by G. K. Parks
Around lunchtime, the pace picked up as more customers entered the bank. All five tellers were working the front. I tried to pay attention to the employees to see if anyone seemed off, but there was too much of a rush to focus on anything other than work. It was two o’clock by the time the clientele trickled to a stop. With the obvious lull, I was told to go on break. I went upstairs, did a thorough assessment of the restroom and break room, and returned to my post at the front counter. As I sat on the stool behind the counter, I spotted Jablonsky waiting for a loan officer. He stretched and caught my eye but did nothing obvious to compromise my position. Either he was checking up on me, or there had been a new development.
Four
At five o’clock, the security guard locked the front doors. All the tellers did a final count of the money in the drawers, put the cash into zippered envelopes, and brought them to the smaller bank safe to wait for the morning. Wishing everyone a good night, I went outside and walked the two blocks to my car. Shutting my door, I put the key in the ignition and started the engine before dialing Mark’s number.
“It’s about damn time,” he began. “The ATM got hit early this morning.”
“What do you mean it got hit?”
“Our robbers waited for rush hour traffic, attached a chain to the contraption, and drove off before our agents could intervene.”
“Shit.” My mind tried to process an appropriate plan of action while I exited the garage and turned down the next street. It looked like another late night would be spent in the OIO building. “What about a description of the vehicle? Did they get tag numbers?”
“We got the car. It’s a rental, wiped clean. Forensics is going over it. There were no prints. We checked everything, even the lever to adjust the seat. We’re pretty sure it’s at least a three man team. From eyewitness accounts, two men got out and hooked some chains to the ATM, and another was obviously driving the getaway vehicle.”
“ATM’s have cameras.” I was speaking out loud, but he didn’t take offense to my simplistic statement.
“They wore masks. Our IT team is trying to come up with a possible solution. But as I was saying, we have the vehicle. Hell, we even have the ATM. The only thing we don’t have is the money. Treasury Department’s putting us in contact with an expert on ATM thefts to give us a usable timetable and evaluate the evidence. He should be calling in a few minutes. Are you on your way?”
“Of course.” It sounded like our robbers had seen one too many movies. This was real life; you couldn’t just haul off an ATM machine and believe you would get away with it. That was highway robbery, my internal voice made the pun, and even I cringed at the pathetic attempt at humor. “What about Boyle’s location?”
“Nothing yet. We’ve doubled up our surveillance. If these assholes show up, we’ll nab them.” The sound of metal on metal filled the airspace. Mark needed to oil that filing cabinet. “When you get here, come to my office. We need to devise a better plan for protecting the bank.”
* * *
Knocking on Jablonsky’s open office door, he glanced up. Clearly, someone wasn’t having a good day. He blew out a breath and rubbed his forehead. He motioned that I remain silent, and it became apparent he was on speaker with someone important from the Treasury Department. After a couple yes, sirs and we’ll do our best, sirs, he hung up.
“Are we having fun yet?” I asked, trying to hide the smirk. His glare quickly squelched my playful attitude.
“We’re a group of incompetent imbeciles,” he muttered. “Or so say the higher-ups.” He looked ready to explode as he tried to tamp down his rage. “Assuming our tipster is on the level, we’re going to do all we can to grab the guys at the convenience store. Until then, we have nothing. It’s bad business, hoping for another crime to be committed.”
“What did the expert say?”
“Twenty minutes to get into the ATM. They dragged it off, took it a few blocks to a secluded location, emptied it, and left the car and the goddamn machine.” He slammed his palm on top of the desk. “Fuck.”
“What do you want me to do?”
He looked up as if he forgot we were having a conversation. Maybe the stress was leading to premature senility. “Don’t let anything happen at the bank. We’re keeping the team outside, and hopefully, we’ll stop them before they do any more damage.”
I nodded.
“Anyone you work with seem suspicious?”
“No. But I’ve barely spent any time with these people.”
“You have amazing instincts, Parker.” He frowned, considering something. “I trust your judgment. Off the record, anyone set your radar buzzing?”
I shook my head.
“Let me know if they do.”
“Absolutely.”
“All right. Go home. There’s nothing for you to do here. I’ve turned another group of IT guys onto the tipster’s phone message, and forensics is still evaluating the car. When something surfaces, I’ll let you know.”
* * *
The rest of the week, I evaluated each of the Mutual One employees. No one seemed involved. Frankly, unless one of them was the tipster, they all had alibis for the latest ATM theft. This was a small branch of a neighborhood bank. This wasn’t some giant national savings and loan. Most of the customers had been coming here for years or were new additions to the community. The tellers knew them by name, and no one seemed out of place. At the same time, no one seemed too comfortable or familiar with the layout either. Jablonsky was barking up the wrong tree.
After spending the day undercover as a bank teller, I went to work at the OIO. Our floor looked like a ghost town, and a sick feeling settled in the pit of my stomach. Yes, it was a Friday, but something was off. Glancing around, I dialed Carver’s cell phone. Hopefully, he would insist I had gone insane.
“Parker, I can’t talk right now. The convenience store just got knocked over.”
