Free The Town: A Novel by Chuck Hogan Page B

the way, they don’t believe me either.”
    “Don’t believe what?
Who
either?”
    “About nothing happening to me out there. My mother treats me like the ghost of her daughter, back from the dead. And my father’s all ‘
Brrrhrrrhrrr,
business as usual, let’s rent a movie…’”
    Frawley’s first impulse always was to counsel. He reminded himself that he wasn’t there to help or to heal, he was there to learn. “Why do you think I don’t believe you?”
    “Everyone handling me like I’m porcelain. If people want me to be fragile, watch out, because I can be
very
fragile, no problemo.” She threw up her handless cuffs in surrender. “So stupid, getting into that van. Right? Like a six-year-old on a pink bike, pulled into a van, and not even screaming or kicking. Such a
victim
.”
    “I thought you had no choice.”
    “I could have struggled,” she argued. “I could have let them, I don’t know,
shoot
me instead.”
    “Or ended up like your assistant manager.”
    She shook her head, wanting to relax but emotionally unable.
    Frawley said, “I went out to visit Mr. Bearns. He said you haven’t been by yet.”
    She nodded at the floor. “I know. I need to go.”
    “What’s holding you up?”
    She shrugged hard inside the baglike sweatshirt, avoiding the answer. “We’re trained to help robbers,” she said. “You know that, right? To actually
help
the criminals, and not to resist. Even to repeat their commands back to them, so they know that we’re following their orders
to the letter
.”
    “To put the bandit at ease. To get him out of the bank more quickly, away from customers, away from yourself.”
    “Fine, okay, but—
helping
the thief? Like, rolling over for him? You don’t think that’s a little whacked?”
    “The vast majority of bank theft is drug addicts looking to score. Their desperation, their fear of being sick, makes them unpredictable.”
    “But everything is like,
Do what the robber says
. Like—
Don’t give him dye packs if he tells you not to
. Hello? So why do we have them? And—
Be courteous.
What other business do they say that in? ‘Thank you, bank robber, have a nice day.’”
    Through the side window, Frawley watched two boys tossing around a tennis ball a few backyards away, making showtime catches on a late Friday afternoon. “Speaking of training,” he said. “It’s written policy at BayBanks for the openers to enter one at a time, the first one confirming that the bank is secure, then safe-signaling to the second.”
    She nodded contritely. “Right. I know.”
    “And yet this was not your usual practice.”
    “Nope.”
    “Why not?”
    Shrug. “Laziness? Complacency? We had an all-clear for the tellers.”
    “Right, the window shades. But the tellers don’t arrive until a half hour after you two. And setting off the silent alarm—you’re trained to wait until it is safe to do so.”
    “Again—what is the point of sounding an alarm
after
a robbery? Can you tell me that? What is the
point
?”
    “Mr. Bearns put you both at risk.”
    “But you couldn’t
know
that while it was going on,” she said, angry suddenly, tearing into him with her eyes. “They were inside the bank,
waiting
for us when we walked in—outnumbering us, scaring the
shit
out of us. I didn’t think I was ever walking out of that bank again.”
    “I’m not placing blame, I’m only trying to get at—”
    “So why haven’t I gone to visit Davis? Because I couldn’t stand to let myself fall to pieces on him.
Me,
little suburban
me,
not a scratch on her, safe and fine and hiding out—at her
parents
?” She pushed hair off her forehead where there was no hair and looked away. “Why, he asked about me?”
    “He did.”
    Her shoulders drooped. “The hospital won’t tell me anything over the phone.”
    “He’s going to lose most of the sight out of one eye.”
    Her handless sleeve went to her face. She turned to the window, toward the boys playing catch. He pushed it