Takeover (11 page)

11:36
A.M
.

“Something just happened,” Theresa said. “Every person there just jumped a foot.”

“I wish we had
sound,
” Cavanaugh said.

Jason picked up the phone. “They have sound at the monitor station. I’ll ask.”

Theresa caught her breath as she saw Paul’s hand move to his side, going for his gun. It was an ingrained response, she knew. He wouldn’t even have time to think about it, wouldn’t even have time to stop himself, but Bobby Moyers would have time to pull the trigger on that submachine gun before Paul could get his Glock up and pointed.

She watched Bobby approach Paul. But the robber merely shouted something, and Paul’s hand stopped midmotion. He did not pull out his gun. “What the
hell
is going on?” she demanded.

“That young woman didn’t come back,” Cavanaugh pointed out.

“Shots fired,” Jason said. “It sounds like he killed that girl.”

Don’t move, Paul. Don’t do a thing.

Cavanaugh let loose a string of expletives. “Can security see behind the teller cages?” he asked Jason.

“Just the counter area at each window. There’s no camera coverage in the offices behind the cages. She went back there with Lucas, and only Lucas came out.”

“Can’t we see through the windows? The ones in the outer walls are clear.”

Jason knelt on the window seat, phone in one hand and a pair of binoculars in the other. Where did he get those? Theresa wondered, resisting the urge to rip them out of his hands. She moved to the telescope instead.

“I don’t see anyone,” the young man reported. “There’s cabinets stacked against a few of the windows. They must be behind those.”

“So she could be alive.”

“The other hostages are asking if she’s dead,” Jason went on. “He’s not denying it. They can’t make out much else.”

“Why not?”

Jason dropped the phone onto the table. “Fed security snaked a mike down an air vent. It’s over on the east wall, so most of the talk is unintelligible. You can only make out what someone’s saying when they shout.”

“Crap. Who was that girl? Kessler?”

“I don’t know,” the bank executive told them. Theresa watched Paul through the telescope. Did he know she was there? Sense it, maybe?

“Is she an employee?”

“Oh, she
works
there. She looked familiar to me, but I don’t know her name.”

“Call your security team. They should have names to go with all the faces now.”

“I asked them an hour ago,” Jason told him. “They were too busy trying to keep the FBI agents out of their desk chairs.”

Kessler reached for the phone, then hesitated.

“What?” Cavanaugh demanded.

“I felt this sudden desire to ask if I could just go home.” The man’s face had become ashen over the course of the morning, approaching the shade of his shirt. “Cowardly, I know. I’m just not used to this.”

“You’re not supposed to be, sir.” Cavanaugh spoke more gently. “It’s not your job, it’s mine, and I should have thought to get a list of the hostages an hour ago. Maybe everyone on it would still be alive.”

Theresa couldn’t help but wonder if the bitterness in his voice had more to do with a woman’s untimely death or his perfect no-bloodshed record. “Now that he’s started killing people, he might keep on going.”

He did not thank her for stating the obvious. “If we’re right about Ludlow, he had already started. It may be time to let him know we suspect him of Ludlow’s death, to let him get used to the idea he’s not going to be walking away from this, even if we can’t confirm the woman’s murder.” Cavanaugh’s hand strayed toward the phone, then stopped. “Wait a minute. When we were talking about Bobby having been sent out of state, you said you bet you knew where. I’ll bite. Where?”

“Atlanta.”

Bobby Moyers had a brother. Eric Moyers worked as a baggage handler for Continental Airlines. He described his job as slinging golf clubs and countless wheeled suitcases onto a moving belt for people who could afford to go to much nicer places on vacation than he could. He had the same sandy hair and stocky build, a head cold, and he didn’t want to talk about his brother.

“What’s he done now?” he asked Patrick as they both had a cigarette on the tarmac outside Concourse C. An Embraer jet began to push back from the elevated walkway.

The heat levitated from the asphalt in visible waves, but Patrick wanted a smoke badly enough to risk passing out. “He’s robbing a bank and has taken a bunch of people hostage.”

