by KJ Kalis
Pushing the thoughts of Charlie and work out of her mind, Jess tried to calm herself. She stuffed her phone back in her pocket. She’d have to deal with Charlie later. If he didn’t understand why she couldn’t make the presentation because her niece had been abducted, then so be it. She’d let the cards fall where they would. Abby was the focus until they got things resolved. She couldn’t let Chase down again.
Chase looked up from his computer, stretching his neck left and right, “I think I might be able to fabricate a fake dose for them,” he mumbled, staring back down at his laptop.
Jess’s heart skipped a beat, “Are you sure that’s a good idea? I mean, you said you thought they would probably test whatever you gave them. If they do and they realize it’s not the real deal, they’re going to kill Abby.”
“You’re probably right, but what choice do I have? I have to give them something.”
“Give them the real ABG!” Jess yelled. “What’s the conflict here? Your daughter has been abducted. Go find the samples you have and let’s jot down this formula and get it to these people and get Abby back!” As the words came out of her mouth, Jess felt guilty. She knew giving up the formula and the samples would condemn Chase to life in jail, that was if they were even able to get Abby back. Jess swallowed and held up her hands, “I’m sorry. I shouldn't have said that.”
Before Chase could respond, Jess’s phone rang. It was Saunders. “Hello?”
“Jess, it’s Detective Saunders again. You have a minute?”
“I guess.”
“Listen, I was wondering if you could come back downtown. Now, don’t hang up on me,” he chuckled. “Actually, we found something I think you might want to see. Any chance that might happen?”
By the way he was talking, the words coming out slowly and softly, Jess could tell he needed her to come and meet him but didn’t want to push it. “You mean at the bank?”
“Sure.”
“Okay, I’m sitting in front of the lab. Is that where you and your brother are?”
For a minute, Jess was confused. How did Saunders know they were back at the lab? “Yes. How did you know that?”
“Lucky guess, and I ran the license plate of the only vehicle in the parking lot.” There was a pause, “Will you come down?”
“Sure. Give me a minute.”
As Jess hung up from the call, she stared at Chase. He hadn’t moved. There was information on his screen that Jess couldn’t decipher. “Listen, that was Detective Saunders. He found something at the bank he wants me to look at. He’s waiting for me out front. Let me know if you hear anything else, okay?”
“Okay.”
As Jess turned and walked away from Chase, she had a sinking feeling. She wasn’t exactly sure that leaving Chase alone in the lab was the smartest plan, but what choice did she have?
Jess stepped out of the elevator and trotted to the doors, giving a wave to Sully as she ran by, “See you later,” he called behind her. Out in the bright sunshine, Jess saw the navy-blue car that Detective Saunders drove right by the front door. As she approached, he got out, leaning his forearms across the top of the car. “Thanks for coming down.”
Jess slid into the car on the passenger side and fastened her seatbelt. Detective Saunders must’ve been driving for a while because the air conditioning was blowing strong and cool. As she settled into her seat, she felt butterflies gathering in her stomach. “What did you find at the bank?” she said, as Detective Saunders put the vehicle into gear. For a moment, she wondered if he’d found Abby’s body and wouldn’t tell her on the phone. “It’s not Abby, is it?”
He glanced at her as he pulled out of the industrial park, “No, nothing like that. It’s just that sometimes these cases take time to evolve after something happens. You know, we go in all lights and sirens making sure everybody’s safe and secure. After that, the real work begins.”
“And that real work helped you find something?”
“It did. It’s nothing big, but I thought you might want to see it for yourself.” The police radio in the car chirped some information about a traffic stop somewhere else in Tucson that interrupted their conversation. Detective Saunders glanced over at Jess and said, “How are you holding up?”
The fact that someone was concerned about her well-being took Jess off guard. She was used to being strong, toughing things out. She’d had to learn to be that way after she lost her parents. Jess caught a sharp breath in the back of her throat, “I’m okay, I guess.”