“Is Boyle okay? Did we get the guys? What about an I.D.?”
“Sam’s fine. If you’re at the office, you might as well stay there. We’ll bring the party to you.” He hung up without another word.
Dammit. Things were not going the way they were supposed to. Maybe we were all incompetent imbeciles. I reviewed the alleged progress we made on the vehicle and the recovered ATM machine, but realistically, there was no progress. No prints, no leads, nothing helpful. We were chasing ghosts, and it didn’t look like they could be caught.
Two hours later, Carver, Jablonsky, and a team of agents came in. Mark shut himself inside his office, slamming the door for effect. Carver said something to the rest of the suits with him, and they scattered. He grabbed a chair and pulled it up to my desk. I raised an eyebrow and waited for him to say something.
“It’s a four man team. Three men, one woman. She was a decoy. She goes in, starts asking a dozen questions about lottery tickets, and while she’s there, two guys go to the ATM, dark jackets with the collars turned up and baseball caps low on their faces. Boyle notices them, goes around the counter, and the chick clocks him with a glass bottle. By the time he recovers, the guys are gone.”
“Shit,” I muttered.
“The car they were driving had no plates. It was a black sedan, older, maybe from the nineties. Our surveillance team was in hot pursuit for almost two miles and then they vanished.”
“How the fuck did they vanish?” I wished I had a door to slam in frustration.
“Don’t know.” He rubbed his eyes. “The good news is they didn’t get anything from the ATM, and Sam’s working with a sketch artist to get a composite of the woman out over the wire.”
“Where is he?” I glanced around the office.
“Emergency room. They wanted to make sure he didn’t have a concussion.” I shut my eyes and sighed. “We have the security camera footage from inside and outside the convenience store,” he continued. “Frankly, it’s just a matter of time.”
“Great.” I opened my eyes and gave him a look. “What are we doing until then?�
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“Jablonsky’s on the line with the Director and someone from the FBI. We need a foolproof plan to stop these assholes. They didn’t get anything today, but we didn’t get them either.”
“Let me rephrase. What are we doing in the meantime?”
Carver wasn’t assigned to the surveillance vans, and since I was only working the bank, we were both free to do whatever needed to be done on the investigation.
“Dial up the security cam footage, and I’ll go make some popcorn.”
Five
It was starting to feel like progress was being made on identifying the thieves. Carver and I spent the evening watching and rewatching the footage. He noted a few details about the car they drove, and we had the fundamental stats for the men involved, height, weight, and race. I noticed a reflection in the glass on the counter, and after sending it down to the IT department, we had a reasonable representation of the woman’s profile. When Agent Sam Boyle returned to the OIO with his clean bill of health and a couple of stitches, he verified that’s what she looked like. Between the profile reflection and the rendition the sketch artist made, we issued a BOLO on her and ran it through the news channels. Maybe we’d get lucky.
It was after midnight when Jablonsky left his office. He didn’t say a word, and given the fact he was lugging a stack of files, I suspected he was having an early morning meeting with someone at a different agency concerning our current failure. This was, by all accounts, the FBI’s operation, but since we were part of their organization, we were helping. Or trying not to impede the investigation. At this point, our usefulness was still somewhat questionable.
“They’re lucky,” I said, breaking the silence. Carver and Boyle both turned to look at me. “It’s not that we’re screwing up. And it’s certainly not because they’re better than us. They’ve been lucky up until this point, but it won’t last.” Something was scratching at the corners of my subconscious. “The tipster has to be on the team or someone close to one of the thieves. There is no other way he would know what’s going on and no other reason for going to such extremes to make sure his identity was protected.”
“But why would someone involved in the thefts report himself?” Carver asked.
“Maybe to taunt us. Maybe as a game to prove he’s better,” Boyle suggested. “Or because he doesn’t want to be doing this, but he isn’t sure how to get out of the mess he’s in.”
“We need to find the girl.” I picked up the sketch and looked at her picture. “She’s the best lead we have right now.”
Glancing at Boyle, it was obvious he was kicking himself for letting her get the drop on him. He had been duped by a pretty face. It was a ridiculously stupid mistake; unfortunately, we were all human. Mistakes did happen, even if they weren’t supposed to.
“Go home, Sam,” Carver suggested. “Alex and I will run through this a few more times. You’ve had a rough day.”
Boyle nodded. Even though he was the only one of us with seniority, he had gotten too arrogant and let his guard slip because of our previous intel that the thieves were comprised of only a three man team. He was unprepared for the woman. Maybe that was her function on the team.
“Sir,” I called after him, “you prevented them from getting the money.”
“Yeah. Too bad I didn’t stop them from leaving.”
“We’ll get them. It’s just a matter of time,” Michael added. After the elevator doors closed around Boyle, Michael whispered to me, “Do you think we will get them?”
“If they’re smart, they’ll stop now and go into hiding.” I let out a slight chuckle. “But if they were smart, they wouldn’t be robbing ATMs and one of their own wouldn’t have called in a tip.”
