The bond that binds her to the Mathesons is blood—effectively unbreakable. I’ve always known this at some level, I suppose, but in my euphoria at possessing Jet again, I let myself believe that some magical solution would reveal itself later. But later has become now, as it always does, and I see no solution. Not even the hope of one. And as for Buck’s death, at this moment, nothing links the Poker Club to it other than their collective relief that he’s dead.
And there’s no law against that.
Chapter 21
Only one city police officer responded to the alarm at Constant Reader, and he found both the front and rear entrances locked. The alarm had been triggered by a motion detector on the ground floor. After a quick search, Nadine discovered that a second-floor window had been forced. Oddly, that window was fourteen feet above the pavement of the rear parking area. To gain access that way, the intruder would have had to either bring his own extension ladder or do some creative climbing and risky acrobatics—wasted effort employed in the robbing of a bookstore.
All Nadine can find missing is the tower unit of her computer server. The cash register hasn’t been disturbed. We stand with the cop in the midst of the bookshelves, trying to figure out why someone would steal her computer. The cop has already grown impatient. He seems resentful about having to fill out a report.
“Are you sure that’s all that’s missing?” he asks.
“I think so,” Nadine says. “I mean . . .”
“What have you not checked?” I ask her.
She purses her lips, bemused, and turns in a circle. “Nothing. I mean, unless . . .”
“What?”
“The safe?” she asks, almost humorously.
“Check it.”
She goes into a small office tucked between the bookstore and café portions of the shop, and I follow. The safe appears to be undisturbed.
“It looks okay,” she says.
“Open it,” I advise her. “Just for kicks.”
She looks back to make sure the cop can’t see, then spins the dial right, left, and right again. When she opens the door, I hear a long sigh.
“Well?”
“Somebody was in here,” she says. “Shit.”
“What’s missing?”
“A couple of external hard drives.”
“What was on them?”
She’s shaking her head in silence.
“Nadine?”
“The backups of my business software, plus my financial records for the past two years.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all?” She looks over her shoulder, her face taut with frustration. “I am so fucked.”
“How so?”
“It’ll take me weeks to get back up and running. Back up to speed, I mean. I have my basic software on disk, but I’ve lost so many transactions, records . . . God, what a nightmare. And before you ask, I kept those drives here because this is a fire safe. I don’t have one at home.”
The cop’s voice comes over my shoulder: “So that’s all of it, ma’am? A computer and two hard drives?”
“Looks like it, yes.”
“It’s just . . . sometimes people have firearms stolen, and since they’re not licensed, they don’t like to report it.”
“No,” Nadine says wearily. “No gun.”
“All right. If y’all are okay, I’m going to head out. There’s been kind of a rash of these things tonight.”
“What things?” I ask. “Break-ins?”
“Yeah.”
“What else got broken into?”
The cop pauses halfway to the door. “Couple of law offices downtown.”
Nadine and I share a puzzled look. “Law offices? What was taken?”
“Same thing. Some computers. Disks and files and such.”
What the hell? “That’s pretty unusual, isn’t it?”
The cop shrugs, then takes out his cell phone to check a text message. “I guess. We get all kinds of crazy stuff in this town. Last week some guys backed a truck through a brick wall to rob the fishing store.”
Nadine rolls her eyes at me.
“Okay, well, I think we’re fine,” I tell him. “Thanks for responding to the call.”
After walking the cop to the door, I come back and find Nadine sitting at one of her café tables.
“How do you feel?” I ask, just to get her talking.
“Violated.”
“It’s always that way with burglaries.”
She looks around the store with what seems like hopelessness. “What the hell, Marshall? What do you think?”
“I think it’s pretty damn weird that they broke into your safe. Even weirder that they didn’t bust it open with an ax. Somebody cracked it. A pro.”
“Are you sure?”
“Had to be. Somebody’s looking for something. Breaking into law offices around town?”
“I’m not a lawyer anymore.”
“Have you done anybody a favor? Legally, I mean. Like someone gave you a tape of their husband having sex with his secretary, something like that?”
She looks like she’s