Replaceable: An Alan Lamb Thriller (4 page)

“This is some shady business,” Weathers said. “Just keep me in the loop, would ya?”

“Will do.”

“I’ll give ya a jingle once we hear back on the DNA.”

Alan hung up. His mind had come nowhere near to presenting a solution. It was still working to fit the pieces together. But he thought back to what Howard Sitka had said, about how he had opened his front door that morning and found a man who the was the spitting image of him standing on the other side of it.

And now they were dealing with a mysterious set of fingerprints that were nearly a match for Sitka’s…but not quite.

My guess is that the expert’s off his game
, Weathers had said.

Alan wasn’t so sure about that.

Chapter 3

Alan was back
in Omaha by 2:45 P.M. As soon as he walked through the door to his office, Lucy blurted out, “The boss wants to see you.”

“I just got back.”

“He seemed hot to trot.”

“In English?”

“As in you should check in with him before you pass go and collect two hundred dollars. By the way, how was your trip?”

“Eventful.”

Alan dug into his pocket and pulled out his digital recorder. He handed it to Lucy and said, “Can you type this up when you get the chance?”

“Anything juicy?”

“Listen to it yourself, Watson.”

“Feeling snooty this afternoon?”

“Just jeg-lagged.”

“And how’s your inner turmoil?”

“I haven’t given it much thought.”

“I’m telling you, you should really go and see someone. Maybe a hypnotherapist. Have them put you under. You never know when you might be carrying around baggage from a past life.”

“Good to know.”

“I’m serious. It’s the real deal. The last time I went, I found out I was lower royalty in one of my past lives. Victorian Era. My husband was a wealthy land owner who cheated on me regularly. It went a long way in helping me understand why I’ve always had trust issues in my current incarnation.”

Alan wondered how difficult his job would become if he had to take his suspects’ behaviors from their past lives into account.

“Might do you some good,” Lucy said.

“The tape, Lucy.”

“Okay, I’m on it.”

Alan walked over to Gant’s office. He didn’t bother bringing coffee this time. When he entered, he noticed another manila folder perched at the corner of Gant’s otherwise neatly-organized desk.

“For me?” he asked, pointing at the folder.

Gant nodded. Alan picked up the folder and thumbed through it. “Related?”

“Illinois this time, but has all the hallmarks of the case you just caught,” Gant said. “Teller ripped off the vault. Susan Carville.”

“Is she in custody?”

“Yeah.”

“Let me guess, they found her tied to a bed?”

“Close. Found her tied up in her car a few blocks from the crime scene. Duct tape over her mouth.”

“They recover the money?”

“Nope. The only money they found was the loose change she had floating around in her purse.”

Alan sat down in the chair across from Gant’s desk. “What the hell is going on? Sounds like it’s related to the Mellencott job, but this was in a different state, perpetrated by a different suspect.”

“Look for a relationship between the two suspects. Or
vics
, depending on how you want to look at it. Check Sitka’s credit card statements, bank account transactions. Maybe he traveled to Peoria recently. Maybe he was having an affair with this Carville woman and they figured they could each pull a heist and then ride off into the sunset together.”

“I thought Sitka ranked as the new dumbest criminal, but looks like he’s got some stiff competition.”

“Coincidence maybe.” But Gant didn’t look convinced.

“I don’t believe in coincidence.”

“I don’t believe that for a second. In our trade, coincidence is the name of the game. I think you believe in them all right, but you’d never go so far as to invite one of them out to dinner.”

“Not like this.”

Alan gave Gant a breakdown of the Sitka case, recounting Sitka’s story, his interview with Nancy Sitka, and what Rosemary Jeffers had said about Sitka acting out of the ordinary on the day the bank was robbed. He ended with what Weathers had told him about the enigmatic fingerprints they had pulled off the bank vault and the Cadillac’s steering wheel.

“You think the examiner got it wrong?”

“I don’t know. That’s what the detective working the case down there thinks, but it seems unlikely.”

