Replaceable: An Alan Lamb Thriller

by Bouchard, J. W.

  “Maybe you should see somebody about that,” Lucy said.

  “Like?”

  “I don’t know. A therapist. Or maybe a dream interpreter.”

  “A dream interpreter? Does such a thing exist?”

  “Have you ever heard of the Internet?” Google it.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “It might help. Dreams have meaning.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Sure. Like people who have reoccurring dreams about losing their teeth. Usually that means that in waking life they are stressed out about money.”

  “And sometimes a dream is just a dream.”

  “Except for when it isn’t.”

  “I’m going to go get that coffee now,” Alan said.

  “Two coffees,” Lucy reminded him. “One for your superior. Break the morning ice.”

  Lucy was an odd duck. Alan reminded himself of that fact on the way to the breakroom. Odd duck or not, he chose to heed her advice.

  He filled two Styrofoam cups with coffee, left them black, and proceeded to SAC Gant’s office.

  The lackluster appearance of the office fit Thomas Gant’s personality perfectly. He was a no-nonsense man of fifty that could come off as unusually gruff. There was something initially off-putting about his direct and to the point manner, but Alan had grown comfortable with it over time. In fact, sometimes Alan was downright grateful for it.

  During his years in law enforcement, he had learned the politics involved and had learned to play the game. Gant seemed to hate playing the game as much as he did. It was an unspoken rule in the Bureau (at least as long as Gant was around) that you spoke nothing but the truth, and whatever that truth was, you better be able to back it up with fact and logic.

  As long as you understood that philosophy, Gant was nothing but a slightly overweight teddy bear with a receding hairline and breath that smelled of spearmint-flavored chewing tobacco.

  Alan placed one of the cups of coffee on Gant’s desk and slid it over to him before he sat down.

  “I’ve got a new one for you,” Gant said, sliding a manila folder across the desk.

  Alan took a sip of his coffee and grimaced.

  “What’s with that face? You allergic to work or something?”

  “No,” Alan said. “The coffee. It’s bad.”

  “Oh.” Gant seemed to view this as a challenge and took a sip of his own coffee. He pulled the cup away from his lips and scowled at it. “Jesus, your assessment was right on the money. About as tasty as raw sewage.”

  Gant took another drink of coffee and scowled again. He appeared determined not to let it go to waste.

  Alan picked up the folder and combed through it. “Not much here,” he said. “A bank robbery? Isn’t exactly in our wheelhouse.”

  “Your guess is as good as mine. Wheelhouse or not, the FBI put it up for adoption. It’s your baby now.”

  Alan went through the contents of the folder again, this time giving it more than a cursory glance. A simple bank job wasn’t something they normally handled. “Howard Sitka,” he said, reading from the report. “Augusta, Georgia. Fifty-three. President of Mellencott Bank.”

  “They had it for two minutes. Apparently, they interviewed the suspect and decided to hand it off to us.”

  “Am I reading this right? He’s the vic and the primary suspect?”

  Gant shook his head. “It isn’t a typo. I already checked. They found this guy, Sitka, tied up in the bedroom of his house. But they’ve also got him on security cam footage. Emptying out the vault of his own bank.”

  “So the guy robs his own bank, goes home, and knocks himself out cold. Sounds like there’s a flaw in the plan.”

  “Yeah, but did he tie himself up before or after he knocked himself unconscious?”

  “Couldn’t have done it all himself.”

  “What I was thinking. He had help. I’m guessing the wife.”

  “Guy had to know the bank had cameras everywhere.”

  Alan felt that strange lightness in his stomach that he experienced whenever a case was particularly intriguing. That same zero gravity sensation one felt when they launched their car too fast over the crest of a decent-sized hill. This case practically screamed, “The game is afoot, My Dear Watson!”

  “Doesn’t make sense,” Alan said.

  Gant leaned over his desk, hand outstretched. “Here’s your boarding pass. Have fun in Georgia.”

