Chapter 10

"I'd offer you some coffee, but I see you already have some," Tom said.

Emily acknowledged his statement by raising the large thermos she was carrying. It was filled with straight black coffee with four shots of espresso added—a recipe she had learned from a coffeeshop in Carlsbad—a town north of San Diego—when she had spent a weekend up there a few years ago.

She half sat/half collapsed into a chair in front of the bank of monitors, slumped forward with her elbows on the table, and took a long sip of the coffee, keeping her sunglasses on.

She could feel Tom staring at her.

"Long night?" Tom asked.

Without looking at him, she nodded but didn't elaborate. Instead, she continued sipping her hyper-caffeinated coffee.

She had already clocked that Tom, Vinnie, and the other male detective assigned to this case—a Black man named Bernie Collins—were in the room. They were not the type of men she would ever explain last night to. A night she had spent in the apartment she kept here in San Diego, with Mila, having sex until well past midnight, and then waking up at 3 a.m. to use the bathroom, only to get back into bed and having even more sex, until it was time to leave to come here.

Mila was one of the women Emily called whenever she found herself in California. She was ten years younger than her, and very sexually aggressive—a perfect match for Emily. When she was in the mood for someone a little more…submissive, that was when she called Sofia.

In any case, even the small amount of time she had spent with them yesterday had shown Emily that the men she was in a room with now were little more than overgrown adolescents who would probably start dragging their knuckles at learning she was exhausted because of another woman.

And she was certain Andie Fuller would prefer being spared the details as well.

After another sip of the coffee, she felt more revived.

"Okay," she began, "let's go over it again."

"Well, um…we've already gone over it again," Tom said. "A few times, in fact. Before you arrived. Late."

Emily ignored the dig.

"Yeah, but I wasn't here when you went over it," she said. "So, we'll go over it again." She removed her sunglasses, wincing a bit at the fluorescent brightness of the room. "Okay…they disable all the alarms and convince the security team that the cameras being switched off was normal."

"Correct so far," Vinnie said.

"They then manage to clear the second floor of every living soul, so they could steal the paintings," Emily went on. She held up her hand, not wanting to be interrupted again. "One of the gang goes out into the rotunda area and steals The Young Shepherdess while the others work in Gallery Sixteen. Then, for some reason, that guy leaves the museum with that—and only that—painting."

"Yeah, well, we have a theory about that," Tom said.

Emily didn't care. She wanted to work this out herself.

After a moment, she made a face.

"I still don't get why that painting, and not the Rembrandt…" she muttered.

"Maybe they hadn't gotten the Rembrandt out of the frame yet," Andie suggested.

Possible, Emily considered, but…

She looked at Andie.

"Wouldn't the Rembrandt be the first painting you would remove from its frame?" she asked. "And wouldn't that one be the painting you made sure to leave the building with?" She pointed at the young woman. "You could work as a cop for the next hundred years, Detective…not pay any taxes, and have all of your living expenses covered somehow, and after a hundred years, you would still not have earned what that Rembrandt is worth."

"Thanks a lot," Andie muttered, crossing her arms.

"We have a theory about the sixth guy," Tom said.

Emily knew he wouldn't stop until she let him explain his theory.

"And that is…?" she invited.

Tom then spent a few minutes explaining an idea centered around the sixth guy getting spooked by something while out in the rotunda, and being unable to warn his team. Bernie tacked on a notion about a double-cross.

Of the two, Tom's made the most sense, Emily conceded.

But…

"Why take the time to go after all of those other paintings?" she asked, hearing frustration creeping into her voice.

The Rembrandt was the key, she figured. The key to solving exactly what was…wrong with this robbery!

The thieves could have walked off with that one painting in probably less than five minutes! Instead, they had given themselves more work…which meant more time, and by doing so they…

Her eyes widened as an idea came to her. She sat stock still as she ran it over in her mind, looking for a flaw in her reasoning, but not finding any.

"Are…you okay?"

She was barely aware of the question coming from Tom—Tom who was obviously annoyed by her participation in this investigation, but who couldn't help himself from acting solicitously from time to time simply because he wanted to sleep with her.

She didn't answer right away, going over her idea again, still looking for something that would tell her she shouldn't pursue this avenue of thought, that she needed to look for something else. But not finding it…

She started laughing.

"It's fucking brilliant!" she said, admiring the person who had come up with it. She laughed even harder. "So fucking brilliant!"

Tom cleared his throat.

"Are you having a breakdown?" he asked. "Or is there actually something pertaining to this investigation you'd like to share with us?"

She looked at him and smiled. She then made sure she had the attention of everyone else in the room.

"There's no one else," she told them, and then waited to let that sink in.

The detectives stared at her for a few moments, and then exchanged looks with one another.

"You're saying," Tom began, "that the picture of the girl just…vanished?"