“You know as well as I do that mistakes happen.”

“Yeah, but why go out on a limb? Why risk his reputation? He knows he’ll be called on to testify later on, so why nitpick about such a slight discrepancy when it’ll only open up the floodgates? I don’t think he would have said anything if he was less than certain.”

“Covering his ass maybe? The defense will have their own expert take a look at the prints. It would be an embarrassment if it came out in court that the prosecution’s expert had overlooked something. You know how it is. Question something like that, it brings into question his expertise in any case he’s been involved with.”

“Maybe.”

“What about an actor?”

“An actor?”

“Like a body double. Someone that looked like the suspect. Maybe Sitka
was
kidnapped, and the perps used a double.”

“Must be a pretty convincing double if no one at the bank noticed.”

“What if they did though? It would explain how they claim Sitka was at the bank and tied up at his house at the same time.”

“It’s elaborate. Maybe
too
elaborate. It also doesn’t explain the similarity of the prints.”

“Maybe they lifted prints off Sitka after they assaulted him. Then had a way to transfer them to the vault and the car. I saw something like that in a movie once.”

“If that was the case, wouldn’t the prints match exactly? Why leave prints at all? They would have known that Sitka’s prints would have been all over the vault and inside his car already. It would have been pointless.”

“And you don’t think Sitka was lying?”

“If he is, he’s damn good at it.”

“Shit,” Gant said. “I’m out of ideas.”

Gant wasn’t a slouch when it came to the art of deduction, but he had spent enough time behind a desk for the gears in his brain to get rusty. It wasn’t quite like riding a bike. Alan knew you had to keep the equipment running; keep the wheels turning, well-oiled, get them moving every day or your mind would inevitably start to slow down. The ideas tended to run out more quickly; the dead-ends came rushing up on you sooner.

For a moment, Gant only stared at him. “We’re flying blind here?”

“Close to it.”

“It’s a real conundrum.”

“That’s a good word for it.”

“You know that crossword puzzle they put in the morning paper? I do it every morning. Helps keep the mind sharp.”

“It shows,” Alan said.

Gant chuckled. “Bullshit.”

Alan had the impression that the conversation had gone on too long. They had nothing else to say to each other. It was like two friends that hadn’t seen each other in years, but when they finally sit down to catch up, they both realize even the passage of many years wasn’t enough to carry them through five minutes together. People moved on, changed, and later discovered that they no longer had anything in common. Alan always tried to avoid those moments; tried to leave the conversation before it settled on the weather.

“We’ll get a break,” Gant said, trying to sound optimistic. “Someone will slip up. It always comes out eventually.”

“Except when it doesn’t,” Alan said.

Alan did legwork on the Peoria case from his desk. His first call was to the Peoria PD to a detective named Hodgens. Hodgens was fifty-six and within spitting distance of retirement. He had worked a beat on the street for twelve years before doing a three year stint in Vice and then finally got around to being promoted to detective in the Commercial Crimes Division. His plan was to serve out his remaining four years and then call it quits.

Over the phone, Hodgens sounded much younger than the fifty-six year old he claimed to be. He was also a loquacious fellow.

During the span of the twenty minute phone call, Alan also learned that the detective had a daughter that had just graduated from high school back in May and was planning to attend Chicago State this coming fall. Alan couldn’t explain it, but he had a peculiar knack for getting people to talk. Maybe it was something about his demeanor, maybe it was the tone of his voice, but he had a way of getting complete strangers to unburden themselves of their life stories. Lucy attributed it to him having a soothing aura; something mellow and inviting about it that emanated positive energy. Alan didn’t buy it for a minute.

After pleasantries had been exchanged, Detective Hodgens had finally seen fit to get down to brass tacks. The robbery had taken place at First National. For all intents and purposes, the circumstances involved in the First National robbery were virtually identical to those of the Mellencott Bank robbery in Augusta.

