TUESDAY AFTERNOON
Ty pulled her Silverado into the parking lot at the end of West Clover Street between the Midas Hair Salon and the First National Bank of Haggersville. The bank was a stately, older two-story redbrick building, well maintained and important-looking, a place where you could be more confident than not your money would be safe.
Sala waved at the salon. “Midas hair? Does that mean they dye your hair gold?”
Ty said, “I tried pink once as a teenager, but never gold. Think it’s too late for me to give it another shot?”
Sala laughed, gave her hair a tug. As they crossed the parking lot, Ty phoned Lulie Saks at the hospital. Gunny was out of post-anesthesia care, but she still wasn’t coherent. It might take some time, Dr. Ellis had told Lulie, before Gunny could be questioned and make sense. Both Lulie and Chief Masters were with her, and Officer Romero Diaz was seated outside her cubicle in the ICU. Gunny was safe and secure.
Ty slipped her cell back into her pocket. “The killer will know soon enough Gunny’s alive, if he doesn’t already know, which he probably does. He couldn’t afford to let her talk to the FBI, so he either goes into the wind or tries to kill her again in the hospital.” She sighed. “Of course, if the killer knows she didn’t see him, he might think he has more time.”
Sala said, “If he’s afraid she knows something that could bring him down right away, it wouldn’t matter if she saw him or not. I honestly don’t see how she could know who hit her on the back of her head. I’m hoping she heard something distinctive, smelled something, maybe a cologne she recognized, something like that.”
“I’ve always believed there’s a lot of faith involved in law enforcement, otherwise you get ground under.” After a moment, she said, “You know what? In the short time I’ve known you, I realize you’re always situationally aware, know who and what’s around you. I’ve got to learn that.”
“Well, maybe. My older brother was also in Afghanistan, still is. He taught me before I went in. Saved both our lives. All you have to do is clear out your mind, look and really see, listen and really hear. But none of that mattered with Victor Nesser.”
Ty reached out, touched his arm. “You can’t see in the dark, Sala, plus you were sound asleep. Teach me, okay?”
He studied her hand a moment, her long fingers and short buffed nails, a strong hand, a capable hand. He looked back into her serious face and smiled. “Yes, all right, I will do my poor best.”
“Speaking of poor best, Victor didn’t manage to kill anyone in the church this morning. Only minor injuries reported so far. I wonder what he thinks about that? That he failed?”
“Or maybe he’s happy he showed the world what a badass he is.”
Sala held one of the big glass double doors open for a man in Bermuda shorts and flip-flops, and he and Ty followed him into blessed air-conditioning.
“Wowza,” Ty said. “Would you look at the gold-veined brown marble floor?” She swept her hand around her. “It’s like a 1930s art deco Hollywood set. What a shine. Everything meant to impress.”
A dozen or so desks and chairs were arranged artfully along the walls. There were old-fashioned windows, tellers on high stools manning each station. All of the bank employees seated at the desks were dressed sharply. People waited in a snaking line, peeling off whenever there was an open window. It seemed quiet and orderly, old-fashioned and really quite civilized.
Sala said, “I hope Al Capone doesn’t burst in with a tommy gun.”
She smiled. “I’ll bet the bank was built in the thirties, and everything is authentic. They’ve buffed it up, made repairs, and kept all the original stuff. It’s like stepping back in time. Would you listen to me, I’ve already lowered my voice to a whisper.”
“Do you know, I can’t remember the last time I was actually in my bank. I do all my banking online now. But maybe I’d change my mind if I had a bank that looked like this.”
Ty flashed to Harry Potter’s Gringotts Wizarding Bank. This layout was pretty close, minus the goblins manning teller windows and the huge chandeliers hanging overhead. They heard people talking to one another, all whispers, like they were in a cathedral, and more than once they heard the name Gunny Saks.
They stopped at the security station, a beautifully carved art deco podium. A tall redheaded man with blue eyes and a big smile stood beside it. He was dressed in a well-pressed dark blue guard’s uniform. Sala thought he looked about as forbidding as a poodle, even with the SIG in his holster.
They introduced themselves, showed Mr. Nathaniel Hoolihan their creds, and were directed toward the ornate staircase at the far end of the lobby. “Mr. Calhoun’s office is right behind the big bank of windows overlooking the floor.”
Ty looked up. “Why would he have all those windows? Seems to me it would be distracting.”
Mr. Hoolihan cleared his throat, leaned close. “When Mr. Calhoun became president, he broke out the wall and had those big windows put in. It lets him look down onto the floor, see the customers that come in every day—that and he likes to see we’re all doing what we’re supposed to. It wasn’t that way when Mr. Henry was running things.”
Sala bent close to Ty’s ear as they mounted the beautifully shined staircase. “So Mr. Calhoun LaRoque has already seen us. Does he know who we are, I wonder?”
“I’ll bet he does by the time we get to his office,” Ty said. “Are you ready to meet Mr. Eccentric?”
“As in ‘too rich to be called crazy’? You bet.”
At the top of the stairs they were met by a very pretty young woman wearing three-inch stilettos, a pencil-slim black skirt that wouldn’t allow for an extra pound, and a white silk blouse under a matching black jacket. She had spectacular dark hair in wild curls around her head down to her shoulders. She gave them a huge smile showing straight white teeth. “I’m Courtney Wells, Mr. Calhoun’s senior private assistant. Mr. Hoolihan called up, said you were FBI, that it was important you speak immediately to Mr. Calhoun. Is this about Gunny Saks? Did she die yet?”
Ty smiled. “No, she didn’t die. And yes, we’d like to see Mr. LaRoque immediately. Thank you, Ms. Wells.”
Courtney was too young to hide her disappointment. She huffed, turned on a skinny heel, and walked to a magnificent mahogany door, opened it, and stuck her head in. “Mr. Calhoun, the two FBI agents I told you about are here to see you.” She stepped back, waved them in.
They walked into a big square office directly out of a fashion magazine in the 1930s. The magnificently carved desk, the chairs, the sofa, and the museum-quality credenza behind the desk were all classic art deco. On top of the credenza sat a series of framed photos—the frames art deco, of course—all of the man himself and his wife, from their twenties to the present, a photo chronicle of their lives together. Behind the big desk sat Mr. Henry’s one and only child. He slowly rose and gave them a smile. Calhoun LaRoque looked to be about Ty’s father’s age, but unlike her dad, Calhoun was at least six foot three and skinny as a toothpick. He was dressed in a bespoke dark blue suit with narrow white pinstripes, a white shirt, and a bright red power tie, like a uniform in its way, like her father’s blue Washington State Patrol captain’s uniform with its black bow tie.
Calhoun LaRoque had a head of thick pewter-gray hair with a few strands of black still woven in. His eyebrows were dark and thick over deep brown eyes. He waved at Courtney and very nicely asked her to close the door behind her.
Courtney left the door open a crack. LaRoque cleared his throat, loudly. She closed the door with a snap.
Calhoun said, “Courtney used to listen at the door, so I saw to it they put in a thicker one. It steams her not to know everything before anyone else.”