Prince of Thieves

by Chuck Hogan

  "He was cuffed to the chair." Dino held up an evidence bag containing a snipped plastic bundling tie, the kind with locking teeth. "Cracked his jaw, maybe his cheekbone, the bones around the eye."

  Frawley nodded, the odor at its most pungent there. Bleach effectively fragged DNA. Criminalists at the FBI lab used it to blitz their work surfaces clean, to avoid any evidentiary cross-contamination. Pouring bleach was something he had heard of rapists doing, fouling genetic matter left on the victim, but never bank robbers. "Bleach, huh?"

  "A little extreme. But camping out here overnight, you can never be too careful."

  "They sure don't want to get caught. These guys must be facing a long fall." Frawley slid his beeper to his hip and crouched behind the third teller's cage, noticing blond crumbs on the paling carpet, partially melted by the bleach. "They sat here and had a picnic."

  Dino crouched with him, his mechanical pencil tucked behind a hairy ear. "Gets hungry on a job, Frawl. I told you, these are blue-collar bandits. Boiled eggs and thermos coffee. The Brown Bag Bandits."

  Dino stood again while Frawley remained on his haunches, imagining the bandits hanging out there as the sun came up, the bank theirs. He rose and looked through the teller's cage to the windows along the front of the building, the square outside. He had a vague memory of passing through it the day before-- a sense of entering the home stretch, his legs burning, the crowd cheering him on. "Marathon runs right by here?"

  "Holy shit, Frawl, I forgot. Look at you. Twenty-six point two miles and you're up and around like nothing happened."

  Frawley returned his beeper to the front of his belt. "Broke three and a half hours," he said. "I'm happy with that."

  "Well, congratulations, you loose screw. That is one lonely sport you got there. What is it you think about the whole time?"

  "Finishing," Frawley said, now looking at the lockbox open on the back counter. "So the eye doctor was closed all day."

  "Top-floor gym was too, but some employees got together to watch the race-- picture windows, good view up there. They were out by six. Traffic control ends around eight at night outside, even with runners still stumbling in. Our guys didn't need more than a few hours to load in, punch their hole, and drop down."

  "Young guys. Lowering themselves through a two-by-two hole in the ceiling."

  "Not the old masters, no. The older generation-- lockpicks, plumbers-- they'd need a bed to land on."

  "How'd they access the building?"

  "Another rear door. Separate entrance for the shops upstairs."

  "Exterior security cameras?"

  "Not for the bank. But we'll check. Though if it's our guys-- "

  "Yeah, they'll already have been busted." Frawley put his hands on his hips, his thighs and calves still stinging. "So what's your call?"

  "Early call?" Dino sucked in a breath and joined Frawley in looking around. "It's a good pick here. The holiday, the hundredth running of the marathon. Nice weather, a square full of hungry race fans. The bookstore, clothing stores across the street-- though they're mostly credit-card transactions. But the convenience store, the McDonald's, that Espresso Royale coffee thing. Plus the Sox are in town, that ups the neighborhood restaurant and bar cash big time, over three days. Plus-- Jesus-- the nightclubs on Landsdowne Street. Their combined Saturday-Sunday takes?" Dino worked his tongue around the inside of his cheek. "I'm gonna go large here. With the vault, the night deposits, the ATM? Put me down for three and a quarter. Plus or minus ten percent, yeah, I'd say a good three and a quarter."

  "I'm going three-five," said Frawley, turning toward the open vault. "Fuck, I want these guys."

  * * *

  FRAWLEY NEEDED THE VAULT. The vault was his vic. Not the corporation that owned the bank, not the federal government that insured it and employed him. The vault: emptied and plaintive and violated. He needed the vault in the same way that homicide detectives generate sympathy for the corpse to fuel their hunt.

  The safe-deposit room had not been touched. Drilling each individual box demanded a blind man's patience and a lottery player's devotion, a hundred-to-one gamble on finding anything of value that wasn't insured and traceable.

  He moved through the open interior door into a well-maintained cash hold. Frawley sometimes found tellers' jackets and umbrellas hanging inside vaults. He had seen vaults used as break rooms.

  Fingerprint dust coated the cabinets and doors. Only traveler's checks, scores of torn, color-coded paper straps, and the manager's tally sheets remained inside the forced cabinet. Frawley tried to shut the bent door with his elbow, the hinges whining as it crept open again.

  Six rigid bundles of cash had been set aside, left behind in a small, neat pile over the cash drawers. Frawley cracked open one of the short stacks of retired bills, finding a dye pack nestled in the hollow. He recognized the SecurityPac brand. Dye packs worked when removed from the bank's premises, triggered by electronic transmitters hidden near the doors. The device was timed to delay detonation for twenty or more seconds, the pack burning at 400(r) Fahrenheit, too hot for the thief to grab and throw. It released an aerosol cloud of indelible red dye powder that turned note-passers into human smoke bombs, voiding currency and staining human skin for days. Less well-known was that many dye packs also emitted a small burst of incapacitating tear gas.

