Outsourced

17

Carol gave her husband a concerned look when she saw him. “What happened to your face?” she asked.

Dan ran a hand lightly across his jaw. “Shrini made lentils with green curry for lunch. I got some sort of allergic reaction from it.”

Thin lines creased Carol’s brow as she moved closer to him. “That’s funny,” she said, her eyes narrowing, studying the pattern that the rash made. “You’ve had Indian food before without having any reaction. And this rash seems so isolated, mostly on your nose and jaw.”

“I guess it’s just one of those things.” He waved a hand in the air as if that would wave the issue away. “I am so damn beat right now. I’m going upstairs to take a nap.”

She was still frowning as she nodded to him. “Dinner will be ready soon. I’ll let you know when the food’s on the table. Oh, I almost forgot, Gordon called.”

For a second Dan felt as if his heart had turned to slush. Barely under control, he asked Carol what time that was.

“Right after you left this morning.”

“Did he say anything?”

“Only that he wanted to talk to you.”

“I’ll call him back after I take a nap,” he said.

As he walked up the stairs, he really did feel exhausted. All he wanted to do was lie down on the bed and close his eyes. Just hide someplace dark. When he got to the bedroom, he pulled the window shades down, then collapsed on to the bed. Lying there, he thought about all the lies he’d been telling Carol. Before this robbery business he had never lied to her. Not once. Now he was telling her one lie after another. At first, he had felt guilty about it, maybe even remorseful. Now he felt almost nothing. It was amazing to him how easy the lying was becoming.

He was drifting off when the lights turned on. He saw Carol moving towards him, her face flushed with excitement.

“You won’t believe what’s on the news,” she said, breathless.

Dan pushed himself up and sat helplessly as Carol turned on the television set. The top story was about the bank robbery. When they showed a high-school graduation picture of Margaret Williams, all Dan wanted to do was slink off into some dark corner and die. According to the report, the other woman, the one shot in the stomach, was in intensive care and the doctors weren’t sure yet whether she was going to make it. “We’ll know more in the next forty-eight hours,” one of the doctors was saying. The story seemed to go on forever. Dan sat there dreading what was going to come next, praying that they wouldn’t show a photo of Gordon. When they came to report on the dead man found outside the bank, they described him as being in his early sixties, wearing a Grateful Dead T-shirt and shorts. Police were working on the assumption that the robbers killed him either for his car or because he might’ve seen something. Instead of showing a photo of Gordon’s corpse, the news aired a police drawing of what the dead man would’ve looked like if he were alive. They asked for anyone with information about him to contact the Lynn Police. Carol gasped when she saw the drawing.

“Do you know who that looks like?” she asked.

Dan could feel himself shaking his head.

“I swear that could be Gordon. And that Grateful Dead T-shirt-”

“Come on,” Dan half heard himself saying, “a lot of guys wear those types of T-shirts. And that doesn’t look at all like Gordon. Jesus Christ, that’s a drawing of an old man.”

“It looks a lot like Gordon to me,” she said. “Go ahead, call him, see if he’s home.”

“I’ll call him later.”

“I’m telling you, that’s him. If you don’t try calling him, I’m going to.”

Dan picked up the phone and dialed a movie phone line. He waited until he got the recorded message as to what was now playing, pretended to leave a message for Gordon, and hung up. All the while, Carol watched, anxiously pulling at her fingers.

“He’s not home right now,” Dan said. “But that doesn’t mean anything. He’s always out. Who knows, he could be on his way to the Jersey Shore right now.”

“I’m going to call the police,” Carol said. “I’m sure that’s him.”

Dan stopped her as she reached for the phone. “Come on, you know how Gordon is. If you send the police to his apartment, the guy will get weird on me and probably never want to talk to me again.”

“You’re saying that as if it’s a bad thing,” Carol said, only half-joking.

“Gordon’s not that bad.”

“He’s very strange. Most of the time when he’s talking to me, I don’t know what he’s saying.” Carol shook her head. “I wonder what he was doing at that bank.”

“How can you be so sure that’s him? From that one police drawing?”

“I really think it’s him,” she said, but some doubt had edged into her voice. She hesitated for a moment, her mouth opening slightly. “When I was watching the news downstairs, they mentioned something about the bank’s security system not working. Isn’t that what you built for them?”

“I architected the system, I didn’t build it. If they had let me code it instead of farming the coding out, I bet you it would have worked today.”

“You don’t think the system not working was because of a mistake you might have made?”

“No, I don’t. What’s wrong – you’re worried no one’s going to want to hire me after this?”

