“What was he doing there?” the detective asked.
“According to his wife, he was restoring a 1930 Ford and went to Newburgh for a part. We found a headlight set in his trunk and receipt in his wallet.”
As the briefing wound down, teams were assigned aspects of the investigation: canvassing, background checks on employees and reinterviewing witnesses. As they ended things, one agent asked Morrow a final question.
“What about the news report that says we have a key witness to Agent Dutton’s homicide?”
“Everyone who was there is a key witness to the crime,” Morrow said.
Not long after the briefing, after everyone had departed for their assignments, Morrow had a moment alone at his desk. He used it to stare at Lisa Palmer’s driver’s license photo. She was closer to Dutton’s killer than anyone else at that scene.
You had to have seen something.
After the upcoming news conference he would go back to her. She was his thread to the killers. There was one more thing he would try to help her remember.
Morrow’s cell phone rang.
“Frank, this is Gortman with ERT at Ramapo.”
The supervisor agent sounded jacked on caffeine, breathless amid the excessive background noise at his end.
“What’s up, Jim?”
“We’ve got something here—hold on. Can you hold on a bit?” Gortman turned to talk to someone before coming back to Morrow. “Okay, we’re getting it ready to go for you to use at the news conference.”
“Wait, Jim, what is it?”
“I thought Lanning told you, anyway, we’ve got something you’ll want everyone to see. We got it from this place across the roadway…”
15
New York City
Four motorcycles rocket from the Freedom Freeway Service Center, disappearing down the roadway leading to on-ramps for the New York Thruway and a web of secondary highways and back roads.
The grainy images, lasting some ten seconds, were captured by an old security camera at a fabric warehouse called the Colossal Cloth Collection. The building stood about one hundred and fifty yards from the service center. Its rusted exterior mountings for the camera had loosened, leaving it susceptible to wind gusts. The distance and aging equipment resulted in jittery footage.
But for the FBI, this was a key piece of evidence.
“We believe these are our subjects,” Special Agent Barry Miller told the reporters gathered for the press conference at Federal Plaza. The FBI showed the images on large monitors at the front of the room. Networks were broadcasting live. “We’ll have copies for you and enhanced still frames of each vehicle. We’ll run it three more times before we continue.”
Jack Gannon was among the reporters, photographers and TV crews crammed into the room. Every news outlet in Greater New York had someone there. Angelo Dixon was at the back, lining up shots. Amid the unyielding glare of camera lights, Gannon studied the security video. Taking notes, he never lost sight of the human toll.
It was right in front of him.
The ghostly images of the killers in flight, juxtaposed with those of the four people they had murdered. The faces of the dead men stared from the enlarged photographs set up next to the monitors. The FBI was about to confirm their identities. Now, for the first time, the world would meet the victims.
There was the crew chief, Phil Mendoza: aged fifty-two, of Flatbush, Brooklyn, married thirty-two years, with three children and six grandchildren. Mendoza, a former U.S. marine, had nine years with American Centurion and was considered the old man of the team.
Next was Gary Horvath, aged forty-one, from Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. Horvath was recently separated after his nineteen-year-old son was killed when a rig hauling scrap metal rolled over his Honda on the Jersey Turnpike. Horvath was a former self-employed limo driver who’d put in seven years with the armored car company.
Then there was Ross Trask, twenty-four years old; the crew’s rookie, who started with American Centurion two years ago. Trask was from the Bronx and was about to join the New York Fire Department. He was engaged to his high school sweetheart. She operated a hairstyling salon. Their wedding date was a month away.
The FBI agent was Gregory Scott Dutton, who’d joined the bureau in 2007. Right from the academy at Quantico, Dutton was assigned to the Bridgeport residency office in Connecticut. He’d worked on the joint-terrorism task force’s investigation on the Bridgeport link to the attempted Times Square bombing. Dutton’s widow was seven months pregnant with their first child.
The instant their names were released, reporters alerted their desks to dispatch people to track down their families, ignoring Agent Miller’s pleas to respect their privacy.
The story was too big.
There were too many factors: four homicides, one of them an FBI agent going for his weapon, the 6.3 million dollars and the nature of the attack. The killing of the FBI agent was compelling. Since the bureau’s creation in 1908, fewer than fifty agents had been killed as a result of direct adversarial force.
Gannon’s call to the WPA went to Lisker.
“We’ve been watching the conference live,” Lisker said. “We’ve sent people to The Bronx and Brooklyn to profile the guards. What do you have to maintain our lead on the story?”
Gannon cupped his hand over his phone.
“Nothing, so far. I’m working with my sources.”
“After the press conference, I want you to help on the profiles of the guards. You and Dixon head to Flatbush. Profile Mendoza. I’ll get Hal Ford to get you the family’s address.”
“What about the FBI agent?”
“Our Bridgeport stringer got his home number. No one’s answering. The stringer’s on her way to the house now, but we think the agent’s widow is avoiding the press.”
Gannon was uneasy with Lisker’s micromanaging of the story. It would lead to problems. Gannon turned back to the news conference and surveyed the agents watching from the sidelines. The undercurrent of emotion seething beneath their grim faces was palpable.
For the FBI, this wound went deep.
Gannon found Special Agent Frank Morrow observing from a corner and for one burning moment their eyes met, before Morrow suppressed a sneer and looked away.
Then Gannon saw Katrina Kisko, sitting midway at the side. She’d glared at him long enough for him to feel her wrath before she resumed focusing on the conference.
“With the support of American Centurion,” Agent Miller said, “the FBI is offering a two-hundred-thousand-dollar reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the suspects. We’re appealing to the public, to anyone with any information about this crime, to contact us.”
The amount sent ripples of murmuring across the room.
“We’ll take a few questions now,” Agent Miller said.
The reporters asked about leads, evidence, Agent Dutton’s action, FBI policy on drawing a weapon, safety and training of armored guards, statistics about heists, the high-performance sport bikes used for the getaway, the commando-style attack, the suspects, motive, number of agents on the case, the emotion, FBI vendetta, the risk of being an armored-car guard, the amount of money stolen, witnesses, links to other heists, the possibility of the crime being an inside job, the potential link to domestic or international terrorist groups.
For nearly forty-five minutes, reporters went up and down a range of aspects relating to the heist before Miller concluded.
“We’ll call another briefing when more information is available. Thank you.”
As the conference broke up, Gannon told Dixon he would meet him where he’d parked his SUV, then pursued Agent Morrow, who’d left the room alone. At the moment, Morrow was his only shot at a stronger angle. The agent was thirty paces ahead, about to round a corner, when Gannon called out.