The two of us spent the next couple of hours reviewing the reports from the forensics lab, our tech support, and the statements by the agents in the surveillance van. The only thing we really needed was a lead on their identities or whereabouts. Carver was at his desk, running through some type of vehicle database hoping the make, model, and dents and dings on the car would lend themselves to tracking the owner. I remained at my desk, trying to correlate the tipster footage to the two thieves inside the convenience store. There was a strong possibility the tipster could be one of the thieves, but then again, the tipster could also be any Joe Schmo off the street. I despised endless possibilities.
At three a.m. my computer let out a resounding ding. Facial recognition had gotten a hit on the woman who assaulted Boyle. Not only did we have a name and her previous arrest record, but we also had a current address.
“Do you want to knock on some doors?” I called across the room to Carver.
He received the same notification and answered my question with a bright smile.
After the proper paperwork was signed, an entire assault team accompanied us to Roxie Henderson’s apartment. No wonder the woman had a record. With a name like that she was just a stone’s throw away from stripper or prostitute. The team flanked the front and rear exits. There was a decent chance the rest of the ATM robbers could be staying at Roxie’s. Carver knocked on the door as I stood to the side of the frame, a group of three well-armed men behind me.
“Ms. Henderson, open up.” We all strained to listen for noise coming from inside. “Federal agents. Ms. Henderson, open up.” Michael wasn’t taking a lack of response as a possibility.
After a minute passed without any sound or movement, he stepped back, reaching for his gun as one of the tactical team approached the door with a battering ram. After one good swing, the door popped open. The frame splintered where the deadbolt had been. The tactical team went in with guns poised as Michael and I brought up the rear.
A chorus of clears echoed through the living room, kitchen, and bathroom while Michael and I found Roxie passed out in bed with a needle in her arm.
“That’s one way to spend some stolen cash,” Carver commented as we radioed for EMTs, and he checked her vitals. “She’s breathing. No sign of an overdose.” He lifted her eyelid and checked her pupil. She mumbled something but didn’t move.
I glanced at the paraphernalia littering her dresser. “Heroin?”
“That would be my guess.” He stepped out of the room, and I followed.
“On the bright side, she didn’t make a run for it,” I remarked, and he snorted.
“I doubt she even realizes anyone is inside her apartment, including herself,” he sighed.
“Can someone take a look at this,” one of the tactical guys called from the kitchen.
Michael and I exchanged a look. It would have been childish to play a game of Rochambeau to decide who was going into the kitchen and who had to babysit the drug-addled thief, so instead, I strode to the kitchen without giving Michael a chance to protest.
The refrigerator was open, and for all intents and purposes, I was willing to accept that our team found it that way. Inside were stacks of cash, schematics on four different models of ATM machines, maps listing the locations of the hits, and a set of blueprints. No one touched anything, but I crouched down to get a better look. This was definitely a lot more than we bargained for, but there was no reason to look a gift horse in the mouth. Something did seem strange though.
“Any sign of anyone else living here?” I asked. I got a couple of headshakes. “How ‘bout signs of some recent visitors?” This time, I got a shrug. “All right, we need an evidence team down here.” One of the men radioed it in, and another went downstairs to wait for the EMTs to arrive. “Carver,” I called, heading into the hallway, “does anything about this situation seem strange to you?”
He met me in the hallway, keeping an eye on our unconscious prisoner from outside the doorway. “Like what?” He watched as I walked the entire apartment, not touching anything but just observing. The house was neat, tidy, and orderly. “Did you find any evidence of substance abuse anywhere else?” Carver asked as I wandered through the living room.
“None.”
Although her name seemed like a dead giveaway
, nothing about her apartment, the building, or the neighborhood screamed addict. There were pictures of her with friends or family. She didn’t look the type. Even stoned out of her mind, she still didn’t resemble an addict. There was no liquor, wine, or even beer in her opened fridge. No empty bottles in the trash. Not even a cigarette lighter to be found anywhere else in her apartment.
“You think someone did this to her?” Michael reached the same possible conclusion I did.
“Maybe. Or maybe she’s got a Type A personality and likes to keep the dirty little secrets completely hidden away, so no one will suspect her world is anything other than perfect.”
“Damn, you’re cold and cynical.”
Eventually, the EMTs showed up and checked her vitals. She roused slightly as they put her on top of a stretcher and carried her down the stairs. She was going to the hospital and getting handcuffed to the bed. At least we found one of the thieves. Three more to go. Maybe we could get her to talk. The doctors could evaluate her for other drugs, check for track marks, and at least with her being a captive audience, we’d have the opportunity for some real answers.
Six
“Welcome back, Ms. Henderson,” Carver announced from in front of her hospital bed. “I believe your luck might have run out.”
She looked utterly bewildered. Her eyes searched the room wildly, trying to determine where she was and what was going on. She jerked her arm and realized she was restrained.
“You’re in the hospital,” I offered. “Do you remember what happened?”
She shifted her gaze to me, surprised anyone else was nearby. Frankly, I didn’t want to be here anymore than she did, but after the evidence team set to work in the apartment, there wasn’t any other place for me to go. Plus, Carver needed some support from a female team member, or so he claimed.
