The Town: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

to bring so much to these empty repositories himself.
    *   *   *
     
    T HE TECHNICIAN SWABBED THE insides of the branch manager’s cheeks, collecting elimination DNA along with her fingerprints while Frawley made a copy of the manager’s contact sheet on the bank’s Xerox machine.
    Claire G. Keesey. DOB 4/16/66. Frawley looked again and realized that today was her thirtieth birthday.
    Dino wanted a look upstairs, leaving Frawley to do the interview solo. She was wiping ink from her fingers as Frawley introduced himself, making their perfunctory handshake awkward. He had snagged her a Poland Spring, which she thanked him for, uncapping it and sipping a little before setting the bottle down on the table beside them, next to an empty Diet Coke.
    Frawley sat in the corner with her facing him, so that the police passing outside the door would not distract her. The bleach odor was only mild here. She shifted in her seat, making herself ready for the interview, smiling a little, uncertain. She rubbed her stained hands together in her lap as though chilled. Her arms were long and bare.
    “No jacket today?” said Frawley.
    “Someone took it,” she said, looking back at the door. “For evidence. They… they cut my blindfold out of it.”
    “Would you like… ?” He opened his own jacket, and she nodded. He stood and draped it over her shoulders, though as he sat back down, she slipped her arms into the sleeves. The cuffs hung just an inch too long. If he had known a woman would be wearing his jacket that day, he would have chosen a newer one. “And you’re sure you’re okay, you don’t want to go get checked out?”
    “Just stiff,” she said.
    “No bumps, bruises?”
    “No,” she said, realizing only then how odd that was.
    Frawley showed her his microcassette recorder, then turned it on and set it on the table. “Ms. Keesey, I want to start with your abduction, then take you back through the robbery itself.”
    The word
abduction
brought a blink and a deep swallow. This trauma had many layers and she was in only two or three deep.
    “It’s unusual to see a bank employee kidnapped during an otherwise successful robbery. But it means you spent a fair amount of time in the company of the bandits and perhaps possess some information that can benefit our investigation. I am the local bank robbery coordinator for the FBI, and this is all I do, work bank crimes, so nothing you can tell me is too trivial. Let me also say that if I don’t ask a question you want asked, go right ahead and answer it anyway.”
    “Then, if I could… no one’s been able to tell me about Davis.”
    “The assistant manager?” said Frawley. “He’s being checked out at the hospital,but he’s going to be okay. He’s hurt, but he’s going to make it. That’s what you wanted to know?”
    She nodded and rubbed her cheek with her hand, the dried stain leaving no exchange.
    “You saw them beat him?” said Frawley.
    She looked down and nodded.
    “It was brutal,” he said.
    “I didn’t… I looked away.”
    “Now I’m assuming these bandits threatened you upon your release. Told you not to cooperate in any way with the police, the FBI, correct?”
    “Yes.”
    “Okay. And could you detail the exact nature of that threat for me?”
    “It was after they stopped. One of the ones in front—he was the same one with me at the vault—he had my handbag.”
    “Okay, hold on. Now, you were blindfolded for the entire ride, no?”
    “Oh—yes, he shook it. My big Coach bag—I know the sound of my things. He unsnapped my purse, told me he was pulling out my driver’s license. He read it to me. Said he was keeping it.”
    “In his words, if you can remember them?”
    She crooked her head, looking down, repeating them quietly. “‘If you tell the FBI anything about us, we will come back for you and fuck you and kill you.’”
    “Okay,” said Frawley, pretending to write that down, coming back up with a neutral smile. “Of