The Heir Hunter (11 page)

“Thank you for worrying about little me,” said Alex. “I’m not afraid to go in, Nick.”

“I know you’re not, but we need to have someone outside. All those years of being a cop taught me a little about getting through doors. You still have those little two-way radios we used to play around with?”

“Somewhere in the garage, I think. I don’t know if they even work anymore.”

“We’ll buy new ones if they don’t. Any sign of trouble, we’ll need instant communication. I think one in the morning might be a good time to arrive. I’d need a good chunk of time in there to be thorough. Friday night isn’t the best night to do it, but it’s risky to wait.”

“Isn’t there any other way in besides the front door?” asked Alex, feeling reluctantly swept up in his enthusiasm. “Seems a little conspicuous.”

“We can’t break windows, and I’m not about to shuffle down the chimney. The front door’s actually fairly concealed. There are these overgrown bushes surrounding the front steps. Once I get to the porch, I’m pretty well covered.” He studied her. “What do you think? Are we crazy?”

“You
are,” she said. “Bribing somebody’s one thing, but breaking and entering?”

“You talk like we’re burglarizing the place. We’re not stealing anything. We aren’t hurting anyone. We’re just . . . taking a little look around.”

“Just like walking through a museum, huh, Nick? No different at all.”

“Alex, please. Is this really so bad?”

“Bad enough to land you behind bars.”

“Only if I get caught. We’d probably get off on a trespassing charge. I’m not sticking around to get caught, though. If I run into problems at the door, I’ll just bail out of there.” He fell to a knee in front of her. “I say we do it,
Alex. Something like Jacobs will never come around again. We have to give it a shot.”

Alex wouldn’t look up. He brought a finger to her face and used it to gently raise her chin. They stared at each other for a moment, and she fought back a smile. Nick burst into a grin and knew the battle was won.

“That’s my partner,” he said.

“The sensible one of the two,” she replied.

He rose and turned to the water. He was talking about it so matter-of-factly, as if it were no more difficult than going to the supermarket. But if something went wrong, there would be consequences. Laws varied from state to state, county to county. It could get a lot uglier than six months in the county jail. He rubbed his face. He felt confident now but wondered how his knees would feel walking up those porch steps.

“I can’t believe it’s coming to this,” Alex finally said.

“It’s the only way.”

Both sat in silence momentarily, Nick biting at a hangnail, Alex staring across the river. Nick reached down and sent a final rock into the silent waters.

“Let’s take another look at Michael Drive,” he said, heading back to the car. “We’ve got to plan this right.”

A
T 1 A.M
., the rented midnight blue van pulled quietly from the driveway and down the street. They drove silently to their destination. Everything had been discussed, every scenario played out, and they were as comfortable with the plan as they could possibly be.

Nick sat in the passenger seat and felt perspiration bead up on the back of his neck. In eight years with SFPD, he had never seen much to make him sweat. He had seen mangled bodies, dead children, and shotgun suicides, and he had never shrunk from any of it.
You become immune after the first year
, Bill Merchant had told him.
You get an iron stomach.
His father had been right. He wondered how long it took criminals to develop iron stomachs. His was in knots.

The early hours of the morning were coal black, no moon in the sky to throw a spotlight on them. Upon arrival they made a pass down Michael Drive, scanning the street for any signs of life. Nick was encouraged to see that the streetlamp directly in front of Jacobs’s home was burned out. The first break had gone their way.

Alex pulled the van to the curb around the corner and cut the engine. Nick glanced over his shoulder down the block and strained his eyes toward Jacobs’s house, the fourth one from the corner.

“Conditions are about as good as they could be,” he
said, sounding more confident than he felt. “I doubt we’d have a better night to try this.”

Alex nodded. “Houses are dark except for that one across the street.”

Nick looked himself over yet again. He was wearing a heavy army jacket over a pullover. Inside the jacket was a crowbar; over his shoulder, a backpack. His hands were fitted with black leather gloves, and his radio was secured in his front jacket pocket. They had tested the clarity in Alex’s backyard and been satisfied. Nick had remembered to remove the van’s license plates before they had set off for Hudson.

