The Town: A Novel (5 page)

“I… all right.”

He had her take him slowly from the bank into the getaway vehicle. “You’re sure it was a van?”

“Yes. That van-sound of the doors. The bouncing as it drove.”

“Do you remember seeing a van outside when you arrived at work this morning?”

She winced, shaking her head. “I don’t know. A white one, maybe?”

She took him through the drive. “You couldn’t see anything out of the blindfold? Not even at the very bottom?”

“Sometimes a narrow strip of light. My lap against the seat. The seat was white, or cream.”

“Any sensation of light passing? Windows in the back where you were?”

“I… no. I can’t say. I don’t remember.”

“It was a passenger van.”

“I guess. Yes.”

“You’re not certain.”

“I don’t know what a ‘passenger van’ is. If that’s a minivan, then, yes, I’m certain. We went skiing up in Maine last winter—myself, some friends—and I rented the van. It was a Villager, I remember, because that’s a strange name for a car, and we called ourselves the Villager People. I don’t know if this was that, but it was like that.”

“Okay, good. Like that how?”

“Two separate seats up front. The middle bench I was in. Another bench behind.” She winced again. “I’m bringing too much to it, maybe. At least, this is how I see it in my mind.”

“That’s fine.” He wanted to encourage her without flattering her, keeping her account honest. “Where were you sitting?”

“The middle bench. Yes, the middle.”

“How many sat there with you?”

“Just one.”

“To your… ?”

“My right.”

“On the door side. You were against the wall. And you don’t think there were any windows there. How many in front?”

“Two men in front.”

“Anyone behind?”

“Yes.”

“Two men in front, one next to you, and one behind.”

“I think… yes.”

“And they didn’t have their masks on in the van.”

“But I don’t know how I know that for sure. Maybe I don’t know that.”

Frawley chided himself for focusing on the van. The van was going to turn up torched. “How did they communicate? Did they speak much?”

“Very little. ‘Right.’ ‘Left.’ ‘No.’ ‘Yes.’ Like that.” She looked up at him. “That’s how I know they didn’t have their masks on.”

“By their voices.”

“They were so
beastly
in the bank, with them on. So distorted and… not even human. Like monsters. Can I… should I talk about the masks?”

“Go ahead.”

“They were all the same. Like Jason, like
Friday the 13th
.”

“You mean hockey masks.”

“Yes, but—with these scars drawn all over them. Black stitches.”

“Stitches?” said Frawley.

“Like hash marks. Sutures.” There was fear in her distant gaze. “Why do that? Why
scars
?”

Frawley shook his head. It was a strange detail and his investigation welcomed strange details. “So they didn’t speak much in the van.”

She was reluctant to return there. “No.”

“Did they seem to know where they were going?”

“Maybe, yes.”

“Did they tell you where you were going?”

“No.”

“Did they tell you you were going to be released?”

“No.”

“Did you think you were going to be released?”

“I…” She stared into the middle distance, almost in a trance. “No.”

“Did the van make stops?”

“It did.”

“What for?”

“Traffic, I guess.”

“Okay. No doors opened, no one in or out?”

“No.”

“And you never tried to escape?”

A blink. “No.”

“Were you ever on a highway?”

“Yes. For a while.”

“Were you wearing a seat belt?”

She touched her lap, aiding her memory. “Yes.” Then, green eyes focusing on him: “I didn’t try to escape because they had guns.”

“Okay.” Wanting not to break the spell. “You asked them no questions?”

She shook her head.

“And they never addressed you?”

“No.”

“Nothing was said. Basically they left you alone in the backseat.”

“The middle seat.”

“Right.”

“Yes. Except…”

“Go ahead.”

She was far away again. “The one who was sitting next to me. Not
next
to me… but in the same seat, the same bench, the two of us. The one who blindfolded me. I could tell somehow… he was looking at me.”

“Looking at you.”

“Not like that. I mean… I don’t know. Maybe it was just a feeling.”

“Not like what?”

“Not like, you know,
looking.
Just, I don’t know. Just
there.
”

“You had his full attention. And then what?”

