S
ERGEANT ADELLEPOISE JOHNSON
was in charge of the Third Tier Evidence Vaults in the vast basement complex of One Police Plaza, in Lower Manhattan, almost in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge. Sergeant Johnson had been a chain of custody supervisor for ten years, and during that time, in each of those years, she was the supervisor who’d experienced the lowest rate of CoC infractions. For that extraordinary record, she had been awarded an “Integrity” commendation with a dark blue star and a Meritorious Police Duty citation, both of which she wore proudly on the ample front of her uniform. She had fifteen clerks handling evidence curation for her, as well as another dozen assistants and technicians, and she managed them with military precision and correctness. She knew as well as anyone that evidence management was critical to the outcome of criminal prosecutions. While she might not be the most beloved supervisor in the Evidence Vaults, she was the most respected. People were proud to work for her.
It was a Friday, nine o’clock in the morning, and Sergeant Johnson had been in since seven getting an early start on the computer paperwork of the week, reviewing all the evidence that had been checked out or returned, every movement of every shell casing and hair and DNA swab, whether for trial, lab work, or on-site examination. Maintaining the chain of custody of evidence was of paramount importance, and in the past few years the entire procedure had been computerized, with digital video recording of absolutely everything that was done to a piece of evidence, by whom, when, and why.
Sergeant Johnson was never happy when someone arrived to examine evidence by surprise, and she was particularly irritated that it would occur on a Friday morning. But occur it did. One of her evidence clerks arrived with a tall, thin gentleman in an expensive dark suit, sporting a wiffle cut that practically screamed
FBI
. And sure enough, he was a special agent of the most annoying kind, one of those who thought they were God’s gift to law enforcement and that beat cops were a lower form of life.
“I’ve spent over an hour now getting credentialed,” the man said in a sarcastic drawl. “I tip my hat to the efficiency of the NYPD.”
With this, he held out his badge and a folder containing his credentials.
Sergeant Johnson never got into it with anybody for any reason. She rose from her desk—her sheer size was often all that it took to quell a sparky personality—gave the man a smile, and took the badge and folder.
“Special Agent Morrison?” she asked.
“That’s what it says on the badge,” he said.
A real hard-ass. She looked at the ID, which was brand new, and the badge, also new, and then looked at him. He looked new, too. Fresh out of the academy. They were the worst.
“So you’re working on the Kells case, Agent Morrison?”
“It’s all spelled out in the file.”
“And you want to examine the forged page, I see.”
“I repeat, it’s all spelled out in the request, Sergeant.”
“You understand, Special Agent Morrison, that in CoC situations the less evidence handling that goes on, the better. It’s my responsibility—” She emphasized the
my
—“to make sure any evidence handling is necessary and justified. I’m telling you this to make sure you understand the procedures.”
“I’m sure you will find that my examination of the evidence is not on a whim, and I can assure you the FBI would not be happy if my request were denied.”
Sergeant Johnson had dealt with Morrison’s type countless times before, and it was almost laughable how predictable he was. Spoiling for a fight even before there was reason for a fight. She opened the folder and carefully examined his credentials and documents. Everything did indeed look to be in order. The FBI had gone through all the proper channels, the only issue being that Agent Morrison was three hours early for his scheduled appointment. But again, that was typical FBI. The reason for the examination was standard and pro forma, evidentiarily justified and legal.
She approved the documentation, signed it, stamped it, and handed it back. “I will accompany you,” she said, rising.
“Fine,” said Morrison.
He didn’t seem interested in knowing why, so she added, truthfully, “I do this with many high-profile cases. My testimony can be helpful if the defense raises CoC issues.”
“It’s your call,” he said.
Johnson, the evidence clerk, and the FBI agent proceeded to the elevators and descended to the basement, which had been completely renovated in 2011 as part of a major expansion project. Much of the new space had been devoted to state-of-the-art evidence curation, and entering it was like entering the spotless corridors of a first-class hospital. It was a long walk to the Third Tier Vaults, which housed all the evidence in active, open criminal investigations. It was the most important of the three tiers of evidence storage.
After passing many numbered doors, they came to the appropriate storage room. The clerk deactivated the alarm, and the door opened to reveal a beautiful, clean white room with locked cabinets and a plastic table and chairs. There were cameras in all four corners of the ceiling, which Sergeant Johnson knew were recording their every move.