Emily smiled.

"Oh no," she said. "The Young Shepherdess was definitely stolen. But we've been making the wrong assumptions. Take my word for it…we're not looking for a sixth Beatle. We're looking for someone those guys have never worked with before. Someone they didn't even know was going to be at the museum. They had no idea The Young Shepherdess was going to be stolen."

She paused again, waiting, wanting them to chew on the concept the way she had. To see the answer the way she had.

"This wasn't the botched robbery of six paintings," she eventually went on. "It was the successful robbery of one painting!"

***

It was like a scene out of a movie, Emily thought.

She had just dropped a bombshell statement, and her audience was stunned into silence. Although—as she suspected in this case—the silence was brought about more by her audience thinking she was crazy, and less by them thinking she was a genius.

She stood up.

"Think about it," she said before any of them started telling her why she was wrong. "You find a group of professional thieves to act as your patsies. You give them a list of paintings to steal—including a Rembrandt, which even they would know would be worth a lot of money. You give them everything they need: time, date, location. You even give them the equipment they would need to pull off the heist. Finally, you promise them a shitload of money to acquire these paintings for you.

"But while they're working over here…" She held her left arm out to her side and waggled her hand. "…you're over here, stealing a different painting." She held out her right arm and waggled that hand.

She laughed again.

"It's fucking brilliant!" she exclaimed.

Vinnie raised his hand.

"Assuming you're right," he began in a tone of voice which indicated he felt this was very, very, very farfetched, "how did our mysterious guy get out of the building with the painting?"

Emily couldn't believe he didn't see the obvious answer. And because no one else piped up to tell him, it was clear they didn't see it either.

"He walked out," she told them simply. "He just walked right out with the painting."

"It was a set-up," Andie said.

Emily felt proud of her.

"Whoever it was," Andie went on, "he turned the cameras back on! He got those other guys caught!"

"Which was when the security people started evacuating the museum…" Tom muttered.

"And that's when our guy just blended in with the crowd," Emily finished for him. The security staff had basically escorted their culprit right out the door.

"But how do you walk out with a painting?" Bernie asked.

Emily shrugged.

"It was cut from its frame," she said. "It's not a huge painting. If it's rolled up…I can imagine it being hidden underneath a jacket."

Tom suddenly seemed to come to life.

"Vince, Bernie…go through this footage again," he ordered. "Let's isolate men leaving the museum when it was being evacuated, who are wearing jackets or sports coats. If we're lucky and can get usable stills, we'll send them off for facial recognition.

"Andie…get in touch with the museum," he continued. "I want all the records from the admissions desk. We need to find the names of men who paid to get in using a credit or debit card."

"Or a membership pass," Emily suggested.

"Right," Tom agreed, but speaking to Andie. "Get on it."

Emily was excited, and the rush of adrenaline was helping her overcome the late night she'd had with Mila. But she still needed coffee…

Sitting down, she pushed her wheeled chair back enough so she could lift her long legs and rest them on the table in front of her, crossing her feet at the ankles. As she resumed drinking her espresso-laden coffee, she absentmindedly flexed the toes of her right foot repeatedly, causing the tartan-patterned Santoni pump to slide off her heel and back on again, while she thought things over…

She was certain her theory was correct. What's more, she was glad that Tom and the other detectives appeared to be taking it seriously as a lead. She decided she would join Bernie and Vinnie in looking over the security camera footage. Perhaps she might spot something that would stimulate her instincts, and let her know that was the guy.

What the detectives most likely still didn't realize was that they weren't looking for an ordinary criminal. They weren't looking for a big brute of a man with a face like a gorilla who would seem out of place in an art museum.

Not in this case.

No…this was a sophisticated heist. The guy who did this had an elegant mind, the kind of mind capable of considering all the details…A to Z, soup to nuts.

He was also patient. He hadn't thought of this scheme just last weekend while in the shower. This had taken months, maybe even a year. He wouldn't have acted until he had everything in place…and that would have taken time.

And he was rich…

Although the five men who had been caught in the museum were professional thieves, Emily had looked carefully into their backgrounds and rap sheets. They were a few steps above the smash-and-grab convenience store robbers on the criminal evolutionary ladder, sure, but those five had never been particularly well-funded prior to starting a job. They knew alarm systems. They knew how to pick locks. They knew how to get into safes. But the type of equipment they had used at the museum was bespoke and expensive.

And untraceable.

Emily knew the police were going to try to figure out where some of that stuff had come from, but she also knew they would fail to do so. And that kind of obscurity—the ability to have something custom-made without it ever being discovered who made it—was very, very expensive. She knew because she knew several people who were in that line of work.

In short, she needed to make sure Bernie and Vinnie weren't trying to find someone like John Dillinger or Sammy the Bull Gravano in the surveillance footage.

