When Samantha had asked Danny to drop her in front of the police station, she hadn't quite been telling the truth. It hadn't been exactly a lie either. She was going to the police, but not just to make a statement. She knew one Detective Megan Tanner; they went back a long way. Samantha was sure that she could persuade Megan to make a few enquiries for her in exchange for information.
Megan Tanner was sitting at her desk when the officer brought Samantha in.
"Ms. Spade for you," The uniformed policeman announced.
Megan looked up and a smile spread on her face.
"Sam, how long has it been? A year at least?" Megan pulled Samantha into a hug. "How are you doing at the FBI?"
"Being busy," Samantha replied and forced a smile. Megan tilted her head. Something told Samantha that Megan was not totally surprised by her visit. There was an uncomfortable silence as neither woman knew how to begin.
"So you have seen the papers?" Megan asked finally, starting to pace.
"Yes, this morning. It is Eric, isn't it?"
"Of course it is him," Megan hissed.
Megan was wringing her hands and pacing agitatedly. Samantha watched her. She didn't understand why Megan was so nervous. She had known Megan during the time of her marriage, but she had been a casual acquaintance. She had been at a couple of parties. And there had been many parties.
"Clyde Buckner disappeared," Samantha said.
Megan stopped pacing.
"When?"
"The night before yesterday. He left the house late and nobody has seen him since. The FBI is investigating."
"Do you think that he killed Eric?" Megan asked. Samantha thought she could detect something like hope in Megan's voice.
"Maybe. We are considering the possibility," Samantha lied. So far, except for her and Danny, nobody at the FBI knew that Clyde Buckner had robbed a bank together with the Dane brother's and future Special Agent Samantha Spade. Samantha didn't know whether she should laugh or cry. She could practically hear her mother telling her 'I told you so'.
She bid Megan good-bye and left with an ill feeling settling deep in her stomach. Back out on the street, the cold air blew in her face and she pulled her coat closer. Seeing Megan again had brought the past back. How ten years could be such a short time. It seemed like it had happened yesterday. It amazed her how much the hurts of the past could still reach her now. When she had moved out of her parents' home, she had sworn to herself she would never look back. She hadn't and still the past had now caught up with her. Like the icy New York wind was slipping under her coat, the demons of the past were slipping past her well-constructed defences.
oOo
When Samantha arrived back at the office, Danny and Vivian were slaving over a mountain of files at the briefing table. Jack was nowhere to be seen.
"Hey guys. What happened here?" She took in the chaos.
"Buckner was under investigation for tax fraud. The first indictment was filed in 1995 and dropped the following year. He was running a hair salon and forgot to pay taxes. With the next business, another investigation; this time in 1998. The case was closed in 1999. Apparently Clyde had gone out of business and with him, the evidence. At the time he was running a security service." Vivian summed up their work so far.
"Interesting. What about his last business, the computer store? It looks like he didn't pay any income tax. Didn't the IRS notice?"
Vivian shrugged. "There is nothing to indicate that he was ever investigated after 1999. Maybe he figured how to cheat on his taxes and not get caught?"
"Mhm, maybe." Samantha was sceptical. Clyde was greedy, but not very smart. Richard had always been the smart one. "Listen, I need to run something by Jack. Have you seen him?"
"No, he's probably in his office." Danny said.
"I passed there when I got in. He isn't there," Sam replied as she shook her head. Matters would have to wait. "I have to check something out."
She sat down at her desk. She turned on the computer monitor and typed in Megan's name in the FBI data search.
Something hadn't sat right with her when she had spoken with Megan. She had been too nervous and for a casual acquaintance, she had been very sure to recognise Eric after ten years.
As expected, Megan Tanner came up with a clean record. Of course; Megan's career was exemplary. She had risen quickly through the ranks. Sam wasn't sure what she was looking for. Some sort of connection.
Megan Tanner, born Megan Jeffries, in Red Sun, Ohio in 1976. They were born the same year, Sam thought. Married to Timothy Tanner in 2002. No children. Samantha couldn't imagine getting married again. She shook her head. She was imagining things. Maybe Megan had known the Danes better than she remembered. After all, she had left the morning after the robbery. Megan hadn't been involved, but she had been there, she knew. Even if Eric had told her afterwards about the robbery and Megan now knew about it, Samantha wasn't going to ruin another career. If she was going down, she would go down alone.
