Chapter 3 #2
“Hayes,” he greeted her, finding her grip firm but not aggressive.
“Beckett,” his partner added as he shook her hand. “You a Mountie?” he inquired curiously.
Hayes briefly considered warning her not to answer, but she beat him to the punch.
“If you’re going to ask about where I stashed my horse, I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed,” she warned with a slight edge to her tone, clearly not impressed with Beckett’s ill-timed joke.
“Of course not,” Beckett replied, shaking his head with a barely repressed grin. “But if you don’t mind, I’d quite like to get this dog and pony show going—” He gestured towards the wall behind her with an amused smirk that said he’d been saving that one as his back-up plan.
To her credit, Agent Cho did not dignify his second attempt with a response.
“Take a seat,” she said, rather sternly.
It must have been too early in the day for him to dig through his mental book of jokes, since Beckett just sighed as he sat down at the table.
“We’ve managed to identify four of the five suspects who fled the bank in a getaway car four days ago.
The first was Charlie Carpetio, little-league baseball coach from Boston, currently unemployed, suffering from severe financial difficulties in recent months.
Next is his brother Marcus Carpetio. A repeat offender currently on parole after serving four years for assault and battery.
The third suspect is Ilya Solvek, a Russian immigrant who served time with Marcus three years ago.
He was incarcerated for petty theft, and was Marcus’s cellmate for a few months. ”
“Looks like Ilya decided to graduate to bigger and better things,” Beckett commented, which made Hayes smile.
Naomie, however, was not amused. She simply continued her recitation without acknowledging his smartassery.
“The fourth perp we positively identified is Nathan Fortier. He was born in Queens, but his parents moved to Sherbrooke for a short time while he was a teen when his father took a job out here at one of the universities. Fortier had a few run-ins with the local PD while he was here, but nothing major. They eventually moved back to New York for Nathan to attend college. From what we gathered, once he’d moved out of the house, his parents moved back here while he stayed in New York.
After college, he worked as an accountant for a big firm when suspected embezzlement got him fired.
He’d dropped out of sight for six months until he showed up on the security footage at the bank during the robbery. ”
“What about the fifth suspect?” Hayes asked.
Naomie walked over to the wall and tapped a blurry shot of someone of small stature in a hoodie sneaking out of a side door of the bank.
“Our best guess is that it’s Nathan’s girlfriend Elona Solvek.
She’s Ilya’s cousin, so it would explain the link, but we have no pictures or proof.
Her passport was flagged in Italy two days prior to the robbery, and her boss confirmed she’d taken time off for a trip she’d been planning for a year. ”
“This is all very fascinating—” Beckett drawled. “I love a good Russian theft scandal—and I’m not opposed to a repeat on the little person thief theory, but I’m not sure what we’re doing here.”
Naomie sighed, looking as if she was at her wit’s end dealing with Beckett.
Hayes could relate. God only knew how many times he’d wanted to punch his irreverent partner.
He wasn’t sure when that annoying quirk had grown into something he now fully embraced—but he didn’t share her annoyance with him even as he related to it.
“We’ve identified several locations where we think Nathan might try to stash the money until the heat dies down.
We’ve done our best to stay low profile so they don’t suspect we’re closing in on them, but we have good intel that says they’ll end up here.
” She pointed to a picture of a large brick building, covering a full city block and five stories high.
“Because—” Beckett said, gesturing for her to keep going.
Hayes gave him a narrow look, silently urging him to ease up on the attitude. Beckett ignored him. As usual.
“This is where Nathan attended high school,” Naomie explained.
“No one’s that sentimental about their high school days,” Beckett scoffed.
“He was a student there for three years, and he caused quite a raucous when he told some of his classmates that he’d found secret tunnels leading from the lowest basement to several places within the city.
The school was searched, of course, and the tunnels were never found.
But not even the Archbishop could kill the rumors. ”
“Wait a second—” Beckett said, sitting up, showing obvious interest for the first time since the meeting started. “You’re saying—what—that a bunch of priests dug tunnels leading out of the school? What is this? A low budget Harry Potter remake?”
Sighing again, she turned away to try to hide how she was biting her bottom lip, reluctantly amused.
Carl snickered and then finished the tale of the school’s history.