"Glad we could help," Ray said. "Detective Ruiz is going to handle the release. She's just upstairs. Can I get you some water?"
"I'm fine, thank you."
Ray walked him up. He watched him climb the stairs. Carrow's left foot, at every step, turned out a little at the toe.
The roll-call room on the second floor had been cleared for the afternoon. Someone had pushed the long tables together into one, and on it, under a gooseneck lamp borrowed from the evidence office, sat the heat-sealed bag with the black box inside it. A video camera on a tripod pointed down at the table. Detective Ruiz sat at one end with a file folder. Teo from evidence control stood against the wall with his clipboard, looking as though he'd been promised a story.
And at the far end of the table, in a gray tweed jacket, with a black canvas tool roll laid open in front of him and a young woman in a jeweler's smock beside him, sat Walt Szabo.
Carrow stopped in the doorway.
"What's he doing here?"
"Have a seat, Mr. Carrow," Ruiz said pleasantly. "This won't take long."
"That's the man who had my watch. That's the man who—Detective, I don't understand. I was told I was coming to pick up my property."
"And you may well be. We have a competing claim of ownership, that's all. It happens. When it happens with something like this, the easiest thing is to look inside." Ruiz gestured at the chair across from her. "Sit, please. I've asked Mr. Szabo to open the watch under camera, in front of all of us, so there's no question about anyone tampering with anything. You'll be able to see every move he makes. If it's your father's watch, it'll say so, and you'll go home with it today, and I'll apologize for the inconvenience personally."
Carrow didn't sit. "He'll fake it. He's a watchmaker, he can—he could put anything in there."
"Through a heat-sealed evidence bag?" Ruiz said. Teo lifted his clipboard an inch, helpfully. "And just to be fair to you," Ruiz went on, "Mr. Szabo has written down, in advance, what he says we'll find inside. He's sealed it in this envelope." She held up a plain white envelope, signed across the flap by Walt and by her and by Ray. "I'd like you to do the same. Tell me, before we open it, anything at all you know about the inside of your father's watch. Markings. Serial numbers. Anything a watchmaker in Geneva might have put there in 1968."
She slid a pad of paper and a pen across the table toward him.
Carrow looked at the pad. He looked at Walt. Walt looked back at him with mild, polite interest, the way he'd look at a customer who'd brought in a watch that was running slow.
"It's Swiss," Carrow said finally. "It'll have Swiss markings. Hallmarks. A serial number. I don't know the number, my father had the papers, they were stolen with everything else." He sat, at last, on the edge of the chair. "Look, I'm not a watch person. I'm a—I just loved my dad."