Her eyes swelled in the recalling. “They just drove and drove. Seemed like hours. I guess I have a sort of… it seemed like it went on forever, but now it’s like there were whole blocks of time… I’m just blank. I know that at some point I realized we were off the highway, making lots of turns. I was praying they would stop, praying it would be over—and then all of a sudden they did stop, and all I wanted to do was keep on driving. The engine was still running but I could tell the ride was over. That’s when they shook my Coach bag.” She found Frawley’s face. “My credit cards, my car keys… ?”

“If they turn up, you’ll get them back. The one in the seat next to you, he made the threat?”

“No. No, the voice came from in front of me, the angry one. The one who took me to the vault.” She pulled at her stained fingers. “I had trouble with the combination.”

“Was he the driver?”

“I don’t… no, I don’t think he was. He wasn’t—because I was on the left, and his voice came from the right front.”

“Would you say he was in charge?”

“I don’t know. I know he did the talking then.”

“What about the one next to you?”

She lifted the lap of her skirt to cross her legs, and Frawley noticed that her shoes were gone, just dirty stockinged feet. “I think there might have been tension.”

“Between them? How so?”

“The angry one, he was the one who wanted to take me.”

“From the bank. And the others?”

“One of them questioned him—I’m not sure, it happened so fast. I think it was the one who sat next to me.”

“So the angry one, as you call him, he takes your license.”

“And then the side door opened. The one next to me helped me out.”

“Door slid open or opened out?”

“I… I don’t remember.”

“And the one next to you—you say he ‘helped you out’?”

“Just that—I was afraid of falling. I was afraid of
everything
. But he didn’t let me fall.”

“So he didn’t pull you from the van?”

“No. He grabbed my arm and I went. It didn’t feel like I had a choice.”

“Did he lift you down, walk you down?”

“I wasn’t—I mean, of
course
I was scared, I was very scared,
terrified
.” She uncrossed her legs, sitting still. “But it wasn’t, like… I didn’t think he was… maybe I was naive. If it was the angry one taking me, I would never have left the van on my own. I wouldn’t have been able to
walk
.”

“Okay, slow down. Did you get a sense of his size?”

“Yes. He was big.”

“Big as in strong?”

“As in strong, tall.”

“Would you say he was friendly?”

She picked up on Frawley’s implication. “No. Impersonal. Just, not angry.”

“Okay. So you’re out of the van.”

“I’m out of the van, and we’re walking fast. He’s got me by the arm. The ocean stunk, really foul, and the wind was hard. I thought I was at the airport—I heard planes—but it wasn’t a runway because the ground was sand around my feet. It was a beach. And basically he told me to walk to the water until I felt it on my toes, and not to take off the blindfold until then. It was so windy, and the sand was blowing up, airplanes screaming overhead—I could barely hear him. But then suddenly my arm was free and I was on my own. I know I stood there for like a minute, idiotically, until I realized I had to be walking. I took very short steps—not even steps really, dragging my feet through the cold sand, arms out in front of me, because I had this image of myself stepping off a cliff. It took, literally, forever. The longest walk of my life. Another plane roared overhead, a rising roaring, a terrible noise, like pulling all the air up with it—and then the sand was different and I felt water washing around my heels. I pushed off the blindfold and I was alone. And I had only walked maybe, thirty feet.” The toes of one foot rubbed the heel of the other as she looked at her ruined stockings. “Why did they take away my shoes in the first place?”

“To keep you from kicking or running, don’t you think?”

She reached for the water and swallowed some down, her hand shaking more now. “My first day of kindergarten, I pitched a fit when my mother tried to leave, and Mrs. Webly took away my new patent leather shoes as punishment. And just like that, I stopped crying.” She rubbed at her stained fingers.

Frawley let her burn off more residual adrenaline, then focused her on the robbery itself. She took him through it with mixed results, returning again and again to the garish black stitches on their masks. Tears pushed to her eyes but did not spill as she recounted Davis Bearns’s beating at the hands of the “angry” bandit. “He had fallen… he was just sagging off the chair… and that one just kept hitting him…”

“Did you see Mr. Bearns activate the alarm?”

She reached for her Poland Spring again but held the bottle without opening
it, watching water slosh around inside. Car-wreck eyes. Something was up, but he couldn’t tell if it was her account or just trauma bleeding through.

