Takeover - Lisa Black [92]
Cavanaugh nodded. “It could be. It works in our favor as well—if we have to pursue, which I pray we don’t, at least we won’t be running into the motorcade or convention-center traffic. Of course, if he heads east from here, it wouldn’t have made any difference anyway. I need to know what he’s planning. If he waits any longer, we’re going to run into that Hall of Fame concert traffic.” He dialed the phone again, punching the numbered plastic buttons with violence.
“What about Cherise?” Patrick said. “Did you check out what Theresa told that SRT guy?”
Cavanaugh gestured at Jason, who answered. “I spoke with her parents—as much as I could; they were hysterical—and her brother, and three other Fed tellers. She’s had no recent changes in her behavior or her habits. She’s been dating the same guy for a year and a half, a production assistant at WMMS. They break up off and on, but he’s been away with a church mission trip for the past ten days, rebuilding homes in New Orleans. Her finances have stayed steady. She deposits her salary and pays her bills. No big purchases. If there’s some dark secret in her life, she’s hidden it well.”
Cavanaugh kept dialing, so Patrick lowered his voice and spoke to Jason. “Lucas, then. Did we ask his sister what Theresa told the sergeant about abuse?”
“I tried her, but the line was busy. Apparently there are still people in this country who don’t have call-waiting. Or a DSL line.”
“Mind if I try?”
“Be my guest.” Jason stood up. “I’ve got to have a bathroom break anyway, or it’s going to get messy in here. Here’s the number.”
Patrick moved out to the center of the building, by the elevators, where the early-afternoon sun slanted through the wall of windows facing the courtyard and the Eastman Reading Garden. Miraculously, Lucas Parrish’s sister answered on the first ring. As soon as he identified himself, she said, “I’m not interested in helping you kill my brother, and besides, I have to be at my post in ten minutes.”
“Ma’am, he’s surrounded by approximately thirty-five cops and security guards. I don’t want anyone to shoot him, because once one bullet flies, you know more will follow, and there’s a lot more people down there besides your brother. So I’m as desperate to keep him alive as you are, understand?”
Slowly she agreed.
“Do you have any idea why your brother is doing this?”
“Why he’s robbing a bank? Because he’s a dreamer without a real job, that’s why.”
“He doesn’t want to work for a living?”
From the tone of her voice, she took no offense at the question. “He’s not lazy—he’s impatient. He wants grand adventures, tons of money, a beautiful woman who will love him forever and ever. He aims too high, I guess you could say.”
“I’ve been told Lucas suffered some abuse as a child. Can you tell me how that happened?” He tried to sound knowledgeable, when in truth he had no idea how Lucas’s friggin’ childhood could help them in this situation. But Theresa had taken some risk to pass along this information, and he would act on it.
“You mean the burns?”
“Uh…yeah.”
“My mother’s husband. Our father, I guess, though I’ve never really been too sure about that.”
“He left when you two were kids?”
“Yeah.” She waited, no doubt wondering what the hell Patrick was getting at. He wondered, too.
Patrick began to pace, then entered the stairwell to move down one floor. “Is that when Lucas began to get in trouble?”
“No. He didn’t go in for petty stuff—he’s never aimed low. I got in more trouble than he did. He liked school, worked part-time here and there. He read a lot. I guess that’s how he got so dreamy—he read books and drew pictures to get through the days at our house. I went out and played football with the boys, climbed fences, anything to be with other people. We all cope in our own ways.”
Patrick couldn’t stand in one place. He escaped the sunlight and slipped between the cool stacks, up to the glass-walled map room. Rachael had her back to him, glued to the monitor, watching the small group of pixels representing her mother.