“I don’t mind.”
“His name is Swann. Ex-Sergeant Swann.”
“I know him,” Monica said dully.
“Yes, he told me that. He wanted me to ask you if you minded if it was he.”
She thought of Swann’s kind face and manner, his sonorous voice. He had been obscure, though, and so set in his ways. She felt he was always watching her as a cop watched a subject, not the way a man watched a woman.
“It’s okay,” she said. “He’s a clean freak. Very organized. He’ll probably help me out with all of this.”
The sheriff snorted and reached out his hand.
“We’ll do our best to find your kids, Miz Taylor. I’ll ask Mr. Swann to bring you something to eat. I’ll call the doctor to come by again as well.”
Saturday, 10:14 A.M.
SORRY TO KEEP you waiting,” Jim Hearne said to Eduardo Villatoro as he slipped back behind his desk. “That was a local rancher. A friend of mine. A good man.”
Villatoro settled into the chair the rancher had just used, his briefcase on his knees. He watched as Hearne gathered up a thick file with the name RAWLINS on the tab and put it on the credenza behind him. Digging in his breast pocket for a card, he leaned forward and handed it to Hearne.
Hearne read it, a glimpse of recognition in his clear blue eyes. “Detective Villatoro of the Arcadia, California, Police Department, now I remember. You called and asked for a meeting a few weeks ago. All the way from Southern California.”
“Thank you for meeting with me. I’ve retired from the department since then.”
“Congratulations,” Hearne said, his face showing what he was thinking, that the meeting wasn’t official after all but of a personal nature. And maybe a waste of Hearne’s time.
Hearne said, “Have you ever been to North Idaho before? We say North Idaho, not northern Idaho, by the way.”
“I see.”
“So, have you ever been here?”
“No.”
“How do you like it so far?”
“It’s very green,” Villatoro said, thinking: It’s very white.
“Yeah, it’s our little piece of heaven,” Hearne said.
Villatoro smiled. “It’s a very pretty place. Very peaceful, it seems.”
Hearne said, “It usually is. We’ve got a problem going on this morning, though. You probably saw the poster out there. A couple of local kids are missing.”
Villatoro had observed it alclass="underline" the women who arrived with the poster, the loud one with the little-girl voice who told everyone in the bank what had happened, the conversation between the loud woman and the rancher who had left Hearne’s office.
“I hope the children are okay,” Villatoro said. “I’ve been struck by how intimate it all is, how local. It’s like the town thinks their children are missing. It warms my heart to witness such an attitude.”
Hearne studied him. Probing for insincerity, Villatoro guessed.
“We do tend to take care of our own,” Hearne said. “Maybe it’s not like that in L.A.?”
“L.A. is too big,” Villatoro said. “It’s not as bad as people make it out to be, though. There are some neighborhoods where people look out for one another. But it’s just so easy to get swallowed up.”
Hearne seemed to be thinking about that, then he looked at Villatoro’s card again.
“So, if you’re no longer with your police department, what can I do for you? Are you looking to retire here?”
Villatoro looked at Hearne blankly. For a moment, it didn’t register what Hearne had said or why he had said it. “No,” he said, alarmed, holding up his hand. “No, no. I’ve got another matter.”
“Oh, then I’m sorry. I just assumed.”
“I want to complete an investigation I worked on for years. It led me here.”
Hearne sat back. “What are you still investigating?”
Snapping open the locks on his briefcase, Villatoro slipped five sheets of paper out of his file and handed them across the desk. They were back and front photocopies of hundred-dollar bills.
The serial numbers for the bills were typed on each one, followed by a series of bank routing numbers that had been highlighted by a yellow marker. Hearne recognized the routing number.
“These came through my bank,” Hearne said. “Are they counterfeit?”
“No, they’re real.”
Hearne raised his eyebrows, as if saying “So?”
Villatoro said, “As you know, there are authorities who electronically scan currency as it flows through the system to check for marked or counterfeit bills. It isn’t a perfect system, but when it registers a hit, they increase the frequency of scanning to determine origin. When there are several hits from a single bank, it may be something significant.”
“Meaning?”
“I’ll start at the beginning. Eight years ago, there was an armed robbery at a horse racing track in my town, which is-or was-outside of Los Angeles. Millions in cash was taken, and a man died during the commission of the crime, one of the guards. As you can guess, it was an inside job, and the employees were convicted and sent to prison by the LAPD. I was assigned to the case and served as the liaison between my small department and the LAPD, which had many more detectives and much greater resources. We turned the investigation over to them even though I objected at the time. It was a decision made by my chief, who is a great lover of outside experts.”
“Hold it,” Hearne said. “Was this the Santa Anita robbery? I read about that.”
“Santa Anita Racetrack.” Villatoro nodded. “One of the largest employers in Arcadia. My wife worked there at the time and knew many of the employees, as did everyone in town. Yes-$13.5 million in cash was stolen.”
“Isn’t that where Seabiscuit ran?”
Villatoro said, “Yes. There’s a statue of him there.”
“My wife made me read that book, and I loved it. We saw the movie, too. I didn’t like it as much. I guess they just can’t make a good movie about a horse. Horses are too subtle.”
Villatoro said, “Do you know about horses?”
“I used to ride in the rodeo,” Hearne said. “I do love horses. I miss being around them.”
Villatoro said, “Back to the robbery.”
“Sorry, go ahead.”
He cleared his throat and continued. “Of course, all of the employees who were convicted claimed innocence, but the evidence was too compelling. I’ve read the court records myself, and I would have convicted them as well if I’d had a vote. One of the former employees gave up the others and testified against them all.
“But there is a big problem. None of the cash was ever recovered, and not one of the people convicted has yet to come forward and say anything, even though they could probably bargain their way out of jail. And for seven years, these people have kept quiet.”
“Damn,” Hearne said. “That’s a long time. They must be tough.”
Villatoro waved his hand. “They’re not so tough. My wife says the people in prison just weren’t the types to do this kind of crime, for what that’s worth. To me, though, it’s good information. I’ve met them and talked to them. They’re desperate to get out, and they swear they have nothing to tell us.”
Hearne frowned.
“We keep waiting,” Villatoro said. “I interviewed them every few months, hoping one of them would tell me where the money went. For a long time we thought they’d buried it somewhere. They will get out, probably, in five or six years, maybe more, and I suppose for that kind of reward they could wait. But it doesn’t seem like they know. I really feel, in my heart, that if they knew where the money was, they would tell me. One of them should have broken by now, or found God, or just wanted to get out.”
“What about the guy who testified against them?”