L is for Lawless (Kinsey Millhone 12)

"What do we do now?" Bucky asked.

"I guess we wait," I said.

Within the hour, the safe technician arrived with a big red metal toolbox. He introduced himself as Bergan Jones from Santa Teresa Locksmiths, shaking hands first with Chester, then with Bucky and me. Babe had gone back to folding clothes, but she nodded at him shyly when he was introduced to her. Jones was tall and bony looking, sandy haired, stoop shouldered, with a high shiny forehead, sandy brows, and big glasses with tortoise-shell frames. I placed him in his middle fifties, but I could have been off five years in either direction.

"Hope you can help us out here," Chester said, waving at the safe, which Jones had already spotted.

"No problem. I probably open thirty safes a month. I know this model. Shouldn't take me long."

The four of us stood and watched in fascination as Jones opened his toolbox. There was something in his manner of an old-fashioned doctor on a house call. He'd made his initial diagnosis, the condition wasn't fatal, and we all felt relief. Now it was just a matter of the proper treatment. He took out a cone-shaped device that he attached to the dial, screwing it down tightly. Within minutes he'd popped the dial off and set it aside, then removed the two screws holding the dial ring in place, slipped off the ring and set it with the dial. Next he took out an electric drill and began to bore a hole through the metal in the area that had been covered by the dial and ring.

"You just drill right through?" Babe said. She sounded disappointed, perhaps hoping for dynamite caps or nitroglycerin.

Jones smiled. "I wouldn't put it quite like that. This is a residential fire safe. If this were a burglary safe, we'd run into hardplate: barrier material just behind this steel plating. I got a pressure bar for that, but it'd still take me thirty minutes to drill a quarter-inch hole. Lot of them have auxiliary spring-loaded relocking devices. You hit the wrong spot and you can fire the relockers. If this happens, it gets a lot worse before it gets better again. This is easy."

We were quiet while he drilled, the low-pitched whine of metal making conversation awkward. The hair on the backs of his hands was a fine gold, his fingers long, wrists narrow. He was smiling to himself, as if he knew something the rest of us hadn't considered yet. Or maybe he was just a man who enjoyed his work. As soon as a hole had been drilled, he took out another device.

"What's that?" I asked.

"Ophthalmoscope," he said. "Gadget your doctor uses to peer in your eyes. This shines light on the combination wheels so I can see what we got going." He began to peer into the newly drilled hole, moving closer while flicking an outer dial on the scope to adjust the focal length. While squinting through his ophthalmoscope, he carefully rotated the protruding spindle stub to the left. "This turns the drive wheel, which in turn picks up the third combination wheel. The third wheel moves the second wheel, which then turns the first wheel," he said. "It takes four rotations to get the first wheel moving. That's the one closest to the front of the safe. Here it comes. Perfect. The gate's exactly under the fence. Now we'll just keep reversing the direction of our rotation and lessening the number of turns. Soon as I get all three wheels lined up, the fence will be in position to drop when the lever nose hits the gate in the drive wheel. We keep turning and the lever pulls back the lock bolt and it's all over."

With that, he gave the handle a pull and the safe door opened. Chester, Bucky, and I gave out a simultaneous "Ooo" like we were watching fireworks.

Babe said, "Heck, it's empty."

"They must have got it already. God damn ," Chester said.

"Got what?" Babe said, but he ignored the question, shooting her a cross look.

While Bergan Jones wrote down the combination and put his tools away, Bucky peered into the safe, then got down on his back like an auto mechanic and shone a light into the interior. "Something taped up here, Dad."

I leaned over and peered with him. An item had been secured to the top of the safe: a lumpy-looking ten-inch-by-ten-inch square of beige tape.

Chester stepped over Bucky's legs and crouched by the safe, squinting at the patch. "What is that? Peel it off and give it here. Let me take a look at that thing."

Gingerly Bucky loosened one corner, then pulled it away like a Band-Aid from a wound. A big iron key adhered to the tape. It appeared to be an old-fashioned iron skeleton key with simple cuts in the end. He held it up. "Anybody recognize this?"

"Beats me," I said, and then turned to Chester. "You know what it is?"