Chapter Seventeen

 

2:15 p.m.

 

The Paleville Police Department was bigger than Ocean Point’s. Bigger building, more officers, larger fleet of cars, and a definite increase in background noise. She may even have felt a tad bit overwhelmed if it weren’t for Mitch’s phone call to his counterpart, paving the way for her visit.

Elise tried to focus on the list of questions she’d compiled for Detective Brunetti before leaving the office. But it was hard to concentrate with a handcuffed man in an orange jumpsuit sitting across from her in the waiting area, eyeing her from head to toe. Oddly, she was aware that her feelings were a mixture of unease and excitement. What did he do? And why?

The crime beat was one she both enjoyed and loathed. When it presented a puzzle—like a murder whodunit—it was hard not to feel her adrenaline pumping, her curiosity piquing. When it meant recording basic crime facts with no opportunity to delve further, it was tedious at best.

“Ms. Jenkins?”

She jumped to her feet, her notebook sliding to the floor. As she bent to pick it up, she traded glances with the suspect, a shiver running down her spine. He opened his mouth and snapped it shut, his eyes toying with her as she hurried to the receptionist’s desk.

Smoothing her skirt and tugging at her sweater, Elise took a slow, deliberate breath and focused on the thirty-something woman behind the counter with coal-black hair and dark brown eyes. “I’m Ms. Jenkins.”

“Detective Brunetti will see you now.” The woman pushed a button on the wall, prompting a buzzing sound as the door to the left of her desk unlatched. “Just go through that door. His office is the fifth one on the right.”

The hallway was painted a muted gray and had a series of doors leading off of it on both sides, a stark contrast to the handful of private offices in the Ocean Point Police Department. She proceeded down the narrow linoleum floor, counting doorways in her mind. One, two, three, four . . .

Five. A thin brown wall placard bore the name Douglas Brunetti, Detective. She knocked on the open door, studying the man behind the desk as she did.

Douglas Brunetti was about forty-five years old. Even seated at his desk, Elise could tell he was trim and in shape, a complete contradiction of the clichéd donut-eating image that often went with his profession. Maybe detectives were different, she mused.

The man looked up, smiled as he saw her standing in the doorway. “You must be Elise,” he said, rising from his chair and crossing the distance between them in mere seconds. “Detective Burns told me to be on the lookout for you. He just neglected to tell me how easy you’d be to spot.”

“Can I bring you home with me?” she said and laughed, instantly feeling at home with the man Mitch described as a hardworking, honest guy. “Thanks for agreeing to talk to me today. I won’t take too much of your time.”

Waving his hand in the air, Detective Brunetti motioned to the empty leather chair beside his desk. “Take a seat. Can I get you anything? Coffee? Soda? Water?”

“No, thank you. I stopped at the diner a few blocks away before I got here. Gave me a chance to get my questions in order.” Elise set her purse on the floor and sat down. “How long have you been a detective here?”

He resumed his spot behind the desk, pushing his paperwork off to the side. “About five years. But I’ve been with the department for five before that.”

She nodded as she jotted his answer down. “I realize you were just a child yourself, but are you familiar with the bank robbery that happened here thirty-five years ago?”

“Absolutely.” Detective Brunetti picked his right foot off the ground and rested it across his left knee. “It was at that moment that I decided to be a police officer when I grew up. I was fascinated with the whole thing. The excitement. The how. The who. The why.”

She got that. It’s how her desire to write was born. It hit her early in life, taking hold and never letting go. “There was more to that bank robbery than people realize, wasn’t there?”

He quirked his eyebrows and cocked his head. “How so?”

“There was someone else in that bank besides the people in the vault and the three robbers.”

“Tell me what you know.” He was intrigued, she could see it in his face.

“A seven-year-old girl by the name of Hannah Daltry was hiding under a desk during the robbery.”

For a moment Detective Brunetti said nothing. He simply shifted a puff of air around in his closed mouth for a few moments while he contemplated the conversation. Finally, he spoke.

“Yes, she was. May I ask how you know that?”

Elise reached into her purse and extracted the writing sample, handing it to the detective. “Hannah Daltry was my writing instructor at Ocean Point Community College. She wrote about the robbery in an example for the class. With the help of an older student, we were able to put two and two together.”

She watched as the detective’s eyes skimmed down the page, his face curious as he stopped at the bottom and went back to the top, working his way through the story one more time. When he spoke, his voice was quiet yet strong.

“We were all sad to hear of her murder. Hannah was a neat kid, I mean woman.”

Her ears perked. “Did you know Hannah when you were kids?”

The detective nodded. “Yes. She lived across the street from me. She was about seven when all that happened, I think. I was ten.”

