Jamie Brodie 02 - Hoarded to Death

sat back down, thoughtful. "That woman sounds young. I wonder if this is a group of young people? The dead guy, Wally, was pretty young."
    "Yeah." I remembered my self-description of him as resembling Shaggy. "Kind of a hipster wannabe."
    Conrad said, "Well, that's a refreshing change, from the usual criminal sort, right?"
    Eckhoff laughed. "Right." He sobered up a little. "Okay. We'll meet here, at the library, and go from here. Dr. Huffstetler, I don’t want you to come to this first meeting. There’s a detective at Pacific Division that’s built like you; he’ll pass from a distance. If they do have something with them, and Jamie thinks it looks good, we’ll arrange another meet. Jamie, Todd, and I will meet here at 10:00, we can go over how we're going to handle the contingencies, then get there in plenty of time. Wear comfortable clothes. I'll alert the West Hollywood sheriff's station, have them discreetly patrol the area. They probably do anyway." He stood up again. "Any questions?"
    Gillian asked, "Do you think they'll have the page with them?"
    Eckhoff considered. "I don't know. If they were professionals in any sense of the word, they wouldn't. They'd want us to show ourselves first. But if this is a bunch of kids trying to make a quick buck, they may have it with them." He shrugged. "We'll just have to wait and see."
    Gillian sighed. "I want to see what they have, but I certainly don't want to join you."
    I told Gillian, "I'll call you afterward, let you know what happens. Unless it'll be too late."
    "Oh, no, it won't be too late. I won't be able to sleep until I've heard."
    Eckhoff rubbed his hands together. “Okay, cool. So, it’s a date for tomorrow. I'll meet you all at the front doors of this building at 10:00 pm." He grinned at me. "Now I have to go try to get another date."
    I laughed. "First office to the left. Good luck."
    "Thanks." He waved and disappeared in the direction of Liz's office.

    Tuesday took forever to pass. Liz had made a date with Eckhoff for the coming weekend and spent our reference shift grilling me about what I knew about him. Which was almost nothing. At the end of the day I went home, ate, changed clothes, listened to Pete’s exhortations to be careful, and assured him I would. I drove back to campus and got there around 9:50.
    I met Eckhoff and the second cop, the decoy for Conrad, at the door of the library . The second cop’s name was Todd Smith. He didn’t look anything like Conrad up close, but from a distance, in the dark, he’d do fine. He was tall and thin like Conrad, and had a similar amount of hair. Eckhoff was dressed casually, but still as if he could be the representative of a wealthy philanthropist. I was wearing jeans and running shoes. I wanted to be able to run if I had to.
    Eckhoff rubbed his hands together. "Okay, Jamie, you're going to have to start the conversation. How it goes depends on whether they bring the paper or not. Todd, you’ll stay by the car until we find out if they have something for you, as Dr. Huffstetler, to see. And," he gave me a sly grin, "I think you should call me Jon. It'll save confusion in names, and since I have a date on Friday night with one of your best friends, we might as well get on less formal terms."
    "Hey, that's great." I gave him a grin back. "Liz is awesome. But be aware, Kevin knows Liz and thinks she's awesome too. So don't mess her over or you'll have both of us to deal with."
    He laughed softly. "Believe me, I intend to treat Liz very well."
    "Good to hear."
    "Okay. Back to business. Jamie, I think we're just gonna have to play it by ear, in terms of how we start the conversation. What we'd like to do, of course, is to see the paper and see if it's worth discussion, then get out of there. I'll say that I have to confer with our anonymous donor before we start any kind of negotiations. So our main goal is to establish whether they have the paper, and if so we'll have to meet with them again. But we still won't have to expose Dr. Huffstetler to the situation when we meet with them the second time, because that's when we'll be arresting them. We'll have planned backup in place at that meet."
    I was ready to get the show on the road. "Sounds good to me. Will LAPD or the sheriff's department do the arrest?"
    Jon shrugged. "Depends on where the second meet is. If it's in the sa me place, we'll ask the sheriff to make the arrest, then turn over custody to us."
    I couldn't see a telltale bulge under Jon's