Rose’s Hostage – Chapter Two

Stephen Pierce stepped gingerly past the fire personnel through the broken glass.  People stood around in knots, their faces slack with shock.  Uniformed officers calmly separated the customers and bank employees so the witnesses couldn’t contaminate each others’ stories.  Everyone waited for the FBI, who hadn’t arrived yet.

He took in the scene.  From the state of the place, their serial robber had been here again.

Art Rossberger, Pierce’s partner, followed him, his lips pursed in concentration.  The overhead lights on the high ceiling shone through his sandy, close-cropped hair to his pink scalp. His darting glances always seemed cursory.  Pierce knew Rossberger rarely missed anything.

“Detectives? Over here.”  The patrol field supervisor beckoned them.

“What’s up?”  Pierce said.

“Him again.  Same as last time.  Black clothes, same type of weapons, in and out.  He took hostages again.  Two this time.”

“Who?”
“Two women.  One left her purse behind.”  He read from his notes.  ”ID says Sheila Mary Graves, sixty-two, gray hair, wearing jeans and a white short-sleeved blouse.

“The other one is Libby Ann Marshall.  She took a late lunch to cash a paycheck.  Her work called here when she didn’t come back and talked to the head teller.  Thirty, brown hair.  Gray slacks, turquoise shirt, black sweater.  Witnesses said our guy picked her off the floor.  She was peeking.  They took the other one along as an afterthought.”

“Nobody hurt?”

“No.  He told Marshall if she came with him, he wouldn’t hurt the other lady.”  He pointed.  “Manager’s over there.”

“Thanks,” Pierce said.  The supervisor went back to the witnesses.  Rossberger wandered over too, hands in his pockets.  Voices rose sharply across the room.  Some of the witnesses protested they needed to go home, call their spouses and babysitters.

Pierce ignored the tearful complaints.  He walked across the marble floor to one of the desks in the back.  The manager, a pudgy man in a suit, was ghost white.  EMTs checked his vitals, but he kept waving them away.

“I’m all right,” he insisted.  ”Just a little shook up.”

“Andrew Seaver?”  Pierce said, reading the plaque on the desk.  “I’m Detective Pierce.  I’d like to ask you a few questions if you’re up to it.”

“Sure, okay,” Seaver said.  He glared at the EMTs.  ”I said I was all right.”  They retreated, packing their gear.

“Can you tell me what happened?”

Seaver recounted the same story as the others, except when the two robbers took him into the vault.  “They told me to help them fill the bags.  They made me take out all the trackers, the bait packs, dye packs too.  I didn’t want to, but they had guns.  I had no choice.  I had no choice, you understand?   I really thought that guy was going to shoot me.”

“It must have been very frightening for you.”

“You better believe it.  They took two women with them.  There was nothing I could do. Nothing.  They were in and out of here so fast.  I don’t get how it all happened.  How do they do that?”

“They have lots of practice, unfortunately,” Pierce said.  “Did you notice anything distinctive?  Voice?  Any marks or anything about their clothing?”

Seaver shook his head.  “All of them had something over their faces, and hoods.   All in black, wearing gloves.  I couldn’t see anything.  I don’t understand the explosion,” he fretted.  “Why do they have to make such a mess?”

“To scare people,” Pierce replied.  “Also to disable the man-trap, so they can leave.” Privately, he thought it was pretty clever.  The access control vestibule, sometimes called a man-trap, could lock the robber or robbers between the outer and inner doors like a bug in a bottle.  Not all banks had them, so they would have had to case it to know this one did.  As a patrol officer, he’d been on the scene when a note-passer had gotten caught in one and blown his brains out rather than go to prison.  A much bigger mess than a bunch of shattered glass.

“Well, it’s terrible.  My ears are still ringing.”

“Mr. Seaver,” Pierce said, lowering his voice, “do you trust your employees?”
“What do you mean?” Seaver asked slowly.

“There was a very large cash deposit this afternoon, shortly before the robbery, wasn’t there?  Because of the holiday weekend?”  He knew the answer.  Three other banks, three drop-offs.

“Yes.  They got the whole deposit and everything else in there, almost two million dollars.  What does that–”  Color flushed back into the man’s pale face.  ”I don’t know what you’re trying to say, Detective.  Our employees pass thorough background investigations.”

“We’ll check everybody,” Pierce said.  He walked away and left the man spluttering.  Oh, nice one.  He rubbed the corners of his eyes.  Exhaustion tended to make him crabby.  He hadn’t been this tired in a long time.  All these bank robberies, whoever was killing hookers and their johns down on the strip, not to mention what was going on at home.  He shook himself mentally.  Focus.

Rossberger came back.  “The fire captain says it’s probably the same explosive as last time.  Flash powder.”

“Firecracker stuff.”

“Yes.  The bomb tech found remnants of a paper bag like before.  They lit the fuse and threw it into the vestibule.  Blew both sets of doors out.”  He hesitated.  ”Caruthers called.  FBI is on their way.  Also, the captain called.  He’s dumping the Mendez murder on us.  Hicks is suspended again.”

“Son of a bitch.  That asshole Hicks.  Doesn’t Benoit know what we’ve got on our plate?”

“He knows.  He just doesn’t care.  I don’t think anyone else could take it.  They’ve all got an unbelievable backlog.  This economy is bringing out the worst in people.”

“I know one guy who’s got plenty of money.”  Pierce stared morosely at the glass on the floor.  He knew where their priorities lay.  The hostage situation was more serious.  The Slut Shooter, as some of the more crude members of the department had dubbed him, and Mendez the wife-killer would have to wait.

The FBI arrived with a bustle.  Their Evidence Response Team spread throughout the scene.  Cameras flashed, forensic kits appeared.  The Ralston bomb tech greeted the fire captain and they spoke in low tones.