The connection was one she hadn’t even imagined uncovering. Feeling her heart rate begin to accelerate, she leaned forward, oblivious to the list of questions in her lap. “Did you know she’d been in there?”

Again, he nodded. “I did. But the only reason I knew is because my mom and Mrs. Daltry were best friends. And I overheard Hannah’s mom telling mine.”

“That was a lot for a kid to absorb, I bet.”

“It was. But I could also tell how important it was that word never got out. So I never uttered a sound about it to anyone. I hated the idea that a little kid I’d known her whole life had been scared by three thugs, as my mom called them. I think that was the real moment I knew I wanted to be a cop.”

She tossed his words around in her mind for a few seconds, letting it all sink in and take hold. “You ever tell anyone you knew?”

“Nope. Not my mom. Not my dad. Not even Hannah. I just kept a close watch on her at school and in the neighborhood. She seemed real removed after it happened. Sad. I think she took it far harder than this writing sample shows.” He looked at the page one last time and then handed it back to Elise. “But she rebounded nicely. Set her path on teaching when she left high school and made a nice career for herself.”

“Why do you think it was kept a secret?”

“Her safety, I guess. I’ve looked at the records from back then. Studied the case. Would love nothing more than to find the loser who got away. But after so many years and so little physical evidence, the likelihood is slim to none.”

Her pen moved across her notepad, working desperately to get everything down. “Little evidence?”

“As she said in her writing, they wore masks and gloves. No fingerprints. He got off scot-free.”

“And the money?”

“It was all recovered at the scene. The guy dropped his bag and ran when his buddies got shot. And in the chaos of those initial moments with gunfire and bodies dropping, he slipped away.”

Glancing down at her list of questions, she got back on track. “I understand the child safety thing in this instance, I guess. But when a child isn’t involved, what makes you hold back certain bits of information after a crime? And how do you know what to hold back?”

“Good question.” He pulled open a drawer to his left and pulled out a thick binder. “See this? It’s supposed to be like a detective bible of sorts. You know . . . how to do things and when. But a lot of the times, I don’t use it.” He dropped it back in his drawer and turned back to Elise. “It’s more instinctual. I imagine Mitch would tell you the same thing.”

“What you hold back from the public can often be what breaks a case, can’t it?” she asked.

He nodded. “Yes, it can. If we hold back a particular pattern we see between murders, and we question someone who mentions that pattern or some bit of information we’ve kept to ourselves . . . then bingo, we’ve got our man. Or, at the very least, someone who knows something about the crime and can potentially lead us where we need to go.”

She veered from her prepared questions again for a moment. “Could there have been any other reason Hannah’s presence in that bank was kept quiet?”

Detective Brunetti seemed to ponder her question as he turned a pen over and over on his desk. “I don’t think so. The reports I read never said she knew anything. You know. She was scared. They wore masks. She tried to stay out of their line of vision, which means her visual on them was limited. I don’t think she knew enough to ever I.D. anyone, if that’s what you’re thinking. But they’d still keep her presence quiet simply because a criminal could get spooked.”

“I guess that makes sense. But—” She stopped, fiddled with her pen for a moment, then regained eye contact. “If that robbery took place today, with you as detective, would you have done anything differently?”

Detective Brunetti tented his fingers to his lips and sat silently for a few moments, seeming to mull over her question with an intensity she wouldn’t have expected. But it made sense. This crime had touched his life directly.

“I think the main thing would have been in relation to Hannah. I would have brought a child psychologist in to work with her. Not necessarily to grill her, but to help her work through her experiences. At the very least, it would have helped her. At best, it may have uncovered something no one realized was there.”

“They didn’t do that?”

“People are more aware of how crimes like that impact their victims nowadays. That awareness wasn’t necessarily there thirty-five years ago.”

“Do you see any reason why I can’t write about her presence in that bank now? In light of her death?”

Detective Brunetti studied her for a long moment, an internal assessment that made her feel neither uncomfortable nor irritated. The Hannah connection was a secret the Paleville Police Department had kept from the press for thirty-five years. And, more important, it was a secret he’d kept since he was a child.

“Mitch had nothing but good things to say about you as a reporter. He said you’re more than fair with his department and that you write with compassion. Between that and what my own vibes tell me, I’m good with it. Hannah was forced to hold that experience in for much too long. I do have one request, though.”

She was honored both by what Mitch had said as well as Detective Brunetti’s willingness to give her the benefit of the doubt. “Anything.”

“Run it by Mrs. Daltry first. Make sure it’s okay with her.”

Elise set her notepad on the desk and stood, extending her hand to the detective. “I have an appointment to sit down and talk with Mrs. Daltry tomorrow morning. I’d never dream of telling this part of Hannah’s story without her permission.”

Her hand disappeared inside his warm, firm grasp. “Thank you, Elise.”