The Bubble Gum Thief (12 page)

She was met with cold stares from her classmates as they exited the room. A teacher’s pet is never popular. Even Brent’s smile was a little forced. Should’ve been him, right? Even though he wouldn’t have wanted it. Dagny peeked inside the classroom, and the Professor waved for her to enter.

“Dead dog in Chula Vista,” she began. She filled him in on the details and relayed Perez’s theory about the gum. “Was there gum on the back of the card in Cincinnati?”

“You can find out tomorrow when you visit Lieutenant Beamer. You’re okay with that, right? Going to Cincinnati?”

“Of course.” Little did he know she’d already booked a ticket.

March 13—Cincinnati, Ohio

A balding middle-aged man with a bad cough plopped down in the seat next to her. “Michael Connelly. I love his stuff. I read that one last week.”
Cough
. “How do you like it?”

“Uh-huh,” she murmured, without looking up from her book.

“I thought about being a cop, always thought I would have been a good detective. But you know how those things go.”

Dagny didn’t, so she ignored him.

“You from Cincy or DC? Or you connecting somewhere?”

“I’m from DC. I’m going to Cincinnati.”

“Business or pleasure?”

“University Hospital. I’ve got a mild form of leprosy, and they’re checking me into a clinical trial.”

“Oh.” The man left her alone for the rest of the flight. He even ceded the armrest.

When the hills of Northern Kentucky parted, the Cincinnati skyline filled the expanse. Staring out the taxi window, Dagny was surprised by its beauty. Newer cities are all glass and steel, but Cincinnati was a hodgepodge of classical, art deco, and modern
architecture. The hills surrounding downtown were dotted with expensive homes and condos feasting on river and city views. Beautiful, colorful bridges spanned the river. But when Dagny’s cab crossed one of them into the downtown, she saw boarded-up storefronts and loiterers in front of City Hall. There were hundreds of old houses in distress. Shattered windows and graffiti. Vagrants sleeping on benches. An upturned trash can.

Cincinnati looked better from afar, she decided.

At District One, a short, scrawny bald man waited by the curb. “Ronald Beamer,” he said, helping her out of the taxi. The curbside greeting was unexpected, but then again, visitors from Quantico were surely rare.

Beamer led Dagny up the steps and into the station, through a maze of cubicles and desks, to a conference room in the back. One wall of the conference room was made of glass and looked out to the bustling activity of the precinct floor. Dagny sat down in a maroon leather chair with brass nail-head trim. Its roller-ball wheels didn’t fare well on the plush green carpet. Beamer sat across from Dagny and placed a thin black binder on the wobbly oak conference table. He flashed a nervous smile. “Okay, before we go any further, are you taking the case?”

“No. I’m working with Timothy McDougal at the Academy. He’s worked with the BSU for the past thirty years or so, and now he works mostly on independent research projects.”

“He’s the old guy that I talked to?”

“Yes.”

“What’s his interest?”

“He was intrigued by the robbery at Waxton Savings and Loan, and wanted me to find out more about it. That’s it.”

“Why is he intrigued? Because of the baseball or because of the card?” Beamer asked.

“The card.”

“So this is just research?”

“Yes.”

“We’d like notice and a chance to review before anything is published. Just to protect the investigation, if you know what I mean.”

“That’s perfectly reasonable.”

Beamer opened the notebook and slid it across the table to Dagny. “You can look through it, make copies, whatever you want. I can give you the rundown, too, if you’d like.”

“I would.”

Beamer spent the next thirty minutes recounting the pertinent details of the investigation. The thief had stolen only a little over $7,000 and the World Series ball. The phone system had logged the call that drew Roy Fielder to Dayton. It was a nonexistent number with a Dayton area code. “There are sites like
SpoofCard.com
that make it look like you’re calling from another number, another area code,” he explained. Dagny already knew this, but let him tell her anyway.

Beamer took her through the various witness statements, and noted the thief’s strange incantation: “The sins of the devils remain with them in heaven.”

