“Sorry, Mrs. Smith, I have to exercise this warrant.”
“Must I sit in the folly? It’s cold today,” she said.
“No, ma’am. It’s the folly we’re searching, so you can stay in your house.”
Carmine walked across the lush grass between the garden beds to where the little round temple stood, its Ionic columns, each fluted, supporting a tiled terra-cotta roof that sat on it like a Chinese coolie’s hat. Only the English could have termed a garden adornment a folly, Carmine thought, treading up the steps. Steps and floor were both greenish terrazzo; the rest of the folly was constructed of pure white marble. Who in America had the skill to fashion this? he wondered. No one, he decided. The columns were probably imported from Italy, where sculptors abounded. American equivalents would be carving fancy tombstones.
A cursory inspection revealed no overt hiding place, but he had Abe Goldberg.
“Think you can find the secret compartment?” Carmine asked.
Abe’s fair, freckled face broke into a smile, his blue eyes sparkled. “Does a fat baby fart?” he asked.
Carmine moved off the steps onto the grass and watched Abe work. First he had two cops remove the white table and chairs, then he stood at the center of the folly and rotated, his head tilted toward the roof. That over, he repeated the rotation, this time gazing at the floor. Then he walked each circular step all the way around, using Carmine as his marker. After which he lay flat out on the floor and started rapping it with his knuckles.
“Nothing,” he said curtly.
The steps had been installed in sections of arc thirty degrees wide, which meant each full step had twelve sections. The edge of the highest step measured about three and three-quarter feet per section.
“Cumbersome to remove, but feasible,” he said, picking up a crowbar and inserting it under the overlapping lip of the step.
He found the one that lifted on his fifth attempt. It was fitted as snugly as the others, but dislodged when levered and broke into jagged pieces.
“He doesn’t open the compartment with a crowbar, Carmine. See? The section actually slides outward on runners like an expensive drawer. I’ve broken it,” he ended with some regret. “Such nice work too.” Up went his shoulders in a shrug. “No use regretting. Where’s my camera?”
The Holloman PD used supermarket brown paper bags for large items of evidence, small brown paper bags, and little brown paper envelopes. Abe’s camera flashing blue under his eyes, Carmine flinched at the smell emanating from the compartment, then put both hands inside and withdrew a pair of coveralls akin to a boilersuit. Flash, flash from the camera. The garment was rigid with browned, dried blood, so much so that it took time to compress it into folds, reduce it to something that would slide into the bag. It had not been as carefully preserved as Lancelot Sterling’s souvenir; mold and mildew fuzzed and whiskered its crevices, and insects scurried for shelter.
“There’s nothing else inside,” said Abe, disappointed.
“Well, we photographed it in situ, withdrawn, the step, the sliding mechanism and everything else we can think of,” Carmine said, sitting back on his heels. “It’s enough, but I want the razor. Where is it?”
“You said enshrined, but you don’t enshrine anything you revere in the same space as you put your bloody clothes,” Abe said. “The Ghost, Carmine! Think adoration.”
“Then it’s somewhere else in here, Abe. In one of these columns. There must be a column drum with a compartment in it at about… head height. So he can look without touching.”
“Won’t happen,” Abe said pessimistically. “The marble will be too thick to sound hollow. There must be a spring that opens a door when pressed, but not manually. At the weight, given that the door will be the full length of one column drum, Smith must have electrically wired the spring. Wiring under the ground, under the steps and the floor, up inside the shrine column. All of them are probably hollow at their centers, but the shrine one much more so. I bet he triggers the door by an impulse from a wireless control he holds in his hand—he’s a ham radio nut, he must know every trick there is. If he wasn’t carrying the control to Zurich with him—and why would he?—then it’s lying in the open among the other junk in his radio shack.”
“Check the columns with a magnifier first, Abe. If there is a door, the joins must show.”
“Look at a column closely, Carmine—any column will do.”
“Shit!” said Carmine, peering. “A thin line runs down the middle of each flute.”
“We have to find his control. Either that, or demolish the whole temple.”