Blood Trust - Eric van Lustbader [151]
Pawnhill set a slim attaché case on the ground and opened it. The case was considerably smaller inside than out, but there was still room for a number of items, including a one-inch-thick laptop, a small zipped leather case, and latex gloves, hood, and booties. These he put on, then he took out the leather case, and snapped the lid shut.
He possessed an aptitude for vocations other than finance. These had been taught to him by the Syrian during the crazy time they’d enjoyed at Oxford. Unzipping the leather case, he selected several professional picks from a set. In no time, he was through the rear door. Warren’s apartment was on the third floor. Pawnhill took the stairs; since childhood he’d had a fear of being trapped in an elevator. The same could be said for revolving doors.
The building was old, the stairs bare wood. He removed his loafers, climbing in absolute silence. Reaching the third floor, he went along the hall. He could hear a radio playing, also a baby crying briefly. Then only the music, muffled to almost all percussion, rose up the stairwell. No one was in the hall.
For some time he stood in front of Billy Warren’s door, simply breathing. The yellow crime-scene tape had been taken down; everything appeared normal. Then, leaning forward, he put his ear to the wood. When he was certain no one was moving inside, he picked the lock. Then slowly he turned the doorknob and pushed the door inward.
He let the door swing all the way open. Standing on the threshold, he stepped back into his loafers. From the attaché case, he produced a plastic hood with elastic around the opening for his face. He slipped it over his head and adjusted it. Now he was protected from inadvertently leaving a hair in the apartment. Then, softly and silently, he entered, closing the door behind him.
He found himself in a small three-room apartment, bright and relatively neat, considering all the recent activity. It was furnished in fairly upscale style, tasteful in a modern way, but without much flair. Placing his attaché case on the carpet beside the coffee table, he stood in the center of the room, turning slowly in a circle in order to take in everything that came in sight. He went methodically through the bedroom and bathroom without finding anything. Returning to the living room, he let his eye fall on one piece of furniture after another—the sofa, the pair of easy chairs, the rug, a Travertine marble–topped coffee table on which was a ceramic decorative vase, a green crystal sculpture of a frog, a stack of coasters, along with a single coaster marred by a water stain. Pawnhill looked more closely. It was logical to assume that the glass that had recently sat on the coaster had been taken by the forensic team, along with Warren’s personal computer and cable modem.
Against one wall was a modern lacquer sideboard above which was a cabinet that held a bookshelf stereo, stacks of CDs, a flat-screen TV, a cable box, Blu-Ray DVD player, and a couple of popular commercial DVDs. The rest of the space was taken up by books—mostly texts, but also a handful of contemporary thrillers—and a couple of photo albums. Pawnhill leafed through one without interest. He wasn’t interested in a visual chronicle of Billy Warren’s early life. The second held Warren’s doctorate paper, according to the title page. Pawnhill slid it back beside its twin. Then he opened every CD jewel case and DVD package. In this case, he was looking for a DVD onto which Warren might have burned the incriminating data. He’d already tried to hunt down a USB thumb drive that Warren might have used for the purpose.
The result was that after spending almost an hour carefully ransacking the apartment, he had found nothing. He was on his way out when his gaze happened to fall on the stack of coasters, which were discs that seemed to him larger than normal. He went through each one