Kim walked up to the information desk with Kevin in tow.
"Hi. I was looking to speak to your curator, Claire Anderson."
The young man behind the desk gave her a weird look. "She's normally not in on weekends. Does she know that you're coming?"
Kevin noticed a few visitors standing within earshot. He tapped Kim's shoulder to alert her. They both knew Claire wanted this away from the public eye. Without a second thought, she came up with a cover.
"Yes. We're from the auction house V&P Associates and we're here to talk to Claire about a Jackson Pollock. Here's our ids as proof."
The two detectives sneakily placed their badges on the counter. Once the young woman saw the badges, she immediately got the hint. She nodded and picked up the phone to call Claire, "Hi Claire. There are people here from V&P Associates to talk about the Jackson Pollock."
The young woman emphasized the last part to make sure Claire got the hint. She told the detectives that Claire would be down shortly. As they waited, Kevin got a text. He pulled Kim to the side to tell her what it said.
"Just got a text from Jay. Our suspect apparently has a brother out of state. Guess what he does for a living."
"Let me guess, art dealer." Kim guessed, knowing what Kevin meant.
Kevin turned his phone around to show Kim the picture Jay had sent him. It was of the brother's business card from an auction house.
"So our suspect steals the art, gives it to his brother to sell, and then what? They split the cash? They can't do that and keep it all above board." Kim added.
Kevin nodded in agreement. "So it's either not a legit auction house or they have an underground black market going on in the back room."
Before Kim could agree or disagree with Kevin, Claire walked up to them.
"Kevin, Kim…welcome back." She shook their hands. "Why don't you guys follow me?"
Rather than going through the security room door, Claire took them up to her office.
"V&P Associates. Nice cover. I'm assuming that's Voight and…"
"Platt." Kim said.
"Platt! Trudy Platt?! I love that woman."
"How do you know boss-lady Trudy?" Kevin asked.
"She came in with her husband a few weeks ago. We gave her husband and his team free admission whenever they wanted as a thank you for helping us remove a child from a sculpture." Claire watched the pair nod in understanding. "So, what can I do for you?"
"Well, first we would like to tell you that we believe we have a suspect. However, we need a little more information to prove it." Kevin said.
"Great!" Claire was happy they were actually getting somewhere with the case. "What do you guys need?"
"All of your security footage from the last few weeks. What we saw yesterday was helpful, but we need a little more to see if our suspicions are correct."
Kim jumped in. "We also want to know if those id pads near the doors that you swipe onto have a timestamp. Like could you be able to tell how often a specific card gets used and at what times?"
"Can I? No. But I can absolutely get our security team on that. They can have all of that to your office within the hour." Claire wrote herself a note to bring down to security as soon as they were done. "Anything else you guys need?"
Kevin flipped through the folder he had brought and shook his head. He might not have needed anything, but Claire could tell that Kim wanted to ask something. She decided to get Kevin out of the room for a moment. She called up the security guys and had them pull the footage asap. As Kevin got up to leave and talk to the security team, Kim was about to follow.
"Hey Kim, you want to hang back a second?" Claire asked.
Kevin was already gone before she could get his approval. She sat back down and watched Claire put away a few papers into a folder. Being this close to her, she was also able to notice what the pin on Claire's blazer was.
"Rosie the Riveter?"
Claire looked down at the pin and smiled. "That's my girl! She represents all the women that went to work outside of the home during World War II even when it was frowned upon. I keep her with me as a reminder to keep going and never let anyone tell me I can't do something just because I'm a woman. Because, as her slogan says: 'We Can Do It'! That slogan is one of my life mottos."
Kim smiled and let out a small laugh at Claire's fangirling over Rosie. This was exactly what Claire needed to get Kim to open up.
"So, what do you want to know?" Claire asked, leaning forward in her chair towards Kim.
Kim sighed and shook her head a little. "The biggest question I have is how do you do it? Basically run this place and deal with everything going on with this case and get ready for a baby…and work out every day?!"
"How I do it? I'm still not sure. Why I do it? Because I love it. Every single piece of it. I literally can't picture myself not being a curator. This is my home away from home, well at least when I'm not at the gym. That is my other home away from home. You should honestly work out if you have some time when you're not chasing bad guys. Great for stress and my doctor said it'll be good for labor once the baby comes."
Kim nodded and smiled. "I'll have to look into that. But you're not afraid that having a baby will mean you have to stop doing any of those things?"
"Hell no! What is this, the 1950s where women have kids and are stuck home all day? Screw that. I always go by my girl Queen Bey's advice 'Strong enough to bear the children, then get back to business.' You're a woman, you're a mom, but you're also a cop…and don't let anyone tell you differently."
