memories of the morning. He moved forward on numb legs, the pill bottles rattling in his pocket, untouched. By the lobby, Abara held down the crime-scene tape, and Nate high-stepped over. The black security guard was gone, but evidence cones marked the outline of his body. The smudged pool of blood looked shiny and gelatinous beneath the overhead fluorescents.
A burly little man hurried over and blew out a breath, exasperated. He was balding, and the male-pattern swirl had lifted from his pate. It had been a long day. He introduced himself as the bank director of physical security, shook Nate’s hand earnestly, then launched into the update.
“Looks like they dodged the parking-lot cameras downstairs, rode the service elevator up. So much for eleventh-floor security. As you saw, dark clothes, not form-fitting, big boots. Hard to read height, weight. No flesh showing anywhere, so witnesses couldn’t get a read on their ethnicity.”
“Considerate of them to leave their bodies behind,” Abara said.
Nate was having a hard time lifting his focus from the crimson smudges on the floor tile. He thought of the guard’s eyes, rolled back almost to solid white.
The security director continued, “Before they hit the vault, they broke down the door to the security closet and unplugged the DVR box that caches the digital footage.”
Abara made a popping sound with his lips. “So they could work the vault with their hoods off.”
“Right,” Nate mumbled. He pictured the man stepping into sight in the vault doorway, gripping the circular saw, the hood pushed up atop his head. His ear, torn away in a spray of black blood. How he’d looked back and Nate had shot him again through the forehead.
He heard Abara’s voice, as if from a distance. “… you okay?”
Nate nodded quickly. “Fine, fine.”
“These guys were pros, moved fast and hard,” the security director continued. “No one could get to an alarm. Our vault door’s eighteen inches of steel, tool-resistant for thirty minutes, but it was, of course, open for the business day. So they sailed in through the day gate. They used a diamond-tipped rescue saw to hit one of the quarter-inch Diebolds, got a little over three hundo into a duffel. Which, thanks to you”-a nod to Nate-“is still sitting on the floor in there. They were razoring into the safe-deposit boxes when you went in guns blazing.”
Abara was nodding along; he’d heard this all already. Clearly, repetition was a big part of the investigation- sifting through the evidence again and again, looking for flecks of gold.
The robbers’ bodies lay where they’d fallen, hoods now tugged off, flight suits sliced open and peeled back like flayed skin. Nate walked where directed, minding the cones, the blood spatter. He found himself crouching over the first corpse in the lobby, regarding the clean-shaven face.
Nate wanted to reach down and touch the waxy features. “He’s what? Twenty-seven, twenty-eight?”
“This one?” Abara checked a black leather notepad. “Twenty-six.”
Nate wondered about the next of kin. Who would answer the door to the death notification? Sickly mother? Pregnant girlfriend? Nine-year-old son, home from soccer practice? Gazing at the bodies sprawled on the tile, Nate was all too aware of how the loss of these lives would ripple out. Awe settled in, a sense of the enormity of what he had done, but he expected to feel something more, too. A hint of remorse, perhaps. But no. There were too many other parts to this equation. Those bullets riddling the bank manager’s stiff pantsuit. The cool white hand he’d gripped through the window. A young girl’s earlobe, darkened with her mother’s blood.
The security director had been pulled away, but Abara was still at Nate’s side, asking a question: “You said the sixth man had an accent?”
“Eastern Europeanish,” Nate replied.
“Russian? Polish?”
“More Russian, I’d say. But I don’t know.”
Abara gestured at the bodies. “Local dirty white boys, all five. Accent no makee the sense, hoss. You sure you weren’t hearing things?”
“I’m sure. Do you know who they were? The dead ones?”
“Yup. They’re an Inland Empire team. Been on our radar a little more than three years. But a few things don’t add up. One: What the hell were they doing in Santa Monica? They’ve never even made it west of Victorville for a job. And two: What’s with the sixth man? They’ve always run jobs as a five crew.”
“Maybe they recruited,” Nate said.
“I don’t know. Five men’s generally the most you see in a job like this. Six is the tipping point for logistics- more trouble than help.”
“The sixth man seemed to be the crew leader.”
“So you said. In that case why would a new recruit run the show?”
Nate closed his eyes, put himself back in the vault. The scuff of that boot behind him-Number Six, lying in wait with the letter opener. The whistle of movement, steel through air, and the hot pain in his shoulder. He heard the voice, a low rush of menace-
“Right,” Abara said. “‘He’ from ‘He will make you pay.’” They’d been through this as well. Stepping past the teller gate, the agent gazed at the blasted drywall of the ceiling and ran a hand over his utilitarian buzz cut. “AKS- 74U assault carbine.”
“You can tell from the bullet holes?” Nate asked.
“No.” Abara grinned. “Crime-scene report. Now can you walk me through it?”
“I already have. Several times.”
Abara pressed his fingertips together. “I got this wife, yeah? She loses her damn birth-control pills. I’m talking two, three times a week. Not a good thing to lose. And I always tell her, I say, ‘Honey. Retrace your steps.’ And she argues and argues-Puerto Ricans, right? But when she finally listens? There they are. So what do you think. Can you do that for me?”
Nate said, “Find your wife’s birth-control pills?”
No smile. Instead Abara pointed at the window, still cranked open as Nate had left it, swath of blood across the pane. Nate took a moment, chewing his lip. Then he walked over, set his hands on the sill, and leaned out into the cool dusk air.
“Whoa, cowboy.” Abara’s voice sounded distant behind him. “Want to reel it back a little?”
Nate pulled himself in. Nothing was left of the teller with the pretty green eyes but a collection of evidence cones at his feet. He set about retracing each move, starting with his tumble through the window over her lifeless body. One detail at a time. The tiny puffs of drywall. The relentless screech of the saw. The bullet sailing past, so close it trailed heat across his cheek. Recounting all this now in relative solitude made it more real, and with every step he took, a black tide rose in his chest, threatening to choke off his words. He had shot two men on the main floor and was stepping back toward the vault when something glinted under a desk, catching his eye. He walked over, crouched, and picked up the pearl clip-on earring. Cradled it in his hand. Flashed on its owner’s limp arm unfurling, her rings clacking tile. The black tide climbed into his throat, catching him off guard, and he eased himself down to sit on the floor. Several of the cops paused and looked at him. Then a few CSI techs. The movement around him ground to a halt, the focus of the room pulling to him. He swallowed hard, tried to keep the emotion from his face, but he could feel his cheeks turn to pins and needles.
“Sorry.” He clutched the earring, the clasp digging into his palm. “Just give me a sec here.”
Abara waved the others to get back to work and squatted next to him. “Take all the time you need.”
After Nate caught his breath, he finished the walk-through, ending with his face-to-face with Number Six in the vault. Abara scratched his head with a pen. “Can you look at some security tape, see if you can pick out the crew leader?”
“I thought they wiped out the footage,” Nate said.
“We got some in the service elevator and back hall before they pulled the plug on the digital feed.”
Nate followed him to a rear office filled with monitors, where the security director and two Robbery-Homicide detectives waited, the screen before them fluttering on pause. The footage showed the robbers crowded in the service elevator, six forms covered with black fabric. The director clicked PLAY, and they all watched the men ride up, waiting to explode into action. Wrists jiggled. Boots tapped. Gun slides were racked, magazines reseated. Every man a jumble of live nerves.
