Takeover - Lisa Black [46]
“That’s why I’m here.” Patrick balanced the can in the unsteady pyramid of trash.
“They empty that twice a day,” Eric Moyers told him. “We just dehydrate so fast in this heat.”
“Mr. Moyers. Your brother is in a very dangerous situation right now. I think we’re going to need your help to save his life.”
Eric Moyers pitched his can at the wastebasket, collapsing its contents into a noisy jumble. “Why on earth would I want to do that?”
CHAPTER 14
11:43 A.M.
“You think Bobby and Lucas are from Atlanta, Georgia?” Cavanaugh asked. “Why?”
Theresa spoke rapidly, without taking her eyes from the TV. Paul sat terribly still, left arm clamped to his side, hiding his firearm. “The key chain for the car is a red, rubberized relief of men’s faces. I think it’s from Stone Mountain State Park outside Atlanta, where Jackson, Lee, and Davis are carved into a cliff. The dirt I found in the floor mats is clay with iron oxide. Rust, that’s what the toxicologist told me.”
“Georgia’s red dirt,” Cavanaugh said.
“Exactly. Don thinks the twig in the trunk is from a magnolia. They grow here, but they’re especially abundant in Georgia.”
“Jason? Is that right?”
“Yep. Bobby just served eight months on felony parole violation at the federal prison in Atlanta.”
“Give the girl a cigar. What about his cellmate?”
“Thirty-one-year-old black male from Raleigh, name of Dunston Taylor.”
Theresa saw her own disappointment mirrored in Cavanaugh’s face.
“Not Lucas, not even as a middle name, but he did get released the week before Bobby,” Jason went on. “They’re searching the database now for any Lucas who would be out now.”
“What about guards?” Theresa asked.
“They’re searching the employee list, too.”
“So how do two run-of-the-mill scumbags in prison hook up with a bank examiner from the Federal Reserve?” Cavanaugh asked.
Jason didn’t have an answer, and Theresa didn’t care. “Can’t we figure that out later? Right now they just shot and killed one of the hostages. What are we going to do before they shoot the rest?”
Cavanaugh perched himself, catlike, in front of the phone. “I’m going to ask Lucas who he shot and why. And then we’ll talk about his feelings.”
Theresa returned to the telescope. The line of hostages remained one short, but otherwise nothing had changed.
Ms. Elliott, the head librarian, materialized at her elbow. “How are you holding up?”
“Fine,” Theresa said.
Ms. Elliott waited.
“I keep breathing in and out. Beyond that, I don’t know.” Theresa sank against the wide windowsill, leaning one thigh against it; even the marble had turned hot in the overhead sun. She breathed in the scent of book dust. “My grandfather used to work here.”
Peggy Elliott questioned her kindly, as if Theresa were a particularly bashful student asking to use a periodical. “At the Federal Reserve?”
“No, here at the library.” She spoke without turning from the glass, but she could see the other woman’s solid form, safely tucked against the wall between the windows, watching her. “Of course that would have been…what, 1930? He was a page. Do they still have those? Pages?”
“Sure. We call them clerks now.”
“What do they do?”
“Shelve books, help readers find what they’re looking for.”
“He always read a lot.” Theresa gazed across the street, at the building for once, instead of its windows. These stone structures had been here for a long time, but so much had changed. What had it been like in 1930, when a fourteen-year-old boy could go downtown to work by himself and no one worried, before terrorists blew up planes and automatic rifles had been invented? The study of crime told her that the world had