by Lis Wiehl
“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 with 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.
Allison and Nicole looked at each other, wide-eyed.
“Why would someone pull a trigger with his middle finger?” Allison squinted at the screen. “It certainly wouldn’t come naturally.”
Leif held out his hand and moved his index and then his middle finger experimentally. “It looks like there’s something wrong with his index finger.”
“That might be enough for us to find the second man,” Nicole said. “And if we can find him, then we can find the man who murdered Cassidy and Lindsay.”
CHAPTER 32
At three in the morning Ophelia got up to use the bathroom. Padding down the hall, she heard hitching breaths coming from behind the guest room door. Allison. Quietly sobbing.
Should she ignore it? But that seemed cruel. However, she wasn’t certain how to respond. Finally she went to the bathroom and then came back to Allison’s door with a pill bottle in her hand. She knocked softly.
The sounds stopped. Ophelia wondered if Allison would simply sit in silence until she eventually went away. It was how she herself might act, but she wasn’t a neurotypical.
Finally, just as Ophelia was turning to go back to her room, Allison called softly, “Come in.”
She was sitting on the end of the bed, the sheets twisted and tangled behind her. Only now did Ophelia realize she should have offered her some different clothing to sleep in. As her pupils adjusted to light, she could see that Allison’s eyes were swollen from weeping.
“Would you like a sleeping pill?” She held out the bottle. She used them herself on the nights she woke from nightmares about her stepfather.
“No.” Allison shook her head. “I’ll be okay.” Her voice was not at all convincing.
“I have a pill cutter,” Ophelia offered. “You could try just taking half.”
Allison put one hand across her belly. “I don’t think I should.”
Ophelia had forgotten about the baby. The thought of being pregnant had always unnerved her. Something with a life of its own growing inside you? It reminded her too much of the sci-fi movie Alien, the look of horror on that one character’s face as the monster burst from his abdominal cavity.
What would a neurotypical do in this situation? She steeled herself. “Would a hug help?”
Allison was silent for a long moment. Ophelia was just beginning to relax when she answered. “Yes, I think it would.”
Ophelia sat down, turned toward her, and slowly reached out, tentatively putting her hands on the other woman’s shoulder blades. Suddenly she was locked in a tight embrace, with Allison’s warm, wet face on her neck. Ophelia stiffened, although she tried not to show it.
“I just can’t believe she’s gone,” Allison mumbled. “My little sister. And she died because of me.”
Ophelia pulled back until she could see the other woman’s face, contorted with grief.
“Not because of you.” It wasn’t logical to blame oneself for someone else’s deeds. “It’s because an evil man decided to target you.”
“So? I’m the one who chose to be a prosecutor. I’m the one who put myself in daily contact with criminals. I’m the one who made myself a target.”
“From what I understand, your sister used to have a much more risky lifestyle than you have ever had,” Ophelia said reasonably. “And if it weren’t for people like you, even more criminals would be out on the street. You do good things, Allison. It’s not your fault that other people choose to do evil.”
“I know you’re right.” Allison took a shaky breath. “I know that. I can’t let my emotions get the better of me. Not when we’re so close to catching this guy.”
“You can’t change the past.” Ophelia spoke from personal experience. “No matter how much you might wish that things had been different, you can’t go back. All you can do is go forward. And maybe try to make things better for the future.”
“Thank you.” Allison squeezed her hand, then, to Ophelia’s relief, released it. The two women sat side by side in silence for several more minutes, until Ophelia judged it would be okay to return to her room.
In the morning the house was silent, the door to the guest room closed. Ophelia could almost pretend it was a normal day, one she would spend quietly in her office, with the occasional cat jumping on her lap or desk.
She began writing a computer program that she could send slipping through back doors to examine and compare online databases. While it would leave no trace and alter nothing, it might give her the information they needed to catch the man who had killed Cassidy Shaw and Lindsay Mitchell.
First she generated a list of the 356 people whose crimes had been investigated by Nicole and prosecuted by Allison. Since every witness had reported the suspect as male, the next step was eliminating the 59 convicted female felons from the list. She identified 6 men who had died since they had been sentenced.
Next she looked for inmates who had already served their time, and who would thus be free to cause mischief. That was still a substantial number: 78. And of course she couldn’t be sure that the killer wasn’t someone acting on another criminal’s behalf.
But if he was one of the 78, it would help to have the name of the man with the damaged finger. Then she would be able to create a list of men who had been investigated by Nicole, prosecuted by Allison, and incarcerated with the man with the damaged finger. Her working hypothesis was that the killer and the second bank robber had met in prison. Once she had the name of the second man, she could start work on proving—or disproving—the hypothesis.
Ophelia worked until lunch, when she ate what she always did—a peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich on whole wheat bread, accompanied by a banana. It was healthy and filling, and she saw no need to vary it. After some thought, she made a second sandwich and covered it with plastic wrap.
Despite the near constant whoosh of the central air-conditioning, the air inside the house felt heavy and muggy. In Oregon, so much humidity meant only one thing: a storm was coming. The three cats—Maizy, Amber, and Cinders—sprawled on different platforms of their cat tree, lazy in the heat.
Ophelia was just finishing the last bite of her sandwich when Allison walked into the dining room.
“Good morn—” Ophelia looked at her watch. “Good afternoon. I figured you needed your sleep.”
“Thanks.” Allison’s eyes were so shadowed they looked bruised. “Thanks for letting me sleep. And thanks for talking to me last night. I was just feeling so overwhelmed.”
Ophelia’s cell phone rang, sav
ing her from another awkward discussion of Allison’s feelings. It was Nicole, calling with a possible match for the bank robber with a damaged finger: a recently released con named Denny Elliot.
And the news got even better. Not only had Elliot just gotten out of prison for bank robbery, but they had his cell phone number and should be able to figure out where he was through either cell phone tower triangulation or, if it was a more modern phone, GPS. And with luck, where Elliot was, there would the killer be also.
But of course they couldn’t count on that. Ophelia wrote a new program that compared where Elliot had been imprisoned with the incarceration records of the 78 former prisoners she had previously identified. That cut the number down somewhat, but 33 people were still too many to consider them all viable suspects.
She needed a new angle. She went back into the dining room, where Allison sat with her sandwich. She had taken only a single bite. Ophelia hoped she wasn’t allergic to peanut butter. She should have asked.
“Would you like something different to eat?” she said.
“What?” Allison gave her head a little shake, as if she had been someplace far away. “Oh no, I’m fine. I’m just not very hungry.”
“Oh. Okay. So, I’ve got it down to 33 possibilities from 356. All of them are men sentenced in cases that involved you and Nicole and who are currently out of prison.”
“Wow—that’s pretty impressive.”
Ophelia felt a warm glow of pride. “It still is higher than I would like. I was wondering if you remembered anyone who particularly threatened you and Nicole during their case.”
“We get a lot of dirty looks,” Allison said, “but threats are pretty rare. People usually manage to hold it together. There are only two people I can think of: Doug Halvorsen and this guy named MT Young. Both of them had to be removed by the U.S. marshals because they wouldn’t stop screaming at us. The Young guy even made a run at us, but he got tackled.”