“It won’t take long. It’s important,” Morrow said.
Lisa agreed.
Off to the side, Agent Roberts was on the phone to Agents Vicky Chan and Eve Watson. He was arranging to drive Lisa back to the hotel in Manhattan so she could work in the room with the sketch artist before collecting Ethan and Taylor and going home to Queens.
Then Agent Roberts, another agent and Dr. Sullivan prepared to leave the service center with Lisa. They were outside the entrance when Morrow caught up to them.
“Lisa.” He took her hands. “Thank you. I know this was painful.”
“Catch them, Frank.”
“We will. I’ve taken care of whatever you may need at your house while we continue investigating. From surveillance to having someone stay with you, if you want.”
“Well, our lives have already been turned upside down.”
“Whatever you’re comfortable with. Think it over and let us know.”
“Okay.” She tried to smile before noticing someone approaching.
“Excuse me, Agent Morrow?”
Everyone’s attention shifted.
“Jack Gannon, World Press Alliance. Sorry for interrupting, but I was wondering if you could update your progress on the investigation?”
Morrow was quick to respond.
“The investigation continues. We have no further comment at this time. We’ll update the press when we have something.”
“And here?” Gannon looked at Lisa and assessed that she was not a cop. In fact, she looked familiar. Was this the woman he’d seen with Morrow before? “What can you tell me about the nature of your investigation here? I’m sorry, miss, you are…?”
“I—I—” Lisa shot a look to Morrow. “I’m not sure I can—”
Morrow’s jaw tightened.
“She has no comment at this time.” Morrow positioned himself between Gannon and Lisa. “Now, if you’ll excuse us, please.”
“Is that right, miss? Does Agent Morrow speak for you?”
“Beat it, Gannon,” Morrow said.
“Let me pass you my card.”
Before Gannon could pull a business card from his wallet, Roberts, Morrow and the other agent got Lisa into an FBI sedan.
As it wheeled away, Lisa’s eyes met Gannon’s.
She kept looking at him until the car disappeared toward the thruway back to Manhattan, her children and her life.
24
New York City
A cobra, entwined in thorns, hood flared, fangs exposed.
Experts said it represented a feared killer ready to strike from the depths of its agony. The black-and-gray drawing filled the large monitor in the boardroom at the FBI’s Manhattan office.
“This is a solid break for us,” Morrow told the investigators who’d gathered for an emergency case-status meeting late in the day.
Lisa Palmer’s sketch had been enhanced to a sharp pencil image of the deadly snake. Its body twisted with bramble, circling the wrist of the suspect who’d murdered FBI Special Agent Gregory Scott Dutton and at least one of the three guards.
“To date, we still have no latents, no casings, no plate, no DNA. This descriptor is the strongest lead we’ve got so far. It came from our key eyewitness this morning.”
Morrow said it had emerged after interviews with a psychiatrist and was reliable. The witness had been positioned next to the shooter’s wrist. Earlier in the day, after recalling the tattoo, the witness worked with an NYPD police sketch artist to ensure accuracy of the detail. The image had just been submitted to the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System, which also held information on tattoos, scars, photos and other physical characteristics on some sixty-six million people.
“We’ve also submitted it to every possible U.S. agency—military, prison security and gang task forces at national, state, local police levels—alerting them to look for any individuals bearing a similar tattoo. We’ve advised they exercise extreme caution and alert us.”
Glenda Stark added: “We’ve also alerted Interpol, U.S. Customs, airports, train and bus terminals. But we’re not releasing the information to the press at this time.”
Al Dimarco, a New York detective with the Joint Bank Robbery Task Force, stared at her from his status sheet over his bifocals.
“Why not?” Dimarco was puzzled.
“We’re pressing intelligence sources first,” Morrow said.
“Meanwhile, you go with this needle-in-a-haystack search for your cobra killer?” Dimarco said. “Cripes, blast the tattoo to the press, it goes viral and the whole freakin’ world is looking for our guy within hours, Frank.”
For a second, Morrow envisioned a New York Post headline: FBI Search for “Cobra Killer.” Morrow respected Dimarco, a legend with the NYPD, but had always considered him to be too cozy with the New York press, liked to see his work on the front pages.
“Yes, Al, we could give it to the press, but we believe our subjects don’t know we have it. If we told the press, we’d be giving our edge to the suspects, who could take every effort to cover it. These guys are good. Let’s work quietly with intel first. The tattoo could be the key to us grabbing the whole crew and its network. If we blast it through the media, we alert the subjects that we’re coming.”
Dimarco shrugged. Morrow flipped through his file before stressing his point.
“You all got the handouts and the e-version, but I’ll state the obvious—we want everyone who is canvassing and recanvassing to show the tattoo, especially to employees at the service center and American Centurion.”
“Hold up, I’ve got another question,” Dimarco said. “If these guys are so smart, why did they leave a living witness?”
“They left a lot of living witnesses,” Morrow said.
“I’m talking about our tattoo witness here,” Dimarco said. “She was less than two feet from the shooter. He had a gun to her head, then pulled away. They’d already knocked down four. Why didn’t they put her down?”
“I would say they were sensitive to response time. They were working by a clock. They could’ve seen people in the parking lot making calls,” said Percy Quinn. “Witnesses reported seeing one shooter urging the gunman to leave the scene. We figure they feared they were taking too long and that locals were responding.”
“That’s plausible,” Morrow said. “Unless you’ve got another theory on that, Al?”
“No, but it’s very fortuitous that she was not killed.”
“We have no reason to suspect she was involved, if that’s what you’re getting at, Al?”
“No, it just struck me as odd.”
“She begged for her life,” Morrow said.
Glenda Stark requested Morrow move the meeting along.
“All right, updates,” Morrow said. “Going around the table—what do we know from confidential informants, what are we hearing from the street?”
“Even with the reward, we’re not getting much,” Tony Carza, a New York detective, said. “It’s an indication that these guys are not known locally.”
“The call line, tips?” Morrow asked.
“Got about sixty that we’re following,” Agent Hughes said. “Half of them related to possible sightings of the sport bikes from the public appeal using the security video, but nothing concrete.”
“Financial?” Morrow asked. “Anything from banks, casinos, on large amounts of cash, wire-transfer services?”
Agent David Whitfield, an expert in white-collar crime, reported that nothing unusual had surfaced that could be tied to the heist.