  “How’d it go?” Lucy asked when Alan was back in his office.

  “Fine.”

  “See. It was the coffee wasn’t it? Told you it would do the trick.”

  “I think we bonded over it.”

  “The coffee melted right through his gruff exterior.

  “Melted through something anyway,” Alan said.

  “Get a new one?”

  “Start a new file under Sitka, Howard-Mellencott robbery. I’m heading out. Next flight to Georgia.”

  “Georgia huh? The Peach State. Did you know that Coca-Cola was invented there?”

  “Nope.”

  “Yep. By Dr. John Pemberton.”

  “Has anyone ever told you that you’re a fountain of knowledge, Lucy?”

  “A girl picks things up along the way. It’s a robbery then?”

  “Looks that way.”

  “Why would we be investigating a robbery?”

  “That’s what I’m supposed to find out,” Alan said as he made his way out the door.

  Chapter 2

  The original idea for the Genetic Crimes Bureau was conceived in 2019 by a special committee tasked with identifying opportunities to curb ever increasing violations in the area of stem cell research, DNA manipulation, and performance enhancement (in this latter case, the GCB would investigate all cases except those of which were commonly referred to as ‘juicing’).

  Technology had ruled the roost for decades, but the biological sciences were the new Wild West. And like the Wild West of old, there was a significant criminal element. For once, the government had decided to be forward thinking and to adopt legislation before that criminal element could grow out of control.

  Thus, in the year 2022, the Genetic Crimes Bureau was established. It was to be a new federal entity that would work hand-in-hand with the FBI and other intelligence agencies, and would also lend assistance to State and local law enforcement agencies in areas relating to stem cell alteration, performance enhancement, DNA modification, cloning, virus tampering, as well as any other infringements which arose out of this new biological final frontier. The feds wanted to get in front of it and control it. Now that designer babies had become the rage, the potential for abuse had grown exponentially. It was only a matter of time before criminals would become as prolific with the human genome as they had with cyber crime or the drug trade.

  The birth of the GCB had taken place at a time when Alan was searching for a fresh opportunity. Initially, recruiting for the agency had focused on applicants with experience in both law enforcement as well as the biological sciences. Alan hadn’t fallen into this latter category, but due to his exemplary service record, he had risen to the top of what was often considered to be the murky waters of the government’s application process.

  Alan had gotten into law enforcement at the age of 22, when he had been hired on as a Detention Deputy in the Albany County Jail in Laramie, Wyoming. He had attended the Wyoming Law Enforcement Academy in Douglas, Wyoming. Two years later, he had been promoted to patrol and transferred to the streets of Cheyenne, Wyoming until he had transferred to the Aurora PD in Colorado, where he eventually made detective. It was during his time with the Aurora PD that he had the opportunity to work several crossover cases in which federal law enforcement agencies were involved. This led him to apply for the FBI. Alan was hired and attended the Academy in Quantico, Virginia, after which he was assigned to the field office in Denver, Colorado.

  His position with the GCB had more or less fallen into his lap. He wasn’t a science geek by any means, but
his time with the FBI and the Aurora PD had proven his penchant for solving cases no one else could. During the GCB’s interview process, when questioned about his lack of knowledge regarding the biological and related sciences, Alan had simply stated, “I’m a fast learner.”

  Apparently, that succinct statement had been enough, because two months later he had been assigned to the Genetic Crimes Bureau headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska.

  That had been in 2023.

  He was a year into it now. The program had been given a five year life span, in which time it would be expected to either prove its worth as a standalone agency or would be unceremoniously dissolved. Alan had looked at the opportunity as a calculated risk.

  In November, Alan would be thirty-five.

  He wasn’t one for reminiscing on the past, wasn’t nostalgic over time gone by, but the four and a half hour Delta flight from Eppley to Hartsfield-Jackson gave him plenty of time to think. He spent most of it thinking about Howard Sitka and the Mellencott Bank robbery. When he landed in Atlanta at 3:00 P.M., picked up the rental car at Avis, and started the two hour drive for Augusta, the case was still on his mind.

