estimate of height for the robber who had shot Maya. She remembered that mud had splattered the tires and bottom of the doors and sides of the cargo van, something she didn’t think she’d told Bran.
“It looked recent,” she said, thinking it out. “I mean, it was dry, or mostly dry anyway, but if they’d driven for hours I’d have thought more of it would have fallen off. You know? It had to have been from the day before, when it rained.”
“It might have rained here, but it didn’t in Seattle,” Agent Novinski, the woman, said flatly. She took out her phone and did a search. “Or in Tacoma.”
“Ruts and holes on a dirt road can stay muddy for quite a while, though,” Lina pointed out.
“That’s true,” Novinski agreed, but Lina could tell she wasn’t satisfied.
They wanted a better description of both the men than she could give them. No, she had no idea what color the second man’s eyes were. He had been looking at Mr. Floyd, not toward her. Wiry, short for a man. She was sure the hand that held the gun was encased in the kind of thin glove doctors and nurses wore.
They were even more dissatisfied when she couldn’t be sure what color eyes the guy who’d shot Maya had.
“But you say he stared right at you,” the male agent said.
“Yes, but you know how thick the glass is, and I was looking through it at an angle. Plus, I’d just seen my best friend get shot.” She glared at both of them. “It was horrible. Do you know what happens when somebody gets shot in the head?”
Clearly they did. Special Agent Novinski, the woman, had the grace to appear regretful.
“I was beyond shocked, and terrified, too. I can still see his face and the way he looked at me, but I didn’t think, oh, he has blue eyes.”
Naturally, at that moment she pictured Bran Murphy’s eyes, a vivid blue. She wished, quite passionately, that he was here. He wouldn’t let these two badger her.
“My best guess is hazel or light brown. You know, kind of in between.” She frowned. “I don’t think he had really dark hair, either. Even shaved, his head would have looked different if he did. His jaw would have been darker, too. He was definitely Caucasian.” She spread her hands in a helpless gesture. “I looked at him for a total of maybe ten seconds. This is the best I can do.”
Eventually they gave up and departed, leaving her feeling drained. Lunch might help, she thought, but didn’t move. Even making a sandwich seemed like a herculean effort. She wished suddenly, selfishly, that she had gone home for Christmas. Maya would still be dead, but her death wouldn’t be so brutally real. Lina wouldn’t be the only person who could potentially identify one of the men who’d robbed at least three banks.
And, oh, yeah, she’d still be in deep avoidance about telling Bran he was going to be a father.
Her phone rang. His name came up. For some reason, she didn’t hesitate to answer the call.
“Are they done with you?” he asked.
Stung, she said, “Hi. Yes, I’m fine this morning. Thank you for asking.”
There was a short silence. “Are you really fine?” he asked, in a different voice.
“No.” She closed her eyes. “I mean, yes, I’m okay.”
“Have they come and gone?”
“Yes. I don’t think I satisfied them, but I can’t see through walls and ski masks, so they were bound to be disappointed.”
“They were hopeful.” Was that a smile in his voice? “Can I bring you lunch?”
Her stomach came to attention. “What kind of lunch?”
“I was thinking pizza, but if you’d rather I could stop for deli sandwiches.”
In the interests of not gaining too much weight, Lina tried not to indulge often, but pizza sounded like exactly what she needed right now. “I would love pizza,” she admitted. “Can you make mine half veggie?”
“You don’t eat meat?”
“I just want to know I’m eating something healthy along with all the fat, okay?”
She heard a rusty sound that might be a chuckle. “Good thinking. Give me half an hour.”
And he was gone.
* * *
“I DON’T LIKE the sound of that,” he said flatly.
“Of mud?” Lina seemed bemused. “Why?”
He had set down his slice of pizza, wiped off his fingers and quickly checked his phone, to find that the last rain in south King County or Pierce County had been eight days earlier.
“Because it suggests they were staying up here for at least the previous day. They wouldn’t have picked up mud on the highway or in town.” The bank was actually outside the city limits because of recent growth the Clear Creek council members hadn’t been farsighted enough to anticipate, to their current frustration over lost tax dollars. A good percent of homes in the rural county were on dirt or gravel roads that developed potholes and ruts. Very few homes on acreage had paved driveways, either.
“Well, doesn’t that make sense anyway?” Lina asked. “I mean, Tacoma to here is kind of a long commute.”
He gave her a look she ignored. After two slices of pizza, she was full, which left her free to speculate.
“Plus,” she continued, “surely they’d have wanted to, I don’t know, scope out the bank in advance. Why did they pick that bank and not Chase or Opus or Whidbey Island Bank?”
He sighed. Starting at the crack of dawn, he’d watched videos from another local bank until his eyes were crossing. Charlie was doing the same, as were several borrowed deputies. The FBI had generously taken the footage from the bank that had been robbed. They’d let the locals waste time on banks the pair hadn’t targeted.
“You’re right. We’re going back a couple of days, thinking we’ll see the same face appearing at a couple of other banks. They are unlikely to have gone in together, because two men would draw more attention than one alone.”
“What if one of them was in Snoqualmie Community,” she suggested, “oh, ages ago and knew the layout was perfect and the only window on the street looks in at a conference room instead of the bank proper?”
“But why would he have been if he’s not a local?”
“He has a girlfriend or just a friend up here who needed to stop at the bank one day when they were together? He’d go in out of professional curiosity, wouldn’t he?”
Bran did not want to believe either of those slugs had any reason to feel at home in Harris County, because if that was the case, the likelihood became greater that he had somehow encountered Lina and that the spark of familiarity she felt was because she had actually encountered the creep.
“We have to look,” he said.
“I
