The man who owned Regent Armored, Daniel McCaffery, made a point of saying, “I’m the official king of Regent Armored,” as often as he could. Leproate doubted that the line would ever be funny, but now, given the heavy bruises down the side of McCaffery’s face, it was just sad. He looked like the official king of taking a beating.
Leproate ran through all the usual angles—disgruntled employees, competitors, known enemies. Nothing fit. The guy who’d swiped the truck had been young, but all of this felt to Leproate like the work of someone who knew what he was doing.
Leproate and Wellsley split up everyone who had worked the shift that night, and interviewed them separately. When they were done, he didn’t have to ask her. She shrugged and he knew. They had nothing. Not even the guy who’d gotten sapped on the sidewalk could give them a description.
They bagged the surveillance camera’s hard drive and stepped outside into the late afternoon.
“So,” said Wellsley, “you might be right, but I don’t see how it gets us anywhere.”
Leproate scanned the street, head on a swivel. “Why didn’t they catch the kid in the armored car?”
Wellsley nodded, getting it. “Yeah. They call the cops, everybody is looking for it…a slow, obvious vehicle. How did he get away?”
Leproate looked at the decaying industrial district that surrounded them. Across the street was a five-story brick building that took up the whole block. The double doors were closed with a padlock and chain. All the windows were broken out. Even the panes on the top floor. Must have been done from the inside. It’d be real work to pull that off from street level. Vandals wouldn’t have that kind of work ethic. They would have the time. Scumbags have nothing but time.
“They didn’t get away,” Leproate realized out loud.
“But they weren’t caught?”
Agent Leproate was already walking away, right down the middle of the street. “They headed away from the river.” He stood in the first intersection. To the right he could see the river cutting northeast across the grid of the city. North were more surface streets, abandoned warehouses, and factories. “Ennh…left turn.” He continued walking.
“Is this some kind of Jedi mind trick?” asked Wellsley. “Because I don’t remember them teaching this at Quantico.”
The next intersection went all four ways. Barry sighed and stood there for a minute. Wellsley said, “If you are that serious about it, we should get some help and have all of these buildings searched. Get it done quickly.”
Leproate asked himself, “Which building would I use? And why? Big enough…and I would have needed to scout the job.” He turned left again and walked quickly. In the middle of the block, when he saw the alley leading into the center of the large brick complex across the street from Regent Armored, he knew.
“This one.”
“Bullshit,” said Wellsley. Then she followed him in.
Leproate’s voice rang off the brick walls of the alleyway. “They would have scouted it from up there. And if there was a place, they would have stashed the truck here, even holed up for a while.”
In the far wall of the courtyard was a large sliding metal door, the kind with counterweights. It had been battered to shit, but it opened easily and without a sound.
The light of the setting sun came through the alley behind Leproate and illuminated the large room on the other side of the door. There, cut through the dirt and refuse on the ancient factory floor, were skid marks from where a large, heavy truck had come to a short stop. Wadded up in the corner were several large tarps.
“How the fuck did you do that?” asked Wellsley.
“Call them,” said Leproate. “Call everybody.”