“You look like Rambo,” said Alex with a nervous little laugh.

“Let’s hope I pull this off like Rambo,” replied Nick. He grasped the door handle, hesitated, and looked back at her. “You all right?”

“I’m all right.”

“You sure?”

“Ask again and I may say no. Get your butt moving before I start thinking too much.”

“Okay. If all goes well, you’ll hear from me in less than ten minutes on the radio. If anything goes way wrong, I could be back here real quick, so just be ready to gun it.”

“I’ll be ready,” replied Alex. “Be careful.”

Nick stepped to the curb, closed the door gently, and disappeared around the corner.

John Malloy slouched behind the wheel of the car and listened to his partner gurgle. The breathing was rhythmic, almost hypnotic. With every wheeze and snort, he felt himself grow drowsier. He pinched himself and glanced at his watch. Twenty minutes after one. Another forty minutes and it would be his turn to be annoying. His partner would hear some real snoring then.

They had parked at the end of Michael Drive, beneath
the long shadow of a tree. Their vantage point was completely perfect. It was boring, simple work, but at least the money was right.

Malloy was almost glad to see the pedestrian. Watching him would kill a few minutes. He reached for the binoculars and raised them. The solitary figure was moving quickly down the dark sidewalk of Michael Drive. He immediately felt suspicious. The stranger wasn’t jogging, didn’t have a dog by his side. Malloy studied him and wondered what the hell he was up to.

Nick walked briskly along the sidewalk toward the Jacobs home, feeling every thump of his heartbeat. Despite his reconciliation with the plan, he couldn’t purge a distinct uneasiness in his gut. The Jacobs case was about to become unique in more ways than just money. He had always respected the law, and despite his and Alex’s rationalizing, he knew this was wrong, wrong, wrong. He thought of his father and wondered if he could see him right then, see his only son drifting to the other side of the law. Under the circumstances, he wasn’t too certain old Bill Merchant wouldn’t be doing the same damn thing.

The surrounding houses were silent and dark as Nick approached the front walkway of the Jacobs home. Before second thoughts could surface, he cut to his left and quickly moved up the walkway leading to the front porch. Boards creaked loudly as he gingerly stepped to the door. He crouched down like a soldier in a foxhole, temporarily sheltered from enemy eyes. The bushes adorning the front garden were effective allies; their shadows were covering him like a shroud. He was thankful the old man hadn’t made use of the hedge clippers.

He grabbed the cold hard steel of the crowbar, feeling the solid weight of it in his hands. Before he could think too much, he turned to the door. He felt the doorknob, and with the full force of his weight, wedged the crowbar firmly between the door frame and the knob. He bent the door outward, knowing he could snap it from its hinge
quickly, but noise was the concern. He would need to lean against the crowbar and slowly increase the pressure.

“Dammit—”

The wood was creaking in protest, flexing to its limits. With an ear-splitting crack, wood fragments exploded outward. The door creaked open. Nick cursed and ducked in quickly, pushing the door shut. With no bolt to hold it, the door swung slightly inward. He reached into the darkness and grabbed what felt like a coffee table, propping it up against the door. He placed the crowbar to the floor gently and peered through the peephole. Another light in the house directly across the street had flickered on. He reached for the radio.

“Alex . . .”

The response came instantly.

“Are you in?”

“Yes. We’re home free. Watch for cops. I’ll be out as soon as possible.”

“The house across the street lit up—”

“I know. Just watch for cops. Toughest part’s over.”

“Just hurry up, Nick . . .”

Nick stared into the inky blackness. For better or worse, he was in. He had gained his entrance relatively easily, but that didn’t mean some nosy neighbor wasn’t reaching for a phone. He strained his eyes and glanced around the living room.

Where to start, dammit, where to start?

