by Lis Wiehl
Ophelia said, “I have come to understand that people act the way they do to correct what they perceive as an imbalance in the world.”
“What do you mean?”
“For example, a shoplifter might feel deprived—of love, of money, of attention—so she steals things to make up for it.”
“But surely the store she steals from didn’t deprive her of those things.” Allison wondered where Ophelia was going with this. “And stealing won’t really give her the underlying thing she needs.”
Unperturbed, Ophelia continued to stroke the cat. “However, it does give her something, and perhaps she figures something is better than nothing. I’m not saying it makes sense to us. But it makes sense to the people who do these things. And whoever is trying to kill the three of you feels that doing so will correct some sort of imbalance, an injustice.”
“But in all the years I have been a federal prosecutor, I have never asked for the death penalty. Never.” Allison slapped her hand on the table for emphasis. “Yet something we’ve done is worth all of our lives?”
Ophelia shrugged. “It may not be logical to anyone but the man who’s after you. But I’m not sure the why is even important. What we really need to figure out is the who. There are two ways to approach this, and I think we need to utilize both. One is to look at all the people you three helped put away. There’s a database I can access to find all your prosecutions, and another database I can cross-reference to find out if Nicole was involved. What I won’t be able to look up as easily is whether Cassidy covered them. I need you to make a list of those so I can start narrowing it down.” She slid the notebook and pen toward Allison.
“That’s not going to narrow it down much. I prosecute somewhere between fifty and seventy-five cases a year. Nicole and I work as a team more often than not, and Cassidy covered most of our cases. That’s got to add up to hundreds of defendants.” The idea was overwhelming but then Allison thought of a way to whittle it down. “Except it has to be a recent case, right? Because why would someone suddenly want revenge for an old case?”
“It could be a recent case,” Ophelia said. “But not necessarily. It could be someone who has served his term and been released and now wants to punish you. Or someone whose sentence was overturned. Or a relative who has now decided to take revenge because an appeal was recently turned down or it’s the anniversary of a sentencing. Try to think about some of the bigger cases you handled, ones where Cassidy might have done a whole series of stories instead of just one. It wouldn’t be logical to kill her just for covering a story once.”
“Nothing about this is logical,” Allison said. The world felt like it had gone topsy-turvy.
“But what’s happening is logical to the killer,” Ophelia said. “And if we knew who he was, it would go a long way toward stopping him.” She tapped her lips with her index finger. “You know, these guys carried off a bank robbery pretty well. Maybe we should first consider any bank robbers you prosecuted.”
“Maybe. But prison is like college for criminals. They go in knowing about one kind of crime and come out with an education in all the others. And one of the things cons talk about most is the best way to rob a bank.” Allison looked at the pen and notepad, but didn’t pick them up. “You said there were two ways. What’s the other?”
“We can also try to work backward by figuring out more about the man you saw in the bank. Two of our witnesses have talked about a bald man, perhaps with a droop on one side of his face. Do you remember prosecuting any bald guys? Any bald guys who’d had a head injury or suffered a stroke?”
“The only bald guy I can think of was a biker in the Mongols who went by the name Little Man.” Allison saw him in her mind’s eye, glowering at her from the defense table. “But he had to be close to four hundred pounds. He’s in prison for racketeering and drug dealing.”
“Well, if the person who killed your sister is the same person Roland and Angel saw, then we know he’s thin, bald, tall, and has intense eyes. And possibly a droop on the left side of his face. Does that sound like anyone you know?”
It didn’t, did it? Something nagged at her, but when Allison tried to focus on it, it slipped away.
Ophelia tried again. “You’re the only one who’s seen this guy, who has probably met him before. Was there anything about him that was at all familiar?”
Allison thought of the man she had seen loping away from her. “I only saw him and the other guy, the one with the bag of money, for a few seconds. And mostly from behind. I barely paid attention to either of them. All I was focused on was finding my sister.” Allison felt a jolt of electricity. “Wait a minute!” She straightened up. “The bank will have surveillance footage! We can get Nicole to get us a copy. There should have been at least three or four cameras that taped the robbery. I’ll be able to see him from all different angles.”
“You’ll also probably be able to see him shoot your sister.” Ophelia cleared her throat. “Do you think you can handle that?”
CHAPTER 31
While they waited to see if Nicole could get the tapes for them, Ophelia had Allison dye her hair and then took a pair of scissors to it.
Allison had never thought of her hair as heavy, but having ten inches gone left her head feeling unexpectedly light. Or maybe the feeling was a side effect of the whole crazy day. She had learned about Rick’s probable innocence, held her dying sister in her arms, and discovered she was pregnant. It should have all been too much, but instead of feeling overwhelmed, she felt blank and empty. As if her head were a balloon and she might just float away into the sky. The feeling reminded her of when they had found Cassidy’s body. Maybe her body and mind were conspiring to protect her.
Leif and Nicole called to say they were coming by around eight. When Ophelia let them in, they both stopped short and stared. Between the new short cap of dark red curls and the loose-fitting shorts and T-shirt, Allison’s look had changed dramatically from the woman who had walked into the bank six hours earlier.