Kevin and Kim walked back in to the 21st to see the rest of the team huddling around the whiteboard talking about the case.
"Ok, Mark's brother's business checks out as legit. He runs the Emerald City Galleries, an auction house based in Springfield." Hailey said.
"So it's gotta be a back alley black market scenario." Kevin jumped into the conversation as he put his stuff back on his desk.
Jay responded. "Could be. And while you guys were taking your sweet ass time getting back, we looked through the security footage you had sent back. There is a camera from the outside of the loading dock that shows a mini-van parked in the area starting between 6:45 and 7pm every night and leaving by 11:15 at the latest. Only on Thursdays does this mini-van get switched out with a larger construction-type van. It's also this van that parks backed up against the loading dock so we can't see the back side of it."
"While you guys were gone Jay and I took a little road trip of our own. We decided to swing by Mark's apartment. While we didn't go inside because we didn't want to draw attention to the case per Claire's instructions, we did snoop around his car in the ramp garage. On first look we saw a small briefcase on the floor in the backseat. So Jay pulled out his phone and used some fancy x-ray app that got to check it out." Adam added.
"The x-ray showed two handguns in the case. I looked it up and our guy isn't in the system for a registered weapon." Jay continued. "So either he's not the owner of the guns or they aren't registered. Either way it's not looking good for this guy."
Kim interjected. "Hey, we would've been back sooner, but we wanted to take one more look through the gallery to see if we missed anything."
"And?" Rojas asked.
"Well, did you guys notice the first time that one of the rugs near the empty cases was out of place? Originally I agreed with you guys that they must have just moved them when they did the floors. However, most cleaning crews would have moved it back after the floors were dry." Kevin explained.
"Who says the floors were even cleaned?" Hailey asked, a little suspicious.
"Security footage shows someone from the cleaning crew using the floor buffer at 8:30." Jay adds.
"And my uncle who was a janitor for thirty years always used to tell me the best way to do the floors with the buffer was backwards. The buffer leaves a thin residue on the floor, and if you step on the floors after they've been buffed before they fully dry you'll leave…"
"FOOTPRINTS!" Everyone exclaimed as Kevin got up to get the picture he just sent to the printer.
He posted the picture to the whiteboard. "Exactly. So I figured in a rush to get the art out, they forgot about that, and since they couldn't go back over it with the buffer without it looking like an obvious cover up, they used the rug to cover them."
"Ok but this footprint definitely isn't our guy." Kim said. "From what I saw in the security footage, Mark wears Timberland boots."
"And those feet are way too small to be a guy anyway...unless the dude is like four foot nothing." Adam joked.
"And there aren't any guys that short on the museum staff, at least not anyone I interviewed." Jay said.
"Me either." Hailey added. "But that is definitely a sneaker print, looks like by the logo in the print it's Reebok."
Kevin looked up, kind of concerned. "Claire was talking about wearing sneakers to the gym that morning."
"That's not her brand though. She only wears either Nike or Under Armour." Kim came to her defense, knowing what Kevin was thinking. "And besides, her id wasn't swiped any time after 5:15pm. The only people that swiped in and out of that building at all between 6pm and 6am were the security team and the cleaning crew."
"Those swipes were a little out of the ordinary though. And the cleaning crew definitely overstayed their welcome on Thursday. Their van didn't leave until 12:30am. And like I said before, the van is parked so we can't see the back, but something tells me it wasn't just cleaning products and the buffer they put in there." Adam explained.
Voight now came in to see how the case was progressing. He had heard most of the conversation on his way up into the bullpen.
"Well if we can't see it on that camera angle, do we have another on the inside of the loading dock?"
"Yeah Sarge, however, the cameras go dark for about an hour and a half between 11 and 12:30 when the van leaves." Adam explained.
"How convenient." Voight shook his head. Maybe these people were smarter than he originally thought. "Do we know who killed the power to them?"
Kevin answered, flipping through his notes. "According to the security team I spoke to, those cameras can only get shut off two ways. Either someone can climb up and shut them off manually-"
Jay interrupted, "But security footage would show someone on a ladder or whatever right up until the second it's off."
Kevin continued, "Or...the security team can shut them off from their office."
"So you're saying one of our clean handed security guys is working with them!" Voight was getting impatient with the amount of potential suspects.
"Definitely not one of the guys we spoke to. They don't work nights. There is another set of security guards that comes in around 6pm." Kim said.
"Ok so do we have names? How often do they swipe in and out? Do we know what doors they have access to and when? And who knows how to shut the cameras off? Come on! I want to know who took the jewels and the painting, where they brought it, what they were looking to gain and why!"
"Yes Sarge!" The crew scurried back to their desks to work every angle of the case they had. Voight went back to his office to handle his end of the case, keeping it on the down low.