Carol tried to smile, but it faded fast. “I guess I’m worried about everything these days. It just doesn’t sound like a very good endorsement having a bank security system you built-”

“Architected,” Dan corrected.

“Okay – architected – being broken into. Maybe you should remove that last contract from your resume?”

“Probably not a bad idea,” Dan agreed.

“Do you think they could try suing you?” Carol asked, her face now racked with worry.

“I’m sure my design was sound. If there are any problems with that system, it must be in the implementation. But that’s what you get when all you care about is price and you have the software developed by the lowest bidder. Don’t worry about this, okay?”

“I’ll try not to. This whole thing is just so freaky. Especially that drawing looking so much like Gordon.”

Dan tried to make an innocuous comment. Standing up, he felt as if all his strength had bled out of him leaving him sluggish, like he had a bad flu. On their way downstairs, Carol knocked on both kids’ doors, telling them to come down for dinner. While they sat at the table together, Dan couldn’t look at his children and couldn’t stand the thought of them looking at him. He could barely lift his head enough to look past his plate. After the robbery, he had been mostly in shock. Now, the full magnitude of the events was hitting him.

Two people dead, another critically wounded, and it was his fault. Gordon, that young girl, both lying in a morgue now because of him. Because of him…

What did I do? he thought. Jesus Christ, what the fuck did I do?

Carol was telling the kids about the bank robbery, about how it was the same bank Dan had worked at only a month earlier. As she talked, he involuntarily shrunk inwards, as if her words were blows that he needed to protect himself against.

“Wow,” Gary said, “Dad, what would you have done if you were there today and a bunch of guys came in with guns?”

He could feel Gary’s eyes boring into him. Sitting there he felt dirty, diseased, as if he were contaminating his wife and children. He couldn’t stand it.

What the fuck did I do to myself? To them? What in the world did I do to them?

“I don’t know,” he said, his words catching in his throat.

Susie was now asking about the robbery. How could he just sit there and listen to them talk about it? How in the world could he possibly do that?

He pushed his chair away from the table.

“I’m not feeling well,” he told Carol. “I’m going upstairs to lie down.”

His wife’s brow furrowed the way it did whenever she was surprised. “Do you want me to bring you up the rest of your dinner?” she asked after a short hesitation.

“No, that’s okay, I really don’t have any appetite.”

He caught a glimpse of their faces as he turned from them. Carol showed mostly a mix of worry and confusion, maybe even a bit of the brittleness he had seen flashes of before. Susie was staring straight ahead, her features now pinched and angry. Even Gary seemed taken aback.

Jesus Christ, even without trying he was hurting them…

Moving slowly, he left the room and headed towards the staircase. His legs cold, dead, almost as if they were disconnected from his body. Looking up the stairs, he didn’t know how he was going to make it, but he had no choice. He needed to lie down and figure out a way to convince himself that things were going to be okay.

Captain Kenneth Hadley’s pale blue eyes did not look happy as Resnick entered the station. In fact, his soft round face seemed to be sagging under the stress of the day’s events. He indicated with a short wave for Resnick to join him in his office.

After Resnick took a seat across from him, Hadley asked his detective where he had been, his voice showing a touch of exasperation.

“I was getting a statement from Viktor Petrenko.”

“Walt’s been back over two hours.”

“Petrenko can be a tough man to track down.”

“In case you’ve forgotten we have had a bank robbery with two fatalities and another victim lying in intensive care with her stomach mostly gone. I need you working this case. I can’t have you running around on a personal vendetta.”

Resnick shrugged. “We needed to get a statement from Petrenko.”

“That could’ve waited.” He paused. “You didn’t do anything to get yourself or the department in trouble, did you?”

“Me? Of course not. I was very sensitive about his loss, letting him know that we would do everything possible to recover his stolen items.”

Hadley let out a lungful of air, the noise escaping from him in a slow hiss. “What did he have to say?” he asked

“Among other things, his safety deposit boxes were empty at the time of the robbery.”

“So he doesn’t want to tell us what was in them.”

“Probably for a damn good reason.” Resnick edged forward in his seat. “This shook Petrenko up. He’s desperate right now. God knows how much he lost, but probably worse for him, he can’t afford to let us find what was in those boxes. Let’s put him and his people under surveillance for a few days and see where it leads us.”

Hadley blinked several times while he stared dumbfounded at his detective. “Not a chance. We’re short-handed as it is. Every man I can free up is going to be working this bank robbery until it’s solved.”

“You’ve got no imagination, Ken.”

“Maybe not, but what I do have is everyone on my ass until we’ve cleaned up this mess.”

