Conklin and I followed Swanson under the tape and through the door. The interior of the Cash ’n’ Go was lined with pressed-wood paneling; counters ran at elbow height around two sides so people could sign their checks and fill out paperwork. There were a dozen metal folding chairs in the center of the store, all of which had been knocked out of line; white strips on the floor leading to three teller windows; and an open security door at the end of the room.
Two bodies lay sprawled on the floor between the chairs, blood pooling on the lino. I could see the body of a third where he had fallen across the threshold of the security door. Bullets had punched holes in the paneling, and shell casings were all over the floor.
Conklin said to Swanson, “Quite the shooting gallery. What happened exactly?”
Swanson called over one of the men on his team, Tommy Calhoun, a young guy, going bald at the back of his head, a cigarette smoker to judge by the nicotine stains on his fingers.
Calhoun gave us an animated summary of the Windbreaker cops’ attack on the check-cashing store, including the owner tapping the silent alarm.
At about the same time Blau hit the alarm, his wife was seeing the robbery in progress through the plate glass. She called it in, then flagged down a cruiser for good measure.
“The uniforms came in,” Calhoun told us excitedly, making his hands into guns. He said, “Pow-ka-pow-pow-pow.”
“I’m guessing the shooters had wallets on them,” I said.
Swanson grinned. “Wouldn’t that be nice? No wallets, but CSI just got started. We’ll know who these guys are in an hour.”
Was it over?
I was ready to exhale, I really was. I stepped around the blood and the CSIs taking pictures and stooped to get a look at one of the dead men.
He’d taken a couple of shots to the chest and one to his face through his mask—a pig mask. That was new. The Windbreaker cops on the video we’d seen were wearing plain face masks.
Then I noticed that the doer wasn’t wearing gloves. I looked over at the second man, who’d taken out half a block of folding chairs when he was shot. Same kind of pig mask. And he wasn’t wearing gloves, either.
Why had the slick gunmen we’d seen on surveillance footage changed their MO from nighttime robberies to morning, when there would be less money in the safe and more possibility that customers would enter the store?
Why had they gotten sloppy?
Swanson answered his phone, saying, “Yeah.” And “Uh-huh.”
“Amateur hour,” Conklin said to me under his breath.
“Copy that,” I said.
Swanson said into the phone, “Yeah, I think it’s a done deal, Chief. When CSU finishes up, I think you can tell the press we got the bad guys.”
I hadn’t taken Swanson for an optimist, and while I hoped he was right, I knew he was wrong. The dead men on the floor of the Cash ’n’ Go?
They were copycats.
I would bet my badge on it.
CHAPTER 34
YUKI ENTERED THE paneled and richly furnished conference room at Moorehouse and Rogers, Attorneys-at-Law.
Six of the firm’s lawyers sat around the large mahogany table, and so did the first of the two narcotics cops she had come to depose.
Inspector William Brand was stout and muscular and had a two-day-old be
ard. She knew from watching him on video that he had the initials WB tattooed on the side of his neck, as if they’d been burned there with a branding iron.
He smiled at her when she came into the room. Like What’s up, honey?
This was the problem with being small. And, OK, cute.
The pricey lawyers hired by the City of San Francisco introduced themselves, and hands were shaken all around. Someone offered her coffee while another pulled out a chair.