“He can still talk to him,” Theresa said. “If Lucas will even put him on the phone.”
Jason shook his head so hard his tie shifted. “No, you don’t get it. This isn’t TV, where the criminal melts into tears when his sainted mother tells him to come out. These guys are losers who blame everything that’s gone bad in their lives on other people, and most often the people closest to them. He isn’t going to feel sentimental about his family members. He’ll probably hold them responsible for every problem he has.”
“Especially this one,” Frank said. “Eric turned him in. Said he did it to save the aforementioned sainted mother. Her baby’s wild ways wore out her heart.”
“What about her? Would she-” Theresa began.
“She’s dead. He really did wear out her heart.”
“Then why did you bring Eric Moyers here?” Jason asked again.
“Well, gee, I had nothing else to do, and he needed a ride home from work. And because my partner’s in there with an M4 carbine in his face, and this guy is the only life-form we have that can tell us anything about the guy holding the M4 carbine besides his age and ID number. Maybe that’s why.”
“Okay, okay. Did he tell you anything else about Bobby that might help us?”
“Just that’s he’s a lousy thief. I’m guessing Lucas is not only the mouthpiece here, he’s the brains.”
“No surprise there. Okay, we’ll tell Chris what you’ve learned from the brother, but not that he’s on the premises.”
“Wait, you’re not telling your own boss all the facts?”
Jason mopped his forehead with one sleeve cuff. “It’s for his own sake. We don’t know how Bobby will react to even the mention of his brother, and what Chris doesn’t know, he can’t slip and reveal.”
Theresa tried to imagine Leo’s take on this operating procedure. You keep things from me, MacLean, and you’ ll spend a week in the deep freeze putting blood samples from 1994 in numerical order. Then I’ ll fire you.
“Hey.” Channel 15’s reporting turned to how Cleveland had finally won the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s induction ceremonies from New York City and Assistant Chief of Police Viancourt now tore himself away, clutching Theresa’s plastic evidence bag and a sheet of paper. “I’ve got that postage-meter information.”
“That was fast,” Theresa said.
The assistant chief beamed under her genuine praise; if he’d been born with a tail, he’d have been wagging it. “It was nothing. Hi-Patrick, isn’t it? You’re up for the chief of Homicide, aren’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
Theresa goggled. She’d never heard Frank call anyone “sir” before.
“Best of luck to you. I’m glad you’re in on this-we need to keep a cop approach going here. Cavanaugh’s good, but these specialized units can get too wrapped up in themselves.”
Theresa could see a sort of struggle pass over her cousin’s face, as if the desire to be honest-at the moment Cavanaugh seemed their only hope-warred with his desire to be the head of the Homicide unit. Jason said nothing. She intervened. “Could Pitney Bowes trace the postage meter?”
Viancourt’s expression clouded. She could swear he had forgotten what they were talking about, finding the politics of the police department a far more fascinating topic. Then it cleared. “Yeah. They have over five hundred meters leased within city limits, did you know that? Just about any large office concern has one. Anyway, this machine is at a storage facility in Decatur, Georgia. Gray’s Store-All, on Forrest Avenue.”
Frank had his radio in hand. “I’ll get the Georgia cops to send someone out there now.”
“I thought of that. A unit’s on their way,” the assistant chief told him with a touch of reproach. Frank’s stock had just lost a few points on the Dow.
Theresa butted in again, even batting an eyelash or two at Viancourt. “Bobby probably had his car in storage while he served his time. But I don’t understand how the car got to Decatur from here-they’d hardly let him drive himself to prison, would they?”
“Not in this case. It was an interprison transfer, so he’d have gone by bus.”
“Then maybe the storage facility can tell us who brought it there or who paid the bill.” She thanked the assistant chief profusely. He wandered back to the hypnotic waves of broadcast news as she turned to Frank. “Where’s his brother? I’d like to talk to him.”
“So would I,” Jason said.
Eric Moyers’s disposition had not improved greatly since he’d left his workplace. He had gone from one inhospitable climate with a partially stocked pop machine to another. He sat at an abandoned microfilm-viewing station, drinking Sprite without enthusiasm.
Theresa planted her body in front of him and introduced herself. The guy looked exhausted and breathed with a raspy wheeze, but he gamely fielded questions from her and Jason without argument. Theresa had the feeling he’d answer questions from Peggy Elliott, should she care to ask any. An air of hopeless resignation bracketed every word.
“Does Bobby have a white Mercedes?”
“Not white,” the baggage handler corrected her bitterly. “Pearl.”
“And he put it in storage while he served this last sentence in Atlanta?”
“I wouldn’t have any idea where he put it.”
“Could he have paid to store it for six months?”
“Sure. Bobby always had money-stolen money, of course, but he’d have it.” He snorted. “He put his car in storage? That’s probably the only time my brother thought ahead in his life.”
Jason asked, “Did he live in Brookpark before he went to jail? The car is registered to a house there.”
“We all lived there. That’s where Bobby and I grew up. But he was gone and Mom had died-no point me living there all by myself. I sold it months ago.”
Jason’s phone rang, and he answered it, walking a few steps away and pulling out his notepad before he even flipped the receiver open.
Theresa tried another tack with Eric Moyers. “Is Bobby good with mechanics? Did he work on the car, know how to modify it?”
“Bobby couldn’t change a tire if his life depended on it. If he had any work done, he got someone else to do it. What are you guys doing about this anyway? Can’t I sit somewhere so I can see what’s going on?”
“Unfortunately, we can’t all fit in the command center,” she told him, thinking, Damn, I’m learning to deflect people as smoothly as Chris Cavanaugh. “Does Bobby have a friend named Lucas?”
“I told this guy here I don’t know any of Bobby’s friends. He always had plenty of them, I’ll admit that. Everyone liked Bobby, especially kids and dumb animals. But I don’t know his friends-I didn’t want to know them then, I don’t want to know them now.”
“Has he called you since he got out?”
“He might have tried, but I doubt it. I changed my address and phone, left no forwarding. We only had my aunt and uncle in common, and they died in a car accident. Truth is, lady,” Eric Moyers summed up, “I didn’t even know he was out.”
15
12:05 P.M.
Paul had stretched his legs out straight, Theresa noted, probably to release some of the pressure on his butt. He wasn’t used to sitting so much. He still wouldn’t look up at the camera, instead following Lucas’s pacing movements.
I’m failing miserably at this investigating gig, honey. I haven’t discovered one useful fact, and we still have no idea how to get you out of there.
Kessler had disappeared. The scribe, Irene, wrote steadily now that Cavanaugh had Lucas back on the phone. He asked the bank robber, “Where are you from, by the way?”
“I could say the depths of hell, but I hate to be overdramatic.”