Resnick nodded blankly, realizing the futility of trying to argue. “We should put someone on the bank manager. Unless you want to end up with another dead body on your hands.”

“You think he’s involved?”

“I think Petrenko’s going to think so.”

“What about you?”

“I don’t know. The guys who did this found out Petrenko’s box numbers either from Petrenko himself or from someone inside the bank. I can’t imagine Petrenko letting anyone close enough to get that information from him. And you’ve also got someone in the bank shutting down their security system before the robbery and turning it back on afterwards.”

“You still haven’t answered my question. Is this bank manager involved?”

“Logically, he seems like he’d be the guy, but I don’t know. I couldn’t get a good feel one way or the other. Tom and Phil were still working on him when I left. Have you talked to them yet?”

“They’re still at the bank.” Hadley shook his head slowly, a pained expression washing over his face. “Maguire’s looking at the security videos. Why don’t you go join him? And tomorrow take another crack at this bank manager. I need to know if he’s involved. I need this mess wrapped up before I develop any more ulcers.”

“What about having someone watch over Brown?”

“I’ll take it under advisement.”

Resnick started to get up, stopped. “The body we found outside the bank – do we know who he is yet?”

“Not yet.”

Resnick nodded and left Hadley looking miserable, his pale blue eyes staring off into the distance. He found his partner alone in the video room – a windowless eight by ten foot room with a single VCR and monitor, all that the department could afford. A stack of videotapes lay in front of Maguire, who looked up briefly at Resnick with a sour smile before turning back to the monitor.

“Back from your personal errand, huh? Must be nice.”

“Not quite personal. I tracked down Petrenko for a statement.”

“No kidding? How’d that son of a bitch take the news?”

“Not good.”

“Damn, I wish you had brought me. It would’ve been worth the price of admission seeing his reaction. And I bet you had a hell of a lot more fun than what I’ve been going through.”

Resnick looked away, knowing what his partner was going to tell him.

“Margaret Williams’ parents came down to the station. Hadley, the fucking coward, had me break the news to them. I guess I can be thankful I didn’t have to escort them to the morgue.”

The one part of the job Resnick couldn’t deal with was breaking the news of a child’s death to the parents. At some subconscious level that was a good part of the reason he took off to find Petrenko, and probably also why it took him as long as it did to find Petrenko at that restaurant. Resnick knew if he had been back at the station Hadley would’ve roped him into notifying the dead girl’s parents.

“Must’ve been rough,” Resnick said.

“Yeah, it was, but I guess it’s part of the job, huh? Anyway, while you were off having your fun, I’ve had my nose to the grindstone. And guess what? There’s a surveillance camera covering the cabinet that alarm system is locked away in. I’ve gone through the tapes. No one opened the cabinet from midnight last night until after the bank robbery.”

“The security system could’ve been turned off days ago.”

“Maybe, but watch this.”

Maguire ejected the tape that was in the machine and plugged in one that he had separated from the others. Checking his notebook, he fast-forwarded to a tape position that he had written down, and then hit the play button. The tape showed the bank manager, Craig Brown, running to the cabinet, duct tape still attached to his wrists. He looked out of breath as he stood fumbling with his keys, a thin sheen of sweat covering his neck and forehead. After he opened the cabinet, he froze for a long ten count as he stared into it, a look of puzzlement breaking out on his face.

“Did you see that?” Maguire asked. “At no point does he touch anything in that cabinet. He didn’t turn on the security system because it was already on. Which means it was on during the robbery.”

“Why didn’t it work then?”

“Maybe nobody pushed any of the alarm buttons.”

“Brown claims he did,” Resnick said.

“I called Tom. Supposedly three other tellers swore they did also. Maybe they’re all lying.”

“Four people on the inside involved?” A dull throbbing had started in the front of Resnick’s skull. He squeezed his eyes shut trying to block out the pain. “That’s too many people. It wouldn’t work. One of them would screw up their story. The alarm system was probably hacked into. Ah shit, this is going to get complicated.”

“We’ll see. I called Tom and asked if he could have all the alarm buttons dusted for prints.”

Resnick didn’t see the point in that, especially since tellers were probably always touching the buttons, if for no other reason than to make sure they knew where they were. He didn’t bother to mention that to Maguire; he was just glad to see his partner taking more of an initiative.

The throbbing in his head had become more of a dull pounding. He always carried a bottle of aspirin with him, and he popped a couple of tablets into his mouth and chewed them slowly. He wished it had been as simple as the alarm system being turned off. The thought of having to worry about how the system had been hacked into made the pain in his head worse.

“Have you watched the robbery yet?” Resnick asked.

“Yeah, let me show it to you.”

