Page 47 of Shelter for Sharla

And he was right in his guess. There were two big boxes of files, not to mention a list of evidence a mile long. He wasn’t feeling too much trepidation about it until Langstaff toted in another box, and then another. “What are these?”

“All of the robberies.”

“Wait.” Cruz wheeled and stared at the sergeant. “There was more than one?”

“Four. Four armed robberies. Same three guys. I told you it would be a real treat. They were busy, and you’re going to be too.” With that, he walked out and left Cruz and Carter there, their jaws on the floor.

“Where do you suggest we start?” Carter asked.

“First two. I’ll take one, you take the other. Here.” Cruz handed Carter a box. Both men produced yellow legal pads from their messenger bags and sat down to work.

An hour later, Cruz finally came up for air. “Whaddya got? Anything noteworthy?”

Carter tossed his pencil onto the table’s gleaming surface and tipped backward in his chair. “Not really. Garden variety robbery. Three men, masked, one with a shotgun and the other two with handguns. They throw a bag up in the teller’s window and order her to fill it. One’s holding the security guard while the other two terrorize the patrons. They get away in a small car parked down the block, and they’re long gone before the police arrive. Car’s found abandoned later. Stolen. No usable DNA evidence and no leads.”

“Same here two months later. Exact same pattern. Same method. Same kind of getaway setup.” Cruz sat there for a few seconds, his face smooth as he pondered everything. “I have a feeling the third one is the same. But the fourth one should be the one that will tell us the most.”

“Yeah, Sharla called it a ‘botched robbery,’ whatever that means.”

“Want some coffee?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. I’ll get us some. Check the last of the reports on the third one. That should be sufficient. Then we’ll dive into the fourth.” As Cruz walked out, Carter pulled the last file from the third robbery. Exactly the same. Based on the descriptions, the same man performed the same task each time too, so they had well-defined roles. That was good to know.

“Okay, here we go,” Carter said as Cruz returned with the steaming mugs. “You take those and I’ll take these.” Cruz reached for his pile and they were on it.

Five minutes later, Carter ran across what he was looking for. “This is what I wanted. So here are the accounts of the robbery from the witnesses, and the statements from the officers. See what you make of the officers’ accounts and I’ll look at the witnesses’,” he said, handing Cruz a stack of documents.

Carter skimmed through the witness accounts. They were all pretty much the same, the comments made about actions from different locations’ perspectives inside the building, but each confirmed the other. He was getting ready to look through the evidence list when Cruz said, “Whoa! Hold up. I think I just found something.”

“Yeah?”

“Here. The officers make statements about the robbery. There are also nine-one-one logs. According to the witnesses, what time did the robbery take place?”

“They all said two thirty-two or thirty-three in the afternoon.”

“Well, isn’t this interesting? The call to the cops came in at two thirty.”

Carter’s brow dropped. “Just before the witnesses say it began.”

“Yeah. I’m betting nobody noticed that because, you know, watches being off by a few minutes and everything. But what if they’re right? What if it was two thirty-two or thirty-three, and that call really did come in a minute or two before the robbery began?”

Carter’s brain chattered with questions. “Town this size, response time would be lower than most because of the small geographical area.”

“Yeah. So calling it in prior would automatically get law enforcement there by the time it went down. Also says the police officers identified the getaway vehicle because it had been reported stolen twenty minutes before.” Cruz sat back in his chair. “Holy shit. These guys were ratted out by somebody. One of them? Hoping the other two would get caught?”

“But they’d all three be caught, and nobody would get the proceeds of the other robberies. Wait?did they ever find the stolen money from the three other robberies?”

Cruz leafed through a stack of papers, then pulled one out. “No. The money was never recovered.”

“How much money are we talking about here?”

“Well, the robbery file I looked over was five million.”

“The first one was five million also,” Carter said, then searched through the stack of papers for the third robbery. “This one was four million.”

“Son of a bitch. Fourteen million dollars that was never recovered.” Cruz stood and headed out the door, and Carter wondered where he was going. He was back in three seconds. “Langstaff says none of that money waseverrecovered. The other two said they had no idea where the third had hidden it.”

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