Lisa Black: Takeover

Don took it from her fingers. “A twig?”

“Thanks.”

“Sorry. Magnolia? Birch? You really shouldn’t ask me-I flunked botany.”

“So did I.” And she couldn’t see how any of this would help Paul anyway.

The beam of light caught a dark smear on the carpet’s surface. She moved the flashlight to study it from different angles. “This could be blood.”

“Want a Hemastix?”

“Please.”

From the equipment Theresa had piled on a clean paper bag on the pavement, Don slid a paper strip out of a bottle and wet the end of it with a squirt of distilled water. Theresa touched the yellow pad at the end of it to the smear, and it turned dark blue. “Hmmm.”

“Blood.”

“It could be Ludlow’s,” Theresa said, more to herself than to Don. “They could have killed him somewhere else and then dumped his body on his own lawn, but I don’t think so. He didn’t look disheveled enough, and there would be a lot more blood here. It could be from whatever they used to beat Mark Ludlow to death.”

Don took up the train of thought. “They stole this car, then went to get Ludlow to tell them how to get into the bank. He didn’t cooperate, and they killed him and threw the murder weapon in the trunk, getting blood on the carpet. That’s why you didn’t find the weapon at the scene.”

Theresa sliced out the section of carpet with a sterile, disposable scalpel and dropped the piece into a manila envelope. “But they got rid of it before robbing the bank, because it’s not here now, and this jack hasn’t moved in five years, from the look of the rust and the spiders’ nests. Why take the time to remove evidence from a car that’s not yours when you’re probably going to dump it immediately after the robbery anyway?”

“They wanted to be careful.”

“If they were careful, they’d have had a better plan for getting in and out of that bank.” She recapped the scalpel and dropped it into her pocket. With luck, the prints she’d collected would match a set in their database. The blood could be analyzed later; right now they needed any leverage they could get to convince the robbers to give up peacefully. If they had already killed once, either Ludlow or the car’s owner, or both, it made them likely to do so again, but if they knew that CPD had a murder charge waiting for them, they would be less likely to let themselves be taken into custody. She slammed the trunk shut. “I’m done here. Can you get on the blood right away, including the swab from Ludlow’s house? And have Leo run the prints through AFIS.”

“Make the boss man do work?”

“If you have to administer coffee through an IV drip. Don’t let him weasel out of it. Don’t let him even hesitate.”

Don watched her, worry etching creases into his perfect skin. “Are you coming back with me?” he asked, in a tone that indicated he already knew the answer.

“Nope.” Theresa set off toward the sawhorses.

8:30 A.M.

Paul took a moment to appreciate the architecture before facing his death. From his seat on the f loor, he read an information plaque: The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland was one of only twelve in the country. It was built in 1923 and resembled a Roman basilica; the marble on the lobby’s walls had come from Siena, Italy, and the vaulted ceiling was hand-painted in Florentine designs. The lobby seemed appropriately solemn, as the thick walls filtered out all noise from the surrounding city. It should have made one feel insulated and safe, inside with the armed guards and the air-condition-ing and more money than he could fathom, all unknown quantities held at bay by the ancient brick. But now the lions had come within the village walls, and it might never be safe again.

The teller cages, with their old-fashioned iron grillwork, sat between the inner and outer walls of the lobby. The inner walls had huge windows, screened with more iron grillwork and each bearing the city seal of one of the twelve Federal Reserves. Unfortunately, the glass in these impressive windows was opaque. The robbers were safe from sniper fire anywhere in the lobby, except for a fifteen-foot-wide band directly in the center. The window over the East Sixth Street entrance was clear glass. Across from that entrance sat the information/security desk, and behind that desk ran an open hallway. Paul could only hope that security forces were massing at the other end of it.

Polished marble tiles on the floor reflected the occupants like a mirror, from the trembling receptionist huddled next to him to the pacing robber with the automatic rifle. A tall, wiry, light-skinned black, he paused directly before Paul.

Right in front of the clear window. If you’re out there, he thought to the police snipers, take the shot. But of course they wouldn’t, not while the second robber kept himself tucked farther down the lobby, protected by the opaque windows and invisible from the hallway. That one had blue eyes and blond hair, a faded tattoo on the side of his neck, and a sun-roughened complexion. He also had the husky build of a high-school football star gone slightly to seed, and he kept a black M4 carbine trained on the row of frightened humans.

Both suspects wore dark T-shirts and lightweight Windbreakers, the latter a suspicious garment in the summer heat. The taller one had a navy jacket over jeans, while the stockier blond wore a maroon zip-up with black trim and khaki pants.

The black one removed his sunglasses to look Paul over. “Who’re you?”

He had been waiting for this question. “I’m an examiner. I work on the third floor.” It seemed a more prudent answer than the truth, and Paul could only hope that if examiners did not work on the third floor, this man wouldn’t know that. Meanwhile he clenched the corner of his gray blazer between his thighs, to keep it from falling open to reveal his badge. The gun sat far enough back on his right hip to stay hidden, provided he didn’t move much.

His fellow hostages stared at him but said nothing. They could not look any more startled than they already did, so their expressions didn’t give him away. They didn’t know he was a cop-only the security guards knew that-but they had to know he didn’t work there. The security guards were at the end of the line, and the man with the gun did not look at them.

“Can you get into that vault?”

Paul didn’t have to fake a stammer in his response, since he had no idea what vault the man referred to. There didn’t not seem to be one within sight. “No-it’s not part of my job.”

Brown eyes studied him, but only briefly. Then the guy moved away, and the older black man next to Paul let out a relieved breath.

So far, so good.Stay calm and stay alive.

Of course, if they found out he was a cop, staying calm would not save him. Armed robbers didn’t like surprises, and they’d already had a number that morning. They must have expected the Fed to be like a neighborhood bank, with the cash at the forefront, physically present for the grabbing. Paul couldn’t blame them for their mistake; he also wondered why there’d been no one working at the antique teller windows. Instead the robbers were greeted with a handful of employees and no fewer than four armed guards in fatigues, one with a dog.

Paul had reached the bank at a few minutes past eight, left the car at a meter around the corner, and entered the lobby directly behind an older black man in a green uniform, the man now seated on his right. He had immediately explained himself to the security guard in order to get through the metal detector, then headed for the re-ceptionist’s desk. Before he could reach it, the black robber had led his partner into the bank, firing a shot into the ceiling to get every-one’s attention, nearly deafening them all. Paul had felt someone’s hands on his back even before he could turn toward the noise.