The house was almost completely black. He reached for his penlight and shot a laser beam of light around the room. The beam was weak, but he could still see the lavishness with which the old man had surrounded himself. A dust-coated crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling, and a thick Oriental rug covered the floor. To the left, elegant nineteenth-century gilt chairs with burgundy upholstery surrounded a stately antique dining table. A heavy gold-framed mirror hung directly behind the table, and the walls were covered with imposing works of art with elaborate
gilded frames. He ran a gloved hand down the surface of one, feeling the rough texture on his fingers. It felt authentic.

Uncertain where to begin, he turned and promptly slammed his shin on a table. Stifling a curse, he grabbed two books that lay on the table and examined them. One was a biography of Chopin, the other an illustrated translation of Dante’s
Inferno.
Finding nothing between the pages, he placed them aside and scanned the living room with the penlight. A grand piano stood in the corner like a casket.

Moving through the living room and into the hallway, Nick gazed up a long flight of stairs leading upward. People usually kept their personal mementos hidden away in their bedrooms; it would be a good place to start. He was about to head up when his eye caught a tiny flashing from the hallway. He approached the rapidly flashing light and quickly saw what it was. The answering machine’s message light was flashing like a pinball machine. Odd, he thought—a recluse getting that many calls. He pointed the light on the machine and popped it open, taking the tiny message tape. It would make for interesting listening later.

He quickly stepped up the hardwood stairs. Two large portraits adorned the wall to his right. One depicted a somber elderly man with a flowing white mustache staring out over a cliff; the other a young woman in an elegant white dress holding a parasol. He firmly grasped the portraits and lifted them from the wall, noting the surprising weight. Placing them gently at the bottom of the staircase, he returned to the wall and began pressing and feeling the uncovered wall space. He tapped on it lightly and heard no echo.

Seen too many detective movies, Nick. Quit wasting time . . .

Thinking of the initial racket of the entry, he thumbed his radio. “Alex . . .”

“What’s happening?”

“Nothing much. I’m heading upstairs. How’s it look out there?”

“We’re okay. That light went off across the street.”

“You should see this place. Nothing at all like the outside. The old man had a hell of an interior decorator.”

“Quit sightseeing and get to work.”

“I’ll try not to take more than an hour.”

“An hour!”

“At least. Talk to you soon.”

The hallway upstairs was darker than the rooms below, and the penlight seemed dimmer. Four doors beckoned: one directly ahead, one to the left, and two to the right. Nick grabbed and gently twisted the first knob on the right. A windowless closet with six shelves. A lightbulb cord hung from the ceiling and Nick pulled on it, flooding the tiny room with light. He grabbed towels from the top shelf and quickly shook each piece, discarding them in a pile as he went. In two minutes’ time, the entire contents of the closet lay in a heap in the hallway. Nothing was found.

The next door on the right was the bathroom. Nick foraged through all drawers and the medicine cabinet, finding nothing except prescription medicine bottles and lotions. He quickly examined the labels of the medication bottles, making a note of the prescriptions. If necessary, he would find time to call a pharmacist to see what the medications might reveal about Jacobs’s health. He pulled aside the shower curtain, looked in the tub, and saw nothing. He remembered the death certificate and ran the light around the inside. A faint pinkish ring was visible.

A bedroom was the first room on the left side. From the sparseness of the decor, Nick assumed he had entered a guest room. A single twin-size bed, neatly made, sat primly against the right wall. The curtains were open, and faint indirect light from the window facing the street streamed in weakly across the floor. He considered drawing the curtains but quickly thought otherwise. Feeling hot
suddenly, he removed his jacket and placed it on the bed. He approached the closet. One by one, he tossed sport coats, sweaters, and overcoats aside as he checked every lining, every pocket. Boxes on the top shelf of the closet held some old turntable records and a wide variety of hats, gloves, and dusty books. Many were printed in German. Nick looked through one of them. Bonnie had been right about that—Jacobs was German. Or Austrian. The books seem to substantiate it.

He leafed through each of the books, looking for the postcard, the scrap of weathered paper, the birthday card—anything that would give that crucial family contact. After spending five minutes looking in drawers, under the bed—even under the throw rug—he crept toward the door at the end of the hall. If there was nothing of value in the old man’s bedroom, there was still the garage, the dining room, the living room, and any other closets. Something had to turn up.