“What?”

Patrick repeated himself, shouting this time.

“Can’t say I’m surprised,” Eric Moyers said, once the jet left for the runway.

“Why not? Has he said anything about it?”

“He hasn’t said anything to me in over a year. I didn’t even know he’d been released from jail, or that he came back to Cleveland. No, I mean I’m not surprised about it because Bobby has been going from bad to worse his whole life, and I can’t see any reason why he’d stop now. It killed our mother, you know, seeing her baby go to jail.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Patrick said automatically as he mashed his butt beneath one shoe. “Is there anyplace we can talk? With air-conditioning? And maybe less noise?”

As he followed the young man through a heavy door into the
building, Patrick wondered, for at least the tenth time that day, how this case would affect his chances of becoming the head of the Homicide unit. He had passed the sergeant’s exam with flying colors, but then he’d been doing that for years. There had always been guys with more seniority and a better grasp of ass kissing to move ahead of him. This time, though, he had a shot. McKissack, though not truly a moron, had only slightly more schmoozing ability and nothing like Patrick’s case-clearance rate. This time he had a chance.

He had never thought of himself as an ambitious man. But then, most humans didn’t think of themselves as carnivores until they spied a perfectly grilled filet mignon.

And for the tenth time, it bothered him that he could even think about such a thing at such a time. Though he told himself that the bad guys would give up and Paul would emerge with a wise-crack and a rumbling stomach, Patrick had been a cop too long not to know that it could all go very badly wrong at any moment. They hadn’t killed the security guards, true, but the guards were expected and clearly labeled by their uniforms. If they discovered Paul’s profession, it would startle them, and that was the worst thing anyone could do.

He hadn’t worked with Paul even a full year yet, and they probably wouldn’t even socialize if they didn’t have to work together—the kid was too damn virtuous. He’d have the chief’s slot in an instant if he asked for it. The department’s golden boy. And why his cousin didn’t want more of a…well, a
man’s
man…it was beyond him.

Maybe it wasn’t. Theresa just wanted the opposite of her asshole ex-husband, that was all. And Paul was a good cop. Frank would work like hell to get him out of there in one piece.

But
still.

At the back of the luggage sorting room, the employees had a corner that doubled as a lounge, with some beat-up armchairs and a pop machine. It was out of everything except Mountain Dew, which Patrick loathed but drank anyway.

The air-conditioning worked. Well.

“Everyone keeps asking me how I catch a cold when it’s ninety-five freakin’ degrees outside,” Eric Moyers groused. “This is how. The tarmac is like a blast furnace, and then in here it’s a refrigerator. In, out, in, out. Then you have people flying in with germs from everywhere in the world. I’m sick all the time, working here.”

Patrick nodded, feigning sympathy but watching the moving belts instead. He decided to invest in a sturdier set of luggage and one of those locks that only TSA could open. “Bobby is the youngest?”

“Yeah. I’m thirty, he’s twenty-seven.”

“How many kids are there?”

“Just the two of us, and Mom. I guess it’s the old ‘growing up without a father’ thing. Our dad split just after Bobby was born. We had my mother’s brother and his wife around for a while, up the street from us for…I don’t know, at least ten years. Then the steel mill cut back. My uncle went to Gary to work, and Bobby didn’t have anyone to follow around. I was working by then, just trying to keep the rent paid.” Eric Moyers stared at the floor, hands hanging loose between his knees. “First he started coming home from school early. Then he started getting
sent
home from school early. Then he started getting sent home from school in a police car.”

“How did your mother react?”

“She did her best. She tried understanding, she tried tough love. At first he stole from our neighbors, friends, people who knew our situation and wouldn’t press charges, at least not heavy ones. But Bobby never had the sense to stay where he was safe. Let me describe my brother to you, Officer. He’s never had a job. Ever. Not flipping burgers or delivering the damn paper. The only thing he’s ever done is steal, and he can’t even do that right. I’d understand if he were dumb, but he reads books, he’s a whiz at math. He’d just rather die than work for a living.”