Maguire plugged in a second tape that he had separated from the stack and positioned the tape to where the robbers were about to appear. The surveillance camera was angled to capture most of the bank lobby, but not the lobby door. Resnick watched as men poured into the bank lobby, two of them carrying assault rifles, another brandishing a handgun. He reached over and paused the tape.

“I count five men,” Resnick said.

“That’s all I counted also.”

“Do you think any others could’ve slipped by without the camera picking them up?”

“I dunno. Maybe.”

Of the five men, four of them were dressed in red overalls and ski masks. A fifth man was wearing a yellow running suit. He also had on a ski mask, but it didn’t match the others.

“They must’ve planned the robbery for four guys and added a fifth at the last minute,” Resnick said.

“Look at the firepower those guys had,” Maguire said. “Two assault rifles and that big guy with the long hair is waving a forty-five. If you ask me, that’s overkill for a bank robbery. You’re going to make a lot of noise firing off those weapons.”

“You’re going to make a lot of noise firing off any gun. They probably wanted to scare the hell out of whoever was in there and get control fast.”

Maguire thought about it. “Maybe,” he conceded. “By the way, that big guy waving the gun is the one who ends up shooting those two women. He’s probably also going to turn out to be the one who shot the Grateful Dead guy in the parking lot.”

Maguire hit the play button and watched as the tape showed three of the robbers rounding up the bank employees and customers, forcing them on to their stomachs, then taping their wrists and ankles. The two other robbers had duffel bags slung over their shoulders. Maguire pointed them out as they started sprinting towards the hallway leading to the safety deposit boxes.

“Unfortunately, there’s no camera where the safety deposit boxes are kept,” Maguire said. “According to Brown, they would be violating the privacy of their box owners if they videotaped what was being put in them.”

Resnick nodded, realizing the bank manager was right.

“Nothing much happens until the shootings,” Maguire continued. “Let me fast-forward until we get there.”

As the tape sped along, Resnick thought he saw something. He stopped the tape, rewound it and played it back. At one point, the guy in the running suit kneeled by Margaret Williams to check the duct tape wrapped around her wrists. Resnick paused the tape at that point and played it at slow speed. The guy in the running suit had his back to the camera, and while that mostly obscured what happened, you could see for a second him slipping both hands under the young woman’s skirt.

“That little fat fuck,” Maguire swore. “He’s molesting her.”

After that Resnick played the tape at regular speed. At one point the guy who had been waving the forty-five around wandered over to Margaret Williams.

“This is where it happens,” Maguire said.

The man started saying something to Williams. His attitude looked casual, relaxed. After several minutes of that she turned her head, straining to look back at him. Her face was livid, veins streaking her neck as she yelled something to him. At first the robber started glancing from side to side, looking like he just wanted to run away. Then, almost as if a switch had been flipped, his body stiffened and he grabbed her with both hands and flipped her on to her back. Within a blink of an eye, he had his gun arm extended, then a flame exploded from the gun barrel. Margaret Williams’ body bounced on impact. When it settled down her head rested to one side.

Hard lines tightened along Resnick’s jaw as he watched the shooting. He stopped the tape and rewound it. Maguire groaned. “I don’t think I can watch that again,” he said.

“I want to show you something,” Resnick said. “The guy in the running suit – take a look at the way he’s acting while she’s yelling at the shooter. His shoulders are bouncing up and down. He’s laughing, he’s enjoying what’s happening. Now look at the third guy. He’s clearly agitated. As the shooter extends his gun, this guy starts to lift his rifle as if he’s going to shoot him instead. There’s definitely chaos going on at that point.”

Resnick replayed the tape, pointing out his observations to Maguire.

“Okay,” Maguire said. “So we’ve got a couple of psychos involved. How’s that going to help us?”

Resnick stopped the tape. The hard lines along his jaws stretched tighter while he stared at the monitor. “In some ways this seems like a professional job – the way they shut down the alarm system, the precision in drilling open the safety deposit boxes – but I can’t believe those three guys are anything but amateurs.”

“They could just be wack jobs,” Maguire offered. “Are you ready to see the other shooting?”

Resnick nodded grimly. The tape was started again. Mary O’Donnell had been lying next to Williams. After Williams was shot, O’Donnell started screaming. She turned her head back, trying to face the shooter. For a long moment the man stood frozen, then he started yelling back at her. He pushed her on to her back with his foot and without hesitation shot her in the stomach. While she lay writhing on the floor, he seemed to be talking to her. Resnick noticed that the guy in the running suit had stopped laughing. The third guy’s body language indicated that he had given up trying to control the situation.

