28 Hearts of Sand Read Online Free PDF

they got their money and then they shot up the place. They put a bunch of bullet holes in the ceiling and the walls. Then they got out. The whole thing, both times, took less than three full minutes. And when they were gone, they were gone.”
    “Nobody saw two people dressed all in black like commandos wandering around in the streets?”
    “Nope. Greenwich is pretty built up for a suburban town, and it was even then. But nobody saw a thing.”
    “What about surveillance cameras?”
    “This was thirty years ago,” Patrick said. “They had them, but they didn’t have nearly as many as they do now. We did get some surveillance footage. I’ve included whatever is in the public domain in that stack of stuff over there. I’m sure New York will give you the rest. There isn’t much of it. But that’s weird, too.”
    “Why?”
    “Because”—Patrick shook his head—“it’s hard to put your finger on. The cameras weren’t as good then. So maybe I’m just fussing around about nothing. Try to get New York to give you the actual feed. Look at the film so that you can see them in motion. That’s all I’m going to say. I never knew if I was actually seeing something or if I was imagining things. You tell me.”
    “What happened with the third one?” Gregor asked.
    “They crossed state lines,” Patrick said. “The third and the fourth ones were in New York State, in Westchester. Not that that’s much of a drive. Greenwich is right on the border with Port Chester. The third robbery was a bank in Rye, the fourth was a bank in Armonk. Armonk was a bit of a drive.”
    “Same routine?”
    “Yep. Same routine, and same problems for us. You’d think somebody would have seen something somewhere. It was the middle of the summer, for God’s sake. Who walks around in black turtlenecks in summer? You’d figure we would have gotten something. But there was nothing. Then there was number five.”
    Gregor nodded. “The one where somebody got killed.”
    “Two people,” Patrick said. “Same routine, same complete lack of anybody seeing anything, but when they got to the part where they shot the place up, they ended up hitting two people, a bank guard and a high school kid waiting in line to make a deposit from his first job. Their names are in all that, too. It was in Westport, Connecticut. The Fairfield County Savings Bank.”
    Gregor considered this. “You’re sure it was accidental, that somebody died?”
    “It was either accidental, or it was done just for kicks. We’ve never been able to find out. We didn’t have a single lead as to who killed them, or who had been robbing those banks. It would have been the biggest news story in town, if the accident hadn’t happened the same damned night.”
    Gregor tried to process this. “Accident,” he said. “I did hear something about an accident.”
    “Of course you did,” Patrick said. “When a bunch of rich Fairfield County teenagers smash up a car and one of them is killed, it’s going to be bigger news in the New York ADI than the bank robberies were, even with two people dead. There were six people in the car. Martin Veer was driving. Chapin Waring was in the backseat. Then there were four more, don’t remember the names off the top of my head. Martin Veer was killed. Two of the others were treated for injuries. There was a big, enormous explosion, and four days later there was a funeral. It was a big funeral. It made all the local news stations and it made CBS in New York. There was this one clip they kept running over and over again, of Chapin Waring putting a rose into the ground where the casket was. And that’s what did it.”
    “Did what?”
    “We had a special agent then—she died a few years ago, unfortunately, breast cancer—her name was Sarah Havermack. She was watching one of those clips when she realized that the Waring girl looked familiar. She checked it out, and sure enough, there was no mistaking it. Chapin Waring was one of the two