No surprises so far. Frank said the cop’s prayer to himself: Please, God, let me find out something useful. “So he went to jail.”

“He robbed a check-cashing place on Lorain, him and this guy he knew from his high school gym class. Unfortunately, the clerk was the kid they both used to toss into the locker-room trash can, and he sent the cops their way. Bobby got one break—the surveillance tape sucked so bad that you couldn’t tell if he had a gun or a bag in his hand. He got a decent sentence.”

“Where’s the other guy now?” Could this be Lucas?

“Tried to cozy up to a gang of skinheads, thinkin’ they’d protect him inside. They killed him within a week.”

Patrick looked around for a place to dump his empty pop can. The only wastebasket in sight was filled to the brim. “That’s Bobby’s only conviction?”

“That’s the only felony. He’s got all sorts of juvie stuff.”

“Then he went back for the parole violation.”

“My mother’s hair went gray during his stint at the Mansfield prison. When he got out, it was the whole ‘I’ve learned my lesson’ song and dance that we’d heard a thousand times and that Mom still believed. But when he started bringing drugs home, to the place
his mother slept, the place I was paying the rent on, it was time for more tough love. I called the cops, gave him another chance to learn his lesson. Which obviously didn’t take any better than the first time.”

“That’s why I’m here.” Patrick balanced the can in the unsteady pyramid of trash.

“They empty that twice a day,” Eric Moyers told him. “We just dehydrate so fast in this heat.”

“Mr. Moyers. Your brother is in a very dangerous situation right now. I think we’re going to need your help to save his life.”

Eric Moyers pitched his can at the wastebasket, collapsing its contents into a noisy jumble. “Why on earth would I want to do that?”

11:43
A.M
.

“You think Bobby and Lucas are from Atlanta, Georgia?” Cavanaugh asked. “Why?”

Theresa spoke rapidly, without taking her eyes from the TV. Paul sat terribly still, left arm clamped to his side, hiding his firearm. “The key chain for the car is a red, rubberized relief of men’s faces. I think it’s from Stone Mountain State Park outside Atlanta, where Jackson, Lee, and Davis are carved into a cliff. The dirt I found in the floor mats is clay with iron oxide. Rust, that’s what the toxicologist told me.”

“Georgia’s red dirt,” Cavanaugh said.

“Exactly. Don thinks the twig in the trunk is from a magnolia. They grow here, but they’re especially abundant in Georgia.”

“Jason? Is that right?”

“Yep. Bobby just served eight months on felony parole violation at the federal prison in Atlanta.”

“Give the girl a cigar. What about his cellmate?”

“Thirty-one-year-old black male from Raleigh, name of Dunston Taylor.”

Theresa saw her own disappointment mirrored in Cavanaugh’s face.

“Not Lucas, not even as a middle name, but he did get released the week before Bobby,” Jason went on. “They’re searching the database now for
any
Lucas who would be out now.”

“What about guards?” Theresa asked.

“They’re searching the employee list, too.”

“So how do two run-of-the-mill scumbags in prison hook up with a bank examiner from the Federal Reserve?” Cavanaugh asked.

Jason didn’t have an answer, and Theresa didn’t care. “Can’t we figure that out later? Right now they just shot and killed one of the hostages. What are we going to do before they shoot the rest?”

Cavanaugh perched himself, catlike, in front of the phone. “I’m going to ask Lucas who he shot and why. And then we’ll talk about his feelings.”

Theresa returned to the telescope. The line of hostages remained one short, but otherwise nothing had changed.

Ms. Elliott, the head librarian, materialized at her elbow. “How are you holding up?”

“Fine,” Theresa said.

Ms. Elliott waited.

“I keep breathing in and out. Beyond that, I don’t know.” Theresa sank against the wide windowsill, leaning one thigh against it; even the marble had turned hot in the overhead sun. She breathed in the scent of book dust. “My grandfather used to work here.”

Peggy Elliott questioned her kindly, as if Theresa were a par
ticularly bashful student asking to use a periodical. “At the Federal Reserve?”

