Julia Spencer-Fleming - Out Of The Deep I Cry

Russ loosened his grip on one crutch just enough to spare Lyle a finger. Lyle was still laughing when they passed through the smoked-glass doors into the bank.

A young woman in a tight skirt rose from a nearby desk when she caught sight of them. She trotted across the floor. “Deputy Chief MacAuley?” she said.

“That’s me.” Lyle smiled, showing many white teeth.

“Mr. Smith’s expecting you.” She glanced toward Russ and made a pouty face that Russ suspected had been well practiced in order for it to appear natural. “I guess we’d better take the elevator. Security’s on the third floor.”

“We could always send my friend here up while you and I walk,” Lyle suggested. The young woman twinkled at him.

“Let’s not keep Mr. Smith waiting, Deputy Chief.” Russ swung over toward the elevator, a brass-doored relic that had mercifully missed out on modernization. He punched the call button.

“Aw, Dad. You never let me have any fun.” Lyle winked at the girl. The elevator opened with a ping and they piled in, the door almost closing on Lyle and the girl because it took Russ too long to get himself and the crutches out of the way.

“I hate these things,” he said under his breath as they rose to the third floor. Lyle shrugged.

“This way!” The young woman was first out of the elevator, which gave them a chance to admire exactly how tight her skirt was. She led them up the hall toward security, an unremarkable door with only a number to identify it. Lyle darted forward and opened it for her. She beamed at him. “Aren’t you sweet? You remind me of my dad. He has these great old-fashioned manners, too.”

Russ swung past Lyle into the office. “Thanks, old-timer.”

He could make out only part of Lyle’s rejoinder, and decided it was better to pretend he couldn’t hear any of it.

The man who emerged from an inner room to greet then was tall, bald, and grim-faced. He had the rangy build of someone who had spent his whole life keeping in shape. “Hi,” he said, thrusting out his hand. “John Smith, director of security.”

Politeness kept Russ from checking out what Lyle made of the guy’s name. John Smith? Instead, he shook Smith’s hand. “Russ Van Alstyne, chief of police. I’m surprised we haven’t met before.”

“I’m pretty new here. I retired from my old job and we moved to these parts so my wife could be closer to her family. I signed on with AllBanc about eight months ago.”

“Lyle MacAuley. We spoke on the phone.” Lyle stepped forward and took Smith’s hand. “You look too young to be retired. What was your former line of work?”

Smith looked at him. “I’d tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”

Russ waited for the punch-line grin. None came. “Okay,” he said. “Can we take a look at this tape?”

“Right this way, gentlemen. Nicole, thank you. You’re dismissed.”

Lyle raised his bushy gray eyebrows at Russ, who shrugged. They followed Smith into a shadowy room of faceless metal file cabinets and a wide countertop workstation with three computers. One of them had what looked like a VCR player slaved to the CPU.

“I’m hoping to get the funding to convert the security cams to digital, but until then, we have to translate the actual tape into computer images.” Smith rolled a chair in front of the augmented machine. “This enables us to lighten the images, get better resolution, blow things up-everything we need to better identify someone.” He pointed to another wheeled work chair. “Chief, why don’t you have a seat.” He flicked on the monitor. “The ATM report indicated that the flagged card was used at nineteen-forty-seven hours.”

Lyle caught Russ’s eye and made a face.

“I’ve advanced the tape to nineteen-thirty. I’m putting it on fast forward until we get to the incident time.” He opened a menu and clicked on a selection, and the monitor filled with a grainy black-and-white image of the floor, door, and part of the outer wall of the ATM kiosk. Numbers indicating the hour, minute, and second flickered by in the lower left-hand corner. As they watched, a woman with a toddler, an umbrella, and several large carrier bags entered, dropped the bags, folded the umbrella, took out cash, scolded the toddler, and left, all in the triple time of a Keystone Kop.

“You ever see any funny stuff on these?” Lyle asked.

Smith looked at him. “All the time.”

The tape showed floor, partial wall, glass, edge of door. Russ watched the numbers hurtling toward 19:40. Then 19:42. Then 19:45.

“Slow it down!” He rolled closer to the screen.

Smith hit a key and the action slowed to normal speed. Someone entered the kiosk in a slicker and rain hat.

“That looks like a woman,” Lyle said. “Look, she’s got a purse.”

“Yeah,” Russ agreed. She was hefting two large Kmart bags. They watched as she put them down, dug through her purse, and after a search of two minutes, eighteen seconds, pulled out the ATM card. “Can’t you get a better angle than this?” he asked Smith. “I can’t see anything but her hat.”

Smith hit another key and the action slowed further. “She’ll have to reach up to punch in her PIN number. When she does, we’ll get a better view.”

He was right. As soon as she slid the card in, she tilted her head back to read the screen and they could see the face of-

“Shit!” Russ slammed his hand on the countertop. “That’s his wife.”

On the screen, Renee Rouse went on punching in the PIN number, selecting the amount of cash, and pulling sixty dollars from the machine.

“What is it you were looking for?” Smith asked.

Lyle opened his mouth, and Russ held up a hand to stop him before he said they could tell Smith, but then they’d have to kill him. “We’ve got a missing sixty-five-year-old doctor, disappeared twelve days ago. Search and rescue hasn’t turned up any sign of him. I was hoping anyone found with his ATM card might be able to shed some light on where he is.”

“Maybe his wife did him.” Smith leaned back in his seat and folded his arms across his chest.

“I’ll ask her when I see her,” Russ said, pulling his crutches into position.

“When’s that going to be?”

“As soon as we can get down to the car and get over to her place.”

Renee Rouse looked anguished. “I’m so, so sorry,” she said, holding out the ATM card she had dug out of her handbag. “I didn’t realize I had his. It was in the dish on my dresser, where I keep my change and things. I just grabbed it and stuck it in my bag.”

Russ took the card. It had Allan Rouse’s name along the bottom. “What about the PIN number?”

“We have the same one. Allan’s birth month and year. It makes it easier.”

Russ glanced at Lyle, then back to Mrs. Rouse. “Let me just go over this again,” he said. “You and your husband have a joint account that you can access through his ATM card.”

“That’s right, that’s where all the bills are paid from.”

“And you have your own account, with your own ATM card, where you keep a smaller amount of money.”

“Yes. Usually if I need cash I just write a little over at the supermarket. I was going to get cash back at the Kmart last night, but I forgot. That’s why I used the card. I don’t normally.”

“Have you checked the balance in your account since your husband’s been gone?”

“No. Usually Allan manages all that for me.” She started to cry. “Oh, God, he’s never coming home, is he? What am I going to do without him? What am I going to do?”

Russ left a quick message with Clare’s secretary, Lois, explaining he was going to be working and would have to take a rain check on their usual Wednesday lunch. It took a bit longer to extricate himself from Renee Rouse’s living room. The doctor’s wife whipsawed between begging for help, demanding police action, and crying. Russ guaranteed that he would check and see if anyone had withdrawn anything from her account, promised her that the Millers Kill Police Department was still treating this as a missing-persons case, and extracted her promise to call one of her friends to sit with her so she wouldn’t be alone.