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.”
Jessica patted her little boy’s back, furrows between her eyebrows. “Always?”
“Almost always. Especially when there’s a change in tense for only part of a story. The part that stands out is most likely untrue.”
“Wow.”
“It’s called forensic linguistics, analyzing the probable truth of people’s statements from the words they use.”
“But if you think he’s lying, does that mean someone else killed her?”
“No one else could have. I think he’s lying about why.”
They broke off as Lucas returned. Bobby stayed in the back, as usual.
“This is how it’s going to work, people. Listen up.” With his brisk manner, he could have been one of the SRT commanders. “Theresa’s going to wait at the door. The Fed cops will form a line outside to pass you the money, which you’re going to hand off to Brad and him to Missy and my roomy duffel bag. I will have Jessie and Ethan between me and them. If they try to come in, Bobby and I can shoot a bunch of you first. If they throw in tear gas, knockout gas, a smoke bomb, or put same in the bundles of cash, Bobby and I can shoot all of you before we’re incapacitated. If they try to pull one or two out, Bobby and I can shoot the rest of you. Do you understand that?”
No one nodded or spoke, but he did not press them.
“And though I know you all deserve a tip for your hard work today, no skimming. Don’t let a few bundles get pocketed before they make it to the end of the line. And you, Theresa.”
She felt as if a spotlight had picked her out in a dark room, blinding her with a sudden glare.
“You’re going to be my front man. My sights will be on you the whole time. If you go through that door and keep going, I’ll kill half the people in this room, starting with the security guards. I figure I can count on you, since you stood up for little Ethan there. Am I right?”
She nodded her head to confirm it. He had spared Paul, so perhaps he did not prefer to kill, but she had no doubt that Lucas would do so whenever he thought it prudent. The sight of Cherise’s body had taught her that.
The phone rang, piercing the stillness of the warm air. “That must be your buddy Chris.”