Roses Are Red

The agent from the original Dougherty team was named Sam Withers. Kyle, Agent Cavalierre, and I met with him in Kyle's conference room at Quantico. Withers was in his mid-sixties now; he was retired and told us he played a lot of golf in the Scottsdale area. He admitted he hadn't given much thought to bank robbers in several years, but the horror of these robberies had caught his attention.

Betsey Cavalierre got right down to business. "Sam, did you get a chance to read our write-ups of the Citibank and First Union robberies?"

"Sure did. I read them a couple of times on my way here," Withers said, ru

"First impressions?" she asked the former agent. "What do you think, Sam? Is there any co

"Big, big differences between these jobs and the ones I worked on. Neither Dougherty nor Co

Withers continued to reminisce and conjecture in a soft, sleepy Midwestern drawl. I sat back and thought about what he had just said. Maybe somebody else out there despised banks and insurance companies too. Or possibly they hated bankers and their families for some reason. Someone with a deep enough grudge could be behind the robberies and murders. It made some sense, as much as anything else we had.

After Sam Withers left the conference room we talked about other cases that might relate to this one. One in particular caught my attention. A major robbery had occurred outside Philadelphia in January. Two men had kidnapped a bank executive's husband and infant son. They said they had a bomb and threatened to blow up their hostages unless the bank vault was opened.

"They kept in touch with walkie-talkies. Used police sca

"Any violence in the job outside Philly?" I asked her.

She shook her head and her shiny black hair flipped to one side," No, none."

With all the resources of the FBI and hundreds of local police departments, we were still nowhere on the robbery-murders. Something was very wrong with this picture. We still weren't thinking like the killers.

Chapter Twenty-Two

I got back to St. Anthony's around four-thirty in the afternoon. Ja

Ja

When Ja

The vivid image came flooding back to me. I remembered the feeling of holding them both in my arms when they were much smaller. I did what Ja

As the three of us embraced, Nana came back from a walk down the hall. She had someone tagging along.

Christine entered the room behind Nana. She wore a silver-gray blouse with a dark blue skirt and matching shoes. She must have come to the hospital from school. She seemed a little distant to me, but at least she was there for Ja

"Here's everybody," Christine said. She never made eye contact with me," I wish I had my camera."

"Oh, we're always like this," Ja

We talked some, but mostly we listened to Ja

That got a laugh out of everybody, except Nana, who pretended to be miffed. "Well, we can just order out from the hospital when you get home," Nana said as she gave Ja

"Oh, you like to work," Ja

"Almost as much as you love to tease me," Nana countered.

As Christine was getting up to leave, the nurse brought a phone from the nurses' station. She a

"It's okay, Daddy," Ja

Kyle Craig was on the line. He had bad news," I'm on my way to the First Virginia branch in Rosslyn. They hit another bank, Alex."

Nana shot poisoned darts at me with her eyes. Christine wouldn't look at me. I felt guilty and ashamed, and I hadn't done anything wrong.

"I have to go for an hour or so," I finally said. "I'm sorry."

Chapter Twenty-Three

The bank robberies were coming too fast, one after the other, like dominoes tumbling. Whoever was behind them didn't want to give us a chance to think, to catch a breath, or to organize ourselves.

Rosslyn was only about fifteen minutes from St. Anthony's Hospital. I didn't know what I would find out there: The possible brutalities; the number of dead bodies.

The branch of First Virginia was only a block away from Bell Atlantic headquarters. It was another freestanding bank. Did that mean some-; ;.. thing to the perps? Probably. What, though? The few clues we had so is;, far weren't adding up to anything. Not for me anyway. I noticed a Dunkin' Donuts and a Blockbuster Video directly across the street. People were going in and out. The suburban neighborhood was busy and operating as if nothing had happened.

Something had definitely happened.

I spotted four dark sedans clustered together in the bank parking lot. I suspected they were FBI cars and pulled in beside them. There were no police cars on the scene yet. Kyle had called me, but he hadn't called in the Rosslyn police. Not a good sign.

I showed my detective's badge to a tall, lanky agent posted at the back door. He looked to be in his late twenties. Nervous and scared.