Resnick watched the rest of the tape, watched as the two other men ran back into the bank lobby, both carrying duffel bags. He watched as four of the men fled the bank. The shooter stayed behind. Almost as if he were in a trance, he stood over O’Donnell, his gun arm fully extended. Then, realizing he was alone, he lumbered out of the bank.

Maguire let out a tired sigh. “Watching this crap is wiping me out. I need to take a break and get something to eat. You want anything?”

Resnick shook his head. “Which of these haven’t you looked at yet?”

Maguire went through the stack and pulled out six tapes. “These are all from outdoor surveillance cameras.” He got out of the chair, stretched and pushed a hand against the side of his head, cracking his neck. “I’ll be back in a half hour.”

Resnick took his place and fast-forwarded through four of the tapes without seeing anything useful. The fifth tape showed the five men running towards the bank, all with their ski masks and overalls already on. He fast-forwarded to the point where they were fleeing the bank. One of them stopped, took off his mask and looked back before running out of the view of the camera. Resnick rewound the tape and froze the picture at the place where the man’s profile could be seen clearly. For a long moment all Resnick could do was stare at the screen, his heart beating a mile a minute. Then he just let out a long whistle.

Joel had dumped out the contents of the duffel bags on to the floor and was now counting the money for a second time. The first time he had counted four hundred and three packets of bills, each packet held together by two rubber bands. They all seemed to be of the same thickness. Picking a dozen of them at random, he counted fifty hundred-dollar bills in each. Thumbing through them he saw nothing but hundreds. That meant he had over two million dollars. He finished his second count and came up with the same number.

Outside of the money they had also taken photographs, documents, videotapes and computer disks from Petrenko. He separated those items out and packed them away in a box. At first he thought about sending the box anonymously to the police. While he liked the idea of fucking that commie asshole one more time, he decided it would be safer to just destroy the items. For all he knew the FBI would be able to trace that package back to him no matter how careful he was in sending it. Better not to be a schmuck. Just keep the money and be satisfied. Anyway, it was no skin off his nose whether or not Petrenko ended up in prison.

The robbery also netted six silk pouches and he had their contents spread out on the kitchen table. Diamonds. Ninety of them. He picked one of them up. The diamond felt substantial, heavy, and it sparkled like crazy as he held it to the light. Squinting at the stone, it looked flawless to him, but what the hell did he know? He had an uncle who worked in the diamond district in New York. In a few days he’d visit him, find out what they were worth.

One day he’s down to his last few thousand bucks, the next he’s sitting on over two million large. When Dan had first told him about the robbery, he thought he’d be lucky to clear fifty grand from the job. He had to hand it to the guy, Dan knew what he was talking about. Outside of Gordon going nutso in that bank, things worked out exactly as planned. He felt a tinge of regret about the way he had cut Dan off, but he had warned him about bringing Gordon along, told him a number of times he’d hold him responsible if that nutjob acted up and, if nothing else, Joel considered himself a man of his word. Being cut off was the price Dan had to pay, and besides, he’d had plenty of warnings.

As far as Gordon went, Joel had no regrets whatsoever – except that he hadn’t taken care of that nutjob before they ever entered the bank. Thinking how Gordon shot those two women while they were both bound and defenseless made his blood boil. May he rot in hell! Given the opportunity, he’d shoot him again, and be glad to do it.

He had no regrets about Eric either. The prick was going to have the audacity to go back on the deal they had and try to hold him up for fifty percent of the take? When he was brought in, it was for a twenty percent cut, and he damn well knew it! Just because things might’ve changed with the others didn’t affect what Eric was entitled to. Besides, molesting that girl inside the bank probably triggered the episode with Gordon. He deserved what he got as much as Gordon did. And realizing how Eric had lied to him over the years about how he had ended up in jail gave Joel the creeps. They might’ve known each other for fifteen years, but so what? What did they really have in common? Politics, guns, drinking beer? Eh, good riddance.

Joel gathered the diamonds back into the silk pouches and stacked the money into one of the duffel bags. The diamonds had to be worth at least half a million. With two and a half million dollars, he was going to be able to do whatever he wanted. While there were certain things about his house he would miss – the privacy, twenty acres of woods, having a shooting range in his basement – maybe it was time to move. Maybe he should just go to Florida and get the hell out of where he was. He didn’t have to rush into a decision, though. He’d have some time to think about it. For now, he’d spend a little money, fortify the house a bit, do some of the improvements he’d been wanting to do for years.

A grin broke over his face as he thought about how his fortune had changed. His eyes rolled up towards the ceiling, his grin stretching wider. “You’re finally letting me roll sevens. About fucking time.”