Slowly, she got up. She had to tell Jack.
oOo
Samantha found Jack down in the parking lot. He was smoking when she got there. She had never seen him look this unhappy.
"Hey Jack. I didn't know you smoked," she said lightly.
"I didn't know how much I had missed smoking," Jack replied. Despite the cold, he was not wearing a coat. "Maria is moving out."
"At least you won't fight." The moment she had said it, it seemed stupid, but Jack didn't seem to mind.
"That's something," he agreed. "I just have no idea how it's supposed to go on with us." He lit another cigarette.
"Have you thought about the alternative?"
Jack nodded. "I can't tell you how often I have in the last few years. If it weren't for the girls..."
"Maybe you should think about the two of you for once," Sam proposed.
Jack smiled. "Being a parent makes everything so much harder...but I wouldn't miss it for the world."
They both stood in silence.
"Jack, I have to tell you something," Samantha began.
"It's all right, I know about it," Jack quickly replied, wanting to avoid the topic.
"What? How? How do you know about the robbery?" Samantha was stunned.
Now it was Jack's turn to stare.
"Robbery? I thought you and Martin..."
"No." Sam felt herself blush. "Clyde Buckner, Richard Dane and his brother Eric Dane robbed a bank in April of 1994."
Jack waited for her to continue.
"I was there. Not in the bank, but I waited for them in the car. I didn't know what they were going to do. Only when I read about the robbery in the paper the next day, I put the pieces together. Then, yesterday, Eric Dane was murdered. I read about it in the paper this morning."
"You should have come to me right away," Jack said softly.
"I know. I guess I just hoped that this would all stay in the past," Sam said sorrowfully.
"It would have been easier for everyone. At least the statute of limitation has run out on the armed robbery." Jack put his hand on Sam's shoulder.
Sam shook her head. "There was a shooting, if someone died..."
"Go home. Take a few days off." Jack was serious.
"I...what are you going to do? Jack! You can't just..." Sam shook Jack's hand off her shoulder. Her face was flushed with anger. She turned to stride towards the door, but Jack grabbed her hard by the arm.
"Let me go!" Sam hissed. You're hurting me." She shot Jack a look of anger and hurt.
Jack released her arm. "I'm sorry." He hadn't meant to hurt her; it had been a reflex. "Just listen to me. Just let me figure out a way to fix this."
"There isn't anything to fix. I made a mistake. I thought I could run away from the past, but it turns out I can't," Sam laughed with bitterness.
"All of us have done things we aren't proud of and that we'd like to forget."
Sam turned and left without looking back. She didn't need empty phrases.
oOo
Jack had the team assembled at the briefing table two hours later. The murder of Eric Dane was now officially a federal case and Richard Dane's picture had been added to the white board, next to Clyde Buckner's.
If Martin and Vivian wondered about Sam's absence, neither of them asked about her.
"On April 21st, 1994, three men robbed the Northern United Bank in Manhattan. They stole a grand total of two million and three hundred thousand dollars plus an estimated quarter million in cash, gold and jewellery from the safety deposit boxes. They stole every cent that was in the bank, down to the wallets of everyone who was there at the time of the robbery."
"Professionals?" Vivian asked.
"That was the assumption at the time," Jack said. "They walked into the bank two minutes after opening. They wore baseball caps and possibly wigs. One of them walked up to the counter and handed the cashier a written note demanding she hand over the money in her cash drawer, while another robber asked to be taken down to the safe deposit boxes. He presented valid identification for one of the boxes, so the cashier didn't suspect anything. As soon as they were on their way down, the power shorted out. Robbers one and three stayed in the checking hall, emptying all the cash drawers and taking the wallets of the cashiers and one customer: a woman with her seven-year-old daughter. Robber two was down in the vault room with one of the cashiers. The vault has a time lock, which the employees cannot open; it only opens at a predetermined time, after the regular opening hours. Robber two used the master key to empty the safe deposit boxes. With the time lock disabled by the power outage, the robbers only needed to disable the mechanical lock to open the vault. The robbers were about to leave when one of the security guards tried to stop them. One of the robbers panicked and started shooting, killing the two security guards and one of the tellers and wounding the two customers, including the seven-year-old girl. They were out in less than twenty minutes," Jack said as he laid out the robber's MO.
"Everything looks like this was definitely a crew of pros, and they either had help from inside or another way to get in the system," Vivian commented after listening to Jack's introduction. "Were there any other cases that fit this particular MO? You don't get a crew like this together to pull just one heist."
