The Collectors by David Baldacci Read Free Book Online Page A

probably not for someone who’d just been given a clean bill of health by Johns Hopkins.”
    “Okay, so he popped a blood vessel or fell and cracked his skull. You heard Caleb: The guy was all alone in there.”
    “As far as Caleb knows, he was, but he couldn’t possibly know for sure.”
    “But the security camera and the pass card,” Reuben protested.
    “All good points, and they may very well confirm that Jonathan DeHaven was alone when he died. But that still doesn’t prove he wasn’t killed.”
    “Come on, who’d have a grudge against a librarian?” Reuben asked.
    “Everyone has enemies. The only difference is for some people you just have to look harder to find them.”

CHAPTER 8
    "H OW’S IT CHECK OUT?” L EO Richter said into his phone headset as he punched in some numbers on the keypad. He sat in his car in front of a drive-through ATM in Beverly Hills. In a van parked across the street Tony Wallace, until recently a felonious boutique store clerk, examined the video feed on the screen in front of him. “Sweet. I’ve got a perfect frame of your fingers inputting the PIN. And I’ve got a tight shot of the face of the card going in. With the zoom and the freeze I can read everything on it.”
    The night before, they had switched the metal box containing bank brochures that was bolted to the side of the ATM with a box of Tony’s manufacture. He’d earlier stolen a box from another ATM and built an exact replica in the garage of the rental house Annabelle had them staying at. Inside the fake brochure box, Tony had placed a battery-powered video camera with wireless feed pointed at the keypad and card slot for the ATM. The camera could send the picture up to two hundred meters away, well within range of the van.
    As a backup they’d also placed a skimmer Tony had built over the ATM’s card slot. It was such a perfect replica that not even Annabelle could find fault with it. This device captured all the numbers on the cards, including the embedded verification code on the magnetic stripe, and fed them wirelessly to a receiver in the van.
    Annabelle was sitting next to Tony. Across from her was Freddy Driscoll, who’d been plying his trade selling fake Gucci and Rolexes on the Santa Monica pier until he’d run into Annabelle and Leo. Freddy was manning another video camera aimed out the heavily tinted side window of the van.
    “I’ve got a clear shot of the cars and license plates going through,” he reported.
    “Okay, Leo,” Annabelle said into her headset. “Move out of the way and let the real money through.”
    “You know,” Tony said, “we don’t really need the camera at the ATM because we’ve got the card skimmer. It’s redundant.”
    “Transmission from the skimmer gets garbled sometimes,” Annabelle said, staring at the TV screen in front of her. “And you miss one number, the card’s useless. Plus, the camera gives us info the skimmer doesn’t. We’re only doing this once. No mistakes.”
    Over the next two days they sat in the van as the ATM camera and skimmer captured debit and credit card information. Annabelle methodically matched this information with the cars and their license plates going through the ATM lane, loading it all on a laptop in a spreadsheet format. Annabelle was also prioritizing.
    She said, “Bugatti Veyrons, Saleens, Paganis, Koenigseggs, Maybachs, Porsche Carrera GTs and Mercedes SLR McLarens get five stars. The Bugatti sells for one and a quarter million, and the others sell for between four and seven hundred thousand. Rolls-Royces, Bentleys and Aston Martins get four stars. Jags, BMWs, regular Mercedes get three stars.”
    Leo jokingly said, “What about Saturns, Kias and Yugos?”
    At the end of the two days they regrouped at the rental house.
    “We go quality over quantity,” Annabelle said. “Thirty cards. That’s all we need.”
    Leo read through the spreadsheet. “Perfect, because we’ve got twenty-one five stars and nine four stars