The Frame-Up (The Golden Arrow #1)(53)

Rideout sneers. This guy is not the good-cop half of their team. “Okay, then, show us. Show us the proof.”

I press my lips together, willing Matteo to feel what I feel in this room. Something in my head clicks into place. Call it intuition. Call it Casey Senior’s spirit from the past. Whatever it is, I feel surer about this than I have anything about this case so far. I’m letting the story lead me, not the facts. Exactly how I write my comics. I get a nugget, a vision, then chase that story down its own path. I don’t try to box it in. I’m open to wherever it wants to lead. Facts are Matteo’s part of the investigation. Comic stories are mine.

I look around the room, my attention lingering on the painting behind the desk. “I interrupted the Golden Arrow before he could take all the art down. We need to look behind it.”

Rideout snorts. “If this was an attempted burglary, this room is evidence. We can’t move anything.”

That figures. He asks for proof, then tells me I can’t look.

Matteo turns to Rideout. “We’ll wear gloves. We’re here to look at the office and look for the journals.”

Rideout mutters a string of words I can’t hear before finishing with “It’s your funeral.”

Yahtzee. I accept the pair of latex gloves from Matteo before crossing to the desk and grasping the side of the ornate frame. It’s almost as tall as I am. I recognize the panel drawn in the frame as the one I saw Casey Junior lounging in front of for the charity promotion article Matteo and I saw when we were looking through the comics in my room.

Matteo lines up on the other side of the frame. “All right. We’ll lift it enough for you to look through the crack in the side. On three: one, two, three . . .”

Something inside the frame shifts as Matteo and I awkwardly lift the painting up and slightly away from the wall. My heart races. I’m convinced we’ve broken the antique frame, but it holds together enough for me to lay my head against the wall. It’s an awkward angle. Even with my nose literally touching the frame, I can’t see the wall clearly.

“I need a flashlight,” I say.

“Rideout, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“Of course I mind. I’m a narcotics detective, Kildaire.” But I hear rustling, and a cell phone with a flashlight appears near my head.

“A little farther down, more toward the wall—yeah . . . right . . . right there. Matt—Detective Kildaire, there’s something on the wall behind the painting.” My head pops up, nearly sending Rideout’s phone flying.

Matteo studies me like I’m a puzzle, but after a moment he nods. “Okay, let’s take down the frame. Let’s look at what’s behind there.” We lift, but the five-foot frame is awkward and hard to manage. I don’t think the Golden Arrow could have removed this one by himself, at least not in one piece. It explains why it’s the only one remaining on the wall. Something clunks inside the frame again as we shift it wildly, trying to unhook the wire from the mounting device.

“A little help here, Rideout,” Matteo calls. Rideout mutters about how this is “all a part of my plan” just quietly enough that I don’t think Matteo hears. I’m so excited to be right at the prospect of finding the journals, at being one step ahead of the Golden Arrow, that I ignore Rideout’s ridiculous allegations.

Finally the frame leans against the wood-paneled wall, and I behold in triumph a small safe in the wall behind the desk.

“Just like in the comic books.” Call me Professor X. I’m a brain-ninja to find this.

“It could be coincidence,” Matteo says, taking a picture of the safe with his phone.

“Or the perfect place to keep journals that contain the name of a drug lord and a dirty cop in league together.” I study Rideout from the corner of my eye. Maybe that’s why he’s so unsettled. Prickles dance on my skin as I consider the very real possibility that Detective Dursley could be the dirty cop. And that he’s annoyed with my clue-finding abilities, looking for a way to pin this all on me.

Rideout doesn’t seem to notice me staring. He’s talking over my head to Matteo. “You do realize that the journals can’t be in there. Casey Junior said he’s been looking for thirty years.”

I cross my arms. “Maybe he didn’t know the safe was here.”

Rideout rolls his eyes at me like the teenage boy he is. “After thirty years? You don’t think he knew his dad had a safe in here?”

Matteo watches us like a tennis match. “Chances are he knew it was here, and there’s no way for us to unlock it without a warrant and a special team . . . Oh.”

“Oh what?” I hold my breath. I know this is the answer. This is what the Golden Arrow wants. This is the key to the story.

“It’s open.” Matteo studies the wall safe, then extracts his pen from his pocket. He slides it up the side of the door, and sure enough, it swings forward. “It’s been disarmed.”

We all crowd around to be the first to glimpse whatever is inside the safe. Except it’s empty. Completely. Well, that just takes the freaking cake.

“What now, Dexter?” Rideout’s dry drawl comes from over my left shoulder. I hate that he’s using nicknames like I do. Just because I use my knowledge of comics to catch a comic book criminal doesn’t make me Dexter.

I ignore him and turn my face to Matteo’s. “We need to find those journals.” I beg him with my eyes to believe me. To believe in me. These journals are the key.