The clerk put on sterile, powder-free latex surgical gloves, scanned the numbered cabinets, and approached one. She punched a code into a nearby keypad, and the cabinet sprang open. Peering inside, she removed a shallow tray and brought it to the table.
“Do you need to handle it?” Johnson asked Morrison.
“Yes.”
“Then you’ll need a face mask and gloves, as well.” She almost added a hair net to the list, just to be difficult, except for the fact that Agent Morrison had almost no hair.
Frowning, Agent Morrison donned the gloves and a face mask, and then sat down at the table. He pulled the tray toward him and looked down at the forged page of the Book of Kells. Johnson, curious, edged closer to take a look.
What an amazing-looking thing
, she thought,
so intricate
. It would have been nice to see the original—before it was stolen.
Morrison reached into his suit and removed a notebook, which he laid down on the table beside him, and began taking notes in pencil (pens weren’t allowed). He placed a loupe to his eye, examining the page silently. The time began to drag on, and on, and on. Five minutes went by, and then ten. What on earth was he looking at? She glanced at her watch but decided to say nothing. She was fairly sure Morrison was no expert, and the ridiculous examination was nothing more than the man feeding his own swollen ego.
She and the evidence clerk exchanged a glance.
And now, finally, Agent Morrison picked the page up and examined it while holding it closer to the light, squinting at it and turning it this way and that. Again, the examination went on interminably. Again Johnson exchanged another glance with the clerk, more exasperated this time. Her legs began to ache from standing, and finally she eased herself down into a seat; the clerk, with evident relief, did the same. Would this never end?
Yet still he examined it. Now he was taking more notes, writing rapidly in his notebook in an illegible hand, acting like the expert she was sure he wasn’t.
Suddenly there was a clatter and she rose from the chair to see that the agent had clumsily knocked his notebook off the table, which was now lying spread out beneath it, with loose papers scattered all about. He had jumped up, the page in hand, and was bending down to pick up the notebook, his back to her. She was about to call out to him to put the damn page down while he collected his things but then he turned, still holding the page in one gloved hand, while with the other he fixed the rifled pages of his notebook, putting them back in order.
With a disapproving stare Johnson sat back down, while the agent went back to his examination, taking still more notes.
“Done,” he said at last, placing the page back in its tray.
Without a word, Johnson creaked once again to her feet. The clerk put the tray back into the cabinet, made sure it was locked; they signed out and proceeded out of the room and back down the long white corridors. All routine.
Sergeant Johnson didn’t realize they had a problem until three hours later, when the real Special Agent Morrison arrived for his appointment—right on time.
G
IDEON WENT STRAIGHT
from One Police Plaza to the EES offices on Little West 12th Street. Glinn and Garza met him in the cavernous engineering space, and Gideon followed them past elaborate dioramas, mainframe computers, and heavily scribbled whiteboards to a room in the back. It contained a state-of-the-art chemistry laboratory. A stooped technician with a lugubrious face was awaiting them.
Glinn’s wheelchair whispered along the polished concrete floor, and the door to the lab slid shut behind them.
“Do you have it?” Garza asked.
Gideon removed a notebook from his suit and opened it, displaying the small, jewel-like page. Glinn reached out and took it, staring at it with great intensity. The man’s normally expressionless face was almost comically excited, the good eye glittering, his every movement sharp and precise. After staring at it for several minutes, he signaled the technician, who came over, latex-gloved hands bearing a tray onto which Glinn placed the page.
He turned back to Gideon. “Tell us how you did it,” he said, unable to disguise the eagerness in his voice.
“Well,” Gideon began, “after looking over the specs, I realized the security in the East Room of the Morgan was pretty much perfect. There was no way I was going to get the page out myself. So I had to figure out a way for someone else to take it out for me.”
“How?”
“First I had to stage a spectacular, and apparently botched, robbery.”
Glinn nodded.
“I went on the final Sunday, when I knew the East Room would be packed. I set off a weak flash-bang with smoke, to scare and temporarily blind the room. Then I went to the case and attached a device that detonated a small shaped charge, which in turn split the bulletproof cube containing the book—not unlike cleaving a diamond.”
“A shaped charge designed by you, no doubt, given your work at Los Alamos with implosion bombs.” Glinn waved a withered hand. “Go on.”
