Terminal Secret Read online

  “Right.”

  “We also know that Canal Road is one-way heading into the city in the morning at all points after Arizona Avenue.”

  “So Beth had to be on Canal Road by Arizona Avenue. This is the same conclusion we reached before,” Emily said.

  “Now, forget the car for a moment. Think about the bicycle.”

  “She parked her car and rode a bicycle?”

  “Yes.”

  “With a bicycle, she could go in any direction. And she might have been caught on a traffic camera and we missed her. We weren’t looking for a bicycle.”

  “True. We assume she was at the EPA lawyer’s residence at six and know for a fact that she was in the canal at 7:15. But let’s assume she was on her bike in the time between. She still couldn’t have gone too far.”

  Emily looked down at the map and then over at Wallace.

  Wallace dropped his thick index finger down on the map. “We have a couple of off-road options but I am thinking the C&O Canal path is a likely bet. The C&O Towpath runs for a couple of hundred miles from Georgetown to Ohio. It has less commuter bike traffic than some of the other trails and a lot of places to ditch a weapon. The only hiccup is that at six a.m. the parking lot for the C&O path along Canal Road is closed. There are a couple of places along the side of the road near Fletcher’s Boat house where people park after hours to go fishing, but a car would likely be towed pretty quickly during the morning rush hour. But it’s still a possibility.”

  “Other options?”

  “There’s a pedestrian tunnel not too far from the Georgetown University campus that leads to the C&O trail. There is no vehicle access, but if she were on a bicycle she wouldn’t even have to stop to cross the street.”

  “So you think Beth parked her car somewhere far enough away from the shooting so as to not be suspicious, rode her for bike for a while, ditched her weapon, and then rode back to her car. She put her bike back on the minivan, drove off, and then got in an accident and died.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m thinking.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “If I put myself in her shoes, I’m thinking I want to dump my evidence in the water. We know she was dying of cancer. According to the ME the cancer had spread throughout her body. She probably didn’t plan on dying the day she did, but she was still on her way out. The weapon only has to remain undiscovered for a month or two. Three maybe. After that, who cares if it’s found?”

  “And she discards the weapon and keeps the bullet casing her in pocket? Why would she do that?”

  “Mistake. She worked at Trader Joe’s. She wasn’t a professional. In the hustle to get away from the murder scene, and all the emotions and adrenaline that would come with that, maybe she overlooked the casing. Forgot about it. Dumped the weapon, came back to the vehicle, and saw the casing on the floor. Stuffed it in her pocket and then crashed.”

  Emily shrugged her shoulders.

  “If we believe she dumped the weapon into the canal, that doesn’t exactly limit the possibilities. There’s a lot of water in that canal between DC and Ohio.”

  “And if she was on a bicycle, then the weapon we’re looking for was probably disassembled before it was discarded. Someone would notice a woman riding a bike through DC with a rifle on her back. The size of the weapon may be something we need to keep in mind when we send the search boat back into the water again.”

  “The Duke of Junk mentioned there was a backpack found in the minivan. Probably stuffed the weapon into it before she jumped on the bike,” Emily said.

  Wallace paused for a long moment and then asked, “How far can you ride in a half hour?”

  “Five miles on flat terrain, if I hurry. And she could have gone in either direction. She could have headed towards Georgetown and then back to the minivan, or she could have headed towards Maryland and then turned around for the car.”

  “Well, five miles in either direction will take forever. Let’s call out the dogs. If the dogs hit on anything, maybe we can get a handle on which direction she went. It’s a lot of terrain to cover. Canal. River. Swampland. It’s going to take some time.”

  “I’ll take my bike out there. Pedal it myself. See if there’s anything that jumps out at me. A place to ditch something. Whatever. You want to come?”

  “I think we’re done working out together. No offense.”

  “None taken. Tomorrow morning I’ll pedal down the canal and check it out.”

  Chapter 34

  The BB&T Bank at Thirteenth and F Street buzzed with perpetual motion. Situated on one of the busiest thoroughfares in the city, on the first floor of a ten-story building that housed over forty companies and three thousand employees, the location had been carefully chosen.

  The blonde woman in the long black coat with oversized sunglasses entered the bank at precisely 8:35 a.m. A scarf wrapped around her neck, nuzzling up to her lower lip. A yellow leather purse hung from her left shoulder, creating a stark contrast to her black outerwear. She stared stoically forward, neck bent slightly downward, shuffling her feet in the designated area between the burgundy velvet rope dividers. She didn’t look up at the security cameras but knew they were recording her every move. Watching. All twelve of them. She had counted them on three previous occasions, when she had also memorized the layout of the floor and considered her exits.

  There were two large cameras at the front entrance to the bank—one on either side of the door. The three overhead cameras located in glass bubbles on the ceiling covered the entire lobby. Cameras near the entrance to the main vault provided views beyond the lobby and the bank patrons. Behind each teller window, additional cameras were affixed to the wall, their focus aimed directly at each customer as they stepped forward and stood at their respective teller window. It was out of particular precaution for these cameras that the woman in the long black coat kept her head down, her chin and scarf almost dipping into the top of her coat collar.

