gave a faint smile. “Thanks.”
“How’s your mother?”
Her smile slipped. “She’s still alive. We’re just praying she wakes up soon and can tell us who did this to her. Until then, she’s under twenty-four-hour guard to make sure no one can get to her and finish what they started. Chief Jones was willing to have you all take shifts guarding her, but I know Mom wouldn’t have wanted to take you away from your duties here. I’ve hired a private agency to make sure there’s a guard on her door. So far, that’s worked out well.”
“We’re all praying for her.” Louise set the weapon aside and motioned for them to sit at the table. Once seated Lee wanted to fidget. He wasn’t interested in being in this building ever again. Louise pulled a laptop in front of her. “All right, let’s go through it all again.”
Lee started to say something when Carrie entered the room. Louise raised a brow. “Yes?”
“Sorry to interrupt, but someone found a glove behind a Dumpster near veterinarian Tanya Fowler’s office and brought it in.” She held up the bagged glove while he pictured Tanya, the veterinarian he’d seen occasionally when she’d come to the prison to vaccinate the dogs with the Prison Pups program. A sweet lady whose nonjudgmental eyes never failed to raise his spirits. He tuned back into what Carrie was saying. “Two kids were waiting with their mother while she had their dog in with Dr. Fowler and they ran around the side of the building playing hide and seek. Little Justin Daniels found it and gave it to his mother.”
“Okay. And it’s important because...?”
“It matches the set worn by one of the robbers who robbed that bank in Flagstaff six months ago.”
Louise frowned. “How would she have known that?”
“She wouldn’t. She turned it in to us because it had five one-hundred-dollar bills in it and thought someone may have reported it missing.”
“Has someone?”
“No.” Carrie pushed her glasses up on the bridge of her nose with her forefinger. “But when the robbery first happened, we got all those wanted notices faxed to us, remember? The chief also got the video footage of the robbery.” She walked farther into the room and placed the glove on the desk. “He and I watched it together just in case I spotted anyone hanging around town. Turns out I recognized the gloves in the surveillance video. They’re a pretty popular brand and I sent this exact pair to a cousin for Christmas last year.” She wrinkled her nose. “Well, not this one, but a pair just like them. So I just checked the bank footage again to be sure, and this sure looks like one of the gloves.”
Louise nodded. “Okay, that’s good news. I wouldn’t have thought there would be any chance of picking up that trail again. Send the glove off to the lab. Take Justin Daniels’s fingerprints as well as his mother’s and send them for comparison.” Carrie nodded. “Also, get the serial numbers from the bills and send them to the Flagstaff PD. I don’t know that they’ll need them, but it can’t hurt to have them just in case.”
“Got it.” Carrie turned and walked out, carrying the evidence.
Louise looked up at Ellen. “You heard about that bank robbery, right?”
“Vaguely. It happened shortly after we started our training with Veronica and that’s where my focus was. I think I remember that they never found the money, right?”
“No, it happened just as the bank was closing on a Friday afternoon. Two men in masks and semiautomatics in broad daylight. Shook the whole city up.”
“They were obviously professionals and they had it well planned.”
“True,” she sighed. “They got away that day, but the FBI was called in and arrested one of the robbers—a Nolan Little. The second robber got away, but the FBI tracked him down right here in Desert Valley two days later, hiding in an abandoned mobile home. He got into a shootout with them and was killed. They searched and found his weapon and a few bills, but he didn’t have the bank money on him.”
“Let me guess, the one they caught isn’t talking.”
“He couldn’t if he wanted to. He was killed about two months into serving his sentence.”
“So anyone who might have known where the money is can’t talk because they’re dead.”
“Yes. At least the ones we know about.”
“You think there’s someone else involved?”
“The FBI was convinced there was a third person—a driver—but they’ve never been able to prove it. He wasn’t in the video and there wasn’t a car at the scene.”
“How did they get away?” Ellen asked.
“On foot. Ran right out the back door through a back alley and disappeared. That’s why we think there was a third person involved. Someone with a car that was never seen. Someone who knew where the security cameras were and made sure to park out of view. The robbers climbed in and they drove away.” She sighed. “The FBI sends the chief an update every so often, but I think they’ve probably given up on ever recovering the money—or the third person if there ever was one.” She shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe with the glove, they’ll get a fresh trail to follow.” She drew in a deep breath. “Now, Lee, what can you tell me about the shootout that just occurred?”
Lee shifted. “I think I have something that will help.”
“What’s that?”
“I have a dash cam on my truck. We just need to watch the video.” He held up his phone and pressed the screen to pull up the app.
He shook his head at the irony. After everything this department had put him through, he had something that could possibly help them. And he was going to push aside his initial reaction of “let them fend for themselves” and do it.
This time they’d better not mess up.
An hour later, Ellen and Lee walked out of the building with Lee rolling the puppies behind in their carriers. “A dash cam?” Ellen asked him.
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Call me paranoid. But after everything that happened with the crooked cop and...” He shook his head. “I’m not going to be in that position again. So I mounted a dash cam on my rearview mirror as some sort of protection, I guess. Maybe it was stupid.”
“And maybe you’re brilliant. I can’t say I blame you a bit. And it allowed us to see one of the men in the car.”
“Yes.” He frowned.
“Everything all right?”
“Yes. I’m just thinking.”
“About?” She spotted the SUV in the road, getting ready to turn in to the lot. “Hold that thought.”
Whitney Godwin, also a rookie K-9 officer, pulled in and parked. She climbed out of the truck, her shoulder-length light blond hair blowing around her face. She shoved it back and waved
