Page 31 of Fixer
I sighed as I steered through the dark suburban streets.“There are fewer risks if I’m by myself.”
“With no one to watch your back.”
“I’m a werewolf.I have pretty good situational awareness.”
“I’m a werewolf too, with a lot of hunts under my belt.”
I snickered and bit back an inappropriate joke about what else was under his belt.
He continued, “I’m good at being sneaky and staying unseen.Plus, if we have to search through a bunch of file cabinets, two sets of eyes are better than one.”
“Oh, all right.”We were almost at our target.“But you listen to me, do exactly as I say.You may have experience with hunting, but not felony breaking and entering.”
Wade grimaced at the reminder this was not a law-abiding venture, but he nodded.
City Hall stood alone on a narrow lot off Main Street.Police headquarters loomed just a block nearer.Wade flicked a look at the cop shop as we rolled past.“Lovely.Fast response time if someone sees us.”
“The goal is for them to never know we were there.”I drove well beyond our target, then down a side street, parking in front of an apartment building similar in size to Wade’s but a lot more upscale.I stuck a favorite camera and an extra roll of film in one pocket of my dark jacket, a flashlight in the other, and got out.My lock picks and a few odds and ends bulged the pockets of my black khaki pants, beneath the blackout drape wrapped around my waist.
Wade, also dressed in nondescript dark clothing with a scarf around his neck, strode beside me down the block.
The best way to be ignored was to act confident, like you had somewhere else to be, until the last possible moment.We marched along the sidewalk until we reached the parking area for City Hall.After a glance around, I whispered, “Here,” and ducked into the shadow of a hedge.Wade followed me alongside the building.Thank God for ornamental plantings.
The door I was aiming for opened on the side of the building, flanked by a modern alarm keypad.I motioned to Wade to stay put in the shadows, walked up to the pad, entered the code I’d observed, and held my breath.A beep and a green light rewarded me.I picked the lock and eased the door open, poised for flight.No alarms rang.No lights flashed.“Come on in but cover your face,” I whispered to Wade.
We both wrapped the scarves over our mouths and noses before we ducked inside.I pulled the door shut.The red of the exit sign gave light enough to see by as I reset the alarm, then led the way down the corridor.I knew the layout.I’d checked the construction plan of the main floor before coming here for my reconnaissance run that afternoon, noting the doors and the hallway cameras.The mayor had his office near the back of the building.
At the nameplate for “Mayor Joseph Kling,” Wade handed me the keys Mina had loaned us.The largest key turned smoothly in the lock.I ushered Wade through, closed the door behind us, and used my flashlight to scan the room.No video camera lenses caught the glitter of the beam, unlike in the hallways, but I kept my scarf on as a precaution.
Across the office, the conference room with its sleek table and upholstered chairs sat dark and empty behind its glass window.I didn’t see any document storage spaces in there.The other door was presumably the mayor’s inner sanctum.Mina hadn’t had that key, but I’d been picking locks since I was thirteen, and needed less than thirty seconds to open the door.
Once inside, I went to the office window, fully shut the venetian blinds, and draped my blackout cloth over the slats.
Wade, still standing by the door, whispered, “What’s that for?”
I ran my flashlight around the upper reaches of the office, not finding cameras here either.“We’re going to need light to read and photograph files.The darker the window, the safer we are.”
“Okay.”His scarf muffled his words as he came toward me.“Can I take this off my face?”
“I don’t see video surveillance in here.Can’t be a hundred percent sure, though.I didn’t get to scope out this part of the building in decent light.Maybe keep it on.”
“Right.”
I clapped him on the shoulder.“Filing cabinets.”
“There are five.”Wade eyed them.“Where do we start?”
“First, if any are unlocked, we’ll skip those.If it were me, I might use a locked one as a decoy and go unlocked, but most crooks don’t.”
I led the way over and we began tugging drawer handles.Three of the cabinets opened at a thumb on the drawer latches.Two didn’t.“Right.”I tried Mina’s little key in case it worked, then switched to a small set of lock picks.Honestly, filing cabinets only had about a dozen different keys between them.Back in my Chicago office, I had a ring of keys that could get into almost all of them, but these locks were so cheesy, the picks were faster.
Once I’d popped the top corner lock-tab on both of them, I handed Wade my smaller flashlight and waved him at the cabinet farther from the window.“Take that one.Start at the top.”I’d seen pictures of the mayor, and he didn’t seem like the kind of guy who’d like bending and kneeling.“Start at the back of each drawer unless there’s a folder with no label.Then start there.”
“Got it.”Wade pulled out his top drawer, eased down his scarf enough to hold the light in his teeth, and began riffling through the files.
I got to work on my own.The top drawer held nothing useful.I was halfway through the second one when Wade said, “Hm, this might be it.”He lifted out a folder labeled “Duplicate tax records.”
“Put it on the floor.”I wanted to keep lights below window level, precautions or not.We crouched over the file and I spread out the pages.Sure enough, there was the revised map, showing the road widening project shifting from west to east, right over the top of Wade’s building.The switch could possibly be justified by cutting off a curve, but it meant a more complicated construction process, crossing the existing roadway twice.And there… yep, buildings that would have to be purchased, with valuations way over the tax assessments I’d found.
