A String of Beads (Jane Whitefield, #8)(116)

When Salamone took out the papers, his expression went stony, and Malconi was reminded why he liked the man. Salamone took out the four driver’s licenses and fanned them like a poker hand. He put them all back into the envelope.

Malconi said, “Those are the four guys Joey Corpa sent from Boston to the address we got for Miss Chelsea. They were going to make sure she wasn’t around to testify against our boy Daniel Crane.”

“I see,” said Salamone. “How did you get these?”

Malconi said, “Joey Corpa had a guy fly here to deliver them.” There was no practical reason to tell Salamone about the woman. “The licenses have the addresses of the dead guys. You ought to send somebody to give each family some money. And some for Joey too. He took a big loss.”

Salamone sighed. Every time he saw Mr. Malconi, it cost him money. “I’ll do it today.”

Malconi squinted up at him. “One more thing. We’ve gone about as far as we can for Daniel Crane. I’m tired of thinking about him.”

TECH SERGEANT REID OF THE state police sat in the passenger seat of the large surveillance van as it drove toward the parking lot of Box Farm Personal Storage. He didn’t like the vehicle, and he didn’t like leading an operation from the rear. But in the open space in the back was his friend Tech Sergeant Ike Lloyd. Ike was belted into the bench seat, and bouncing him around too much was not a good idea while he was still recovering from his bullet wound.

Reid watched the first state police cruiser pull up to the gate and the driver pull out a ticket so the automatic gate would open. As the gate rolled aside, a trooper got out of the passenger seat and stuck a steel pipe through the chain link of the gate to keep it from closing. Then he wrapped a chain through the gate and around the steel support pole, and clapped a padlock on it to lock the gate open. The state police car pulled into the lot and parked.

The next seven cars pulled in after it and parked. Out of each car came four troopers, a few of them carrying shotguns or assault rifles. The first men into the building clambered up the stairs, and by the time the van carrying Reid and Lloyd cleared the gate, the place had been secured.

“I’ve got to go up and find Mr. Crane, and serve the warrant,” said Reid.

“This looks like the time for it,” Lloyd said. He watched Reid go inside and up the stairs. This was the first really good morning Ike Lloyd could recall having since he’d been shot. There were now teams of technicians and auditors and men from the DA’s office waiting out on the road for a radio call from Reid inviting them to come in, and he judged it wouldn’t be more than a few minutes before they’d get their invitation.

Reid came back and got into the van. “Crane’s not here. There’s a guy named Thompson who’s supposed to be in charge today, so he’s been served.”

Reid picked up his handheld radio and said, “All right, ladies and gentlemen. You may proceed into the lot and begin your work.”

Before he put his radio down, the other vehicles began to move, each one entering the lot and parking in one of the customers’ spaces. Others kept going out to the ends of the rows of storage bays to begin their search and inventory. Some of the troopers in the office would be going over the list of bays and the people who had rented them, looking for familiar names or the names of people who didn’t exist.

Reid said, “Ike, what were those bay numbers again?”

“J-nineteen and C-fifteen.”

“Okay, let’s start with J-nineteen.”

A few minutes later, Ike Lloyd was standing with his crutches beside Reid while a trooper used a pair of bolt cutters to take off the lock of J-19. As soon as the lock was off, the trooper opened the hasp and raised the metal garage door. The bay was empty except for two plastic coolers, each about five feet long and two feet deep.

One of the technicians took photographs from outside the bay, then more photographs as he moved inside. After a few minutes of examining the floor and the two coolers and a period of fingerprinting, another pair of technicians arrived.

They removed the duct tape from the first of the two coolers using a pair of needle-nose pliers. They put the tape in a plastic bag to preserve any fingerprints they might have missed. Then they flipped the latches holding the cover down tight.

One technician lifted the top up on its hinges and recoiled visibly, and then recovered. There was a young man, dead, wearing a dark shirt and an open black windbreaker and jeans. The smell was the distinctive and terrible reek of a corpse.

Reid and Lloyd stepped closer. “I’m not sure who this is,” said Reid. “You know him?”

Lloyd said, “Not by name. But I would say he’s the missing man from my night at Slawicky’s. See the holes in his shirt? Looks like number four buckshot. That’s the load from the shotgun in my car.”

“I think you’re right,” said Reid. “Double aught has only nine pellets. He’s got at least a dozen holes I can see, and probably the rest were still clumped together when they hit his chest.”

The technicians went to work on the second cooler, removing the tape and putting it in another evidence bag, and then flipping the latches and opening the cooler.

Lloyd and Reid stepped closer. Reid said, “Who do you suppose this is, Ike?”

“If I’m not mistaken, that’s Mr. Daniel Crane himself.”