John Lescroart - The Motive

"But by now, I'm talking 1999," Thomas continues, "things have really begun to change over there. A new faction called the GSPC splits off of the GIA, and though they're still hitting government and military targets, they swear off civilian attacks within the country. After all the killing of the past years, this has a lot of grassroots appeal. The GIA leadership doesn't see it that way, but they're losing influence and, more importantly, members. And funding. They need to do something dramatic to call the faithful to them. This is jihad now, not just revolution. The will of Allah will be done, and even if fellow Muslims are killed, it is acceptable because they all become martyrs." Thomas pauses again. "The GIA decides they are going to blow up the biggest elementary school in Algiers. Six hundred kids."

"Lord, the world." Glitsky's elbow is on his desk. His hand supports his head.

"But Monique won't help them. She can't go there. It's too much."

Glitsky snorts a note of derisive laughter. "A saint, huh?"

"In some ways, she was, actually." Thomas shifts in his chair. "But now she's got an even bigger problem. On the one hand, she hates the government and what it stands for. But on the other, she can't let the GIA go ahead with this bombing. But if she tells anybody, if she betrays her cell, she knows what happens next. Her family disappears, all of it. She's seen it happen not just to Antar Rachid and his family, but maybe half a dozen other times.

"She's got four brothers and a sister, all of them married with kids. Her mother and father, both still young enough to be working. Her mother comes from a family of five, her father's the oldest of four. She's got about forty-five cousins." Thomas comes forward, finally showing a hint of urgency. "They're all dead if she talks. There's no doubt about it. Meanwhile, she's in on the planning. If she refuses, she's with the enemy. She can't show a thing."

Glitsky, nodding, appreciates her problem. "So she comes to you guys."

"She comes to me, personally. I'm stationed over there at the time. My cover is I'm with the visa section at the embassy, but she's been underground for four years and she's figured that out. I do some banking at her branch and she approaches me one day, tells me her story.

"The only way she figures she can do it is if she appears to be killed in the raid on the planners. If I'd help her appear to die, she's got information on a major planned terrorist attack. Remember, this is pre-9/11, but the Cole had already happened, the African embassies. It might have been a trap, but the bottom line is, I believed her. And it turned out it was all true. They raided the cell and found the explosives, and the government announced that Monique Souliez was one of the rebels killed in the raid."

"And Monique became Missy D'Amiens?"

"That's right."

Glitsky sits in silence for a minute. "So why are you here now, with me?"

"I thought you needed to hear the story." "Why is that?"

"Maybe so you'll understand where she's coming from. She's a quality person. Maybe the best thing would be to leave her alone, wherever she is. More than anything else, she's a hero."

But Glitsky doesn't even begin to accept this. "More than anything else, she killed two people in my town. I can't leave her alone."

"That might not have been her."

"No? I'll entertain other suggestions if you've got them."

"It could have been GIA." Glitsky snorts. "Here? They found her here?" But Thomas keeps on with it. "It's not impossible. You know the guy they arrested at the Canadian border with explosives bound for LAX? He was GIA. They're still very much active. They're not going away."

"Maybe so," Glitsky says, "but they didn't befriend some homeless woman so they could establish phony dental records for her."

Thomas takes in the truth of that. It costs him some. But he tries another tack. "If she's exposed, they kill her family, even now."

"I would hope they wouldn't do that." The words say it all. Thomas hears them clearly. This, his personal mission, has failed. But he tries one more argument. "I'd ask you to think of what she's been through. It's so different over there. She hasn't lived in the same world as most of us do. If she did kill these two people, I know it was to save her family. Two deaths against sixty. That's the kind of choice she had to make all the time back home. It must have seemed like the only option she had." "Maybe it did," Glitsky says.

But he doesn't give him any more. After a last moment of silence, poor lovesick Scott Thomas gets up out of his chair, walks to the door, opens it and, like the spook he is, vanishes.

Inside the Putah Creek Community Bank, three tellers sat ready to work the windows, but there weren't any customers. A couple of other employees were huddled over a desk behind the screened work area-muffled voices that seemed to be talking gossip, not banking. Out front, a matronly-looking middle-aged woman raised her head at the entrance of Glitsky and Matt Wessin. With a nervous smile, she rose from her seat behind a shiny, empty desk.

Glitsky, in his all-weather jacket with a gun in his armpit, hung back a few steps while the chief extended his hand to the woman. Obviously, the two were acquainted-small town. "Traci," he said, "this is Deputy Chief Glitsky from San Francisco police."

"Yes, we talked a couple of days ago." More handshakes.

And Wessin went on. "He's told you, I believe, that he's

got a warrant to view the records of one of your accounts, and also the contents of a safe-deposit box linked to the same account. Do you remember a match in a 314(a) form you sent in a couple of weeks ago? Monica Breque?"

"I do. I think it's the first one we've had out of this branch, but I'm afraid I don't remember her. When I saw the name on the 314 form"-she turned to Glitsky-"and then when we talked the other day, I tried to remember something about her, but nothing came to me."

Wessin said, "Maybe one of these will help." He produced from the folder he carried several likenesses that Glitsky had brought up with him, including not only the glossy of the Chronicle photo, but also several of Hardy's snapshots from the Hanover family albums. Now Traci examined the pictures slowly, one by one. When she'd gone through them all, she shook her head. "I'm afraid I don't know her at all. And we pride ourselves on personal service, knowing our customers on sight by name."

"She might have had a bit of a French accent, if that's any help," Glitsky offered.

She stopped shaking her head. "A French accent? Now that rings a bell. And she started here last May, we said? That would have been me if it was a new account, too. I'm sorry." Traci looked back down at the pictures. "I just don't have any memory of someone who looked like this. I do remember the accent, though. Is it all right if I show these to the staff?"

Five minutes later, one of the tellers admitted that, like Traci, maybe she'd seen the woman, or someone who looked like her. If it was the same person, though, the hair was certainly different, and she doubted if she'd been wearing the same kind of tailored, high-end city clothes she fancied in the pictures. "But all the same, I'd bet it's her. Great face."

"So she still comes in here?" Glitsky asked.

"I don't know," Carla said. "I wouldn't call her a regular."

"Can you think of what was different about the hair?"

The teller closed her eyes and gave it a try. "Maybe it was short, and not so dark, but I can't really be sure." She checked the picture again. "But I've seen her. Definitely."

This was reasonably good news, but didn't get them anywhere, so Glitsky and Wessin went back to the manager's desk and got to the account records themselves. Missy, or Monique, or Monica, did not use her checking account to write checks. She had deposited a hundred dollars to open the account on May 17, and hadn't touched it since.