Читать книгу Avalanche Of Trouble онлайн | страница 25

“I don’t know, Al,” Gage said. “But I’ll be right there.” Ordinarily, a random burglary wouldn’t seem that unusual, but two burglaries in one week was enough to rate a headline in the local paper. Add in a double murder and Gage had to ask what the heck was going on.

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On his way to the high school, Gage called Travis. “Didn’t you respond to the high school this morning about a break-in?” he asked when his brother answered the phone.

“Yesterday morning,” Travis said. “It’s already this morning.”

“Sorry to wake you,” Gage said. “But I just got a call from Al Dawson, the janitor over there. He says the gym door has been tampered with.”

“All the doors were fine when I was out there,” Travis said. “The thief got into the lab through a broken window.”

“Al thinks somebody broke into the gym. I’m on my way out there.”

“I’ll meet you.”

Al was waiting by his truck when Gage pulled into the lot at the high school. Security lights cast a jaundiced glow over the scene. Whoever had attacked the door to the gymnasium hadn’t bothered with subtlety. They had bashed in the area around the lock with a sledgehammer or iron bar. “Is this the only door that’s been damaged?” Gage asked.

“I think so,” Al, a thin man in his sixties, said. “I took a look around while I was waiting for you and I didn’t see anything else.”

“You don’t have any security cameras focused on this area, do you?” Gage asked.

Al frowned. “We’re a rural school district. Our budget doesn’t run to security cameras.”

“All right.” Gage took out a pair of gloves and pulled them on. “I’ll check things inside. You wait here.”

But before he could open the door, Travis pulled up. Gage waited for his brother to join them. Travis greeted them, then surveyed the door. “They obviously didn’t care about hiding the damage,” he said. “Same thing with the science lab yesterday—smash and grab.”

“What did they take from the lab?” Gage asked.

“Science equipment—some test tubes and flasks, reagents and a Bunsen burner,” Travis said.