Alez Kava - One False Move

The black-and-white picture barely resembled the bank lobby. No surprise to Grace, especially after a week of viewing crappy convenience-store videos. She put on a pair of reading glasses, but nothing could improve the jerky static.

"I've isolated their entrance. It's coming up."

It seemed to take forever, and Grace finally wedged her way out from between Pakula and Sanchez enough that she could breathe. Despite the cranked-up A/C in the van, it felt like a sauna. And the three men-Pakula's short wrestler's build, Sanchez's tall hunched back and Hertz's potbelly- took up every possible inch of the mobile crime lab.

Finally two figures appeared on the screen, but they were gone as quickly as they appeared. Darcy Kennedy pushed some buttons to rewind and stop the picture. She tapped the keyboard and the two figures filled the computer screen again. Grace took mental notes but there wasn't much to distinguish them-dark-colored jumpsuits, some sort of mask over their lower faces, handguns held down at their sides.

Darcy tapped again on the keyboard, blowing up a view of their faces.

One man looked off to the side, but the other stared directly at them, blurred, static-riddled eyes visible between the mask and dark cap.

"He's looking directly at the camera." Pakula said out loud what Grace was thinking. "Almost as if the asshole wanted his picture taken."

"Are those kerchiefs around their faces?" Sanchez asked. "They look like some fucking Wild West bank robbers."

"A modern-day Jesse and Frank James," Hertz laughed.

"We have their exit on tape. It's about as exciting as the entrance. That's all we have on this one," Darcy clicked more buttons then ejected the tape. "The camera on the bank vault has nothing as far as I can tell. The one focused on the teller windows has a few interesting tidbits."

She pushed in the next video. Immediately Grace could make out the long counter, only one person behind it and the old man in front. Already the three-second delay proved annoying, the figures jerking like in an antiquated Charlie Chaplin movie. Then one of the masked men appeared in the corner of the frame. The next frame showed the old man down on his knees with his hands behind his head as if he had been instructed to do so. Suddenly the masked man was on the counter, caught in midjump, bright white tennis shoe clear amidst the grainy static. Three seconds later, and the next frame showed him shoving the gun against the woman teller's chin, this camera's angle catching her wide eyes. By the next frame, she was gone, somewhere down behind the counter, probably under the killer's hunched-over back. Three more seconds later and he was looking over his shoulder, but now the old man was lying on the floor. Another three seconds and the masked man was gone.

"That's it," Darcy said, rewinding and freeze-framing the teller's last seconds of life.

"We don't have anything of the others?" Pakula asked.

"Nothing. The reception desk and that side office are out of view of any of the cameras."

"From what we've got, it's hard to tell what the hell went wrong." Hertz pulled out a cigarette and began tapping the tobacco end against his hand as if he couldn't wait the extra second to take it out when he escaped the van.

"From what we've got," Pakula followed up, "it looks like he fucking meant to kill that teller."

"Jesus, these cameras are shitty," Sanchez said. "The public hears we've caught the robbers on video and they think it's an open-and-shut case. In truth, we have diddly-squat."

"Not quite diddly-squat." Darcy pressed a few buttons and brought up the frame of the masked robber jumping over the counter. "We're taking a shoe print now. With some video enhancement I should be able to read the funny little emblem on the side. By tomorrow morning we'll be able to tell you the make and the shoe size. There was some residue in the grooves, which was left behind on the counter. Mostly dirt but some little blue pebbles with flecks of gray in them. They're actually pretty." She lifted a plastic bag of what appeared to be dirt with tiny bits of colored rock. "I dusted this off the counter earlier. Who knows, I might be able to tell you where he was today before he stopped by."

Pakula took the bag and held it up in front of him, close enough for Grace to get a good look, as well.

"Wait a minute," Grace said. She took the bag and fingered the pebbles through the plastic. Her stomach did a flip despite her attempt to not jump to conclusions.

"What is it?" They were all staring at her now, waiting.

"I think I recognize these. They look exactly like the pebbles I just had put in my backyard walkways.",

6:17 p.m.

Melanie's chest ached. It hurt to breathe. And every labored breath tasted of gasoline.

She heard moaning then a rumble. Maybe it was only thunder. Everything else was quiet, even the car's chassis had finally stopped creaking and the engine had stopped hissing. She reached to unbuckle her seat belt, and then realized she didn't have it on. That was why her chest hurt. She vaguely remembered crashing into the steering wheel. The air bag hadn't deployed. She was lucky she hadn't gone through the windshield.

She heard another moan and looked beside her to find Jared gone, his car door wide open. Then suddenly the panic returned and she spun around, climbing over the seat.

"Charlie? Are you okay?"

He lay crouched on the floor, his legs twisted under him, his back facing her.

"Charlie, are you all right?" she asked again, hanging over the front seat and touching his shoulder. No reaction. She tapped, then shoved him before she got a response. Another groan, only this time he pulled himself up off the floor and rolled onto the back seat. That's when Melanie saw the blood on his coveralls, dark splatters as if someone had shaken a Coke bottle before opening it and sprayed it all over. For a minute she worried the blood was his own. When she realized it wasn't, there was little relief. The streaks of yellow vomit, however, were his.

"What happened, Charlie?" she asked, hanging across the front of the seat. "What the hell did you and Jared do?"

He wouldn't meet her eyes. Not a good sign.

"Charlie, I asked you a fucking question."

"We gotta go." Jared startled her, suddenly appearing in the open car doorway. He was out of his coveralls, the stocking cap and kerchief gone, too.

"I wanna know what the hell happened back there," she demanded of the two of them even though it felt as if there were knives poking into her chest whenever she took a deep breath. Her cap was gone, her hair a tangled mess, and she batted it out of her eyes so that she could stare down Jared. Not that it ever worked. "Tell me what the fuck happened. I have a right to know."

"We need to get the fuck out of here, now."

He pulled open the back door and to Charlie said, "I'm sick of this crybaby act. Get the fuck up."

But neither Melanie nor Charlie moved. She had never heard Jared talk that way to her son. Obviously Charlie had never heard it, either. He stared at Jared with glassy eyes, looking as if he had just been awakened from a deep sleep rather than been flung through the air and bounced around the crammed confines of the Saturn's back seat.

"Get those coveralls off, too," Jared told him.

"But you said-"

"Shut the fuck up and get moving."

This time Charlie did as he was told. Melanie stayed still, watching her son wrestle out of the coveralls, ripping the kerchief off and flinging it out the car door. He scrubbed his face with his hands, digging his fingers into his eyes with such force that Melanie wondered if it was an attempt to erase what he had seen.

When he was finished, his face looked striped, the fake suntan rubbed off in streaks. She wanted to wipe his face, a mother's instinct. She also wanted to grab him by the shoulders and shake him-another mother's instinct.