“Wow!” Nicole blinked. “If I didn’t know that was you, Allison, I would never guess.”
Leif turned to Ophelia. “You did a great job.”
“It’s a little uneven, but I did the best I could.”
Leif set a plastic bag on the table and began to pull out white takeout boxes. “We thought you guys might be hungry, so we picked up Chinese.”
At the sight of pot stickers and the smell of broccoli beef, Allison’s stomach rumbled and her mouth watered. How could she be hungry when her sister was dead? But the answer was as near as her belly.
Allison had asked Ophelia not to share the news of her pregnancy. She wanted the focus to stay on finding the man who had killed her sister and Cassidy. And if she managed to get out of this situation alive, then the person who should hear the news first was Marshall.
Nicole held out a thumb drive. “Here’s the footage from the surveillance. I figure I must know this guy too, so I’ve watched it and watched it. But when I look at the guy who shot Lindsay, he doesn’t ring any bells.” She laid a cool hand on Allison’s arm. “I don’t know if you should eat before or after you see this. Because I’ll warn you, some of it will make you sick. It did me.”
“Lindsay can’t be any more dead than she is. And I’ll do anything to find her killer.” Maybe it was better her emotions were already walled off, Allison thought. She would watch the video dispassionately. Like a computer. Like Ophelia.
They dished up plates of food and then Ophelia led them into her office. It was yet another plain room, this one with a blond wood desk and a silver Macintosh desktop with the largest screen Allison had ever seen.
Ophelia inserted the thumb drive and clicked to open it. There were a half-dozen files.
Leif said, “We have footage from six cameras altogether. Four from the teller area—that’s one behind each teller. One camera showed the lobby. And one was outside the bank’s entrance. Once the alarm was triggered, the cameras were programmed to automatica
lly save the footage from fifteen minutes before the alarm and continue for fifteen minutes after. Oregon Federal has gone to all digital film.” A lot of banks just shot a frame or two per second, which was why most footage of a robbery looked herky-jerky.
“Let’s start with the exterior camera,” Nicole said, pointing over Ophelia’s shoulder. “That should be the easiest to watch.”
Ophelia opened the file, which began with an overhead view of two ATMs and a stretch of sidewalk, but no people.
Leif said, “Go up to fourteen minutes fifteen seconds on the tape. The car appears a few seconds after that.”
Ophelia dragged the playhead to the right. A small dark-colored car pulled up just past the ATMs.
“It appears to be a navy blue or dark green 2002 or 2003 Toyota Tercel,” Leif said. “We already have an APB on it. The camera wasn’t at the right angle to see the plates, but they were probably stolen anyway.”
Simultaneously, the rear passenger doors swung open and two men got out. Allison stiffened. Their masks were already on, their dark outfits identical, their hands gloved. The shorter, fatter one was closest to the camera. It was the other one, the taller, thinner one, who stopped the breath in her throat. Here he was. This was the man who had killed her sister.
But as he ran ahead of the other man and then flung open the door and disappeared inside, nothing about him seemed familiar at all.
The two robbers were now out of sight of the exterior camera. The driver stayed in the getaway car, waiting, just a blurry figure also wearing a mask. It was hard even to tell if it was a man or a woman.
“You can fast-forward to the seventeen-minute mark,” Leif told Ophelia. “That’s when they appear on the tape again.”
Allison took a ragged breath. So it had taken less than three minutes to end her sister’s life. Less than three minutes to forever scar every person who had been in that bank.
Ophelia dragged the playhead farther to the right. A few seconds later the men ran out the door. Two or three loose bills fluttered from the pillowcase in the shorter man’s hands. He started to turn back, but the taller man yanked him roughly forward, his mouth moving. And then they were jumping in the car and the car was peeling away.
Ophelia half turned. “Anything about the tall one seem familiar at all? His gait, the way he moved his hands, how he held himself when he was angry?”
“I don’t think so,” Allison said, not wanting to admit she had seen nothing that sparked a memory.
“Let’s run through the tellers’ cameras,” Leif said, “although there’s not a lot you can see.” He turned to Allison. “For better or worse, only the camera in the lobby shows what happened to Lindsay.”
Ophelia clicked on the first of the four files. The camera was placed too high, a common problem with banks. Allison had heard that banks had initially wanted unobtrusive cameras that wouldn’t detract from the beauty of their grand lobbies. The practice had continued even as cameras became smaller and most banks had all the charm of a fast food outlet. These robbers had face masks, but any bank robber who visited this branch wearing a baseball cap would have had his face hidden by the bill.
Each of the four clips showed a slightly different soundless slice of the same scene. Lindsay entered the bank and then five minutes later, Allison, at which point they both walked into the loan officers’ area and out of sight of the camera. A few minutes later the two men ran in. The tall one pulled one pistol from his belt, the short one produced two. Then simultaneously they pointed the guns at the ceiling and fired. The tellers flinched at the sound of three gunshots.
