Cut and Run (Lucy Kincaid #16) - Allison Brennan Page 0,99

FBI Agent Lucy Kincaid. Your father didn’t go to work today, and I was hoping to speak to him regarding a bank matter I discussed with him yesterday. He mentioned to me that he was planning a visit with you?” That was a guess on Lucy’s part, but if he was as close to his daughter as he appeared he would never attempt to leave the country without seeing her.

“You just missed him. We had breakfast together, though it was a surprise. He doesn’t usually skip work to visit.”

“I was in his office and saw your picture on his desk, he just mentioned in passing that he was going to see you soon. I just didn’t know it was today, and we’re trying to resolve a situation here.”

“It’s about an hour drive, so he should be back in Kerrville by eleven. He left here a little after ten.”

“And he said he was going back to work?”

Silence. “Well, I assumed.”

“Does he often surprise you during the workweek?”

“What’s going on?” she asked. “This doesn’t sound like anything to do with the bank.”

“We need to talk to him.”

“If you’re really working with the bank, you would have his cell phone number.”

“We already tried.” He’d turned his phone off and removed the battery, Lucy was pretty certain. They could get a warrant to ping the phone, but anyone on the run from the police wouldn’t keep it on them.

“I’ll call him and tell him you want to speak to him.”

“That would be great.” She gave Penny her number.

Lucy ended the call.

“You think that’s going to work?” Laura asked.

“She won’t be able to reach him. Fifty-fifty she’ll call me back. If she doesn’t call me, she’ll call the bank to try to find out what’s going on.”

“How did you guess he would visit his daughter?”

“He wouldn’t leave without seeing her. She’s his world, as Edith Walker said. And he has a granddaughter. He would want to see them. Say good-bye—even if they didn’t know he was saying good-bye.”

Lucy called Zach Charles, her squad analyst. “Zach, Frank Pollero is in the wind. I need a BOLO on him, notify the airports—all the major airports. He left Boerne at ten this morning.” That was fifteen minutes ago. “It’s a thirty-minute drive to San Antonio International, he’s traveling light, could have an eleven or twelve o’clock flight out. Or he could be heading to Austin or a bigger airport. Notify Border Control as well—he might try to drive out, then leave through a Mexican airport. I don’t have a good read on him, whether he has a bunch of fake IDs, but my inclination is no. He wasn’t planning on leaving, but he has some money—enough to at least get out of the country. But this was likely spontaneous and he hasn’t thought it through.”

“I’m on it. I’ll let you know if I hear anything.”

“Thanks.”

“Why would he run?” Laura asked. “Because he was involved in the embezzlement?”

“I don’t think Denise Albright ever came in to authorize the change in the Kiefer accounts. I think that after her killer buried her and her family they convinced Pollero to say that she did. He found someone close enough to Albright in appearance so the picture would pass basic scrutiny. Once we get the analysis back on the paperwork compared to her signatory card, we should be able to prove it.” Maybe they paid him well—gave him a nest egg, his go-money if he ever got caught.

“Why would someone with no criminal record, a pillar of the community, a widower with a family, commit such a heinous act?” Laura asked.

“I don’t think he was involved in the Albrights’ murders. He probably thought she left the country, because that’s what the killers wanted everyone to think. That’s why they embezzled the money in the first place.”

“But Pollero would know that she didn’t embezzle the money.”

True. He would know because she didn’t come into the bank that day.

“Unless,” Lucy said, “she called him. Or talked to him. Maybe she was under duress when she did it, or maybe she was really thinking about taking the money and running. Or he knew all along that she was being set up. That doesn’t mean he knew her family was going to be murdered.” She thought about it. She didn’t know Frank Pollero, and she was only going by her first impression. She knew he’d been lying, that he’d been coached. Maybe he’d been coached after the fact, so when the FBI came he knew exactly