“After splitting the case, I took out the Book of Kells, cut out the Chi Rho page, and gave it a very brief chemical treatment. Then I left the book on the floor and hid the page elsewhere in the room. It all took less than sixty seconds. The room cleared of smoke, and then things proceeded like clockwork. They discovered the book was missing a page; they searched for the page; they found it. At this point, the job had all the hallmarks of a botched robbery. They questioned and searched everyone who had been in the room—one of them had to be the thief—but found nothing, not on me or anyone else. They didn’t look as hard as they might have if the page had remained missing. They thought they had the entire book.”
Gideon smiled. He was coming to the good part. “But I knew that, at some point, they would have an expert conservator examine the cut page. Just to make sure it wasn’t damaged or in need of special attention. They might have even decided to test it to see if it was real or not. At any rate, the Chi Rho page I’d cut out immediately failed a UV examination, indicating it was a forgery.”
“How did you know they would do this?” Garza asked.
“Because I bought a real illuminated manuscript page in London, gave it my special chemical treatment, and brought it into Sotheby’s. There it was pronounced a fake by one of the world’s greatest experts on illuminated manuscripts.”
“Very good.”
“So—as soon as they found the page was a fake—they realized they weren’t dealing with a botched robbery, but a
successful
one. Clearly, they concluded, the thief had brought a fake page into the room to substitute for the real one and hid it in the room, to make everyone
think
it was a botched robbery and that nothing had been stolen. You see, I had to make them think the real page was actually a fake. It had to fail the standard UV test.”
“Clever,” said Glinn. “So what was this ‘special chemical treatment’ of yours?”
Gideon reached into his pocket and removed a small spray can. “La Spiaggia Scent-Free Ultra Sunblock, SPF 70.”
Everyone in the room stared at the small canister.
“The ingredients are titanium oxide, zinc oxide, and octyl methoxycinnamate—all broad-spectrum UV blockers. All it took was a quick spritz on both sides of the page and the deed was done. And when I was searched and the guards found the canister of sunblock—which of course they did—they thought nothing of it.”
Glinn nodded his approval.
“So when the page—covered in sunblock—was subjected to the standard UV tests, nothing happened. None of these glorious medieval mineral pigments fluoresced as they should have if the page was real. The page was therefore assumed to be a fake, made with aniline dyes! And now the powers that be realized—or so they thought—the thief had gotten away with the real page, leaving behind this substitute.”
“Brilliant,” murmured Glinn.
“Thus, the ‘fake’ page became evidence in a criminal investigation. As such, it was sent to the evidence vaults underneath One Police Plaza. And this morning, Eli, thanks to your phony credentials and your scheduling data from the FBI database, I was able to get into the vault and switch the fake
real
page with a
real
fake page. It was just a matter of prestidigitation, at which I excel, done under the table, out of sight of the video cameras. Now they have the fake that they always thought they had, and we’ve got the real page. And no one is the wiser—save for the fact that two Agent Morrisons visited the evidence labs today.”
Glinn clasped his withered hands together, almost as if he were praying. “This is amazing.
Amazing
.”
“Thank you. And now, I’d like to know why this page is so important.”
“And so you shall.” Glinn turned. “Dr. Stanislavsky?”
“Vee are ready, Dr. Glinn,” said the Munster-like technician, picking up the tray with the page and bringing it over to a series of other, shallow trays filled with liquids, akin to developing trays, each with its own thermometer. He took the manuscript page, laid it on a screen with a handle, and immersed it in the first liquid.
“What, exactly, are you doing to it?” Gideon asked, alarmed.
“You shall see,” Glinn replied.
After timing the bath, Dr. Stanislavsky raised the screen and placed it in a second bath, again timing it.
The bath became cloudy.
“Hey, what’s going on?” Gideon asked, staring at the clouding water. It looked to him like the ink on the page was dissolving.
The technician raised the screen. The colors of the intricate Chi Rho image were now running all over the place, along with a heavy white underpainting.
“What the
fuck
?” Gideon yelled, taking a step forward.
Garza laid a firm, restraining hand on his arm.
The page went into the third tray, a laminar flow bath. Gideon could see, through the shimmering surface of the moving liquid, that the Chi Rho image was vanishing, dissolving…and then it was gone. With a deft motion the technician plucked the page from the bath with rubber-nose tweezers and held it up, dripping fluid.
It was blank.