  He examined the drawers without touching them, empty but for the bait bills clipped together in the bottom of each slot. Bait bills were $10 or $20 notes whose denominations, series years, and serial numbers were recorded and kept on file by the bank, per federal deposit insurance regulations. This established a paper trail linking a suspect and the cash in his pocket to the crime scene.

  Many bait bills also contained a tracer in the form of a thin magnetic strip that, once removed from the drawer, triggered a silent alarm signal to police dispatch. Known as B-packs, these particular bait bills acted like tracking bugs, the same way a LoJack device works in a stolen automobile. Many counter-jumpers, arrested at their home hours after what seemed to be a successful $1,200 job, never learned until their court date how it was that the FBI fingered them.

  With no carpet to absorb it, the bleach odor was dizzyingly potent, but Frawley remained inside as long as he could. He wished that the vault could beg him for justice. That it was someone whose hand he could take in a gesture of reassurance, offering a covenant, cop to vic. Then he wouldn't have to bring so much to these empty repositories himself.

  * * *

  THE TECHNICIAN SWABBED THE insides of the branch manager's cheeks, collecting elimination DNA along with her fingerprints while Frawley made a copy of the manager's contact sheet on the bank's Xerox machine.

  Claire G. Keesey. DOB 4/16/66. Frawley looked again and realized that today was her thirtieth birthday.

  Dino wanted a look upstairs, leaving Frawley to do the interview solo. She was wiping ink from her fingers as Frawley introduced himself, making their perfunctory handshake awkward. He had snagged her a Poland Spring, which she thanked him for, uncapping it and sipping a little before setting the bottle down on the table beside them, next to an empty Diet Coke.

  Frawley sat in the corner with her facing him, so that the police passing outside the door would not distract her. The bleach odor was only mild here. She shifted in her seat, making herself ready for the interview, smiling a little, uncertain. She rubbed her stained hands together in her lap as though chilled. Her arms were long and bare.

  "No jacket today?" said Frawley.

  "Someone took it," she said, looking back at the door. "For evidence. They... they cut my blindfold out of it."

  "Would you like...?" He opened his own jacket, and she nodded. He stood and draped it over her shoulders, though as he sat back down, she slipped her arms into the sleeves. The cuffs hung just an inch too long. If he had known a woman would be wearing his jacket that day, he would have chosen a newer one. "And you're sure you're okay, you don't want to go get checked out?"

  "Just stiff," she said.
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  "No bumps, bruises?"

  "No," she said, realizing only then how odd that was.

  Frawley showed her his microcassette recorder, then turned it on and set it on the table. "Ms. Keesey, I want to start with your abduction, then take you back through the robbery itself."

  The word abduction brought a blink and a deep swallow. This trauma had many layers and she was in only two or three deep.

  "It's unusual to see a bank employee kidnapped during an otherwise successful robbery. But it means you spent a fair amount of time in the company of the bandits and perhaps possess some information that can benefit our investigation. I am the local bank robbery coordinator for the FBI, and this is all I do, work bank crimes, so nothing you can tell me is too trivial. Let me also say that if I don't ask a question you want asked, go right ahead and answer it anyway."

  "Then, if I could... no one's been able to tell me about Davis."

  "The assistant manager?" said Frawley. "He's being checked out at the hospital, but he's going to be okay. He's hurt, but he's going to make it. That's what you wanted to know?"

  She nodded and rubbed her cheek with her hand, the dried stain leaving no exchange.

  "You saw them beat him?" said Frawley.

  She looked down and nodded.

  "It was brutal," he said.

  "I didn't... I looked away."

  "Now I'm assuming these bandits threatened you upon your release. Told you not to cooperate in any way with the police, the FBI, correct?"

  "Yes."

  "Okay. And could you detail the exact nature of that threat for me?"

  "It was after they stopped. One of the ones in front-- he was the same one with me at the vault-- he had my handbag."

  "Okay, hold on. Now, you were blindfolded for the entire ride, no?"

  "Oh-- yes, he shook it. My big Coach bag-- I know the sound of my things. He unsnapped my purse, told me he was pulling out my driver's license. He read it to me. Said he was keeping it."

  "In his words, if you can remember them?"

  She crooked her head, looking down, repeating them quietly. " 'If you tell the FBI anything about us, we will come back for you and fuck you and kill you.' "

  "Okay," said Frawley, pretending to write that down, coming back up with a neutral smile. "Of course, intimidation is a bank bandit's stock-in-trade. What I can tell you is, they have their money, they think they have gotten away, and I can assure you they want no more involvement in this investigation. No way they would risk exposing themselves now."