“You know, it’s okay if you’re not. You were part of the bank robbery this morning, too.”
Jess was surprised at how compassionate he was being toward her. She choked out the words, “But Abby…”
Detective Saunders glanced at her, his eyes soft, and nodded, “I know. I know you’re worried about your niece. We all are. Have you heard from the kidnappers yet?”
The question hung in the air. No one knew about the call from the kidnappers except for Jess, Chase and Piper. The kidnappers had been very clear not to involve the police or tell them or they would kill Abby immediately. Based on what she just saw that morning, she took their threat seriously, not to mention if she told Saunders about the call, that would open the door to having to explain about ABG, which she couldn’t do. Jess swallowed, “No, nothing yet. I’m hoping maybe they drop her off somewhere and she can get to a phone and call us.” Jess stared and looked out the window, hoping the detective didn’t pick up the fact that she was lying through her teeth.
“I really hope that’s the case.”
Jess looked at Saunders as he drove. He didn’t look any more excited about the drive to the bank than he might have looked going to the grocery store. Staring at his finger, Jess didn’t see a ring. “Do you have a family, Detective?”
Saunders glanced at her and then turned back to the road. “I don’t have any kids, if that’s what you’re asking me. Never been married. I have a couple of nephews, but with my job, I don’t get to see them very often.”
Jess turned toward the window, watching the desert pass along the side of the car, dotted with stores and homes here and there. “I don’t get to see Abby much, either.”
“That must have made today really hard.”
“It did…”
Saunders must have sensed that Jess needed to talk about anything else than Abby. “That baseball field right over there,” he pointed, “That’s where I play softball with some of the guys from work a couple nights a week.”
Jess tried to smile. “What’s the name of your team?”
“The Rockets.”
“Not very original.”
“I know. We were trying to decide what to call ourselves late one night after a few too many beers at the Shiny Cactus. No one had any better ideas, so that was it. Have you ever been there?”
Jess shook her head no, “I know where it is, but no, I haven’t been there.” She turned back to the window, not wanting to talk anymore.
As Jess and Detective Saunders got closer to the crime scene, she could see that the area was still largely barricaded. It’d only been a few hours since the robbery happened, after all, so it made sense in her mind. The block around the diner and bank were still cordoned off, though there were no more ambulances or firetrucks sitting outside of the bank. Detective Saunders pulled the car up behind a line of other Tucson Police Department cruisers, blocking them in. As he put the car into park, he glanced at Jess, “Let’s go.”
When Jess pulled on the door handle and cracked it open, she could hear the murmur of people talking in low voices all around her. The law enforcement personnel at the scene seemed to have paired off in twos and threes, some of them conferring over tablets, looking serious, and others standing off to the side with what Jess guessed were cups of coffee in their hands, smiles on their faces as if they were sharing stories of their child’s baseball game from the night before or the concert they were planning on attending that weekend. The contrast was startling. A little bit of bile r
ose in the back of Jess’s throat. Did they know a child had gone missing? Why were they smiling? Jess pushed the thought out of her head and turned to look at Detective Saunders. He was waiting for her, standing in front of the car. “You okay?”
“Yes. I’m sorry. Just got distracted.”
“This way,” he said tilting his head in the direction of the bank.
As Jess followed him down the sidewalk, she caught a glimpse of herself in the reflection of one of the windows of the businesses nearby. Her dark, shoulder length hair was pushed behind one ear, the light blue striped shirt she’d put on that morning pulled out on one side and tucked in on the other. She looked disheveled. She felt disheveled. As they walked, she tugged her shirt down back into place and tried to stand up a little straighter. It didn’t make any difference. Abby was still gone.
Outside the bank, the doors were propped open, both the first set that led outside and the inner set that people passed through in order to get into the lobby. Jess stopped just inside the door, staring at what had been a normal place of business just a few hours before. A memory from before the robbery flashed before her eyes, the small clusters of people at the teller’s counter, a bank employee smiling and waving goodbye to a family that was in front of them in line, the manager, hunched over his desk, staring at a computer screen…
Everything was different now.
