Dying to Tell (7 page)

thirteen

Bear's words hung in
the room like fog.

Cal asked, “Larry, where were the hard drives kept?”

“In the security room.” Larry tipped his head toward the break room door. “It's locked all the time and only the Mendelsons and Mr. Thorne have complete access. We keep the alarm system, CCTV, and other security equipment in there. I can't even get in without Mr. Thorne's approval.”

Cal noted that. “Any way to tell who opened the security room?”

“Should have been.” Larry shook his head. “The room's recorded, too, but the recordings were on the hard drive.”

“How convenient,” I said. “The killer knew exactly how this place works.”

Bear said, “Cal, get crime scene in there to check it over.”

Cal made a note, gave Larry an exaggerated nod, and left.

Larry watched him go. “Man, Calloway Clemens is just too cool.
You guys never knew he played? You don't know what you're missing.”

“Let's focus on this, Larry. Who knows about the security system?”

He thought a moment. “Everyone, Detective. It's pretty standard stuff for banks. But if you're asking who has access cards, well, the Mendelsons and Mr. Thorne, of course. Karen Simms and myself are allowed access to certain things but it takes one of them to let us in.”

“Certain things?” Bear asked.

“We have part of the alarm codes and vault combinations for opening in the morning and closing at night. It takes two people—we call them A and B people—each has half the alarm codes and half the combinations to lock and unlock the bank building and the vaults. The Chairman and Mr. Thorne are A people. Marshal, Karen, and I are B people. It takes one of each to unlock anything at the bank.”

“What about this building, the annex?” Bear asked.

“No, the annex is different. The Mendelsons, Mr. Thorne, Karen, and I can all access this building alone.”

I asked, “Why is that so different?”

Bear asked that, too, and Larry said, “No money stored in here. Well, none that we knew of. Now you gotta wonder about the Chairman's private vault, right?”

Yes, we did.

Larry went on. “In this building, only the security room is A and B access, Detective. So it takes dual control to get into it.”

“Maybe the keys have been copied,” Bear said, watching for any reaction from Larry. “Or maybe the door was left unlocked.”

“No way. Mr. Thorne is a fanatic about that room. When he came to the bank a while back, he changed the locks, restricted the keys, and even put in a steel door so it couldn't be forced. He redid the security system, too. He trusts nobody.”

Bear
re-read
the alarm reports several times and drained his coffee cup for a second time. “Larry, do you know where Marshal and Thorne were these past few days?”

“They were doing some audits or something at other branches. Yesterday, they were an hour south of here in Harrisonburg.” His face flushed a little and he looked toward the open break room door. “Look, don't tell them—please don't—but I checked their access cards against the alarm lists. Neither of them came or went in the building for the past two days. They weren't around.”

Bear looked at him. “Why'd you do that? Do you suspect one of them?”

“One of them?” Larry's eyes went round and his mouth cracked into a wide smile. “Detective Braddock, I wouldn't put it past either one of them. With their
A-B
access, they can get into anything in the bank together. Anything. But if I had to pick just one, I'd say Marshal.”

Marshal?
“Hey, I don't like these guys, Bear, but they're bankers. They're too boring to be killers.”

“Why Marshal, Larry?” Bear watched Larry glance at the door again. “And don't cut any corners.”

Larry lowered his voice. “The Chairman and Marshal have been fighting for over a year—real bad, too—about money, staffing, family stuff, even the Chairman's old pals from the war. Marshal threatened to have him tossed off the board.”

“Can he?”

“No—I don't think so, anyway.” Larry shrugged. “He also threatened to have him ruined. His reputation, I mean. Marshal kept saying the Chairman saw things and was mentally unstable. He threatened to bring that to the Board of Directors.”

Bankers love scandals like rats love leaky ships. And nothing rocked your investments like a
nut-job
running the till. Marshal might not have had the power to remove him from the board himself, but he could stir up a scandal and just watch all the board members join hands to pack William's office.

“And Thorne? What's his deal?”

Larry looked down and sipped his coffee, making a face like it was cold. “Not really sure. I just don't like him. He's, well, flashy and pretentious. He thinks he's better than all of us—and that included the Chairman. He acts all respectful and such in front of others, but I've seen his emails and heard him on the phone. He thinks William and Marshal Mendelson are idiots.”

“Being arrogant doesn't make him a killer,” Bear said.