They had security cam footage showing a bank teller, Susan Carville, wheeling money out of the bank on a bright orange dolly. An hour following the robbery, Carville was located in the backseat of her Nissan Sentra, bound and gagged with duct tape. She reportedly had no clue as to what had happened and no recollection of robbing First National, the place she had been gainfully employed by for the past six years.

Although Alan didn’t like to judge people over the phone, his initial impression of Hodgens (in addition to the newly-discovered fact that the man liked to gab like an old lady at a bingo game) was that the Peoria detective wasn’t as perceptive as Detective Weathers of the Augusta PD.

“Found her hog-tied in the back of her Sentra,” Hodgens said. “Strangest way to create an alibi that I’ve ever witnessed. Talented girl though, to tie herself up that way. We checked her out. No criminal history. Not so much as a speeding ticket since she was seventeen. Lifted her prints off the vault, but that doesn’t mean jack squat seeing as how she has daily access to it. One odd thing though.”

Alan held his breath for a moment. He thought he knew what was coming. He said “You came up with a set of unidentified prints.”

“That’s right. How’d you know?”

“Just a hunch. Let me guess, they weren’t Carville’s, not an
exact
match, but damn close?”

“You must be psychic,” Hodgens said.

“Far from it,” Alan said.

“That’s exactly what happened. The examiner couldn’t quite believe it himself. He said he almost didn’t even bring it up, wondering if maybe he was losing it in his old age. You gonna pay us a visit?”

“I don’t think that’ll be necessary. Do me a favor though. See if there’s anything Carville left at the bank we could pull DNA off of. Send it up to our lab if you can.”

Alan gave Hodgens the address in Omaha.

“One other thing. See if Carville has any relationship with a man named Howard Sitka.”

“Should that name ring a bell?”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

“Some strange business,” the detective said. “And given what I’ve seen, that’s really saying somethin’.”

“Something new every day,” Alan said politely and hung up the phone.

Two cases. Almost identical. In both cases, the main suspects were also the primary victims (or had at least tried to give the appearance that they were).

Coincidence maybe? Alan didn’t believe in coincidence, but he acknowledged the fact that such things did in fact exist. They happened a hell of a lot more often than he liked to admit, especially in his line of work. The real problem was in believing that something was a coincidence without investigating it further. In an investigation, you didn’t write anything off until you had examined it six ways from Sunday, studied it with all your senses, and buried it in the ground.

The circumstances of the Sitka and Carville cases were too similar to be isolated incidents. There had to be a connection. Either Howard Sitka and Susan Carville knew each other, or an unknown third party had orchestrated both crimes. Alan wondered if the locations mattered. He entered the details on his phone. Augusta and Peoria were over twelve hours apart by land.

Alan felt tired. He wanted nothing more than to go home and turn his brain off for a while, but he knew himself well enough to know that there would be no respite from work. His mind craved mystery (and hated it just as passionately), and it would go on attacking a case from all angles until it zeroed in on a plausible solution.

It was going on six o’clock. He pushed his chair away from his desk and leaned back in his chair. After a moment, he scooped up the two file folders and tucked them under his arm.

“Calling it a day?” Lucy asked.

“Yeah, I’m beat.”

“Travel will do that. I was getting ready to leave, too. Want to walk me to my car?”

“You need an armed escort now?”

“You don’t have to,” Lucy said. “I’m sure I can manage.”

She stood up, slung her purse over her shoulder, and headed for the door in a hurry.

Alan sighed and followed after her, catching up with her at the elevator. “Wait up.”

“Oh, so you changed your mind all of a sudden?”

“I look at it as doing my one good deed for the day.”

“You’re not a very ambitious man if you settle at one.”

They rode down in the elevator together.

“So any breaks in the case?” Lucy asked after they had departed the elevator and stepped outside.

“Nada,” Alan said. “If things keep going like this, I might have to consult one of your psychic friends.”

“That sounds like a desperate measure coming from you.”

“I’m getting there.”

“Desperation is never an endearing quality in a man. It’s a turn off, really. It’s a proven fact that women are attracted to men with a high degree of self-confidence.”