The Last Widow. Karin Slaughter

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СКАЧАТЬ toward his holster, but the AR swung up and Pete Guthrie was dead.

      Someone in the classroom groaned, like they’d just watched a movie, not the end of a man’s life.

      The rest of Novak’s team swarmed into the bank, quickly taking up position. Six guys, all dressed in the same black gear. All waving around AR-15s, which were as ubiquitous in Georgia as peaches. There was no sound with the video, but Faith could see open mouths as the customers screamed. Another person was shot, a seventy-two-year-old grandmother of six named Edatha Quintrell who, going by the witness statements, had not moved fast enough getting down on the ground.

      “Military,” someone needlessly said.

      Needlessly, because these guys were clearly a tactical unit. Less than ten seconds through the door and they were already opening the teller drawers, tossing the hidden dye packs aside and shoving the money into white canvas bags.

      Van Zandt said, “We scoured four previous months of footage trying to find someone casing the bank, but nothing stuck out.” He pointed to Novak. “Look at the stopwatch in his hand. The closest precinct is twelve minutes away. The closest patrol is eight minutes out. He knows how much time they have down to the second. Everything was planned.”

      They hadn’t planned on one of the customers being an off-duty police officer. Rasheed Dougall, a twenty-nine-year-old patrolman, had stopped by the bank on his way to the gym. He was wearing red basketball shorts and a black T-shirt. Faith’s eyes had automatically found him in the bottom right corner. Belly flat to the ground. Hands not over his head, but at his side near his gym bag. She knew what was going to happen next. Rasheed pulled a Springfield micro pistol out of the bag and shot the guy closest to him in the belly.

      Two taps, the way they were trained.

      Rasheed rolled over and caught a second guy in the head. He was aiming for the third when a bullet from Novak blew off the bottom half of his face.

      Novak seemed unfazed by the sudden carnage. He coldly looked at the stopwatch. His mouth moved. According to the statements, he was telling his men—

       Let’s go, boys, clean it up.

      Four guys moved forward, two teams each shouldering one of their fallen accomplices as they dragged them toward the door.

      Novak scooped up the white canvas bags of cash. Then he made his custom move: He reached into his backpack. He held up a pipe bomb over his head, making sure everyone saw it. The bomb wasn’t meant to blow the vault. He was going to set it off once the car was out of range. But before he left, he was going to chain the doors shut so that no one could leave.

      As violent criminal acts go, it was a solid plan. Small towns didn’t have enough first responders to handle more than one disaster at a time. An explosion at the bank, casualties falling out of broken windows and doors, was the biggest disaster the locals would ever see.

      On the screen, Novak slapped the bomb to the wall. Faith knew that it was held there by an adhesive sold at any home improvement store. Galvanized pipe. Nails. Thumb tacks. Wire. All of the components were untraceable or so common that they might as well be.

      Novak turned toward the door. He started pulling the chain and lock out of his backpack. Then he unexpectedly collapsed face down on the ground.

      Blood spread out from his body like a snow angel.

      Some of the men in the classroom cheered.

      A woman rushed into the frame. Dona Roberts. Her Colt 1911 was pointing at Novak’s head. Her foot was on the man’s tailbone to make sure he stayed down. She was a retired Navy cargo plane pilot who’d just happened to be at the bank to open an account for her daughter.

      Damn if she wasn’t wearing a strapless sundress and sandals.

      The image paused.

      Van Zandt said, “Novak took two in the back. Lost a kidney and his spleen, but your tax dollars patched him up. The phone to detonate the bomb was inside his backpack. According to our people, the first bad guy who was shot in the stomach could’ve survived with quick medical intervention. The bad guy with a hole in his head obviously died at the scene. No bodies were found dumped in a twenty-mile radius. No hospitals reported gunshot victims fitting the description. We have no idea who these accomplices are. Novak didn’t crack under questioning.”

      He didn’t crack because he wasn’t the average bank robber. Most of those idiots got arrested before they could count their money. The FBI had basically been invented to stop people from robbing banks. Their solve rate was north of 75 percent. It was a stupid crime with a high chance of failure and a mandatory twenty-five-year sentence, and that was just for walking up to a teller and passing a note saying you would like to rob the bank, please. Waving a gun, making threats, shooting people—that was the rest of your life in Big Boy prison, assuming you didn’t get a needle in your arm.

      “So …” The marshal was back. He clapped together his hands. He was a real hand-clapper, this guy. “Let’s talk about what happened in the video.”

      Faith checked her Apple Watch for messages, praying for a family emergency that would pull her out of this never-ending nightmare.

      No luck.

      She groaned at the time.

      1:37 p.m.

      She pulled up her texts. Will had no idea how lucky he was to be skipping this stupid meeting. She sent him a clown with a water gun to its head. Then a knife. Then a hammer. She was going to send him an avocado because they both despised avocados, but her finger slipped on the tiny screen and she accidentally sent him a yam.

      “Let’s look at this next chart.” The marshal had pulled up another image, this one a flow chart detailing all the various agencies involved in the transport. Atlanta Police. Fulton County Police. Fulton County Sheriff’s office. US Marshals Service. The FBI. The ATF. The who-the-fuck-cares because Faith had two hours of folding laundry ahead of her, six if her precious daughter insisted on helping.

      She checked to see if Will had texted back. He hadn’t. He was probably working on his car or doing push-ups or whatever else he did on the days he managed to get out of hideously long meetings.

      He was probably still in bed with Sara.

      Faith stared out the window. She let out a long sigh.

      Will was a missed opportunity. She could see that now. Faith hadn’t been particularly attracted to him when they’d first met, but Sara had Pygmalioned his ass. She’d dragged him to a real hair salon instead of the weird guy in the morgue who traded haircuts for sandwiches. She had talked him into getting his suits tailored so he’d gone from looking like the sale rack at a Big and Tall Warehouse to the mannequin in the window of a Hugo Boss store. He was standing up straighter, more confident. Less awkward.

      Then there was his sweet side.

      He marked his calendar with a star on the days Sara got her hair done so he would remember to compliment her. He was constantly finding ways to say her name. He listened to her, respected her, thought she was smarter than he was, which was true, because she was a doctor, but what man admitted that? He was constantly regaling Faith with the ancient wisdoms that Sara had passed on to him:

      Did you know that men can use lotion for dry skin, too?

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