The door opened and Rob saw the reason for the wait. Special Agent Steeves walked in accompanied by Sheriff Olmstead. The Sheriff nodded to the pudgy officer, who closed the door as he left. Steeves sat down opposite Rob. Olmstead chose to stand. Officious arm folding seemed to be a popular pastime in these parts.
Steeves dropped a sheaf of paper on the table.
“I read the statement you gave to the Sheriff here,” he said. “You’ve had quite a day.”
“I’ve had better,” Rob said.
Steeves stared at Rob for a moment, then pointed at the papers and said, “You expect me to believe this fairy tale?”
Rob’s eyes widened in astonishment. “What do you mean?”
“Well, let’s see. Two people get shot and killed, and now you conveniently say one of them confessed that he sabotaged the bank and set you up.”
“It’s the truth.”
“So you say.”
“Lesley can tell you what happened. I wasn’t there when Tim told her.”
Steeves craned his neck to one side and looked at the Sheriff.
“You’ve never had a young lady tell you stories to save her boyfriend’s skin, have you?”
Olmstead just smirked.
“We’re used to wives and grandmothers and fiancées providing alibis,” Steeves said. “Funny thing, they never seem to want their men to go off to jail.”
“But Stan was there, too. He can back us up.”
“Yes, I talked to Mr. Dysart. He confirmed that Tim and the other guy held you at gunpoint for a while, but he didn’t see how they died and he never heard Tim say anything about what happened at the bank.”
Rob’s fingers turned white as his hands balled into fists.
“Not only that,” Steeves said, “you’ve admitted your prints are on the guns that shot both Tim and the other guy.”
“I explained that.”
“I can think of several possible motives for killing them. Tim could have been in on it with you from the start. Maybe he got nervous, afraid we’d tie him in and he threatened to come clean and testify against you.”
“I didn’t shoot Tim,” Rob said.
“Or maybe you wanted to blame him for the computer sabotage. It makes sense. You’d have to pick a co-worker, someone with the same computer access you had. And that jealousy angle with your girlfriend. Now that’s brilliant, supplying him with a motive like that. You have to admit, though, it sounds a bit far-fetched when you stack it up beside the evidence we have against you. I mean, we didn’t find Tim’s fingerprints on any memory sticks, did we?”
“Talk to Lesley. Tim told her that he did it.”
“Oh, yes,” Steeves said, “I’ll see her next. From what the Sheriff tells me, I expect she’ll give me essentially the same version as you. But then, the two of you had plenty of time to get your stories straight.”
“But we didn’t—”
“She might have even been in on it with you from the start.”
Rob sat and fumed.
“As for the other dead guy,” Steeves continued, “we’re still working on putting a name to him. But let’s suppose for the sake of argument you’re telling the truth about him. He was hired to track you down and get the keyword. And that turned out to be genuine, by the way and thank you for finally giving it up. The bank is busy as we speak restoring all their accounts to normal. Right off the cuff I can come up with a couple of reasons you might have had for killing the guy. He could have seen you shoot Tim, so you had to get rid of the witness. Or you could have been angry about the beating he laid on you earlier. And that’s just for starters. Give me a few minutes and a couple more motives might occur to me.”
“You can’t do this. You’re just making this stuff up.”
“If you don’t like it, then give me something else,” Steeves said. “Is there anything other than the say-so of you and your girlfriend to refute my version of how things went up at that cabin?”
Rob thought furiously. In the end it boiled down to one simple fact. The only person who could verify that Rob hadn’t sabotaged the computers was now dead. He felt completely deflated.
After two more interminable hours of waiting, the pudgy officer was still standing outside the room rather than within. He had apparently memorized as many details of Rob’s appearance as he could handle. Rob had done his best to wear the wax off the industrial tile floor by pacing in a circle around the table. He was in the middle of yet another lap when the door opened and Steeves came in.
Rob scowled at him. “You won’t get anything more from me,” he said. “I want to see my lawyer.”
The FBI agent did something Rob had never seen him do before. He laughed.
“That won’t be necessary,” Steeves said.
He moved to one side and Rob was astonished to see Lesley standing behind him with a grin on her face.
“Your girlfriend here is quite a lady,” Steeves said. “I’d hang on to her if I were you.” He looked at Lesley. “You want to tell him, or should I?”
“Shayna loaned me some video equipment,” Lesley said. “I recorded what happened at the cabin.”
“It was a slick set-up,” Steeves said. “She’s got this purse with a glass bauble on the front that doubles as a camera lens.”
Rob stared at them, dumbfounded.
“We just watched the most relevant parts of the video,” Steeves said. “With this kind of evidence, I have no choice but to suggest to the U.S. Attorney’s office that we drop all charges against you. I have no doubt they’ll agree.”
A balloon of euphoria welled up inside Rob. “You mean it’s finally over?”
“Looks that way,” Steeves said. “There’ll probably be another court appearance to dismiss the charges, but that should be it.”
Rob gave the agent an appraising look. “But why are you so happy? I thought you were dead set on putting me away.”
Steeves grinned. “That’s when I thought you were a scumbag. You have no idea how refreshing it is to have someone turn out to be telling the truth.”
He shook Rob’s hand.
“I’m sorry you had to go through so much,” Steeves said, and with that he turned and left the room.
Rob grabbed Lesley in a bear hug.
“You’re amazing,” he said.
“It helps when your best friend is a video techie.”
“I owe Shayna a big hug.”
“At least.”
They stood holding hands and grinning at each other. After a few seconds Rob said, “A video, huh?”
“Yup.”
“Of you and Tim.”
“Uh huh.”
“On the foldout bed.”
She pursed her lips and slowly nodded.
Rob looked at her in an appraising way for a moment. “Can’t imagine I’d ever want to watch it.”
“No,” she said slowly, “I wouldn’t think so.”
Rob nodded.
Lesley’s grin faded and small worry lines formed between her eyebrows.
“I’m so sorry I didn’t believe you right away,” she said. “I can’t imagine how that must have hurt you.”
“No, I’m the one who has to apologize. I should have understood what you were going through. And you obviously believed on some level what I told you about Tim, even though it must have sounded far-fetched.” He squeezed her hands. “No one could show more faith in me than that.”