I checked the area in the vicinity of the museum first, not because I expected to find them there, although I couldn’t rule out the possibility that the thieves, if there were any, had attempted to hide them in plain sight, not far from the museum, but more so because I roughly knew where they had been kept, and I wanted to plot out the most likely route they might have taken out of the building. I determined that the thieves, if there were any, would have almost certainly parked their van, or whatever vehicle they were using, on the street at a point nearest the best exit—which was not the closest one to the storage area, not by any means, since that exit was pretty exposed to public view at nearly all times, and which for that matter had a tall flight of stairs to manage as well. The best exit was one of two service exits at ground level. Both of these were about equidistant from the storage rooms, but one of them opened on a loading area that was overlooked by tall buildings on two sides, lit well at night, and visible from the street; the other exit, however, was tucked away behind a low wall that concealed some of the dumpsters, and which would screen anyone emerging from that exit until they’d traversed about half the distance from the building to the sidewalk. There was no fence there, either. If, for example, a van had been parked adjacent to that exit, someone, that is, a pair of reasonably strong persons, could readily carry even a large object from the exit to the van and load it up in less than a minute. And it was a one-way street, so it was possible to trace their likely route as far as the corner. From there, the choice was obvious. A right turn was impossible—that street was one way too—a left turn would involve circling the museum and entering a neighborhood with virtually no through traffic, since it was a sort of promontory thrust out into the bay. The van must have gone straight ahead. That meant they were heading for the highway. If that were their route, then the thieves, if there were any, were long gone, and could be anywhere.