“No, here at the library.” She spoke without turning from the glass, but she could see the other woman’s solid form, safely tucked against the wall between the windows, watching her. “Of course that would have been…what, 1930? He was a page. Do they still have those? Pages?”

“Sure. We call them clerks now.”

“What do they do?”

“Shelve books, help readers find what they’re looking for.”

“He always read a lot.” Theresa gazed across the street, at the building for once, instead of its windows. These stone structures had been here for a long time, but so much had changed. What had it been like in 1930, when a fourteen-year-old boy could go downtown to work by himself and no one worried, before terrorists blew up planes and automatic rifles had been invented? The study of crime told her that the world had always been a dangerous place, but at least it used to require more effort.

Ms. Elliott hadn’t moved. “We have a staff lounge. Would you like to come and sit down for a while?”

The woman’s gentle tone frightened Theresa. She must look like she was about to collapse. She straightened her back, brushed what curls the humidity had left her out of her eyes, and said, “No, thank you, I need to stay here,” in as firm a voice as she could muster.

Cavanaugh then ruined the effect by asking her to stay away from the windows, in the same tone one would use to a child. It infuriated her, mostly because she knew he was right. She and Peggy Elliott moved back into the reading nook, and Theresa sat across from the hostage negotiator as he got Lucas on the phone.

“What happened to that young woman?” Cavanaugh asked. He might as well have been discussing copier toner or the need to order more coffee.

“Which young woman would that be, Chris?” If recent events had rattled Lucas, he did a masterful job of hiding it. His voice flowed from the speaker like melted butter.

Cavanaugh looked at Kessler, still on his own phone with the Fed security unit.

“Cherise,” the vice president said. “Shur-EESE. It’s her name.”

Cavanaugh repeated it and asked Lucas again what had happened to her.

“What makes you think anything has?”

“As I said before, Lucas, this has to work on trust. Everything we’ve talked about so far, I’ve told you the truth. But it has to be a two-way street.”

A voice sounded in the background, over the speaker.

“Lucas, what was that?”

“That was Bobby. He don’t trust cops much, as I think I told you.”

“Why not?”

“You got a few hours, Chris?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I don’t.”

Cavanaugh went on. “I have to be able to believe that you’re going to tell me the truth, if we’re going to be able to work out a comfortable solution here, Lucas. You and Cherise went back into the cages and only you came out, so I have to ask you. Where is Cherise? Is she all right?”

“Are you watching me, Chris? You have hidden cameras in here?”

“I’m beginning to think you’re jerking me around, Lucas.”

The pace of the conversation wore on Theresa. “Why does he say his name with almost every single sentence?” she whispered to Jason. “More humanizing?”

“Yeah. Getting him to think of the hostages as human beings instead of objects sometimes means getting him to think of himself as a human being—capable of choice and compassion. It also might make him feel special, that Chris is focusing just on him.”

“But he uses Cavanaugh’s name all the time, too.”

“Yeah. That’s kind of odd.”

Cavanaugh continued, “There’s a camera in every corner of that lobby, Lucas, in plain sight. You know they’re there, so you know bloody well we’re watching you. Why wouldn’t we be? So why are you wasting time talking about the cameras instead of telling me what happened to Cherise?”

“I would have taken the cameras out,” Lucas said. “But they’re at least twenty feet off the ground, and I’m not that good a shot.”

Ha,
Theresa thought.
Like I believe that.

“What happened to Cherise?”

“Cherise,” Lucas stated, “was not cooperating. You know how important cooperation is in an exercise like this. If anyone knows, Chris, you do.”

“I don’t like this guy,” Jason muttered, in what should have been an almost inane comment; instead it chilled Theresa down to her veins. “Calm is one thing, but he’s actually cool. He’s so cool he’s flat-out cold.”

“So Cherise—”

“Cherise is dead,” Lucas said. “See what I mean about cooperating?”