  Looking at it from any given angle, the Mellencott Bank robbery was something of an enigma. Why had the FBI been so eager to hand it off?

  Alan had seen it before: an open-and-shut case, the FBI investigating because banks were federally insured. It harkened back to the 1930s, to J. Edgar Hoover’s War on Crime, an age when guys like John Dillinger and his Terror Gang were making headlines.

  Most of the time, the FBI was content to let local agencies run with things.

  If it weren’t for Howard Sitka.

  A man who could soon find himself among the ranks of the world’s most inept criminals.

  The sheer stupidity of it nagged at Alan’s mind. Why go and rob your own bank? According to Sitka’s tax returns, he was bringing home close to a quarter of a million dollars a year. He was happily married, had raised his kids and sent them off to college, was within a stone’s throw of retirement…

  Why risk it?

  Even if Alan overlooked motive for the time being, it still didn’t explain how Sitka had botched things so badly.

  For one, he had failed to take into account the bank’s security cameras. The man had been there long enough to know the security system inside and out, would have known the precise location of every camera in the place and would have accounted for them.

  But he hadn’t taken any precautions to hide his face during the commission of the crime. The only reason Alan could think of for making such a glaring error was that Sitka had planned on skipping the country immediately after committing the crime, most likely to a country that didn’t have an extradition treaty with the United States.

  There’s a flaw in your logic, Alan thought. And it was a big one.

  Instead of driving directly to the airport (and let’s not forget he would have had to devise a way to bring all that money onto the plane), he had driven home, laid down on the bed, hog-tied himself, and then proceeded to bludgeon himself over the head hard enough to cause a mild concussion.

  Alan wasn’t sure if even Harry Houdini could have managed to tie himself up in the same fashion as Sitka had, let alone to have somehow been able to knock himself unconscious while bound in that position.

  Which meant that someone else was in on it.

  Sitka’s wife perhaps? According to the initial report, it had been Nancy Sitka who had placed the call to 911 after arriving home to find her husband bound and gagged to their California King.

  There were two other anomalies involved in the case as well:

  Sitka’s silver Cadillac CTS hadn’t been in the driveway.

  Meaning he had ditched it somewhere.

  Since 2014, OnStar had come standard on a number of GM vehicles, the CTS being one of them. Even if the perpetrator had had the foresight to disconnect the battery, it had a 72-hour internal back-up power supply. Which meant they should have been able to locate it within minutes, but as of yet, local police hadn’t had any luck in locating the vehicle.

  They hadn’t located the stolen money either. Security camera footage had shown Howard Sitka loading the money from the vault into a set of large black duffle bags, which he had in turn loaded onto a dolley. After this was accomplished, he had slipped out of the building via the rear exit door. Sitka’s house had been searched top to bottom, but the money hadn’t been located. Duffle bags of that size weren’t something you could hide easily. Sitka would have had to have dumped it an unknown location (probably the same location where he had stashed the missing Cadillac), and then hightailed it home on foot or by taxi.

  Unless Nancy Sitka picked him up, Alan thought.

  It made the most sense. It also accounted for how Sitka could have tied himself up, not to mention the blow to his head. Alan was thinking that Nancy Sitka had to be one cold bitch to do that to her own husband.

  Alan drove the rental car down a long stretch of flat highway, his mind on auto-pilot as he went over what he knew about Howard Sitka.

  The man was well educated.

  He had carved out a respectable niche for him and his family.

  He was well respected by the community in which he lived.

  Motive?

  Greed?

  Discontent with his station in life?

  If the man was going to snap, Alan figured it would have happened a long time ago.

  None of it added up. But that still didn’t explain why the FBI had dropped the case into the GCB’s lap. Alan wasn’t a prognosticator, but it didn’t take one of Lucy’s psychics to see that this was potentially shaping up to be one giant cluster fuck.

