“Want to grab lunch after this?”

Nora looked up at Mike as they stood in the lobby of First National Bank in Chula Vista. The drive from L.A. had been awkward at first, but everything had slowly normalized and now there was almost no residue of resentment from him.

“Sure.” She didn’t love the idea of having lunch with Mike — she didn’t want to give him even a hint of hope that there was anything more than friendship between them —but declining would make it weird.

“Cool.”

A man — probably the bank manager they’d asked to see — strode toward them across the tile floors of the lobby. With his well-tailored suit, youthful tan, and sparkling teeth, he was the antithesis of the frumpy bank managers portrayed in movies. Nora wondered if he surfed. Everyone out here seemed to surf. For some reason it made her think of Braden — who didn’t surf and didn’t show any interest in surfing. He was a lot more like her brothers than she wanted to admit: totally uninterested in the opinions of others and carrying a kind of derision for anything that even hinted at the trappings of persona. Thinking of him took her back to their night together and for a split second she was back in his bed, his head between her legs, his fingers inside her, his…

“Peter Reynolds.” The man extended his hand. “I understand you want to speak to me about the robbery last fall.”

“That's right,” Shields said. “Can we go somewhere more private?”

“Of course,” Matthew Reynolds said. “But first, and I’m sorry to ask — ”

Nora cut him off at the pass by producing her ID. “It’s no problem at all. You can’t be too careful.”

He smiled, and she had the feeling it had worked its magic on more than a few California golden girls.

“Exactly.” He looked at Nora’s badge, then took the one offered by Mike and gave it similar consideration before handing both of them back. “Follow me.”

They passed through the main lobby and entered a small hall at the back of the building. A plaque next to the door at the end of the hall announced the office as belonging to Matthew Reynolds, General Manager.

“Have a seat,” he said, indicating the traditional wing chairs in front of the outdated oak desk. “Can I get you anything? Coffee? Tea?”

“No, thank you,” Nora said.

Reynolds lowered himself into the chair behind the desk. “I don’t know what more I can tell you that I didn’t tell your colleagues the first three times, but I’m always happy to help.”

“We appreciate that,” Mike said.

In spite of Mike’s words, Nora could tell Reynolds rubbed him the wrong way. It was in the way Mike held himself, like he was preparing to be attacked when it was obvious the man across from him was utterly harmless to him in all but ego. Then again, most of the men she worked with were like that — more defensive about threats to their ego than their safety. Yet another way Braden was different.

Nora pulled out the little notebook she carried. It was old-fashioned — most of the agents used their phones to keep notes — but she was paranoid both about a technology outage and the possibility of hackers.

Her eyes skimmed the notes she’d taken from the case file. “You said there were four men,” Nora said. “Can you describe them?”

“Like I said to your colleagues, they were wearing Guy Fawkes masks. Like in that movie, V for Vendetta?”

Nora nodded. She knew the movie, knew that Guy Fawkes had become a symbol for digital anarchists like Anonymous. All the San Diego county robberies had been conducted by people wearing the masks, one of a few reasons why it was now assumed they were perpetrated by the same group of people.

“Can you take me through each member of their team?” Nora asked. “Just give me anything you remember on their height, identifying markings, anything specific about the way they talked, moved, or walked?”

She didn’t blame him for sighing. Being asked to repeat details of a traumatic event was one of the most annoying parts of witnessing a crime. But inconsistencies from witness to witness, and even one account to another by the same witness, were some of the richest possibilities for a break. Strangely, people didn’t always remember things clearly right after they happened. They were stunned and traumatized, often in shock, right after a violent event, and even in the days following it. Distance was an ironic magnifying glass. Of course, sometimes it worked the opposite, with witnesses becoming less certain of their recollections over time. The human mind was a strange and complicated machine.

She compared Reynolds’ account with the descriptions in her notes — all men, one black, three white, all covered head to toe in black and wearing Fawkes masks. The black man spoke with the hint of an accent, although Reynolds hadn’t been able to place it even with the help of linguistics experts at the Bureau. The other men had been virtually indistinguishable from one another.

“Were there any differences in their clothing?” Mike asked when Reynolds had finished. “Any deviation at all between the kinds of shirts and pants and shoes they wore?”

Nora knew why he was asking; identical clothing meant a kind of uniform. It also meant an attention to detail that could only be attributed to experts, possibly former military or mercenary members.

Reynolds seemed to think about it as he leaned back in his chair, and Nora wondered if the agents who interviewed him immediately after the robbery had bothered to ask the question. Shields was good that way — thorough, detail-oriented, leaving nothing to chance. It was one of the things that made him such a great agent.

“No,” Reynolds said. “They were all dressed the same — black jeans, black turtlenecks even though the day was warm, black Doc Martens. I couldn’t have told them apart by their clothes.”

Nora was writing it down when he spoke again.

“Except for the necklace, I mean.”

She looked up. “The necklace?”

He nodded. “The one the leader wore. I told the other agents about it.”

Nora flipped through her notes. She hadn’t seen any mention of a necklace. It was possible she had missed it, but she didn’t think so. Then Mike spoke and she knew he hadn’t missed it either.

And that meant it hadn’t been in the file.

“Tell us about it again,” Mike said.

“The leader was dressed like the others, but when he bent over to zip-tie my hands, I saw a piece of rope around his neck. The kind surfers wear? Maybe hemp?” Nora nodded. “It had a buddha pendant hanging from it, but not the fat kind.”

“Not the fat kind?” Mike prodded.

Reynolds waved his hand a little. “Yeah, you know how there are a lot of different kinds of Buddhas: the fat happy ones, the skinny solemn ones?”

“Go on,” Nora said.

“This was one of the skinny ones.”

“A skinny Buddha on a rope,” Mike said.

Reynolds nodded. “I’m sure I told someone.”

Nora wasn’t going to argue the point with him. Either he’d told someone and the agent had neglected to write it down or Mike’s question about the thieves’ attire had prompted a new memory. It didn’t matter. The detail was too specific to be fabricated and not specific enough to give them a real edge.

She didn’t know exactly how many people wore Buddha pendants on hemp in Southern California, but the right answer was probably somewhere between a lot and a shit-ton.

“Would you be able to pick it out if you saw it again?” Mike asked.

Reynolds considered the question. “I think so.”

They finished the rest of the interview without incident. All the other details checked out against the three interviews done with Reynolds immediately after the theft. By the time she and Shields walked out of the bank, the morning clouds had dissipated, the sun high overhead.

“You want to run down local retailers that carry Buddha pendants on hemp or should I?” Shields asked.

“I’ll do it.” She wasn’t looking forward to the rest of their follow-up interviews. As ambiguous as it was, it was rare to get a break like this one. They wouldn’t get another from that direction, and she was anxious for a task that might produce a tangible result.

“A fucking Buddha,” Mike said as they headed for the car. “We’ve got us a mother-fucking enlightened thief.”