Then he looked at the young woman. "Ma'am. Please hand me the watch."
That was when Nadia Brandt said it. Not quietly. Her voice cracked right down the middle, loud enough that the cuckoo, which had nothing to do with anything, seemed to hesitate inside its door.
"Officer, I just bought that from him!"
She held up the carbon receipt in her shaking right hand, and kept her left arm, the one with the watch, pinned against her body.
"Ten minutes ago. Look. It's got his name, it's got my name, it says 1979, it says handmade. I paid for it with a cashier's check. I've been looking at it in that window for two weeks. It's been in that window with a card that says he made it, in front of the whole street, for anyone who walked by. Who puts a stolen watch in the front window with a sign saying where it came from?"
"Ma'am, people do all kinds of things."
"Not him."
"You know him?"
"My father knows him." She was almost shouting now. Outside, a woman with a stroller had stopped on the sidewalk and was looking in. "My father says he's the last honest watchmaker in Baltimore."
Dombrowski's jaw worked. For a second something crossed his face that wasn't patience, something closer to discomfort, as if he had stepped onto a stair that wasn't there. Then it was gone.
"I understand you're upset," he said. "I do. But if this item is stolen property, then you didn't buy it from the owner, and you don't own it, and you'll have to take that up with Mr. Szabo for a refund. That's how it works. I'm not accusing you of anything. I'm telling you the watch is coming with me until a detective sorts out who it belongs to."
"It belongs to me," Nadia said.
"Then you'll get it back."
"That's what they told my father," she said, and her voice went suddenly very low, and Walt saw that she was not just upset anymore. She was frightened, and the fear had nothing to do with the man in the uniform and everything to do with something she'd seen before.
"What happened to your father?" Dombrowski asked.