“You don’t know where Lucas would get some?”
“Lucas wouldn’t fool around with that stuff either. He’d wanted to go Special Forces, underwater demolition, until that injury. And he knew the guy that lost his left hand, too. Combat engineer.”
Patrick straightened his spine, stretching the vertebrae. Cornell sounded positive again, truthful. “Where is he now? This combat engineer?”
“He’s not in the army, I can tell you that. They shipped him out on permanent disability.” “Where does he live?” “Hell, I don’t know. Michigan? Montana? I heard he went to work for a civilian contractor-demolition work-and got blown up his second week. You can’t tell me it wasn’t on purpose. It broke his heart to leave the army. He was weird that way.”
“He’s dead? You sure?” “I heard that from someone. I forget who, though.” “What was his name?” “I don’t think I ever knew that. He was just the guy who got his hand blown off, you know what I mean?” “Did Lucas know anyone else who worked with explosives?” “Not that I know of. But it’s a big army.” “Yeah.” Patrick could not think of anything else to ask. No doubt a million questions would occur to him as soon as he hung up, but he couldn’t help that. He thanked Cornell, asked to speak to the police captain again, and thanked him as well.
“I believe him,” Captain Johnson said. “For the most part. I think he’s fudging a bit on the two guns-he might have given those to Lucas, for old times’ sake-but whatever you asked about plastic explosives, he told you the truth. I’ve known Cornell a long time. He don’t lie too often and he’s transparent as hell when he does.”
“Thanks for the help. We appreciate it.” “Good luck up there, Detective.” “Thanks.” Frank Patrick sighed. “We’re going to need it.”
23
1:25 P.M.
Theresa sat with her knees to her chin, hugging her damaged ribs, and watched her captor. His actions had been quick and brisk before, but now he moved with a sense of real urgency. She wondered if he’d been stalling all this time, waiting for the two o’clock shipment while convincing everyone else that he neither knew nor cared about it. Why?
He conversed with his partner, both of them tucked out of the snipers’ line of fire, in front of the teller cages on the southwest side of the lobby. They seemed to be arguing.
Bobby had the detonator, Lucas had said. Bobby wanted to blow up the building. Maybe that was all Bobby wanted, because he certainly didn’t seem interested in the large amount of cash due to arrive at 2: 00 P.M. He wanted to leave, and he wanted to leave now.
Lucas murmured for a few minutes. Bobby interrupted, and Theresa heard him say, “-not the way it was supposed to go. My opinion counts, too-” before they lowered their voices once more.
Did the explosives have a timer? Perhaps Lucas planned to cut things too close for Bobby’s comfort?
“Are you okay?” Jessica Ludlow whispered to her.
“I guess.”
“I can’t believe he really killed Cherise.”
“Who was she?” Theresa asked. “What did she do here?”
Jessica shifted her little boy, now gnawing on a Pop-Tart; apparently his mother had found a way to extract his snacks and his cough medicine from her oversize purse. A juice box with a tiny white straw sat on the floor between them. Theresa felt like asking if she had a spare. “Cherise was a savings-bond teller. She was really nice, sort of took me under her wing when I first came here.”
“You worked together?”
“In the same department. I’m a secretary, not a teller, but Cherise and me would eat lunch together every day. I didn’t know anyone else here, and I’d talk her ear off. I talk a lot.”
“Did your husband join you?”
Jessica stroked her child’s hair, the skin on her fingers roughened and peeling slightly-she probably needed to go easier on the bleach while scrubbing her floors. “He usually worked through lunch. Or he had to go out with other bank examiners or executives in order to get acquainted with them. He was so busy, trying to learn everyone’s names and titles and, you know, sort of get on their good side right away.”
“I see.” Perhaps Mark Ludlow had been conscientiously trying to get a handle on his new job. Perhaps he had been a snob. “Had Cherise worked here long?”
“Yeah, about ten years.”
“Eleven,” Brad added. He sat with his back against the cool marble. All three conversed without moving their gaze from the two robbers, watching for any sign of agitation. But Lucas and Bobby did not seem to care if they spoke among themselves. Perhaps they had larger concerns.
Bobby’s voice rose enough for them to hear: “Brian said-” Theresa wondered who that might be.
“Had Cherise always worked in Savings Bonds?” She intended the question for Brad, but Jessica answered.
“No, before that she was an administrative assistant to the vice president for public relations. She worked up in the fancy offices on the ninth floor.”
“How’d she get to be a teller?” Brad asked, his voice tinged with curiosity despite the circumstances. “Quite a switch from an admin assistant.”
“She was too outspoken, I guess. She wouldn’t call a mule a horse even for a sack of gold.”
“She sounds like a handful.” Theresa felt angry all over again that such a vital woman had been snuffed out so carelessly.
“Top dogs don’t care for that,” Brad groused. “You should see how they live up there-Karastan rugs, bone china coffee sets.”
“Our tax dollars at work, huh?”
“It belongs to the building,” Jessica clarified. “This is a historic landmark.”
“Of course.” Theresa had no interest in debating the ethics of executive perks. She cared only that the sound of their soft voices had made Ethan’s eyes close, and he dozed against his mother. She also wanted to know why Cherise had died, but no detail so far could explain that.
“Landmark, my ass,” Brad went on. “The first vice president’s Picasso and his original Monet sketch and the Egyptian cartouche are all in storage on eight because he had to have new carpeting. The stuff being replaced was only a year and a half old.”
“There’s a firm line between the townies and the po’ folk here,” Jessica agreed.
“The vice pres for research isn’t as showy,” Brad admitted.
Jessica sniffed. “But his taste runs more to Thomas Kinkade.”
Theresa interrupted the watercooler talk. “Did Cherise resent that? Moving to Savings Bonds?”
“No, she liked it. She said it was real work, where she could see a result instead of a pile of useless memos designed to stroke her boss’s ego. Cherise was sort of a Communist.”
“Did she have any worries on her mind lately? Here at work, or in her personal life?”
“No. Her last boyfriend broke up with her just before I came, but she figured that was just as well… Why?” Jessica turned from the robbers long enough to stare at Theresa. “You think she knew about this?”
“No, I don’t… I’m just trying to figure out why she’s dead, her in particular.”
“Knowing Cherise,” Jessica said, sighing, “she probably refused to give him the money.”
“And it wasn’t even hers.” Brad shifted his legs, rubbing one knee.
“That’s what Lucas said,” Theresa told them. “But I don’t believe him, not the way he told it to me.”
Jessica brushed some dark flakes off her pants onto the marble tile. Ethan woke up enough to play with them, pushing the specks around to create a pattern. “What do you mean?”
“When he described robbing the teller cages, he spoke in the past tense. That’s consistent with describing an event from memory. But when he spoke about shooting her, he switched to present tense and said, ‘She waves the screwdriver’ around and ‘She starts to argue.’ That’s more consistent with a fabrication.”