Bloodless (Aloysius Pendergast #20)(61)
And Gerhard Moller’s room was the fifth window in from the street.
It had taken only a little research and surveillance for Wellstone to learn this. The layout was better than he’d hoped—in fact, it made what had initially seemed like a somewhat far-fetched scheme into something very workable. Very workable indeed.
He’d suffered nothing but setbacks in his progress to unmask Barclay Betts, most recently Daisy Fayette’s eviction from the graveyard shooting set. The feral cunning he sensed beneath the southern belle’s veneer had, ultimately, failed him. And now, thanks to his graveyard shenanigans, Betts was working with an even higher profile. Under normal circumstances, Wellstone would have returned to Boston and not bothered with this hack. But he could still practically feel the warm crème anglaise dribbling down his back as Betts laughed. And ironically, it was Daisy’s humiliation—which he’d heard about in querulous detail—that had given him an idea that might turn everything around.
As part of her breathless litany of injustices done by Betts & Co., Daisy described how Moller had taken photos with that special camera of his and then distributed them, via Bluetooth, to the crowd of reporters and rubberneckers. After leaving Daisy’s house with vague promises of retribution, Wellstone had immediately gone to the tourist ghetto along Bay Street, where most of the reporters were staying, and managed to get his hands on copies of Moller’s photos. There were three of them, with normal-enough subjects: a CSI worker, a tomb with a marble angel, another broken tombstone. But each one was also overlaid with a sinister apparition, indistinct but disturbing nonetheless—an outstretched bony hand; a huge, sinister face; and a wispy-haired skull and claw emerging from the earth.
Those were the words—overlaid, indistinct—that convinced Wellstone he knew what Moller was up to. It was obvious these were real photographs, taken in real time; after all, the “doctor” couldn’t have known in advance precisely what he’d be photographing in the cemetery. That meant there had to be some apparatus within the camera to create, in effect, a digital double exposure.
That had to be it. The camera Moller was so protective of contained a mechanism for manipulating the photos it took by overlaying on them the ghostly images. This, Wellstone speculated, could only be done if the camera already held a large set of supernatural images—previously created by Moller. All he’d have to do was take a “real” photo, then use whatever he’d retrofitted into the camera to add an appropriate overlay from his stock of sinister images, ready and waiting. Wellstone guessed he’d use the viewfinder to frame his double exposure in the most believable way—then, with the click of a button, he’d take a photo and some algorithm in the camera would blend the two layers into a final image—to be passed on to the credulous dupes.
But what exactly was the mechanism? Was there an SSD flash drive inside the camera, preloaded with fake ghostly images, ready to overlay? That was almost certainly the case. If Wellstone could snag that drive with its store of fake pictures, he could show Moller as the fraud he was—with Betts complicit in the whole scheme.
This meant getting his hands on the camera. And the way he planned to do that could technically be considered breaking and entering. But Wellstone brushed this aside. This could go under the heading of true investigative reporting—on the level of the Pentagon Papers or Deep Throat.
Just then, Wellstone saw movement at Ye Sleepe’s main entrance. A burly-looking man—the same Cro-Magnon bastard who had pushed him away from Betts in the restaurant—came out onto the street. He was followed by the scruffy-looking young man Wellstone knew was Betts’s researcher. These two were followed in quick succession by the attractive DP; Betts himself, the fartbiter—and then, Deo gratias, Moller. Wellstone noticed the charlatan was not carrying his case.
That meant he must have left it in his room. Exactly as Wellstone hoped.
A few more people joined the entourage; they milled around outside the lobby for a minute or two, then set off down State Street toward Barnard.
Now he rose, fresh club soda untouched; dropped a twenty on the table; and moved quickly out into the lobby and onto the street. As usual, he hadn’t anticipated the heat and humidity, which wrapped him like a soggy Hudson Bay blanket. There weren’t many streetlights here, especially on the far side where the parking lot was broken up and being repaved, and Wellstone could just make out Betts’s group as they turned onto Barnard and disappeared.
Still moving quickly, yet careful not to arouse curiosity or suspicion, he crossed the street. He’d planned this down to the last detail—but that didn’t mean he could afford to dawdle.
He walked along the fa?ade of Ye Sleepe, ducking past the construction barricades at the far end and turning into the parking lot. It quickly grew even darker. He paused to make sure nobody was around and no security cameras were aimed his way. Except for some paving equipment, he was alone and essentially invisible in the darkness.
Hurrying along, he counted the windows until he reached Moller’s room. He tried peering in, but the curtains were tightly closed. Reaching into a pocket, he pulled on a pair of latex gloves. Then he pressed his fingers against the window, feeling appraisingly along its lower edge.
It didn’t open from the outside. No surprise there. But—thank God—it wasn’t one of those sealed portholes one found in modern hotels that made you feel you were inside a fish tank. Reaching into his pocket, Wellstone pulled out a narrow-bladed chisel and a rubber mallet. Inserting the chisel into the gap between the window and the sill, he tapped quietly with the mallet—once, twice, three times—until the steel end of the chisel was seated firmly in the narrow channel. Then, grasping the end of the chisel, he pushed up, gently at first and then with increasing force. If he could possibly avoid it, he didn’t want to break the glass—that would mean switching to the less appealing plan B, in which he’d have to overturn things and make it appear an aborted robbery. But luck remained with him: the window was unlocked and the sash slid up easily and noiselessly.