Free The Art Whisperer (An Alix London Mystery) by Aaron Elkins, Charlotte Elkins Page B

certainly wearing them this very moment a few yards from here, to keep from messing up the scene with their own DNA or anything else. Where exactly did you find it, Dennis?”
    “Exactly where you told me to look, Jake. I’m impressed.”
    “Well, I am a detective, Dennis,” Cruz said nonchalantly. “It’s expected of me. Now, if you’re done out there, would you do me the favor of going to the main building and getting to that manager? Find out if they maintain any surveillance videos that we might look at.”
    “Sure thing, but I doubt it.”
    “I doubt it too, but do it anyway. And then move on to any garbage cans and dumpsters on the grounds. I want you to go look in every single one of them and see what you can find.”
    “And I am specifically looking for . . . ?”
    “Plastic gloves, another shoe cover, and some kind of sack or bag made into a mask. He wouldn’t want to be caught on the street with any of those. He’d get rid of them right away. And, if he’s panicked, there might be a laptop too. And anything else that catches your eye. Use your noodle.”
    Campbell turned to go, but Cruz stopped him and cocked a cautionary eyebrow. “And when I say ‘look’ in the dumpsters, that includes climbing in and rooting around with your hands if need be, which it probably will. Understood?”
    “Yes, sir, thank you, sir. And here I thought, being the new guy, that I wouldn’t get any plum assignments for months and months.”
    “Kiddo, I’ve been in more dumpsters than you’ve got years. The development of skilled dumpster investigation techniques and strategies is your pathway to becoming a big, important detective man.”
    “You mean like you, sir?”
    “Well, no. I wouldn’t shoot as high as all that. No point in setting yourself up to be disappointed.”
    “I’ll keep that in mind, sir. Thank you for your valuable advice—your ceaseless, constant, all-pervasive, never-ending . . .” He was still coming up with adjectives as he exited. These two had quite a shtick going, Alix thought. Perhaps it was intended to relax people. If so, it was working with her. She was smiling.
    “Pay no attention to that boy,” Cruz said. “He’s still finding his way. Now: the more I see here, the more I believe it is our elusive Phantom Burglar—whoever he might be. Your running into him may not have been the most pleasant experience you’ve ever had—”
    Not the worst, either. It had been anything but pleasant at the time; it had been shocking and frightening and deeply upsetting, but in retrospect, other than losing the laptop and bruising her hip, it had been . . . well, kind of enjoyable. Exciting, anyway. She’d gotten in a few good licks, and they’d felt marvelous. At the very least he was going to have a few sore spots when he woke up tomorrow morning.
    “—but it was a break for us. We now have this shoe cover, for one thing, and I’m hoping he put it on before he put on the gloves so we might be able to turn up some prints. And I’d be really surprised if he didn’t leave some DNA in your room. It’s hard to wrestle around with somebody on the floor without leaving some of yourself behind, so to speak. We’ll want to check your hands and fingernails and so on too, as soon as we’re finished here, if you don’t mind, and we’ll want to collect the clothes you were wearing—well, I guess that would be the clothes you’re wearing now. I don’t suppose you were considerate enough to bite him?”
    She shrugged. “Sorry.”
    “Oh, that’s all right. And at least now we have some confirmation on how it was he could pull off all those burglaries without leaving any kind of evidence. Covers his head, covers his hands, covers his feet. We figured as much, but we didn’t know it before. Now let me ask you another question. Apparently, you never screamed or yelled for help. Why not?”
    “I didn’t? No, I guess I didn’t, did I? I suppose I just didn’t think of it. I was too