“Can you open it?”

“I don’t know.” She glanced at her watch. “We’re at two minutes, forty-five.” She walked away from the lockbox, looking at the tools hung on Ballem’s basement wall, then around the basement in general. A moment later she ran back up the stairs. I followed, but by the time I got to the top, she was already coming back. She was carrying a maul and a wood-splitting wedge. “From the garage. I saw that firewood around to the side.”

I followed her back down and said, “What?”

“Stand back.” LuEllen lined up with the maul and gave the box a full-swing whack with the sharp edge. The blade didn’t cut through, but it put a dent in it. The impact sounded like the end of the world, like a blacksmith pounding on an anvil.

“Jesus Christ,” I whispered. “Somebody’ll hear

“

“Not in this neighborhood,” she grunted, pivoting for another swing. “Everybody’s got air-conditioning, and all the windows are closed.”

She took another whack, put another dent in the box. “You do it,” she said. “You’re a big strong man.”

“Fuck, LuEllen

” Now I really was sweating.

“Hit it,” she said.

I hit it. A half dozen blows distorted the door enough to see into it. LuEllen fitted the wedge into the seam of the door just above the lock, handed me the maul, and said, “One more time.”

I hit it, and the door popped open. Breathing hard, I looked at LuEllen. She was standing with her arms crossed, waiting, not bored but not nervous either.

Inside the safe we found a leather-bound book of stamps, a freezer bag full of currency, and a metal box filled with American gold coins in sealed packages. The stamp collection wasn’t much to look at - a few dozen fading squares of red, blue, and green, each in its own archival envelope. We took it all.

“Upstairs,” LuEllen said. She looked at her watch. “Seven minutes, thirty-five seconds.”

Ballem had an aging computer setup almost identical to Dessusdelit’s. While I checked that, LuEllen tore apart the rest of the house. In the bedroom she found a collection of bondage and discipline magazines, both hetero-and homosexual, a new gun, a Smith & Wesson .357 magnum, fully loaded, and a flat metal box, like a safe-deposit box. Inside were a dozen gold Rolex watches, old but in perfect condition.

“We’re killing this guy,” LuEllen said enthusiastically.

“Good.”

I was bringing the paint in from the garage when headlights swept the windows.

“Car,” LuEllen said. She said it loudly, so I’d be sure to hear. I crouched and scuttled back into the house. LuEllen was against the front wall, peering out of a crack.

“It’s the cops,” she said. “The driver’s coming up to the porch.”

I heard him outside the door and slid over next to it. If he came in