Chapter 45

STONE LET THE water drain off the safe, then dried it carefully, before he and Seth carried it into the house.

“What do you think it weighs?” Stone asked Seth.

“Fifty, sixty pounds,” Seth replied.

“Could one man handle it?”

“You want to try?”

“Nope.”

“I reckon a pretty strong fella could handle it. ”Course, he might drop it trying to get it into a boat.“

They got the safe into the study, laid some newspapers on the desk and rested the steel box on top of it, lying on its back. Lance was working away at the computer in Dick’s office.

“The dial is gone,” Stone said.

Lance spoke up. “That means they tried to open it, failed, then sawed it out of the cabinet.”

Stone peered at the safe closely. He could see the bolt that locked it through the crack between the door and the jamb. “I don’t have a clue how to handle this,” he said.

“Send Dino back in the water to look for the dial,” Lance said. “It’ll simplify things.”

Dino was out on the deck, half out of the wet suit. Stone went out and broke the news to him.

“Your turn,” Dino said.

“Put it back on, Dino; you’re the only one the suit fits.”

Dino sighed and began struggling back into the wet suit. “What am I looking for again?”

“The dial from the front of the safe. It’s got to be…” Stone stopped. “Wait a minute.” He went back into the study and opened the cabinet where the safe had been. He rummaged through some papers on the shelf below, and his hand found something of solid metal. He held up the dial. “Never mind, Dino; I found it.”

“Great!” Dino yelled from the deck and started getting out of the wet suit again.

“Got it, Lance,” Stone called.

“In a minute,” Lance replied. He made more key-tapping noises in the little office.

Dino came into the study in a towel. “I’m going to get a shower,” he said. “Anything else that has to be retrieved from the bottom is gonna be retrieved by somebody else.”

“All right, all right,” Stone said.

“And remember, I have a gun.” Dino went through the kitchen out to the guest house, where he and Lance each had a room.

Lance came out of the little office. “Okay, let me have the dial,” he said.

Stone handed it to him.

Lance inspected the safe closely, then fitted the dial back onto the stem protruding from the front of the safe. “Now we find out whether it’s on right, or whether I have to take it off again and rotate it a hundred and eighty degrees. I don’t suppose any of you has a stethoscope on you?”

They all looked at him blankly.

“That’s what I thought.” He pressed an ear to the safe and began slowly rotating the dial.

“I didn’t know you were a safecracker, Lance,” Stone said.

“Jack of all trades, definitely master of none.”

“Holly opened it, now that I recall.”

“We attended the same safecracking academy. Now be quiet; I can’t listen to you and the safe at the same time.”

Stone walked over to an easy chair and took a seat.

Lance stood up straight, turned the handle on the safe door, opened it and peered inside. “It’s a mess,” he said.

Stone walked back to the desk and looked inside the safe. The estate papers he had stored in it were a sodden mass. He lifted them out in a big lump and deposited them on the newspaper. Then he reached inside and brought out Esme’s diary. It was heavier than before, being soaking wet. He opened the cover and found the pages stuck together, the ink running.

“Have you got a hair dryer?” Lance asked.

“In my bathroom upstairs,” Ginny replied.

“Ginny,” Lance said, “would you like to help?”

“Of course,” she replied, running over to the desk.

“Will you take the diary upstairs, put it on a table and start drying it?”

“Sure.”

Lance reached into a desk drawer and found a letter opener. “Use this to separate the pages as they dry, but don’t force them.”

“Okay.” Ginny took the diary and went upstairs.

A bell sounded in Dick’s little office almost simultaneously with the front doorbell.

Lance disappeared into the office, and Seth went to the front door and came back with Sergeant Young, who looked tired.

Stone introduced him to Ham; he’d already met everybody else.

“Anything new?” Stone asked.

“I’m afraid not. We’ve pretty much started the search over again, and this time we’re concentrating on the beaches and shoreline.”

“Why?” Ham asked.

Sergeant Young looked away.

Stone spoke up. “Because the bodies of the missing women were all found in the water.”

Ham nodded.

Lance came out of the office. “Afternoon, Sergeant,” he said, placing several sheets of acetate on the desk. “I have something that might be of use to you in your search. Do you have a current map of the island?”

“A very good one, showing all the houses,” Young replied. “I’ll get it out of my car.” He was back in a moment and spread the map on the desk. “This is the latest map available that shows all the occupied buildings. You can see, I’ve highlighted the ones already searched in green.”

“I see you’re better than half finished,” Lance said. He picked up a sheet of acetate and laid it next to the map. “This is a thermal image of the island taken from a satellite last night, or rather an image of the north end of the island. In order to get in close, we divided the island in half. This particular image was taken at nine P.M. last evening.”

Everybody crowded around. “As you can see, anything that radiates heat shows up in orange, to a greater or lesser degree.” He pointed at a house in the village. “Take this house, for example: There’s quite a lot of ambient light, and these concentrations are people,” he said, pointing to a group, “apparently gathered around the table, having dinner. Outside, you can see another orange object, which is the family car, its engine still warm.”

“That’s very sensitive,” Young said.

“Too sensitive, in fact,” Lance replied. “I’ve ordered other images for after midnight, on the next satellite pass. In those, we’ll find many fewer lights and TVs on in the houses, and the car engines will have cooled. What we’ll see then is people in their beds.”

“What’s this in the middle of the woods?” Young asked, pointing to a dark area with an orange spot near the north end of the island.

“Very likely a deer, maybe two,” Lance said. “The satellite can pick up heat sources as small as a dog.”

Daisy raised her head and made a noise.

“Good dog,” Ham said.

“I’m not sure exactly how this will be useful,” Young said. “I mean, we can go to every house, search it and count the folks. Maybe we could see if there’s somebody extra that we didn’t count.”

“Right,” Lance said. “The after-midnight images should be more useful. Then we can see if there’s a person where we don’t expect a person to be, in a garage or a woodshed, for instance.”

Ham spoke up. “I don’t suppose it will pick up a dead body?”

Everybody got quiet. Lance shook his head. “Not unless it’s still warm.