  She stared at the tile floor and waited for the next available teller, moving her feet as the patrons in front of her edged forward. At the front of the line the woman subtly clutched her abdomen. The large yellow purse inadvertently slipped off her shoulder. Her oversized sunglasses dipped down her nose as she struggled to regain her composure. Breathing steadily, she pushed her glasses back into place and stood straight. The woman felt the faint rumble of the Metro three stories below as she moved to the next available teller.

  She approached the window, pushed the printed note across the counter to the teller, and smiled. The teller read the brief note, looked up at the woman in front of her, and read the note again. Then the teller’s face turned white and her hands began to shake. The tall woman in the black coat placed her yellow leather purse on the counter, smiled again, and knocked lightly on the counter to indicate that time was not a luxury the teller enjoyed. The teller nodded in compliance and her hands danced across the top of the open cash drawer, careful not to dip below counter level, per the instructions on the note.

  The teller quickly placed three stacks of cash on the counter and the tall woman in the black coat caressed each stack, lifting each to assess their heft. She then flipped through each stack of bills as if running through a deck of cards. She watched carefully as the bills flashed before her eyes, the serial number the only difference between each bill in the new stack. Satisfied, she slipped the three stacks into her yellow leather purse.

  The woman in the coat flicked her head to the side and the teller moved to the next window and whispered into her coworker’s ear. Seconds later she returned to her teller window with another three stacks of hundred dollar bills. Once again, the robber weighed each stack in her hand and flipped through the end of the stacks, eyeballing each bill as it raced by. She left one stack on the counter and placed the two acceptable piles into her purse. The teller looked down, seemingly disappointed one of the stacks was deemed unacceptable. When the teller raised her eyes, the woman in the black coat casually turned away. Conscious
of the note and its instructions, the teller watched as the woman walked past a waiting customer who eagerly moved forward into the space vacated at the teller window.

  Seconds later, the woman in the black coat exited the bank from the side door and entered directly into the main lobby of the office building. She fought the urge to rush to the street, the outside world a mere ten paces to her right. Discipline, she reminded herself. She turned left down the first hall off the main lobby and walked past a set of doors with the name of a law firm spelled out in gold letters.

  At the end of the hall she pushed open the large metal fire door and vanished into the stairwell. When she stepped onto the third floor thirty seconds later, she was four inches shorter with dark brown hair. The black coat, along with her shoes, blonde wig, sunglasses and yellow bag had disappeared into the crevice between the railings of the stairs. She had watched as her disguise thudded to the basement floor three stories below. She was now dressed for the office in a dark cardigan sweater and a long navy skirt. Black flats supplanted her heels. Her large sunglasses had been replaced with library reading glasses. The black bag now on her shoulder hung more comfortably than the yellow one it replaced.

  On the third floor, with the bank alarm ringing faintly in the distance, the woman was now a legal professional. The five stacks of cash filled the inside of her small black bag. The pain medication she had delayed for the last few hours in the name of mental clarity was now in her mouth, releasing the nerve numbing magic from its solidified form on the end of the stick.

  She took deep breaths to help alleviate the pain. Each step was a step closer to relief. Each second with her medication one second further away from the pain. Slowly, euphoria and adrenaline took over the helm of her emotions. Concentrating on her plan, the woman put distance between herself and the stairwell-turned-changing room. Head up, eyes forward, she strolled purposefully down another long hall, past several smaller law offices.

  At the end of the corridor, she turned again. She was now on the opposite side of the building, more than a hundred yards from the bank, three stories above the chaos that was beginning to unravel at street level. At the rear of the building, she entered another staircase and walked down three flights of stairs towards an exit leading to the alley on the backside of the building.

  *

  A young lawyer smoking a cigarette in the alley heard the bank alarm. Unconcerned with a faint ringing he didn’t recognize, he took another drag and held it in his lungs. When police sirens joined the cacophony, the lawyer dropped his habit onto the dirty concrete alley. He extinguished the butt with the sole of his Bostonian and stepped up the small metal staircase to pull on the handle to the rear fire door. Five-hundred-dollars an hour was waiting for him in his office above.

  The lawyer pulled the fire door open just as the woman pushed outward from the inside of the same door. Momentum did the rest. When the quick-dressing thief felt nothing but air where the door should have been, the full force of her weight crashed down on the nicotine-satiated attorney. The collision of the real attorney on his way in, and the fictitious legal professional on her way out, sent both parties to the ground in a mass of dark-colored Italian wool.

  A grunt and a moan followed, intermingled with a mix of muted curses.

  The lawyer fought to stand and a cut above his eyebrow began to bleed. By the time he had shaken the initial cobwebs, crimson trickled freely down his cheek.

  The woman rolled over, stood, and dosey-doed around the bleeding attorney, scanning the ground as she moved. For a moment that lasted entirely too long, the woman stopped her search, looked up, and locked eyes with the attorney.