“It doesn't make him innocent, either.” Larry watched Bear for a moment before adding, “And he dug around the Mendelsons' offices every chance he got. I've seen him several times coming out of them when they weren't in the building.”

It struck me that Larry Conti, the
mild-mannered
suddenly-a
-hero security guard had been keeping his ear tuned in to the bank's
goings-on
very well. Maybe too well. “Bear, Larry's playing at something. A promotion, maybe?”

“Yeah, yeah, I know.” Bear chanced a glance at me but when Larry followed his eyes, he said, “What's your beef, Larry? You just threw your bosses under the bus. And now you're driving the bus.”

“No, I'm doing my job.” He went to the sink and dumped his coffee. “I resent being treated like a
dumb-ass
security guard—if you know what I mean. The Chairman understood me and treated me real good. Not friendly so much. Just good.”

Bear considered that. “Okay, sure. Anything else strike you between Marshal and William that we should know?” Then he waited and watched for signs of a lie.

So did I, but neither of us found any.

“One thing.” Larry took a breath. “Marshal asked me to keep tabs on the Chairman after banking hours. Marshal leaves around four and the Chairman works late. He even asked me to check the alarm and access card reports every morning and let him know if there was anything suspicious going on with his father.”

Bear's eyebrows raised. “Did you?”

“Well, yeah, I had to. And if I didn't or if I lied, Marshal could find out anyway. I figured maybe it was a test or something.”

“Did you see anything unusual?”

Larry nodded. “Yeah, but there was one thing, you know, I thought I should keep to myself for a while.”

“Like what?” Bear leaned forward. “Come on, Larry. Quit playing games with me.”

Larry took out his cell phone, clicked through a couple applications, and brought up a series of photographs he showed Bear. I looked over his shoulder.

The photos were of a woman dressed on a long green trench coat with a scarf wrapped around her shoulders obscuring her face. Only in one shot was her flowing black hair showing over the scarf. Never did any of the photographs unveil her face. In one of the photos, the woman was coming out of a house that Larry said was William's. In another, she was leaving the private entrance to the executive suite here at the bank annex. In others, she was around town—alone here and there.

“Who is she?” Bear flipped through the digital photographs again. “Did you ID her?”

“No, I have no idea who she is.” Larry reached for his phone, but Bear held firm. “There was no record in our visitor logs. When I hinted around with the Chairman about the times I saw her at his place, he lied and said he was somewhere else. So I figured it was personal—you know, some kind of
thing
. I never told Marshal about her.”

I said, “A thing? He's a billion years old and you think he has a thing?”

“He's loaded,” Bear said. “What else happened?”

Larry walked to the break room door and looked out into the hall. He turned back around. “For weeks I've been telling Marshal about the Chairman's movements. He seemed fine with that. Then he asked me if I'd like to make some extra money outside of work. I told him sure, but only as long as it was nothing more to do with the Chairman. I didn't feel right checking up on him like I was—especially outside the office.”

“And?”

“Marshal got weird and dropped the whole thing. He wanted someone to regularly follow the Chairman after hours. He said he was worried his father was losing his mind and memory—you know, like Alzheimer's or something. I refused and he let it go. Then when I asked him about it last week again—I thought maybe I should help after all—he said no, that he'd changed his mind.”

Bear asked, “Larry, do you think he got someone else?”

“Yeah, I do. And so did the Chairman.”

“William?”

Larry nodded. “Yeah. Look, I told you, he treated me with respect and I appreciated that.”

“And?”

“And I told him everything Marshal was up to.”

fourteen

Bear finished with Larry
and decided to check on the crime scene techs working the outside of the bank annex. “I wish we could find Marshal Mendelson. He's starting to worry me.”

I agreed. “There's too many secrets around here, Bear. And the damn thing of it is, everyone knows everyone else's secrets—so far. And the one with the most secrets is dead.”

“The uniforms haven't found anything on that bank robber yet. No one has checked in at the hospital with any gunshot wounds, and we're canvassing all the doctors in three states. He vanished.”

He cursed again and headed outside.

Outside, Cal was overseeing two crime techs extracting bullet fragments from beside the employee entrance door where the robber fired at Larry Conti. Cal held up a small plastic evidence bag as we walked up. “It's a .
22-caliber
. And the round in Conti's book that saved his life is, too.”

Bear nodded. “A .
22-cal
is an odd gun to rob a bank with.”

