The Overlook

speakerphone there was the sound of a key ring being jingled.
    “Try fourteen-fourteen.”
    Ed Romo pulled a key ring off his belt and went through the keys until he found one stamped with the number 1414. He then inserted it into the lock on the desk drawer and turned it. The bottom drawer was now unlocked and he pulled it open.
    “Got it.”
    “Okay, there’s a binder in the drawer. Open it up and look for the page with the combination lists for the safe room. It’s changed week to week.”
    Holding the binder in his hands, Romo started to open it at an angle that would allow only him to see the contents. Brenner reached across the desk and roughly took the binder from him. He opened it on the desk and started leafing through pages of safety protocols.
    “Where is it?” he said impatiently to the speakerphone.
    “It should be in the final section. It will be clearly marked as hot lab combinations. There is one catch, though. We use the previous week. The combination for the current week is wrong. Use last week’s combo.”
    Brenner found the page and drew his finger down the listing until he found the combination for the previous week.
    “Okay, got it. What about the safe inside?”
    Richard Romo answered from his car.
    “You will use the key card again and another combination. That one I know. It doesn’t change. It is six-six-six.”
    “Original.”
    Brenner held his hand out to Ed Romo.
    “Give me your key card.”
    Romo complied and Brenner then handed the card to Reid.
    “Okay, Kyle, go,” Brenner ordered. “The door combo is five-six-one-eight-four and you heard the rest.”
    Reid turned and pointed to one of the others in hazmat suits.
    “It’ll be tight in there. Just Miller and I go in.”
    The leader and his chosen second snapped on their face guards and used the key card and combination to open the safe room door. Miller carried the radiation monitor and they entered the safe room, pulling the door closed behind them.
    “You know, people go in there all the time and they don’t wear space suits,” Ed Romo said.
    “I’m happy for them,” Brenner said. “This situation is a little different, don’t you think? We don’t know what may or may not have been let loose in that environment.”
    “I was just saying,” Romo said defensively.
    “Then do me a favor and don’t say anything, son. Let us do our job.”
    Bosch watched on the monitor and soon saw a glitch in the security system. The camera was mounted overhead, but as soon as Reid bent down to type the combination into the materials safe, he blocked the camera’s view of what he was doing. Bosch knew that even if someone had watched Kent when he went into the safe at 7 p.m. the evening before, he could easily have hidden what he was taking.
    Less than a minute after going into the safe room the two men in hazmat suits stepped out. Brenner stood up. The men unsnapped their face guards and Reid looked at Brenner. He shook his head.
    “The safe’s empty,” he said.
    Brenner pulled his phone from his pocket. But before he could punch in a number, Reid stepped forward, holding out a piece of paper torn from a spiral notebook.
    “This was all that was left,” he said.
    Bosch looked over Brenner’s shoulder at the note. It was scribbled in ink and difficult to decipher. Brenner read it out loud.
    “‘I am being watched. If I don’t do this they’ll kill my wife. Thirty-two sources, cesium. God forgive me. No choice.’”

SEVEN
    BOSCH AND THE FEDERAL AGENTS stood silently. There was an almost palpable sense of dread hanging in the air in the oncology lab. They had just confirmed that Stanley Kent took thirty-two capsules of cesium from the safe at Saint Agatha’s and then most likely turned them over to persons unknown. Those persons unknown had then executed him up on the Mulholland overlook.
    “Thirty-two capsules of cesium,” Bosch said. “How much damage could that do?”
    Brenner looked at him somberly.
    “We would have to ask the science people but my guess is that it could get the job done,” he said. “If somebody out there wants to send a message, it would be heard loud and clear.”
    Bosch suddenly thought of something that didn’t fit with the known set of facts.
    “Wait a minute,” he said. “ Stanley Kent ’s radiation rings showed no exposure. How could he have taken all the cesium out of here and not lit up those warning devices like a Christmas tree?”
    Brenner shook his head