He and Gaynes reached the bank's second-floor offices winded. He knocked on a door marked PRIVATE and was welcomed a moment later by an attractive young woman in a smart gray suit and, beyond her, two men in private security garb manning a bank of five black-and-white television monitors, all of which were hardwired to hidden cameras.
Each screen offered a variety of looks at various parts of the bank, including the main lobby, the ATM anteroom, and the downstairs hallway through which they had just passed.
Gaynes asked Boldt, "Are you telling me we already have him on camera abducting these women?"
"Twenty-four-hour loops are reused after seventy-two hours," Boldt explained in whispered disappointment. "Long since erased."
"Yeah?" she said, gesturing toward the bank of monitors, "Well, we've got him now."
Vanderhorst stood at a teller window to the right of the large room, his back to the camera. Detective Frank Mackenzie maintained his position at the check writing counter, close to the main doors and the only exit to the streets.
Boldt's plan revolved around Mackenzie's ability to deliberately slip up while attempting to act the part of undercover cop. Mackenzie, a big tree trunk of a man with seventeen years on the force, had been selected for this role in part because of his legendary reputation as a thespian. In the summers, he took time off to join the Ashland, Oregon, theater troupe responsible for that city's Shakespeare festival. As a lieutenant and team leader, Boldt's responsibility was to make the most of his assets.
The screens lacked any sound, and so the commotion that followed on the bank's main floor played out on the one television screen silently, making the action all the more eerie and disconnected. Boldt listened to SPD dispatch in his right ear, mentally dialing it into the background.
"Can we hold on number four, please?" Boldt asked as he and Gaynes stepped closer.
She whispered, "I'd rather be in the movie, than watching it."
"Stay tuned, we may be yet," Boldt informed her. "First, we see how smart Vanderhorst is." He lifted the handheld, tripped the TALK button, and issued the order he knew he'd be held responsible for: "Okay, let's do it."
"Affirm." Dispatcher Dennis Schaefer's reply passed thinly through Boldt's earpiece. Mackenzie was ordered to "lay the bait." The rest of the team was put on high alert. Like most operations, after several hours of waiting, the real-time event was likely to play out in a matter of seconds or, at the most, a few minutes. For those few precious moments, disparate players, several city blocks away from each other, had to move, think, coordinate, and act in harmony. Anything less, and Vanderhorst was likely to escape. Denny Schaefer was the stage manager, but Lou Boldt was the playwright, and as such, he listened and watched carefully.
On the small screen Frank Mackenzie unplugged his earpiece from his radio and then fiddled with a knob, turning up the volume.
The message from dispatch: "Suspect is in the building," played over Boldt's radio at the same time it did Big Mac'sas planned. The message spilled into the bank lobby, turning heads.
This was it. Boldt leaned in and watched. Vanderhorst, along with everyone else in the lobby, overheard Mackenzie's radio. The suspect cocked his head slightly in that direction, but he did not overreact. His left hand pocketed the cash from his paycheck.
Mackenzie did a convincing job of playing the buffoon. He dropped the radio, turned the volume back down, and tried to look like nothing had happened. He then took a couple obvious steps toward the entrance, clearly planting himself to block the main doors. A colorful sign there advertised the benefits of home equity loans.
Vanderhorst abandoned the teller window and walked incredibly calmly, Boldt noted, toward the EMPLOYEES ONLY door that led into, the back hallway. But Vanderhorst stopped at that door, studying Mackenzie, who had his back turned.
Boldt spoke loudly into the crowded security room, "Open the door, Vanderhorst." On the screen, Vanderhorst continued to look like he was weighing his options. "Through that door! Now!"
Vanderhorst disobeyed, taking several steps toward Mackenzie and the bank's main entrance.
"We're losing him!" Boldt shouted into his handheld.
Denny Schaefer calmly instructed Mackenzie, "Phase two, Big Mac."
On the screen, Mackenzie spun on his heels, looked in the direction of Vanderhorst, and reached inside his sport jacket, revealing his holster and weapon.
Crack the whip. Vanderhorst turned, shoved a key into the side door, and hurried through.
"Okay!" an elated Boldt shouted much too loudly for the small room, "let's do it like we talked about."
The guards busied themselves throwing switches, and the monitors displayed new views: the back hall, the ATM room, the stairs to the basement, and several angles of the basement itself.
"Go ... go ... go!" Boldt shouted at the screen like an armchair quarterback. Into the radio's microphone he shouted, "More pressure, more pressure!" as Vanderhorst paused in the hallway outside the door that led into the ATM room. Boldt didn't want that door an option.
Dispatch barked another order, and although the monitors had no sound, Boldt knew that Mackenzie was now pounding on that hallway door. Vanderhorst reacted in a mechanical, nervous way, looking first in that direction and then taking off down the hall and into the stairs leading to the basement.
"Yes!" Boldt shouted excitedly. He grabbed Gaynes by the arm. "Get ready to run. You first. The basement."
"Copy," she said, moving toward the security room's door.
Behind them, the image of Vanderhorst moved one monitor to the next, as if he were jumping from screen to screen. As he reached the last, with the flip of a switch, the monitors displayed several different views of the basement.
Special Ops had added these cameras at Boldt's request.
Gaynes understood Boldt's plan then for the first time. "You're stinging him into showing us the way into the Underground," she said.
"We hope," he answered.
With that, as if instructed, Vanderhorst moved quickly across three of the screens and used a master switch to lower the elevator.
Boldt mumbled, "Not possible. I checked that elevator myself and-" But he interrupted himself as Vanderhorst boarded the elevator, stepped inside, and-after a brief but unexpected monitor glitch that left Vanderhorst off-camera momentarily keyed open a back panel on the elevator car intended for emergency evacuation.
"Oh, shit," Boldt barked, a police lieutenant who took pride in rarely swearing. Vanderhorst stepped through and pulled the elevator's panel closed behind him.
"Keys!" Boldt shouted at the security men, as if rehearsed, which it was not.
One of the guards tossed him an enormous ring of keys,