
“No way.” She shook her head. “Just thirty-five of them. You don’t know anything about comic books, I take it.”
If only she knew! “Not the modern ones,” Lindsey said. “When I was a kid I read a few. Archie, Richie Rich, Disney stuff. And my father—”
He was going to leave it there, but she said, “Your father—what?”
“He was a cartoonist. He drew for the comics.”
“Anything in the store?”
Lindsey moved his head to indicate the display case containing Gangsters at War. “He wasn’t very good, I’m afraid. He was just getting established. He died before I was born.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry!”
“I never knew him, so I never missed him.”
She pursed her lips.
Lindsey hoped she wasn’t going to ask him more about it. He didn’t like telling the story. People always offered their sympathy when they heard it.
Officer Plum said, “But family is so important.”
Lindsey said nothing.
After an awkward pause, Officer Plum asked, “About these stolen comic books....”
Lindsey said, “Yes?”
“A lot of people collect them. Sometimes they even form syndicates and buy into them, as investments.”
She knew a lot about comic books for somebody who had just come to investigate a burglary. Lindsey said so.
If she hadn’t been