Someone Else's Lady

I was on my way to the bank the next day when I found myself remembering meeting Angela Neumann the day before. Marshal Neumann had a bit of a gruff exterior, but there was something about the 37-year-old who stood an impressive 5'8" tall. That day, I communicated in Spanish with Akira for the officers. Her ex-husband had never committed any crimes in the past, and therefore his prints and photo weren't in the department database. She wasn't carrying any photos in her purse either. She'd come to hate him so much upon their divorce that she stopped carrying any photos of him. She had put a few away in a box for when her daughter was older, but she herself didn't want to see his face again or even have to describe it. But describe it she would for the sake of recovering her stolen daughter. I sketched away until Akira approved the drawing’s likeness to her ex under the watchful eye of both Duke and Angela. After translating some additional info for both Akira and the officers, I was thanked for my time by Duke and dismissed. Angela had given me a professional nod with a tight smile of sorts. Not many people were in the bank that day because it was fairly early in the morning. There were a few people seated at tables talking to loan officers, and maybe half a dozen people with the tellers. I was waiting behind a woman for an available teller when a suspicious guy entered the bank. I mean, like really suspicious. Right away, I could sense something was very wrong. I had even had nightmares the night before about some unseen madman chasing me through a dark tunnel. I knew it would be a bad day—just maybe not this bad. But there he was, reeking of trouble in army fatigues and wearing the most maniacal look I’d ever seen. He held a duffel bag in one hand and a gun in the other. I suppose I might have had time to run for the door. Instead, I simply froze in place, unable to move an inch. The madman raised his gun straight up in the air and fired a shot. That got everyone's attention, all right, as debris from the ceiling slowly fluttered downward. People screamed and flurried about in a panic as the madman began to shout threats and orders. "Nobody move and nobody gets hurt! It's as simple as that!" I figured some of the tellers had already summoned help by stepping on the panic buttons located below the counters at which they serviced people. The sirens I heard a few minutes later confirmed this much. I thought the guy would simply demand a teller to fill the duffel bag he carried with cash and then attempt to make a getaway. But as I would learn over the next few minutes, this wasn't just about money. This was obviously a disgruntled employee who had been fired in a time of dire need. His main beef was with the manager. The innocent customers were simply his pawns, used to get what he wanted. He demanded that everyone get into a corner of the room and stay quiet, promising to start shooting if they made a move. Unfortunately, I was the closest to the psycho at the time, and that meant I was the most convenient one to grab. He held me so tightly around the neck that I thought he was going to strangle me at first, but then he loosened his grip just enough for me to take in a sufficient amount of air. He then demanded to see the manager, and a moment later, the man emerged from somewhere in the back, hands raised at shoulder level. He appeared to be in his 50s. His hair was mostly gray and he had a slight paunch. Before the nut job promised that I would be the first one he would kill if anyone made the slightest wrong move, he launched into a speech about how he was wrongly fired when his daughter was sick and he needed a job more than he'd ever needed one before to help pay for her expenses. The manager claimed it wasn't that he didn't sympathize, but that he only let the guy go because he had been missing too much work and needed someone more reliable. "But I was missing work because my daughter is fighting a battle with cancer, you fucking heartless moron! Do you really think I was calling out so I could sit in front of the TV all day and pop chips?" The argument went on and on. The madman, whose name I learned was Easton, laid out his hardships to his former boss while the manager promised to work things out and make some kind of deal. I seriously hoped the guy was as dumb as he looked, because there was no way his old boss was going to work anything out other than trying to get as many people out of the situation alive. Then he'd promptly see to it that Easton was prosecuted to every possible extent of the law. What Easton apparently believed was that he was going to walk out of the bank with a whole shitload of cash, start over somewhere else, and never look back. My shock, which had turned to anger, was now turning into genuine fear. Easton had nothing to lose by killing hostages, and I knew it. I'm sure everybody else did too. And then it was as if a bomb suddenly exploded from somewhere deep inside Easton's head, scattering bone, blood, brains, and tissue all over the place—including on me. Was that me screaming in stunned terror before all went blissfully black? Yeah, I guess it was.