“The sins of the devils remain with them in heaven?”

Beamer looked down at his notes. “Yep.”

It didn’t make sense, she thought. “What about the bullets?”

He reached down toward the floor, lifted a clear plastic bag from a box, and handed it to Dagny. “We found three in the bookshelf in Waxton’s office. The other he fired through the front door.”

Dagny held the bag up and studied the bullets. Five lands and grooves twisted to the right. “Smith and Wesson,” she noted. Beamer handed her two more bags. The first contained the bullet casings. The second held the business card and gum. Dagny lifted the bag containing the card and looked at the other side. “No prints, I assume?”

“Nothing. The guy was wearing gloves. You’ll see in the tape when Goldilocks gets here.”

The card edges were perforated. Dagny guessed that they had been produced on a home ink-jet printer. She grabbed her camera from her bag and took a picture of it, then flipped the card around and took of picture of the gum, still partially attached to the back in its wrapper. Chewey’s was repeated in capital letters a half-dozen times in shiny lettering diagonally over the matte silver surface of the wrapper. “What’s the flavor?” Dagny asked.

“I didn’t chew it, Agent Gray.”

She opened the bag and sniffed. “Cinnamon.” She closed the bag. “Who’s Goldilocks?”

“Goldilocks is our nice nickname for J. C. Adams. You don’t want to hear the bad ones.”

“Who is he?”

“J. C. Adams.
The
J. C. Adams.” Beamer raised his eyebrows. “You don’t know who J. C. Adams is?”

Dagny shook her head.

“He’s a local boy that went off to USC to play quarterback. Went all Hollywood while he was there. Dated an Olsen twin for a minute. Would have been a first-round pick, but he got hurt on the first play of the Rose Bowl in his sophomore year.”

It sounded vaguely familiar. Maybe she had heard the name before. “Why is he coming here?”

“After the injury, he came home and joined the force. The chief liked having a celebrity around, and soon the kid started to get his ear on all kinds of stuff. Expensive stuff. And most expensively, the video console. He convinced the chief that we would save money long-term by producing training and recruitment videos in-house. So we sold off the old stuff and bought all-new equipment—cameras and lights, too. Turns out, the kid just wanted to use it for some film he’s making. Then a few months ago, he won a lawsuit with his insurer over the football injury, so he quit the force. Says he’s going to film school in the fall. Now we’re stuck with this stuff, and no one knows how to use it. So we’re always having to call the kid in for help.”

“At least he comes in, right?”

“Sometimes. He’ll come in for you, though. I told him you were pretty.”

Dagny laughed. “You hadn’t even seen me.”

“Yeah, but I wanted to make sure he’d come. For the record, he won’t be disappointed.”

While they waited for J. C. Adams, Beamer excused himself to tend to other matters. Dagny called Officer Perez and confirmed that the gum on the back of the card in Chula Vista was Chewey’s Cinnamon. He also confirmed that there were perforations on the edges of the card, and that the bullet (which he had yet to send) had five lands to the right. Probably the same gun, Dagny thought. Maybe the same guy, or maybe multiple unidentified subjects in coordination. No apparent motive. The third crime had occurred on February 1; the fifth, on March 1. Two data points were never enough to draw a conclusion. Still, if forced to place a bet, Dagny would have put her money on January 1 and a pack of Chewey’s for the first crime.

Beamer returned with J. C. Adams, who looked more like a surfer than a quarterback. He was tall, but skinnier than she’d expected. His curly blond locks hung around his face, forcing him to constantly shove them away from his eyes. “Yeah, she’s hot,” Adams said plainly to Beamer, as if Dagny weren’t there. Then he turned to her and showed off a white-capped smile. “I’m J. C.”

Dagny shook his hand. “Special Agent Dagny Gray, Mr. Adams.”

“Nothing sexier than a lady with a gun.”

She ignored that. “I’d like to see the security footage from the Waxton robbery.”

“Sure.” Adams led them along the perimeter of the precinct floor. When they got to the studio, Dagny laughed at the massive array of video and audio equipment. It looked like the control booth for the Academy Awards.