Pierce watched them as they methodically processed everything in sight.  Their coordinated movements were a ballet of efficiency.  A legion of suited agents established immediate authority over the scene and the impatient witnesses.  The primary agent, Quentin Caruthers, walked calmly over to the two detectives.

“Very timely response,” he said.  Caruthers was thin and wiry; only expert tailoring kept his crisply-pressed suit from looking as if it would flap around him in a strong wind.  His red hair always poked up at the back of his head like Alfalfa on the old Little Rascals shorts Pierce had seen as a young kid.

“Quentin.” Pierce greeted the FBI agent.  “It’s our guy again.”
“Oh yes,” Caruthers said.  ”Hello, Art.”

“We have to stop meeting like this!” Rossberger said, slapping his hand over his heart. “Hey, I saw that kid of yours in the paper.  Made All-Star, did he?”
“Troy?  Yes, he got on the team.  He’s a junior this year, if you can believe it. Makes me feel old.”  Caruthers shook his head and the corners of his mouth lifted.  He hardly ever smiled outright.

“They practice until school starts?”

“Yes.  The coach thinks they have a good chance at the League Championship this year.  Of course, Troy wants to play professional baseball.”

Pierce interrupted the banter. “Let me bring you up to speed.”  He briefly summarized the patrol supervisor’s report and his interview with the manager.  ”We need to call Brad and your guy and get the hostage descriptions out.”

“Easy, Steve,” Rossberger said.  ”Why so antsy?”
“I don’t know.  Something about this situation pushes my buttons.  He’s never taken two before.  He could be escalating, or something else could be going on.  I don’t like it.”

“I don’t either,” Caruthers said.  His brow furrowed.  ”Let’s see what we have.”

——————————————————————————————-

“Just try it.”

“I don’t want to,” she whined.

“Oh for God’s sake, Melissa, I paid a lot of cash for this blow.  The least you could do is try it!”

“It’s not what I wanted,” she pouted.  ”I wanted a drink.”  Her eyes were raisins pushed into a sullen batch of tired white dough, her lips pooched out like a bratty baby’s.  Earl wanted to hit her, but he knew if he did she would leave.  He didn’t want her to go back out on the dark street, because he still wanted to get laid.

“Come on,” he said. “I promise.  It’ll make you feel good.”  He grinned.  ”And you can make me feel good.”

“You’re not gonna try and short me by paying with dope.  I’m wise to your tricks.”

His head pounded.  God, she made him mad.  He could beat the crap out of her and be long gone before her pimp or any cops caught up with him.  His hand shook slightly as he cut the line of coke on the smooth surface of the night table with the edge of his business card.  He picked up the short straw.  He liked a clean straw better than a rolled bill.  Money was so dirty.

“Come on, sweet thing,” he said.  ”I don’t want to do this by myself.”

She stood with her arms folded, frowning at him.  With a disgusted eye roll, she dropped them and came to the table.  He offered her another straw and she took it and bent over the line, snorting it in quick.  Her breasts nearly fell out of her skimpy top.  She threw back her head, blinking rapidly.

“Happy now?”

“Oh yeah. My turn.”  His own straw went into his nose.  He shivered as the rush hit him. Good stuff.  He got up and went to the bed.

“Take off your clothes.”  He punctuated his order with a loud sniff.  Off with the white cotton dress shirt.  A saggy chest appeared, sprinkled with graying hairs that marched in a line to a protruding belly.  His pants hit the floor, belt buckle jingling.

A faint whiff of distaste flared her nostrils.  She slid her miniskirt over her hips and dropped it on the floor.  Her tank top landed on it.

There she was, in all her glory.  She really had a spectacular body.  If he squinted, he could ignore the old track marks on the insides of her arms and the two-inch dark roots at the base of her ratty blond hair.  He could pretend she was one of the models in his wife’s magazines. Melissa was a model’s name.  He knew it probably wasn’t her real one.  That didn’t matter.  He felt a rush of heat in his groin.

“Oh yeah, dance for me, you know I like it,” he whispered.  She began to grind.  When he was close, he beckoned her and she put the condom on, as always.  He watched her breasts jiggle as she bounced.  He squinted again so as not to see the disinterested expression on her face.

The doorknob rattled.  The door slammed against the wall.  A figure in a black trench coat and ball cap with a dust mask over its lower face appeared in the doorway.

Melissa shrieked and launched herself off him.  She scrambled off the bed, heading toward the bathroom.  He doubled over his rapidly shrinking penis and sat frozen as the intruder calmly pointed a pistol equipped with a black silencer at her.

The silencer clicked twice as the figure shot the whore in the back before she could reach the bathroom door.  She went down with a grunt.  Blood spattered on the mirror over the dresser in a grisly polka dot pattern.  Earl could feel his eyes bulge.

The intruder approached the bed.  Earl tried to crawl away.  The condom slipped off and fell on the floor, a soggy deflated jellyfish.

“Oh God, no, please, don’t kill me, please, what the fuck is going on here,” he babbled. “Who are you?”  There was no answer.  The pistol pointed at him like a big, deadly finger.  His frantic gaze traveled from the silencer to the man’s eyes.  They stared coldly at him over the mask, such a deep amber they appeared orange.  ”Who are you?”

“Thank you very much,” the intruder said.  His voice sounded as if he were smiling.

“What?”  The trigger jerked.  A bullet smashed into Earl’s forehead and he knew no more. He fell off the bed with a thump, his body twitching.

The killer stared at him for a minute.  He reached down and picked up the spent cartridges.  There was a flash of light.  A barrage of flashes painted the room before he left, closing the door.

A fly blundered around the room, smacked into the lampshade and lit on the bloody back of the dead woman to enjoy its feast.