The guy who did this was David Niven in The Pink Panther. Or Robert DeNiro in Heat.

She furrowed her brow, still absentmindedly flexing her toes, still sipping her coffee…and still not satisfied…

All of her recent ruminations still didn't answer the question of why the thief had taken The Young Shepherdess…

For someone to go to all the trouble of arranging a daytime robbery of a museum, why choose that painting? In fact, why didn't David Niven (or Robert DeNiro) not have the patsy robbers work in Galleries 17 or 18, and then steal the Rembrandt from Gallery 16 for himself?

Stop focusing on the Rembrandt!

Emily could see that she was in danger of losing sight of the big picture. Time to change tack.

But it was difficult because, honestly, why wouldn't a thief go after a Rembrandt?

The only reason she could come up with was that the theft had nothing to do with the value of the painting and how much David Niven (or Robert DeNiro) could get for it.

Well…he's wealthy, so…

Still, accounting for the fact that he didn't care about money, The Young Shepherdess was an interesting choice. Emily had become an expert on the profiling of art thieves—it was why she was so successful. Men stole—or ordered someone to steal for them—paintings that were either extraordinarily valuable, or which were marquee pieces: Van Goghs, Mondrians, Monets, Basquiats, Botticellis.

In other words, when a man stole a painting it was either to make a lot of money or to stroke his own ego by owning something most people could only dream of having.

Granted, The Young Shepherdess was an empirically beautiful work of art…but it was neither extraordinarily valuable nor an ego-stroking piece. At least not ego-stroking enough for the A-type alpha males who were always involved in art theft.

So what does that mean, Emily?

She bit her bottom lip, trying to consider the matter more deeply…

Take away the money angle.

Take away the ego angle.

That left her with the profile of someone who wanted The Young Shepherdess because they…what?

Felt an emotional attachment to it.

Her heart started beating faster—well, faster than it had already been beating thanks to all of the espresso she was drinking. She knew she was onto something.

This was an emotional theft. The thief wanted the Shepherdess because the thief loved the Shepherdess.

And what kind of person would risk pulling off a daytime robbery, in a museum full of people, with the possibility of ending up in jail, for love?

An idea came to her. At first she wanted to disregard it because statistically it was outrageous to even consider it. But it was the only thing that made sense, and because her instincts were telling her she was right, she analyzed it carefully…

Finally, she slapped her hand down on the desk with excitement, laughing when she did so.

The others in the room stopped what they were doing and stared at her…

***

"A woman!" she exulted, standing up again and looking at Tom.

The detective stared at her, clearly expecting more.

"What is…the opposite of a man, Alex?" he quipped.

"No!" Emily exclaimed. "It was a woman who stole the painting!"

Everyone else remained silent.

"It was a woman!" Emily insisted again.

Finally, after sharing amused looks with his fellow detectives, Tom crossed his arms and said, "Is that so?" But he said it in a patronizing way, as though a child had just told him she had seen a dinosaur in the backyard.

"A female art thief?" Andie Fuller asked dubiously.

Emily couldn't help feeling a little betrayed by that. She had expected she might get at least a modicum of support from the only other woman in the room.

But then she realized that there was merit to the skepticism which was palpable in the air—from everyone.

In the annals of criminal history, women could be found in all major categories: murder, robbery, embezzlement, kidnapping…even sexual assault.

There was one category women were conspicuously absent in, however…

Art theft.

In that category, was the name of a single woman. And Emily knew all about her…

Rose Dugdale had been part of an IRA gang that broke into Russborough House in Ireland, and stole nineteen paintings, including Vermeer's Lady Writing A Letter with Her Maid.

Only eight days later, police raided a house which Dugdale had rented, arrested her, and recovered all nineteen works of art.

The theft had been done as a political statement against the British, and the motive had been to ransom the paintings for the release of IRA prisoners. In any case, the Russborough robbery was the only major art theft conducted by a woman in history.

But Emily was certain she had just discovered the second case.

"I'm sorry, you actually think we're looking for a chick?" Tom asked.

"Or a woman, yes!" Emily exclaimed, with obvious mock cheeriness while shooting lasers at him with her eyes.

"Okay, okay," Tom said placatingly, holding his hands in front of him. "I'm sorry…a woman. How am I supposed to sell that to my bosses?"

Emily thought about that.

"What have our guys said?" she asked, referring to the five who were caught yesterday.

"Nothing yet," Tom admitted. "They're taking the strong, silent type thing to a level I've never seen before. Me, Bernie, and Vinnie went hard at them last night, but got nothing. They haven't even lawyered up."

"Where are they now?" Emily asked.

Tom looked at Andie.

"They're still at Central," she said.

"Central Jail," Tom clarified for Emily.

Emily smiled, lifted her thermos to her lips, and took another sip of coffee.

"Let's go pay them a visit," she said.