“Wait,” Allison said the first time she saw this maneuver, and Ophelia obediently clicked on the pause button.
“Is that like any bank robbery we dealt with?” she asked Nicole. “With the robbers firing at the ceiling?”
“No. But before we came here, I sent a memo out to all the FBI field offices, asking them to check for similars,” Nicole said. “Shots in the ceiling. One guy watching the customers, one going over the counter. Maybe we’ll get lucky and get a match.”
And maybe not, Allison knew. Professional bank robbers, as opposed to the mopes who were just looking to score enough to buy a few days’ worth of their drug of choice, were always looking for ways to refine their technique. To increase their haul and decrease their chances of being caught.
“Okay,” she said to Ophelia, and the other woman clicked the play button.
After the guns were fired, the tall man walked rapidly toward the loan officers’ area, his mouth moving. Allison knew he was shouting the commands about alarms and dye packs that she had heard in the bathroom.
On each of the four files from the cameras located behind the counter, they saw the customers’ faces stretch into masks of fear before they obeyed the command to get down and then disappeared below the level of the counter. Three of the tellers raised their hands, but one with hair dyed a platinum blond just put her hands over her mouth. The shorter man put one gun in the back of his waistband, pulled a pillowcase from under his shirt, and moved from window to window, making the tellers fill the case with money.
And on each bit of film, there were two times when the customers and tellers started in terror. Even the other robber seemed surprised, jerking his head around. And the blond teller lost it, hands on either side of her head, mouth stretched wide in a scream.
Even though it was out of sight, Allison knew this was when her sister was shot, but she managed to watch it four times through without breaking down.
She also didn’t see anything she recognized about the shooter.
Nicole took Allison’s hand. “There’s only one more clip to watch, but it’s the one where Lindsay gets shot. It has the best images of the guy who killed her, though.”
Allison’s whole body tightened. “I’m ready.”
Ophelia clicked Play and moved the playhead to the point where Lindsay first appeared, pacing nervously and looking out the bank’s window. This camera must have been somewhere above the swinging door, but it showed much more than Allison had seen looking through the small window. She watched herself walk into the bank and then the two of them move to sit with Annie.
Allison’s eyes filled with tears as she watched her sister hand over her business plan. Seen from this distance, Lindsay looked poised, confident.
“You do look like twins,” Nicole said. “Even I had trouble telling you apart when I first looked at this.”
Allison watched the woman she had been a lifetime ago. She watched Annie point her in the direction of the restroom. She watched her old self walk toward the camera and then disappear, and Lindsay offer Annie a box of cookies.
And she watched the bank robbers run in and the same sequence begin for the fifth time. Her breathing speeded up. Her palms got wet.
This camera showed what the others had not—Lindsay cowering, the man yelling at her, Lindsay raising her hands as the man stalked over to her. He raised the gun even as she pleaded. And then he fired. She fell back on her elbows and tried to lift herself up. He watched her futile efforts, a sneer twisting his lips. And finally he took two steps toward her and leaned down, his lips moving, and shot her again.
And then the two men were out the door.
Allison saw herself suddenly reenter the frame and fall on her knees by her sister. “That’s enough,” she said hoarsely as the other Allison, the Allison who still had a sister, took Lindsay in her arms. “That’s enough.”
Ophelia closed the file.
Allison realized that Nicole was still holding her hand.
“Did you see anything?”
“I don’t know.” Something nagged at her. “I feel like I did, but I don’t know what it is. Or if it’s just wishful thinking.”
They went through the files again and again, until Leif and then Nicole stretched and moved away, talking quietly. Allison continued to look over Ophelia’s shoulder as she slowed the files down. They watched each video second by second, beginning wi
th the footage from the exterior camera and ending with the one that showed Lindsay dying.
Allison concentrated. What was it that bothered her? Was it the way the tall man moved? She watched for a limp, a gesture, an odd tilt of the head, but saw nothing. Was it something out of place? Something so small she hadn’t completely registered it? Something that should have been there, but wasn’t? The more she focused on the feeling that she was missing something, the more it receded.
She groaned and rubbed the back of her neck. “I know there’s something that bothers me, but no matter how many times we watch these videos, there’s nothing about the tall guy that’s familiar.”
“Wait a second.” Ophelia clicked on one of the teller tapes again and then leaned forward. “That’s it. It’s not him.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s the other guy. The guy who didn’t shoot your sister.”
Nicole looked up.
“What do you mean?” Leif asked.
“Watch,” Ophelia said, and pressed Play. “Just watch the second guy.”
It was the same scene they had already watched a dozen times. “I don’t see anything,” Allison said. “He shoots two guns into the ceiling, he takes the money, he runs out.”
Ophelia pressed the mouse, ran the video back a few seconds, then froze the image. “Look at that.” She tapped on the screen. “Look how he’s pulling the trigger on the gun in his left hand.”
She clicked, and the screen came to life again. With his right hand, the gunman pulled the trigger back with his index finger. But with his left hand, it was the middle finger that was inside the trigger guard. In front of it, his gloved index finger looked floppy. Ophelia froze the image again.