“What’s so funny?” Adams asked, defensively.

“You really pulled a con job here,” Dagny said.

“This thing could pay for itself if they used it right!” Adams loaded a DVD. The security footage flashed on the screen in front of them.

“No sound?” Dagny asked.

“Nope.”

The camera had been positioned above the tellers, and the wide-angle lens showed Cynthia Johnson and most of the lobby, including the front door. The wide angle came at a cost—the image was stretched and distorted. It was hard to see much detail in the robber’s face.

“Can I see the other angles?” Dagny asked.

“That’s the only one,” Beamer answered.

“What do you mean? They only had one camera?”

“Only one working.”

“That’s crazy.”

“I know.”

“Nothing outdoors? Drive-through ATM?” Dagny asked.

“Nope,” Beamer replied, but he hesitated. Dagny knew he hadn’t checked. Hopefully, he would now.

“Can we see where the unsub enters the door again?”

“Huh?” Adams replied.

“The robber,” Beamer explained.

Adams rewound the footage to the point where the robber entered the bank. Dagny squinted at the tape measure along the right side of the doorframe. “Six foot exactly?”

“That’s what it looked like to us,” Beamer said.

At Dagny’s request, Adams made a copy of the DVD. She thanked Lieutenant Beamer and Adams, then headed toward the exit. Beamer went back to his office, but Adams followed her. “So you’re from DC?”

“And going back,” Dagny responded, pushing through the door.

“Right now?”

“That’s right.”

“I can give you a ride if you’d like.”

“I think I’ll just hail a cab.”

Adams laughed.

“What’s funny?”

“You think you’re in DC? You can’t just hail down a cab here.”

“I’m sure I’ll catch one.” Dagny could see a cab a block away, but it was headed in the wrong direction.

Adams pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket, jotted a number on it, and handed it to her. “After a few minutes, when you haven’t seen a cab, call me and I’ll swing back and pick you up.” Adams pointed his remote key toward a red Porsche parked along the curb and unlocked the doors. “Call me,” he mimed as he climbed behind the wheel.

Adams was right—Cincinnati wasn’t a cab town. Each minute Dagny waited felt like an eternity. She thought about calling information and getting the number for a taxi company, but it was easier to just call Adams. He was there two minutes later. “I knew you’d call.”

“I see you’re enjoying the insurance money,” Dagny noted as she climbed into the Porsche. “I’d like to make a stop before the airport.”

“Sure. My bedroom has a great view of the city.”

“I’d like to stop by Waxton Savings and Loan.”

“The ATM, right? You think Beamer messed up by not getting the footage. We can go, but you’re wasting your time. The ATM’s on the wrong side to see the front.”

“They should still check the film.”

“Beamer will. He was just too embarrassed to admit they hadn’t, but he’s a good cop.”

“How’d you know where the ATM is?”

“I helped them with their security.”

Small town, Dagny thought. “How’d that come about?”

“Waxton’s a sports nut. He bought one of my high school jerseys and asked me if I’d sign it. I came over to the bank, signed the jersey, and we got to talking. I’d been working with the chief to upgrade the equipment at the station and told Waxton about it. He wanted some advice on security for the bank, so I looked around and gave it to him.”

Dagny laughed. “Yeah, well, bang-up job.”

“Hey, I just wrote him a proposal! Spent some time on it, too—looked at what other banks were doing. Made a lot of recommendations, but he didn’t do any of them.”

“How much did you propose he spend?”

“Fifty thousand.” He didn’t seem to like that she was shaking her head. “Hey, that’s not that much. Motion-sensitive cameras, hard-drive recording, remote monitoring. I think the robbery shows I was right and he should have listened to me.”

“Counting the baseball, the robber took Waxton for about thirty, maybe thirty-five grand. You were trying to take him for fifty.”

Adams pouted but had nothing to say. After a couple of minutes, he said, “If you got to know me, you might like me, you know.”