"In this case, someone did. This was the first and only case with this exact MO. The FBI Robbery Squad formed a task force to investigate the robbery. I had all their files brought from storage, the whole eighteen months of investigative work. Agent Fairholm was the lead agent on the case. He retired a few months after the investigation into the Northern United robbery was closed." Jack put four boxes of files on the table. The team looked at them in silent resignation. It would take days to read all of them; it would be far faster to talk to Agent Fairholm.
"What does any of this have to do with our case?" Martin asked. He could guess that the missing Clyde Buckner was somehow involved in the robbery from ten years ago, but he had also noted that a second photograph had gone up on the white board.
Jack wiped his forehead with his sleeve.
"I think we have found the three robbers: Clyde Buckner, Richard Dane and Eric Dane." Jack added three sketches to the white board. "These were made from the witness' descriptions."
The sketches bore vague resemblance to the two men at best with regard to their facial features, but the hair was entirely different. There was no photograph to match the third sketch.
"Buckner's friend and accomplice, Richard Dane, born in Red Sun, Ohio, in 1971. That's all we know. After that his trail goes cold. Never paid taxes in his life and has no driver's licence. But we'll dig deeper. Now that the investigation into the Northern United robbery is open again, we have jurisdiction over the case. The robbery itself is out. We are a few years too late for that, but there is no statute of limitation on murder."
"Who pulled the trigger?" Martin leaned back and asked.
"We don't know. One of the robbers in the checking hall--a redhead-- according to witnesses."
All eyes settled on the photograph of Richard Dane, a grinning young man with grey eyes and ginger hair.
"Is he the only redhead in the family?" Vivian asked.
"No." Jack added the enlarged image of an Ohio driver's licence. Eric Dane's face was framed with bright red hair. "Eric Dane was found dead at the Ollivette Hotel in Brooklyn yesterday morning." Jack put up yet another picture in the white board, this one showing the crumpled body of a young man with short red hair, staring up at the viewer, his light blue shirt stained with dark red blood. "Shot twice in the chest at close range with a 9-mm Beretta. We are still waiting on the ballistics."
"What do we know about the third man?" Vivian asked.
"More than we do about the others. Eric Dane was born in Red Sun, Ohio, in 1976. According to DMV, he moved to New York City in 1988, had various small-time dead-end jobs, but he did attend Brooklyn Community College during the evenings. He graduated with a BA in economics in 1992, got a steady job with some small magazine after that. Nothing after that, until two weeks after the robbery when he suddenly moved to Hayden, Washington. He got married three years later, had a son, divorced last year, and went back to school. The full program."
"He started over again--a new life. But something made him come back here. Have you managed to find out what happened to his share of the money?" Vivian asked.
"Maybe he started a college fund for his son, right after he was born. One million dollars. That's a lot of money for a guy who made $35,000 a year. And almost his entire share of the robbery. He never touched most of the money. He saved it all for his son." Jack said.
"We need to talk with his ex-wife, find out if he ever had contact with Clyde or Richard after he left New York City. Also, we need to find out if she knew about the money. I'm calling the local field office; we need phone records and financials on Eric Dane, anything to explain why he was in New York the night he was killed." Jack felt energized again. This new information was starting to shed some light on what they might be dealing with. By now it was fairly clear that Clyde's disappearance and Eric's murder were most likely connected with the bank robbery. Something--they didn't know what yet--had brought the three robbers together again…and had resulted in violence. His instinct told him that the key was to be found in how the three robbers had chosen to spend their share. They already knew what Eric Dane had done with his part of the share and Vivian and Danny were working on Buckner's finances. If Eric Dane had put a million in savings, that would put him above a third of the share. Someone was half a million short and Jack had seen people killed over less than fifty bucks.
What puzzled Jack was it seemed like, that out of the blue, these three men had decided to rob a bank, had pulled it off like they had never done anything else and then had gone back to being upstanding citizens. They had been young, with no education and no money, trying to make ends meet in the big city.
The thought wasn't as shocking as he had expected. Somehow the revelations of the last two days had dulled his feelings; he just absorbed new pieces of information with little emotional feedback. He had stopped asking questions of Samantha; they were just draining her energy. He had seen it many times in her work. No one ever really knew the people around themselves. Husbands led doubles lives, wives had secret lovers, children took drugs and no one ever knew. No one ever wanted to know.
TBC