People wearing FBI T-shirts and gloves roamed around the space. Some of them were kneeling, taking pictures of minute objects, others were interviewing bank employees. Jess saw the bank manager, his head in his hands, sitting at his desk with an FBI agent and another police officer standing over him, asking him questions. Off to her right, there were discarded medical gloves and a couple small pieces of medical tape on the ground left behind from where the paramedics had raced in to care for the woman who’d had the heart attack during the robbery. Near the doors on her left-hand side, there was a piece of duct tape and two discarded hoods wrinkled on the floor. Jess shivered, thinking about what it felt like to not be able to see or speak and having no idea what was going on around her.
Jess felt a warm hand on her elbow as Detective Saunders pulled her toward the back of the bank, glancing at her, his voice in a whisper, “This way.” They passed a couple smaller groups of people working, then rounded the corner into a small hallway that led to what looked like the vault. Jess stopped for a second, staring at what she saw in front of her. The vault door looked exactly like something she would’ve imagined out of a movie — tall and round and at least three feet thick, with large rotating handles on the outside of the door. Inside, there were shelves where money and papers were stacked, but no safety deposit boxes. As Jess thought about it, it made sense. The bank personnel wouldn’t want people off the street accessing their safety deposit box in front of millions of dollars. Too tempting. Too many opportunities for loss or error. Banks survived on not making those. Detective Saunders led her inside of the vault and then stopped, pointing, “Here. This is what I wanted to show you.”
Jess took a couple steps forward and looked to her right. One of the shelving units, filled with stacks of cash carefully wrapped in clear shrink wrap had been moved off to the side. Behind it, near the floor, there was a hole that couldn’t have been more than about two feet in diameter. Jess squinted her eyes a little bit and then looked at Detective Saunders, “You think they got out through here?”
He nodded. “We sent a couple agents through and it comes out on the other side in an abandoned mechanic’s garage. They could have easily concealed their getaway vehicle there as well as using it as a staging area.”
“You think that’s how they got Abby out of the building?”
“I do.”
“I want to see for myself.” Without thinking, Jess bent down and pushed herself through the hole, ignoring Detective Saunders behind her calling to her to come back.
The hole was narrow and dark for the first three or four feet. Jess pulled her phone out of her back pocket and turned on the flashlight so she could see where she was going. She had to scoot along on the ground on her stomach but just ahead, it looked like things changed.
On the other side of the tunnel that had been dug through the vault, the area opened up into something that looked a lot more like a cavern, probably a void between buildings when the area had been built up decades ago. Jess pulled her body to an upright position, brushing the dirt off her shirt and pants. It smelled like a combination of dust and damp. A metal ladder was leaning against the side of what looked to be an opening into a dry sewer line. From living in Arizona for so long, Jess knew that the sewers were only there in case of torrential rains, the desert sand unable to absorb any water at all. It could cause major flooding in no time flat. She stared up. A single work lightbulb with a thin layer of dust covering it glowed from the ceiling. From the looks of it, whoever had done the robbery had been working on the hole into the back of the vault for weeks, if not months. Doing some quick calculations in her head, Jess realized the kind of work they did would have needed jackhammers or other power tools. How no one had heard the commotion was a mystery. Whoever had kidnapped Abby had spent many a long night there working on digging the final hole into the bank vault. It was methodical, patient. Sitting on the edge of the hole with her feet dangling down, Jess realized it didn’t bode well for Abby. Her stomach sank. Her gut, and her experience as an intelligence analyst, told her these were no common thieves. She and Chase and Abby were caught up in something bigger. Much bigger.
From her left side, she heard a grunt. Detective Saunders came wriggling his way through the same hole Jess did. “Just because I wanted to show you the hole didn’t mean I wanted you to go through it.” The words came out with a bit of an edge to them.