“Maybe,” I said, “but it's a nice quiet gun for a murder.”

“Same caliber as William's murderer,” Bear said. “Still, I'm having a hard time thinking the robber killed Mendelson. He would have had to be in the bank half the night.”

Cal agreed. “Yeah, man, I was thinkin' that, too. Whoever killed him sure picked the wrong day. What are the chances someone offed him the same day someone else robs the place?”

Bear cursed.

Cal added, “So far, though, these .22s are our best evidence. Not sure about that cardboard from William's hand, but the ME gave it to me.”

“Let me see it,” Bear said.

Cal dug into his pocket and pulled out another small plastic evidence bag and handed it to Bear. In it was a
one-inch
piece of thin, dark paper or cardboard material. There was writing across one side of it and Cal noted that to Bear. “The ME took this out of Willy's—I mean William's—fingers before he transported the body. He said you asked him to.”

“I did,” Bear said, holding it up toward the ceiling light. “Cardboard? And what's that lettering on it?”

I looked but I'd never seen anything like it before. The cardboard was grainy and cracked. The lettering was faded and without any form I could distinguish. As we looked it over, Angel walked out of the bank and over to us.

She looked at the evidence bag in Bear's hand. “What do you have there, Bear?”

“Not sure.” He showed her the evidence bag. “Some kind of cardboard I think.”

“I don't think so.” She examining the bag for a few moments, then started smiling. “It's not cardboard, Bear. Got a penlight?”

Bear handed her his from his pocket.

“Let's see.” She used the light to inspection of the contents of the evidence bag closer. “It's Egyptian papyrus. I'm sure of it.”

“Papyrus?” It looked like scribbles on cardboard to me. “Like Noah's Ark papyrus?”

“Not Noah's Ark,” she said, but when Cal's eyes got a funny squint to them, she added, “it has Egyptian hieroglyphs on it. We'll need an Egyptologist to examine it, but I'm sure I'm right.”

Cal folded his arms. “Makes some sense, right? Willy's office is loaded with all that Egyptian stuff. He must have had more—maybe pricey stuff—in his vault. Maybe this is a piece of what his killer wanted.”

“
Maybe
s don't count for much.” Bear handed the evidence bag back to Cal. “We need to find out. Find someone to get that safe open. Until we know what was worth killing over, we won't find the killer.”

“You got it, Bear,” Cal said. “Willy's cell phone is missing, too.”

“He was an old guy, Cal,” Bear said. “Maybe he didn't have one.”

Angel shook her head. “No, he did. He gave me his number.” She took out her cell phone, tapped a couple keys, and showed it to Bear and Cal. “Here it is. I had it in my contacts.”

Cal jotted the number down. “Maybe he left it home. It's not in his office or car, or on his body.”

Bear stood. “We'll check his house. I'm heading over there now.”

“Bear, there's more.” Angel dug out the folded piece of paper Karen Simms had given her earlier and handed it to Bear. “Karen Simms gave me this account number a little while ago. William had her open it a couple months ago. Since then, he's been moving money around. She's nervous about it all.” She told them Karen's story.

Bear knew the details from me but listened anyway, then handed the paper to Cal. “Let's see whose account it is. And let's not let Thorne or anyone else we know we have it.”

Cal cocked his head. “What if they ask about it? What if …”

“Lie.” Bear threw a thumb toward the parking lot. “First, let's go to William's place and search it. You can follow that up after.”

“You got it.” Cal handed the two evidence bags with the papyrus and .
22-caliber
bullet fragments to the crime scene technician. “Get these logged, man.”

As we turned around to leave, Franklin Thorne was standing three feet behind us.

“Ah, sorry,” Thorne said and pointed at Bear. “I wanted to let you know I'm heading to the gym. Any objections?”

Bear eyed him. “I guess not. But check with me when you return. And don't be all day.”

“Of course not.” He pivoted and left.

“I wonder how long he was listening?” I asked, and Angel asked the same thing.

Cal said, “I don't like him much, Bear. Not sure why, but I just don't.”

“Yeah, me neither.” Bear watched Thorne walk around the side of the annex building toward the employee parking lot. “Something about him rubs me wrong. We've got a secret vault that isn't so secret, a dead Chairman of the Board, and a missing bank President. With all this going on, the VP of Security wants to go for a jog.”

“Don't worry so much,” I said. “None of us bank here.”