Chapter 2: The Guest List

Detective Omar Farid had worked art crimes for twelve years and could count on one hand the number of cases where a painting stolen from a crowded room was recovered intact. Most ended in ransom negotiations or insurance payouts, the artwork disappearing into a private vault where it would never be seen again. He set up his interview station in the gallery's back office and worked through the guest list methodically. There were one hundred and fourteen people present at the time of the blackout. Security footage showed all exits remained sealed. The roof access was alarmed and had not been triggered. Whoever took the painting was still in the building when the lights came back on, which meant they had hidden it somewhere inside or passed it to someone who did. Lena offered her expertise without being asked. She knew the painting's dimensions, its weight, the texture of the canvas. A Vermeer of that size, once removed from its stretcher, could be rolled loosely and concealed inside a coat or a large handbag. She walked the detective through the gallery's layout, pointing out blind spots in the camera coverage that she had noted during installation. There were three. A storage closet near the service entrance. The women's restroom on the mezzanine. And a narrow utility corridor behind the east wall that connected the gallery to the adjacent building's ventilation system. Omar checked all three locations. The closet was empty. The restroom yielded nothing. But the utility corridor told a different story. Someone had recently removed the screws from a ventilation grate and replaced them loosely. Behind the grate, inside the ductwork, Lena found a cotton sleeve of the type used to protect rolled canvases during transport. It was empty, but it smelled faintly of linseed oil. The painting had been here, briefly, and then moved somewhere else entirely. The question was no longer who had taken it. The question was who had been waiting on the other side of that wall.