  Alan reached the Augusta city limits just after 5:00 P.M. He proceeded directly to the Richmond County Sheriff’s Department where Howard Sitka was being held for further questioning. At this point, he hadn’t been formally charged, but as far as the district attorney was concerned, this was what was otherwise known as a slam-dunk case. Sitka could maintain his innocence until the cows came home, but the security cam footage didn’t lie. They had the President of Mellencott Bank dead to rights.

  Won’t be president of anything for much longer, Alan thought as Deputy Jason Defries escorted Alan down a long corridor and into a darkened room.

  A large one-way mirror took up most of the east wall. Through it, Alan could see the small and dingy interrogation room. The room’s only furnishings included a table and two chairs, one of which Howard Sitka currently occupied.

  Sitka appeared haggard, his clothes disheveled. He hadn’t been processed yet, so he was wearing his own clothes, which consisted of gray slacks, white button down shirt, and a navy tie. A detective was seated in the chair opposite him. Sitka seemed agitated, like he hadn’t slept for a few days.

  Alan turned to Defries and said, “How long have they been at it?”

  “Weathers has been in there with him for the last…” Defries checked his wristwatch, “…going on six hours now.”

  “No confession?”

  Defries looked at Alan as though he had just been asked a trick question. Finally, he shook his head. “Nope. He’s denying it all the way. We even played the footage for him. Says it wasn’t him. I tell ya, if it wasn’t for the security tapes, it would be hard to swallow. Guy’s a pillar of the community.”

  “What’s his story?”

  “Pardon?”

  “He’s saying he didn’t do it,” Alan said. “What’s his version of the event?”

  Defries took a moment to consider this. “It’s kinda strange really.”

  Alan waited.

  “Well…” Defries made a big deal of clearing his throat and then tapped on the glass of the one-way mirror. “Maybe best to let Detective Weathers fill you in on that.”

  Defries led him back into the corridor where they stood outside the interrogation room until the door opened and the detective stepped out.

  Defries said, “This is…sorry, I forgot your name.”
>
  “Special Agent Alan Lamb, GCB,” Alan said, offering his hand.

  Detective Pete Weathers shook it with a strong grip.

  He was a tall man; had a good five or six inches on Alan. Mid-forties, with an athletic build underneath the cheap suit. Dark brown hair, eyes the color of an overcast sky.

  “What’s he saying?” Alan asked.

  “Same thing they all say. ‘I didn’t do it.’”

  Weathers was straight and to the point, using only as many words as were necessary to get his point across. Alan respected that trait and wondered if the man shared similar philosophies to Gant.

  He laid out the entire story in two minutes flat. “Pretty far-fetched if you ask me,” Weathers said as he finished recounting Sitka’s story. “And I’ve heard some real doozies.”

  “That makes two of us,” Alan said. “Mind if I take a stab at it?”

  “All yours.”

  Defries opened the door to the interrogation room and closed it after Alan had stepped inside. Upon entering, Alan gave Sitka an amicable nod and sat down in the empty chair. He removed a digital recorder from his pocket, placed it at the center of the table and hit the record button.

  “Mr. Sitka, my name is Special Agent Alan Lamb from the Genetic Crimes Bureau.”

  Without prompting, Sitka leaned forward, elbows on the table, and in the calmest voice he could muster, said, “Listen, I’ve been over this a dozen times now. I didn’t do it. I don’t know what you people don’t understand about that. That person in the security footage…it isn’t me. Now, when are you going to release me?”

  Sitka meant for that last question to sound more like a demand, but Alan could tell that the man was scared out of his wits. It wasn’t so much a question as it was panic spoken aloud, wondering if he would ever be allowed to leave or whether he would spend the remainder of his days taking dumps on a metal toilet while his cellmate watched.

  It hadn’t been more than thirty seconds since Alan had taken a seat across from the man, but it was enough time for him to ascertain that Sitka was telling the truth.

  Or at least he thinks he is.