  "I... all right."

  He had her take him slowly from the bank into the getaway vehicle. "You're sure it was a van?"

  "Yes. That van-sound of the doors. The bouncing as it drove."

  "Do you remember seeing a van outside when you arrived at work this morning?"

  She winced, shaking her head. "I don't know. A white one, maybe?"

  She took him through the drive. "You couldn't see anything out of the blindfold? Not even at the very bottom?"

  "Sometimes a narrow strip of light. My lap against the seat. The seat was white, or cream."

  "Any sensation of light passing? Windows in the back where you were?"

  "I... no. I can't say. I don't remember."

  "It was a passenger van."

  "I guess. Yes."

  "You're not certain."

  "I don't know what a 'passenger van' is. If that's a minivan, then, yes, I'm certain. We went skiing up in Maine last winter-- myself, some friends-- and I rented the van. It was a Villager, I remember, because that's a strange name for a car, and we called ourselves the Villager People. I don't know if this was that, but it was like that."

  "Okay, good. Like that how?"

  "Two separate seats up front. The middle bench I was in. Another bench behind." She winced again. "I'm bringing too much to it, maybe. At least, this is how I see it in my mind."

  "That's fine." He wanted to encourage her without flattering her, keeping her account honest. "Where were you sitting?"

  "The middle bench. Yes, the middle."

  "How many sat there with you?"

  "Just one."

  "To your...?"

  "My right."

  "On the door side. You were against the wall. And you don't think there were any windows there. How many in front?"

  "Two men in front."

  "Anyone behind?"

  "Yes."

  "Two men in front, one next to you, and one behind."

  "I think... yes."

  "And they didn't have their masks on in the van."

  "But I don't know how I know that for sure. Maybe I don't know that."

  Frawley chided himself for focusing on the van. The van was going to turn up torched. "How did they communicate? Did they speak much?"

  "Very little. 'Right.' 'Left.' 'No.' 'Yes.' Like that." She looked up at him. "That's how I know they didn't have their masks on."

  "By their voices."

  "They were so beastly in the bank, with them on. So distorted and... not even human. Like monsters. Can I... should I talk about the masks?"

  "Go ahead."

  "They were all the same. Like Jason, like Friday the 13th."

  "You mean hockey masks."

  "Yes, but-- with these scars drawn all over them. Black stitches."

  "Stitches?" said Frawley.

  "Like hash marks. Sutures." There was fear in her distant gaze. "Why do that? Why scars?"

  Frawley shook his head. It was a strange detail and his investigation welcomed strange details. "So they didn't speak much in the van."

  She was reluctant to return there. "No."

  "Did they seem to know where they were going?"

  "Maybe, yes."

  "Did they tell you where you were going?"

  "No."

  "Did they tell you you were going to be released?"

  "No."

  "Did you think you were going to be released?"

  "I..." She stared into the middle distance, almost in a trance. "No."

  "Did the van make stops?"

  "It did."

  "What for?"

  "Traffic, I guess."

  "Okay. No doors opened, no one in or out?"

  "No."

  "And you never tried to escape?"

  A blink. "No."

  "Were you ever on a highway?"

  "Yes. For a while."

  "Were you wearing a seat belt?"

  She touched her lap, aiding her memory. "Yes." Then, green eyes focusing on him: "I didn't try to escape because they had guns."

  "Okay." Wanting not to break the spell. "You asked them no questions?"

  She shook her head.

  "And they never addressed you?"

  "No."

  "Nothing was said. Basically they left you alone in the backseat."

  "The middle seat."

  "Right."

  "Yes. Except..."

  "Go ahead."

  She was far away again. "The one who was sitting next to me. Not next to me... but in the same seat, the same bench, the two of us. The one who blindfolded me. I could tell somehow... he was looking at me."

  "Looking at you."

  "Not like that. I mean... I don't know. Maybe it was just a feeling."

  "Not like what?"

  "Not like, you know, looking. Just, I don't know. Just there."

  "You had his full attention. And then what?"

  Her eyes swelled in the recalling. "They just drove and drove. Seemed like hours. I guess I have a sort of... it seemed like it went on forever, but now it's like there were whole blocks of time... I'm just blank. I know that at some point I realized we were off the highway, making lots of turns. I was praying they would stop, praying it would be over-- and then all of a sudden they did stop, and all I wanted to do was keep on driving. The engine was still running but I could tell the ride was over. That's when they shook my Coach bag." She found Frawley's face. "My credit cards, my car keys...?"

  "If they turn up, you'll get
them back. The one in the seat next to you, he made the threat?"

  "No. No, the voice came from in front of me, the angry one. The one who took me to the vault." She pulled at her stained fingers. "I had trouble with the combination."