“No,” she answered softly.

The foot traffic outside the break-room door had quieted. “Ms. Keesey, are you sure you don’t want to go somewhere and get checked out?”

“I’m sure. I’m fine.”

“It was a long ride. And you said yourself, you can’t really account for the entire trip.”

“I just… spaced. I shut down, that’s all.”

“It’s available to you now. It couldn’t hurt.”

Her eyes came up on him, cooler, assertive. “Nothing happened.”

Frawley nodded. “Okay.”

“But that’s what everyone’s going to think, isn’t it?”

He tried to distract her. “Is someone coming here to—”

“He rubbed his gun against my butt.” She blinked a few times, fighting back tears and exhaustion. “The angry one. While we were standing at the vault. He said some things, told me what he wanted to do to me. That is
all
.”

Frawley started off shaking his head, shrugging, searching for something to say, then ended up just nodding. “Do you want to tell me what he said?”

Her smile was fierce and cutting. “Not particularly.”

“Okay,” said Frawley. “Okay.”

“Now you’re looking at me like I’m some stupid…”

“No, no, no.”

“Like I’d jump in a van with
anybody
.”

“No. Look—”

He reached over for his tape recorder. In fact he had nothing to say to her. He only hoped the act of pressing STOP would provide a distraction.

She sat there breathing deeply, thinking deeply. “When I was walking to the ocean… I thought of nothing. Nothing, no one. But in the van, driving, blindfolded like that—I saw my life. I saw myself as I was, as I am, my life up until this day. Today—it’s my birthday.”

“I see,” said Frawley.

“Sounds crazy. Just another day, I know. I don’t know why it matters.” She crossed her arms, her stockinged foot bobbing. “It doesn’t matter.”

A quick thank-you and a handshake could have ended it there if she weren’t still wearing his coat.

“Look,” Frawley said. “I’ve seen people—bank customers standing in line to cash their check when a two-time loser comes through the door and announces a robbery—who come away never looking at life the same. People think of bank robbing as a victimless crime, an insured crime, but when a teller gets a gun
pointed in her face—that can change a person’s life forever. I’m only telling you this so you can prepare yourself.”

“I haven’t even cried yet—”

“The adrenaline’s fading, you’re probably going to feel a little depressed for a while. Sort of like mourning—just let it happen. It’s normal. Some people bottom out all at once, others just gradually get better until one day they don’t wake up thinking about it. For a little while, you’ll see these guys behind every closed door. But you will get better.”

She was staring at him, rapt, as though he were turning over tarot cards. He knew he had to watch himself here. A pretty girl, hurt, vulnerable. Taking advantage of that would have been like pocketing the bait bills from the vault. She was his vault now, his vic.

“And stay off the Diet Coke,” he added. “No caffeine or alcohol, that’s key. Stick with water. In the breast pocket of my jacket, you’ll find my card.”

She fished one out as he stood. “What about my car?”

“You should be able to pick it up whenever. It’ll take a hand-washing to get all the fingerprint dust off. If you don’t have spare keys, you should be able to get them from your dealer.”

She curled her toes. “And my shoes?”

“Those, we’ll have to hold on to for a while. Crime lab people, that’s how they are. If they could wrap you up in a paper bag and put you on a shelf for a few weeks, they would.”

“Might not be such a bad idea.” She slipped out of his jacket as she stood, smoothing the sleeves before returning it to him. “Thank you.” She read his card. “Agent Frawley.”

“No problem.” He dropped it over his arm, its tempting warmth. “And don’t worry about those threats. Just focus on yourself.”

She nodded, looking at the door, not yet moving. “Actually, my license—it had my old address anyway.”

No point in telling her that the bandits had likely been following her for weeks before that morning. Frawley felt up his jacket for a pen. “Let me get your current.”

F
RAWLEY WATCHED HER HUG
a pink-faced, white-haired man in a pin-striped suit inside the door fan.

“Seemed like a good wit,” said Dino. “You want to handle the summary narrative?”

Frawley shook his head, still watching her. “Gotta do my 430 case-initiation form for D.C.”