Free Double Tap by Steve Martini Page B

was trying to keep his distance.
    “If we can prove it,” I tell him.
    “And maybe,” says Harry, “that other employee knew about the gun, where it was kept.”
    “Check it out. Put it on the list.”
    “I’m gonna need help if I’m gonna run all this down.” Harry has cases, some dogs barking back in his office. He will have to clear the decks.
    “We’ll bring somebody in.”
    “Who?”
    “Let me work on it,” I tell him.
    “One other thing,” he adds. “We need to find out why Ruiz left the gun at her house when the security assignment ended. That’s a pretty expensive firearm to just leave behind when you change jobs.”
    “The cops asked him that.”
    “I didn’t see it,” says Harry.
    “Said he just forgot it was there. According to Ruiz, he never carried it concealed. It was too big. He carried a small, compact Glock, a nine millimeter, when he needed to be armed.”
    “So why was it at the house?” Harry wonders aloud.
    I shake my head. “Let’s find out.”
    Harry makes a note to talk to Ruiz about it just as soon as we can corner him at the jail.
    “Anything else?” I ask.
    He looks down his list. “Just this
Orb
thing. I don’t know about you, but I get the sense it was worth a bundle.”
    “She had an extensive collection of art glass, according to the reports. I doubt, given her position, her income, that she bought junk.”
    “It’s more than that. The cops are playing hide-the-receipt. They won’t say what she paid for it. By now they’ve gotta know. They talked to the owner of the shop where Chapman bought it. They would have seized any bill of sale. Probably found the corresponding copy in her purse or in her car after they found her body.”
    Harry is right. It was purchased the afternoon she was murdered.
    “So why hide it?” says Harry.
    “Motive?”
    Harry nods. “That’s what I’m thinking. If somebody saw her buy it, knew what she paid for it . . .”
    “Let’s find out. Subpoena her bank and credit card statements. All of them. If we have to, get an order for discovery. Force them to cough up the bill of sale. While you’re at it, see if we can get some background on this thing. What was it called?”
    “
Orb at the Edge
,” says Harry.
    “This
Orb.
If she wanted it as part of her collection, it probably has a history. Find out who owned it, where it came from, who might have wanted to own it, when it was made, everything you can regarding its pedigree.”
    The building is well past its prime. If I had to guess I would say something from the late forties, put up during the postwar building boom when materials were at a premium. It is a universe away from the opulent government palaces built by dollar-a-day WPA artisans during the Depression: post office buildings with soaring Doric columns of granite and Tennessee marble lining the walls and floors. Today the best of these have all been squatted on by the federal courts and refurbished to within an inch of their original splendor.
    What I am looking at from across the street isn’t even a distant relative. Five stories high, it stands ten blocks to the south of the trendy Gaslamp Quarter and maybe a decade from the grasping clutches and wrecking ball of urban renewal.
    I skip across the street midblock, dodging cars, and climb the two cement steps leading to the main entrance. Inside is a directory, names and office numbers behind smudged glass with a hodgepodge of block letters of varying sizes and colors, some metal, some plastic. I find the one I’m looking for and take the elevator to the third floor.
    The office is on the back side of the building.
    The lights are on inside, enough illumination for me to see the hulking shadow of a figure, its outline skipping across the dappled glass every few seconds as it moves. No voices, so I assume he is not on the phone.
    As I turn the knob and swing the door open without knocking, I see Herman Diggs, his massive shoulders hunched, neck bowed like a