“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.