Lisa Black - Takeover

“If they thought they were hitting the local savings and loan, then they’re not the deducing type. I think they know exactly where they are,” Theresa said. “Did you notice that Lucas’s demand is exactly half the amount to be shredded?”

“But then why not all? Besides, if they knew it was the Fed, they’d have expected the tight security. They’d have had a better plan.”

“Yeah, but all they had to do was get close enough to grab a clerk and put a gun to her head. No security force in the world can do much once that has happened.”

“Hell of a chance,” Frank grumbled.

“It worked.” She wondered why they were even debating it. It didn’t matter whether the suspects meant to hit the Fed, a regular bank, or the corner 7-Eleven. All that mattered now was getting them to come out without killing anyone-except she still couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that all was not as it seemed.

“I don’t know,” Frank was saying. “These guys aren’t even smart enough to bring a driver.”

“If they did get the setup from Ludlow, they knew that the money wouldn’t take long to come up the elevator. Is it risky? Sure. But it could have worked. If they hadn’t lost the car, they could have been in and out in ten minutes. I sure wish they had been.”

“Hang in there, baby.”

Hopelessness flooded her, trying to seep into her bones, and she snapped the Nextel shut. Her cousin’s calling her anything other than her name could not be a good sign. All might be calm for the moment, but they had a long way to go.

10:23 A.M.

Theresa grabbed a coffee, for once not for the caffeine but for the heat. She’d gone from sweltering to shivering in a flat ten minutes, the silk blouse having cooled to a wet shroud.

Don sat in front of a computer terminal, explaining the images to Jason. “Of the prints we got from the car, seven fingers and the palm match Robert Moyers. Ten other prints don’t match anyone in our database.”

“There’s ten other people on this car?”

“No, it could be ten fingers from one person or, more likely, ten fingers from two or three other people. There’s no way to tell for sure.”

“That doesn’t help much,” Theresa admitted. “Moyers owns the Benz- Wait a minute. Why is he in the database?”

“Armed robbery.”

“So that could be him in there.” Theresa sipped, letting the scalding liquid aggravate an already fluttering stomach. She had begun to think these crooks were smart, but who would use their own car for a burglary? “Is there still no one at his house? Do we have a work address or anything?”

“CPD just called Jason about that. The address is old-the woman living there bought it last spring. Doesn’t know anything else about him, not even what he looks like. CPD checked her out, and she’s, like, Snow White: a fashion designer, two kids. Not the type to be an armed robber’s moll.”

“So where’s he been since last spring? He sure hasn’t been living in that Benz, unless he’s a neat freak of the highest order. It’s clean. ”

“You keep saying that,” Jason said.

“We see a lot of cars,” Theresa explained. “Most are filthy. Some have their own supply of cockroaches.”

Jason made a face. “I see. This is the Ohio state database that these prints turned up in?”

“You betcha. And before you ask, we can’t search the country unless we send it to the FBI and wait four or five weeks.”

“Wonderful.”

“It’s not like TV,” Don explained gently. “Moving right along. I superglued the Advil bottle, the Tic Tac container, the Kleenex package, and even that little piece of foil but didn’t get any fingerprints of value. The fumes only brought up a smudge here or there. I used mag powder on the owner’s manual and the envelope and the receipt, since the pulverized metal is better on porous surfaces. And tell Paul,” he added to Theresa, “I hope he appreciates it, because I hate that black powder crap.”

“Duly noted.”

“I got nothing with the mag powder either. CPD called Con-rad’s about the receipt, but it had been paid with cash by Robert Moyers, with the same address, the one he sold to the fashion designer. No one at Conrad’s remembers anything about one sale four years ago. And no one at Sirius will tell me anything about the satellite radio account either, so the cops are running that down.”

“Have you called about the meter on that envelope?”

“The what?”

“Where is it?”

Don moved to a counter and picked up the number ten envelope, now sooty from the mag powder used to process it. “It’s blank. Nothing but the forty-two-cent imprint.”

Theresa peered through the plastic at the inked red markings. “Postage meters are closely regulated. You have to lease them from a dealer authorized by the United States Postal Service. This is a Pitney Bowes; if we call them with this serial number, they should be able to give us the name of the company that metered this envelope.”

Jason listened attentively. “That easy, huh?”

“Not really-they’ll want faxes on letterhead and a few other forms of identification before they’ll release the information. I’ll take the envelope back with me and get some police VIP to call.”

Don thrust a printed form and a pen at Theresa. Chain-of-cus-tody procedures had to be maintained, even under extenuating circumstances, up to and including Armageddon. “Sign here and it’s all yours. Now, follow me.”

She led them into one of the back rooms, pausing at the door.

“That looks-” Theresa stopped.

Don nodded. “Yep.”

“Like Leo. At a microscope.”

“Yep.”

“It’s like he’s working. ”

“You betcha.”

“I can hear you, you know.” Her boss spoke without moving his lean face from the ocular lenses of an old polarized light microscope. “I can also hear the percentage of your cost-of-living increase dropping like a sow’s litter.”

Theresa approached with caution, as if a heavy tread could shatter the tableau. “What are you doing?”

“Pollen.”

“What?”

“Remember pollen? The powdery stuff that busy little bees carry from one plant to another, making most of our food supply possible? Identifying them with polarized light was a big deal in the fifties and sixties, tracking dastardly criminals back to the apple tree behind the crime scene.” He replaced a pair of glasses on his nose, long fingers flicking with excess energy. “It’s a dying art, sadly. No one does it anymore.”

“Yeah, like hair comparisons,” Theresa commiserated. “We have a reference collection for pollen?”

“In the basement. Way back in the corner, behind the piece of fence from that torso in the park and the skull-under-glass thing from those satanic wannabes. I’ve probably breathed in enough dust to give me pleurisy.” Indeed, the one-by-three-inch glass slides scattered around on the countertop appeared dusty, and the mounting media had yellowed. The corners on their hard vinyl case had abraded into powder.

“So what is it?”

“Pine.”

Her shoulders slumped. “That’s all?”

“Nothing exotic, sorry. It’s kind of odd to see so much of it, though.”

He skittered his chair back a few feet as Theresa bent her head to the eyepiece, viewing the pink-stained grains. They seemed to have three sections, a central orb with two kidney-shaped appendages. “Why is the amount odd?”

“It rains regularly here, even in summer. That knocks most of the pollen out of the air.”

“So they might be from some other area?”

“But I thought your guy lived here.”

“His car does. Or did. Where would we expect to find a lot of pine pollen?”