Jess couldn’t tell if he was mad, but it didn’t matter whether he was or wasn’t. She didn’t care if he was frustrated or not. He’d invited her to the bank. What did he expect -- that she’d stand around, cry and wring her hands? That’s not who she was. Jess needed to see for herself. “Whoever did this spent a lot of time thinking and planning this out. How much money did they get away with?”
Detective Saunders pushed himself into a seated position, brushing off his jeans, “When the guys said it was a tight hole, they weren’t lying.” He looked at her, “The money? That’s the thing. Best the bank manager can tell, they didn’t take anything at all. Not one penny. They’ve got people from their headquarters coming in to be sure, but that’s the initial thought.”
A pit formed in Jess’s stomach. That could only mean one thing, she realized. They targeted Abby and didn’t want to get more than a kidnapping pinned on them if they got caught. It was as plain and simple as day. They were mitigating the situation the entire time. The whole thing had been a set up. Or maybe it wasn’t…
Sitting in the dark, Jess realized the robbers had no way of knowing Abby would be with her today. They could fairly assume that Jess would show up at the bank with the fake paperwork she was supposed to drop off — after all, that was the only explanation for the strange request with a tight deadline. But when Abby showed up and they figured out who she was, that must’ve made more sense to them then grabbing Jess. A wave of nausea rolled over her. If they were this well-planned and this well-rehearsed, there was no telling what they would do to get what they wanted. And that was the ABG.
“I want to see the rest of it,” Jess said, putting her foot on one of the rungs of the ladder. Not waiting for permission, she climbed down into a dry culvert that had to be eight feet in diameter. It was almost big enough to drive an ATV through, she realized, wondering if that’s how they got the power tools they needed to the back of the bank in order to break through the wall behind the vault.
“If you want to see the rest of it, the FBI agents told me it’s just straight down this culvert and up the ladder at the other end. Fairly simple. But listen, you can’t touch anything when we get to the other side. You’ll contaminate the crime scene. The FBI will fre
ak out.”
“You can take my fingerprints so you can exclude me if you want.” Before Detective Saunders could answer, Jess took off at a quick walk, still using the flashlight from her cell phone, although the robbers had taken the time to string more work lights the entire distance, or maybe the FBI had, Jess wasn’t sure. Each step on the metal culvert made a hollow, ringing sound that echoed off the walls. On the edges, Jess saw a few pieces of debris -- an old soda can, a single shoe, a tennis ball black with mold. For a second, she was surprised that the detective didn’t argue with her about seeing the rest of the crime scene. That couldn’t be standard operating procedure, she realized.
A minute later, Jess saw the other ladder. It matched the first one just outside the bank. She crawled up the rungs and found herself in exactly what Detective Saunders had described — a mechanic’s garage. There were tools on one of the walls on the side and a car lift on the other, the kind used to do oil changes and change tires. In between, there was a large space, big enough to park two or three other cars. Jess heard Detective Saunders climb out of the hole behind her. “Where is this place?”
“We’re in an old, abandoned garage about a block from the bank. The FBI pulled the records already and it went out of business two or three years ago and then was bought about six months ago by another company, but they haven’t done anything with it.
Jess was immediately suspicious, “A shell company?”
Detective Saunders cocked his head to the side, “Why would you say that?”
“It’s just something I see at work a lot.”
“Oh really? And what kind of work do you do?”
Jess wanted to answer his question but not give him too much information. “I do research for a think tank based out of Washington. No big deal. Just organizational stuff.” The idea that a shell company would purchase a property they could use for their own purposes was nothing new in Jess’s business. It was normal. Standard even. A few years back, Jess had spent three months trying to track down all of the shell corporations and aliases for a grassroots movement on US soil that looked like it could be troublesome over time. Criminals were getting better and better about hiding their identity. Some people thought that technology made everything transparent. In Jess’s world, it just made everything even more murky.