To her surprise, she quickly found herself deeply involved in what she was doing. According to their mug shots, the men who had been arrested the night before were Sam Banner, Robert Stella, Lenny Wiener and Mark O’Malley. She glanced at their faces and the stats on their mug shots, and then at the security stills, comparing carefully. Finally she went through them, pointing. “Mark O’Malley was driving the van, obviously. Looking at height and build, I think Sam Banner was the one who dragged me through the store and down the alley.”
Agent Frasier nodded. “All right. Now I want you to compare them to the men from the other robbery.”
He got up and moved to stand behind her, then pulled another sheet of photos from the bottom of the stack. “I realize it’s difficult, but do you recognize the men from yesterday in any of these other photos? The way they stood? Something else? I can show you some video, too.”
She was acutely aware of him behind her. The fabric of his suit, the heat of his body, the scent of his aftershave.
“Uh, video would be great.”
He reached over to tap the keyboard. His nails were neatly clipped. His fingers were long, and she was certain that his hands would be powerful.
She swallowed and tried to concentrate.
After a minute, she miraculously managed to do so. She took control of the keyboard herself, running the footage and stopping it when something struck her.
“There,” she said, pointing. “That’s Sam Banner. You can tell by the way he’s standing and by his height.”
“All right,” Frasier said, “what about this footage?”
He reached over again and cued up a new video.
“No, no, I don’t think that’s Sam Banner. They stand completely differently. Sam keeps his legs apart. He’s angled, almost as if he’s casual about what he’s doing. This man, he stands straighter, and he’s visibly tense. Watch his head move. He’s jerky. He looks—”
“As if he’s nervous and liable to pull the trigger any second?” Craig asked.
“Yes,” she said. “Just my opinion based on my observations, of course,” she said, swiveling her chair to look up at him.
He smiled. “Educated opinion, though, right?”
She shrugged. “Honestly, if you asked one of my bosses to—”
“Your bosses weren’t in the van with me,” he said, and walked back to take his seat.
She’d been about to stand; her work here was done.
But the way he sat, leaning forward expectantly, his eyes probing...
No, she wasn’t leaving yet.
“So what were you doing at the store yesterday?” he asked.
She immediately felt defensive, but she tried not to do any of the things that would betray her nervousness. Blinking, wetting her lips...
“A friend works there,” she said. “I went to see if he was there. Well, all right. He’s not really a friend. He was a friend. Not anymore.”
He looked down a moment, a slight smile curving his lips. “Care to explain?”
She shrugged uncomfortably and looked away, but she told herself that was okay. Explaining an awkward divorce would make anyone uneasy.
“Gary Benton was—is—married to a close friend of mine. They’re going through a very nasty divorce. I went to see him to remind him that they were adults and that...” She felt herself stiffen, but she was so angry at Gary that she couldn’t help it. “She went out of town to give him space, and he locked her dogs in a crate and didn’t feed them or let them out the whole time.”
“She should have called animal control,” he said.
“The logical answer, of course, but she was too upset to think straight, and—” She paused and looked away again. “She went to the store and said some pretty awful things. I went to ask him to stop being so nasty and trying to upset her. But he wasn’t there and, well, you know what happened next.”
He seemed to believe that. “Well, thank you again for your help,” he told her. “I’ll get you back to work.”
“Thanks,” she said.
He rose. She kept sitting.
He smiled at her. “I meant that literally. I’ll get you back to work.”
“Oh! Okay, thank you.”
She stood quickly, dismayed to feel herself blushing.
She felt his hand at the small of her back as he politely ushered her out.
She told Millie goodbye and passed another half dozen men and women in well-tailored suits as they left the building, walking past the line where people were still lined up, chatting as they waited to pass through security.
She noticed an interesting group waiting their turn. They weren’t in suits and didn’t look at all like members of the FBI.
“Who are they?” she asked.
“A teachers’ group,” he told her.
“Oh?”
“They’re going to take a class in keeping schools safe.”
“I didn’t know the FBI offered anything like that.”
He flashed her a smile. “We’re a friendly crowd, not the enemy,” he said.
“I wasn’t suggesting that. I just never thought of the FBI as being so...open-door,” she told him. “Practically warm and cuddly.”
“Well, that depends on who you are and what you’re up to,” he told her.
A car was waiting for them. Double-parked again, she noticed. Craig Frasier seated her before walking around to slide into the driver’s seat himself.
“In a city full of very different crimes, I find this to be an especially interesting case,” he said as he drove.