Cavanaugh paused. “Why did you kill her, Lucas?” He seemed to be fighting to keep his voice calm, but Theresa couldn’t be sure if that was part of the act. He had to make Lucas aware of how serious the situation had become, but he couldn’t yell at the robber and possibly antagonize him further. This way it sounded as though he was fighting his inner feelings to stay fair and evenhanded, to continue to assist Lucas through this crisis. She began to see why the police department held him in such high regard. But had he met his match?

“Why did you have to shoot her?” Cavanaugh was saying. “Why couldn’t we have worked things out? I said I’d get you the money and I’d get you the car. Why did you give up on that plan, Lucas? Now that innocent girl has lost her life, and for nothing.”

“You’re breaking my heart. I love the ‘innocent girl’ part. You never even
met
the bitch, so how would you know how innocent she was?”

“Had
you
met her? Before today?”

Everyone in the room fell silent, waiting for this answer.

“We had an acquaintance of about, all told, ten minutes. With some people that’s enough.”

“This changes things, Lucas. You see that, don’t you? My boss is going to be a lot less inclined to deal with you if thinks you’re going to shoot people no matter what, for no reason.”

“Tell him to imagine how many I’ll shoot when I
do
have a reason.”

“I don’t understand you, Lucas. You stay so calm through this whole thing, you take over the lobby without spilling a drop, and then, without motive, you shoot a woman.”

“You don’t need to understand me, Chris. I understand you.”

“Then understand this: Before we go any further, I need your word that you won’t hurt anyone without giving me a chance to work with you on it first. No more surprises. If you are considering hurting someone, tell me about it first, and we can work it out. Can I have your word on that?”

“No.”

“They usually go for that,” Jason said.

Theresa had thought her stomach couldn’t sink any lower, and now she discovered she’d been wrong. She also wished Frank or Don were there with her. Or Paul. Especially Paul.

“No one out here is going to give you what you want if they think you’re going to shoot people anyway. You’re not giving us any incentive to work with you, is what I’m saying.”

“I understand that perfectly, Chris. So here’s your incentive: I want that car parked and running, with the keys in it, outside the door in twenty minutes, or I shoot another hostage. How about that for incentive? I bet that will work.”

“You can have the car, Lucas. You just can’t take a hostage away in it, that’s all.”

“And how are we supposed to get to the car without your snipers taking us out? You worked that one out, Chris?”

“If you leave that bank, just the two of you, no one is going to shoot you. I can one hundred percent assure you of that.”

“We can get in the car and drive away? And how far are we going to get?”

“That, I can’t answer. I can only handle what’s happening on this block of East Sixth.”

“Not good enough,” Lucas told him, and hung up.

Cavanaugh thought for a moment, then redialed.

“Now what?” Theresa asked Jason.

“He’ll keep talking to him. As cool as Lucas plays it, he’s got to be uptight or he wouldn’t have shot that woman. He needs a deal, he needs a way out, but he’s going to play hard to get so that he can look like a hero to Bobby and himself. Chris will just keep talking and talking until he wears him down.”

“My ex-husband used to do that. Especially when he wanted to buy something expensive.”

Jason laughed, startling her. She hadn’t meant it to be funny.

Frank appeared next to a matching set of
Vital Records of Concord, Massachusetts
and beckoned to Jason and Theresa. They followed him out of earshot to the glass-walled map room at the north corner of the building. Ms. Elliott or one of her staff had set up a second television next to a glossy blue globe; Assistant Chief Viancourt watched Channel 15’s coverage of the secretary of state luncheon. He sat on an antiqued wooden bench with two other men in suits, like overgrown boys in a class they hadn’t wanted to take.

“I’ve got the brother here.” Frank kept his voice low. “Bobby’s brother.”

“Here?” Jason asked. “You brought him
here
?”

“He’s the closest thing we’ve got to insight into these two guys. He doesn’t know Lucas, never heard of him. But he knows his brother. Can’t stand him either, but that’s not my problem.”

“Yes it is,” the young man insisted. “If he hates Bobby, the feeling’s probably mutual.”

“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?”