Takeover - Lisa Black [50]
“So would I,” Jason said.
Eric Moyers’s disposition had not improved greatly since he’d left his workplace. He had gone from one inhospitable climate with a partially stocked pop machine to another. He sat at an abandoned microfilm-viewing station, drinking Sprite without enthusiasm.
Theresa planted her body in front of him and introduced herself. The guy looked exhausted and breathed with a raspy wheeze, but he gamely fielded questions from her and Jason without argument. Theresa had the feeling he’d answer questions from Peggy Elliott, should she care to ask any. An air of hopeless resignation bracketed every word.
“Does Bobby have a white Mercedes?”
“Not white,” the baggage handler corrected her bitterly. “Pearl.”
“And he put it in storage while he served this last sentence in Atlanta?”
“I wouldn’t have any idea where he put it.”
“Could he have paid to store it for six months?”
“Sure. Bobby always had money—stolen money, of course, but he’d have it.” He snorted. “He put his car in storage? That’s probably the only time my brother thought ahead in his life.”
Jason asked, “Did he live in Brookpark before he went to jail? The car is registered to a house there.”
“We all lived there. That’s where Bobby and I grew up. But he was gone and Mom had died—no point me living there all by myself. I sold it months ago.”
Jason’s phone rang, and he answered it, walking a few steps away and pulling out his notepad before he even flipped the receiver open.
Theresa tried another tack with Eric Moyers. “Is Bobby good with mechanics? Did he work on the car, know how to modify it?”
“Bobby couldn’t change a tire if his life depended on it. If he had any work done, he got someone else to do it. What are you guys doing about this anyway? Can’t I sit somewhere so I can see what’s going on?”
“Unfortunately, we can’t all fit in the command center,” she told him, thinking, Damn, I’m learning to deflect people as smoothly as Chris Cavanaugh. “Does Bobby have a friend named Lucas?”
“I told this guy here I don’t know any of Bobby’s friends. He always had plenty of them, I’ll admit that. Everyone liked Bobby, especially kids and dumb animals. But I don’t know his friends—I didn’t want to know them then, I don’t want to know them now.”
“Has he called you since he got out?”
“He might have tried, but I doubt it. I changed my address and phone, left no forwarding. We only had my aunt and uncle in common, and they died in a car accident. Truth is, lady,” Eric Moyers summed up, “I didn’t even know he was out.”
CHAPTER 15
12:05 P.M.
Paul had stretched his legs out straight, Theresa noted, probably to release some of the pressure on his butt. He wasn’t used to sitting so much. He still wouldn’t look up at the camera, instead following Lucas’s pacing movements.
I’m failing miserably at this investigating gig, honey. I haven’t discovered one useful fact, and we still have no idea how to get you out of there.
Kessler had disappeared. The scribe, Irene, wrote steadily now that Cavanaugh had Lucas back on the phone. He asked the bank robber, “Where are you from, by the way?”
“I could say the depths of hell, but I hate to be overdramatic.”
“Bobby is a Cleveland boy, born and raised, we know that—”
“Really. What else do you know?”
“—but where are you from, Lucas? Where did you two get to be friends?”
“I fail to see how that’s relevant, Chris.”
“Did you meet when Bobby served time in Atlanta?”
A pause. Theresa could see him on the monitor, talking on the phone from the information desk. It had a cord and limited his movement to pacing in front of the hostages, the curly wire stretched over their heads. Any minute now he would tug the body of the phone down onto one of them. “I don’t see that car pulling up outside. And don’t give me any more lines about a tow-truck driver.”
“That’s just it, Lucas. The last time you mentioned the tow-truck driver, you also mentioned Winn-Dixie, which is a chain of grocery stores, right?”
“So?”
“So there aren’t any in Cleveland. There aren’t any in Ohio. They’re a southern chain.