Flash

voice rose in ghastly triumph. "I knew—"
    Jasper yanked hard and fast on the steel uprights. There was a high squeak of metal. And then the entire structure toppled suddenly, abruptly, as though an earthquake had struck.
    The boxes that remained on the shelves rained down on Dixon. The flashlight was knocked from his hand. It rolled on the concrete floor. The beam ricocheted wildly and finally came to rest aiming uselessly at the wall.
    The top of the steel shelves fell against the opposite wall and lodged there. Several heavy boxes slid to the floor, striking Dixon.
    He screamed in rage and pain.
    Jasper switched on his own flashlight and aimed the beam straight into Dixon's eyes.
    Dixon was on his knees, trapped in a cage formed by the metal shelves and uprights. Tumbled boxes hemmed him in on all sides. Papers and file folders littered the floor.
    Dixon was trying to raise his right arm. The light caught a glint of metal. He still had his gun.
    Jasper threw the flashlight straight into his face. Dixon dodged reflexively, but his movements were limited by the shelving and the boxes.
    Jasper leaped onto the steel skeleton of the shelving. It groaned beneath his weight, but it did not give way. He balanced on an angled upright and kicked Dixon's right shoulder.
    Dixon yelled again. The gun clattered onto the concrete. There was enough light bouncing off the locker walls for Jasper to see that the weapon had slid out of Haggard's reach.
    "Jasper."
    A flashlight beam flared in the aisle outside the locker. He put up his hand to shield his eyes.
    "It's okay." He bounded from one steel section to the next and jumped down on the far side near the open door. He scooped up the gun. "It's okay."
    Olivia appeared in the doorway. "Are you all right? Are you hurt?"
    "I'm fine." He looked at her. "I told you to make a run for it when you heard a disturbance."
    "My God. This was your big plan, wasn't it?" Outrage rose in her voice. "Jasper, you could have been killed."
    There was no point yelling at her. She was not in a mood to listen. He gently pried the flashlight from her hand and used it to survey the toppled shelving and the array of fallen boxes that imprisoned Dixon.
    "Like I always say, there is no substitute for a good filing system."
    "This is no time for dumb jokes," she said tightly.
    "No," Jasper agreed. "It's not. We've got some work to do."
    "What do you mean?" she demanded. "We've got to call the police."
    "We're going to make certain that the files in Gill's hot box are all safely out of the way before we call the cops." He paused. "Except, of course, for the Lancaster file."
    "The hot box is on the platform truck."
    An odd, rasping sound caught Jasper's attention. He aimed the flashlight at Dixon.
    Haggard was still on his knees. His face was wet with tears.
    "I did it all for her," Dixon whispered. "I did it for Eleanor. The country needs her."

26
    « ^ »
    T hat night they burned the contents of Melwood Gill's hot box in Jasper's big river-stone fireplace. The flames devoured decades of facts and rumors and grainy photographs shot through long camera lenses. They consumed yellowed, hand-typed pages from a private investigation agency that had gone out of business twenty years earlier. They ate new reports produced by the computer printers of a modern, more sophisticated agency.
    The police had taken the Lancaster file into evidence, but not before Jasper and Olivia had scanned the contents.
    Rollie's private investigator had tracked down an unnamed retired police detective who had been involved with the Richard Lancaster murder investigation.
    The former detective had retired to a beachfront house in Mexico. He had confided to the investigator that he had been convinced from the beginning that Richard Lancaster was not the victim of an unknown burglar who was never caught.
    Lancaster had known his killer, the retired detective claimed. He also said that he would have bet his pension that the murderer was Dixon Haggard. But there had never been any proof to take to a prosecutor. The case had gone into a cold file.
    Dixon took full responsibility for the murder. He was apparently proud of the fact that he had acted alone. Eleanor Lancaster had no inkling of the truth.
    "I talked to Todd this afternoon." Olivia fed another sheet to the flames. "He said he feels an obligation to stay on with the Lancaster campaign for a while. He's going to do whatever he can in the way of damage control. But he told me