  “Are you okay?” the lawyer asked, wiping his cheek. He felt the moisture on his fingertips and looked down at his hand. When he raised his glance he saw the backside of the woman disappear into the mass of pedestrians on the sidewalk ten yards away.

  *

  A half block away, with the bank’s main entrance now in the distance to her right, Amy stepped onto the large escalator heading into Metro Center. She waved her pre-bought subway pass over the gate turnstile and walked down two flights of stairs to the lowest platform. She traversed the platform from one end to the other, weaving slowly through the morning rush hour crowd. At the end of the platform she took another staircase up. From there, she followed the platform to the far end and exited through the fare gate on the opposite side of the station. Without taking a train, she was now a half mile from the scene of the holdup, scrubbed and unidentified. When she stepped foot back on the street level she raised her hand and smiled as the taxi pulled over to the side of the curb.

  *

  The cellphone in her backpack started to ring with increasing volume and Emily stopped her bike and dismounted.

  “You out pedaling?”

  “I am.”

  “You find anything?”

  “A lot of area to ditch a weapon.”

  “How much longer are you going to be?”

  “What’s up?”

  “You want to run a bank robbery?”

  “You know I do.”

  “How long to get downtown?”

  “I’m almost back at the car.”

  “Pedal to the metal. I’ll meet you there. BB&T. Thirteenth and F Street.”

  *

  Detectives Wallace and Fields stood shoulder-to-shoulder in the security room of the BB&T bank. The bank manager leaned against the far wall, the extra stress of the morning’s security failure already taking its toll, the strain evident by the shaking hands and the nervous tick in the corner of his left eye.

  The security guard sat at the controls of the desk, the feed from six cameras on display on the wall, each on its own monitor. The light from the six displays gave the small room a bluish hue, as if staring at an aquarium in the dark. The security guard paused the recording at the beginning of the robbery, just as the suspect entered the bank.

  “Is everyone ready?” the security guard asked.

  “Run it,” Detective Wallace replied.

  “Absolutely,” Emily chimed. “My first bank robbery.”

  The security guard handled the logistics of juggling the multiple security feeds as Wallace offered his version of the play-by-play.

  “Okay. She walks into the bank at 8:35. She appears to be alone.”

  The bank manager checked his watch. “An hour and five minutes ago.”

  “The clock is ticking, I understand,” Wallace said.

  The security guard continued. “She’s disguised. Sunglasses. Long coat. Wig. Scarf. Shoes. Yellow purse. A decent disguise that lets her hide her real height and most of her physical features. All we really have is a flash of her hands and her jaw line. We may get prints off the counter if she wasn’t wearing cover to prevent them from being transferred.”

  “Based on the shoes we found in the stairwell, she seems to be average height. Take away the three-inch heels on the shoes she was wearing and she’s in the five foot five range. Five six at most.”

  They watched as the bank robber handed the note to the teller and then sifted through the stacks as they were placed on the counter.

  “How much money is in each stack?” Emily asked, turning towards the bank manager standing in the dark corner with a cell phone in each hand.

  “Ten thousand is standard for a stack of hundred dollar bills. We lost fifty thousand dollars.”

  “She left some on the counter,” Emily pointed out.

  The manager nodded. “Dye packs. With a little experience, you can detect a dye pack quite easily. The older ones felt heavier and had a hard center. They were very easy to detect. The new dye packs consist of a smaller plastic insert. Harder to detect, but still visible. This woman knew what she was doing. She didn’t want the cash placed in a bag by the teller. She wanted the cash on the counter. She wanted to see it. She wanted to decide which stacks she was taking with her.”

  All parties watched as the woman turned away from the teller.

  �
��She goes out a different exit from the one she used to enter the bank,” Emily said. “You’d think most people would take the quickest way out of the bank. Straight across the lobby onto the sidewalk, and gone.”

  Wallace offered his insight. “She did her homework. There’s an overhead security camera on the corner of the building. An ATM on each side of the front door. She’d be more easily tracked on the sidewalk in front of the bank.”

  “But she came through the front door on her way in.”

  “She didn’t care what she looked like then. This woman wanted to change her outfit and then get out of the building looking like someone else. Walking into the bank, robbing it, and walking out of the bank wearing the same outfit is not nearly as effective.”

  “After she walks out the door into the lobby of the office building, what do we have for surveillance?” Emily asked.

  The security guard pointed to the next monitor on the wall. “We have her going down the hall on the first floor. We have nothing in the stairwell.”

  “Why not?”

  “I think there were cameras in the stairwell at one point, but now we only have cameras on every floor. I don’t think the stairs see much traffic.”

  “Fair enough.”

  The security guard pointed back to the monitor. “We can see the profile of the perpetrator on the third floor as she walks past a camera in the hall near the elevator bank. Only a grainy view from maybe twenty feet away.”

  “Not much to go on there,” Wallace said.

  “Not much.”

  “Less than a minute later she enters the stairwell at the rear of the building.”

  “A minute later you can see the perpetrator exit the building into the alley. This image is from above, on the outside of the building. This is not a bank camera,” the security guard added. “Here is where you can see the collision between the bank robber and the lawyer who was having a cigarette.”