James Patterson - Roses Are Red

"I know about the job at the Citibank in Silver Spring," the manager said. His wide square face was beet red. Perspiration dripped from his forehead in large drops. His blue eyes blinked repeatedly.

"Watch your computer screen," Mr. Blue said and pointed with his gun. "Watch it."

A film sequence came up and the manager saw his wife putting black tape on the mouths of his three children.

"Oh, God! I know that the manager in Silver Spring was late. Let's get going," he said to the ski-masked man in his office. "My family is everything to me."

"We know," Blue said. He turned to the assistant manager. He pointed the gun at her. "You're not a hero are you, Ms Collins?"

She shook her head of soft red curls. "No sir, I'm not. The bank's money is not my money. It isn't worth dying for. It isn't worth Mr. Bartlett's children dying for."

Mr. Blue smiled under his mask. "You took the words right out of my mouth."

He turned back to the manager. "I have children, you have children. We don't want them to be fatherless," he said It was the Mastermind's line and an effective one, he thought. "Let's get going."

They hurried to the main vault, which had a dual combination and needed both Bartlett and his assistant manager to open it. In less than sixty seconds, the vault was open.

Mr. Blue then held up a silver metal device for all to see; it looked like a TV remote control. "This is a police scanner," he said. "If the police or the FBI are alerted and come our way, I'll know it as soon as they do. And then you two, and also the two tellers, die. Are there any trip alarms inside the vault?"

The manager shook his head. "No, sir. There are no secret alarms. You have my word."

Mr. Blue smiled again behind his mask," Then let's go get my money. Move it!"

Blue had just about finished loading up the cash when his police scanner suddenly picked up an alert. "Robbery in progress at First Union Bank, downtown Falls Church."

He swiveled toward James Bartlett and shot the bank manager dead. Then he turned and shot Ms Collins through the forehead.

Just the way it had been planned.

The siren on the roof of my car was screaming. So was my body.

And my brain.

I arrived at the First Union Bank in Falls Church, Virginia, at almost the same time that Kyle Craig and his FBI team got there.

A black helicopter was just settling into the mostly empty shopping-mall parking area directly behind the bank. Kyle and three other agents climbed out of the chopper and headed toward me at a fast trot. They were stooped over and looked like monks hurrying to chapel. All four wore blue FBI windbreakers, which meant the Bureau wanted the public to know the FBI was involved with the investigation. The murders so far were gross and chilling for everyone. People needed to be reassured, to have their hands held.

"You been inside the bank already?" Kyle huffed as he came jogging up to me. He too looked like he hadn't slept.

"I just got here myself. Saw the big bad Belljet sputtering in. Figured it had to be you, or Darth Vader. Let's go in together."

"This is Senior Agent Betsey Cavalierre," Kyle said, indicating a smallish woman with lustrous black hair and eyes almost as dark. She wore her oversized FBI windbreaker over a white T-shirt, khaki trousers, running shoes. She was probably in her mid-thirties. Intense-looking and also pretty, though certainly not glamorous.

"This is the rest of the first team. Agents Michael Doud and James Walsh," Kyle continued with the introductions. "This is Alex Cross. He's the VICAP liaison with the DC police. Alex found the bodies of Enrol and Brianne Parker."

There were quick, polite hellos and handshakes all round. Senior Agent Betsey Cavalierre seemed to be sizing me up. Maybe it was because her boss and I were friends. Or maybe because I was VICAP, the official liaison between the FBI and the Metro police. Kyle took me by the elbow and steered me away from his agents.

"If the original two bank robbers are dead, who the hell did this job?" Kyle asked as we walked past ribbons of yellow crime tape snapping loudly in a crisp breeze from the southeast," This is as bad as it gets. You see why I brought you in?"

"Because misery likes company," I said.

The FBI ADIC, or assistant director in charge, walked with me inside the bank lobby. My stomach fell. Two female tellers were lying on the floor. They were dressed in dark blue business suits, now stained with their blood. Both were dead. Their head wounds indicated they had been shot at close range.

"Executed. Goddamn it. Goddamn it," Agent Cavalierre said as we stopped at the bodies. An FBI crime-scene unit immediately began videotaping the scene and taking still photographs. We headed toward the open bank vault.

It got worse in a hurry. Two more victims were inside the vault, a man and a woman. They had been shot several times. The business suits and bodies were riddled with bullets. Had they been punished too? I wondered. What were their sins? Why the hell was this happening?

"This makes no goddamn sense to me," Kyle said rubbing his face with both hands. It was a familiar tic of his and instantly reminded me of the many cases we had worked together in the past. We complained about it sometimes, but we'd always been there for each other.

"Bank robbers don't usually kill anybody. Not pros. "Agent Cavalierre spoke," So why do this sick stunt?"

"Was the family of the manager held hostage as in the Silver Spring robbery?" I asked. I almost didn't want to hear the answer.

Kyle looked my way, nodded. "Mother and three kids. We just got word on them. Thank God, they were released. They weren't harmed. So why were these four butchered, and the family released? Where's a pattern?"

I didn't know yet. Kyle was right: The robbery-murders didn't make any sense. Or rather, we weren't thinking like the killers. We didn't get it, did we?

"There might have been a screw-up here at the branch. If this is connected to the bank in Silver Spring."

"We have to assume it is," said Agent Cavalierre. "The father, nanny, and child were killed in Silver Spring because the manager was warned that the crew had to be out of the bank at a certain time or the hostages died. According to the video monitor at the bank, they missed by less than thirty seconds."

As usual, Kyle had information the rest of us didn't. He shared it now. "An alarm went to the police here in Falls Church. I think that's what prompted the four murders. We're trying to run down where the warning call came from."

"How would the crew know the alarm went to the police?" I asked.

"They probably had a police scanner," Agent Cavalierre said.

Kyle nodded. "Agent Cavalierre is very smart about bank robberies," he said 'and just about everything else."

"I'm after Kyle's job," she said and smiled thinly. I took Agent Cavalierre at her word.

I accompanied Kyle and his first-team entourage to FBI headquarters in downtown Washington. We were all feeling a little sick about the murder scene we'd witnessed. Agent Cavalierre did know a great deal about bank robberies, including several committed in the Midwest that resembled the Citibank and First Union jobs.

At headquarters, she pulled up as much relevant information as she could get in a hurry. We read printouts about a pair of desperadoes named Joseph Dougherty and Terry Lee Connor. I wondered if their exploits might have served as some kind of model for the two recent robberies. Dougherty and Connor had hit several banks in the Midwest. They would usually kidnap the manager's family first. Before one robbery, they held the manager and his family for three days over a holiday weekend, then robbed the bank on a Monday.