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T
he problem with playing hoops on a Saturday afternoon with younger guys was not that they were in better shape, but that they
had no fear of death. None. At. All.
John MacKinnon feinted right, and when the tall blond kid guarding him shifted, he shot the ball over the boy’s right elbow.
There was a breathless moment of hope, followed immediately by crushing disappointment. The ball bounced off the rim, the
sound echoing in the gym. It headed back into the key as four guys collided, trying to nab the rebound.
Not that he was out of shape. Far from it. He lifted weights twice a week, ran every day—well, nearly every day—and played
pickup hoops on weekends. Lots of guys his age weren’t nearly as fit.
The other team’s point guard, a rangy college kid with abs you could bounce a quarter off of—damn him—caught the ball and
ran down the court. Nine guys followed, thundering in a close pack.
But the thing was, once you reached a certain age—say, forty—you became more aware of death. Of the potential of death. That
little twinge, high on your left arm, or the stitch in your side that might be a forewarning of something more dire. You worried
about what you ate. Thought twice about the deep-fried cheese curds and considered—actually considered—getting the tofu burger
for lunch. Young guys, in contrast, were so busy thinking of pussy and beer that there wasn’t a whole lot of room for anything
else in their brains. Certainly not worry about trans fats and heart disease.
Someone elbowed him in the ribs. He shoved back, his sweaty arm sliding against an equally sweaty shoulder. The other player
grunted. Served him right, the cocky young asshole. Score one for the old guy.
Just last month, Ted York had keeled over from a heart attack right in the middle of lunch with a bunch of desk jockeys from
D.C., and wasn’t that an awful way to go? The poor bastard had been eating a salad. Bet Ted would’ve ordered a bacon double
cheeseburger if he’d known it wouldn’t’ve made a difference anyway. But that was the trouble with being over forty. You didn’t
know what—
John’s pager went off with an obnoxious digital sound. One of these days he’d have to change the ring tone on the thing. If
he could figure out how. Everyone stopped, and a couple of guys groaned. The ball bounced into a corner of the gym, and the
blond kid went to retrieve it.
“Oh, man!” The rangy point guard bent over, hands on knees, panting. “Figures you’d get paged now, Mac.”
“We were losing anyway,” John shot back.
More grumbling, and a discussion of his mother’s virtue or lack thereof. He ignored the back talk and dug in his gym bag for
his pager, pushing aside the Glock to reach it. He read the number on the little device and swore softly. So much for hoops.
The game started again behind him.
John opened a plastic bottle of water and took a deep swallow as he punched in numbers on his cell phone.
The other end picked up. “FBI.”
“MacKinnon.”
“We’ve got a bank robbery in Winosha,” Tim Holt, the Milwaukee ASAC—Assistant Special Agent in Charge—informed him without
preamble.
“Where?”
John picked up his bag and headed for the lockers.
“Winosha. Small town south of Superior on Highway 53. It’s in Washburn County.”
“Never heard of it.” He shouldered open the men’s locker-room door.
“No reason you should have,” Tim said in his California surfer-dude drawl. “Not more than three thousand people all told,
and that’s at the height of tourist season.”
“Yeah? Figures the assignment would be in podunkville.” John pulled off his sweaty T-shirt and wiped his face with it before
dropping it in his gym bag. “Who’ve I got?”
“McHenry’s on leave of absence, Anderson’s still on the Sun Prairie case, and Wilson’s working surveillance this weekend.”
Tim didn’t elaborate further, because he knew damn well John could draw the obvious conclusion.
Crap.
John finished stripping and rolled his right shoulder. It still ached from when he’d pulled a muscle shoveling snow back in
April. It was the kind of injury kids in their twenties never sustained, and the guys at the office didn’t let him forget
it, either. Goddamn Wisconsin winter. Another problem with getting old: the body didn’t bounce back from injuries as fast.
“Mac?” Tim queried.
“Yeah.” John grimaced. “Give me Torelli.”
“You okay with that?”
“Sure, I’m good. I’ll call him.”
“Fine. Paperwork’s waiting for you here.”
John said good-bye, punched the button to hang up, and dialed another number. He rubbed his shoulder while the other end rang.
“Hello?” A New York accent this time. Music played in the background, something kind of sultry and jazzy.
John grinned. Maybe Dante Torelli was with a girlfriend.
Ohhh, too bad.
“Torelli?”
“Yes?”
“We’re on. Bank robbery. Meet me at the office at”—he glanced at his watch; it was 3:14. “Four o’clock.”
John hung up without waiting for the reply and threw the cell back in his gym bag. He carried the bag into the showers and
placed it on a nearby bench while he washed off the sweat. Then he dressed in old jeans and a light blue T-shirt. Damn, he’d
have to change into something more businesslike at his apartment. Not that he’d be able to compete with whatever designer
suit Torelli would decide to wear today.
He snorted and stuck the Glock at the small of his back under the loose T-shirt before grabbing his bag. Outside the gym,
the August heat slapped him across the face, and he felt the sweat start again as if he hadn’t just showered. He had transferred
to Milwaukee from Philadelphia last fall and still hadn’t acclimated to the Wisconsin weather, despite the fact that he was
originally from Lander, Wyoming. First the howling cold of the Midwest winter, and now the hostile heat of summer. Who knew
it could be this ghastly hot so close to Canada, for God’s sake?
John crossed the sticky asphalt parking lot to his black Chevy Silverado pickup and unlocked it. Naturally, it was baking
inside. He popped both doors and watched the heat waves roll out from the interior. It was a wonder the steering wheel hadn’t
melted yet. Anchorage began to look like a good posting at times like this. He got in, took out the Glock, and tossed it on
the passenger seat within reach before starting the engine.
Ten minutes later, when he pulled into his apartment-complex parking lot, the Silverado’s interior was arctic-cold. He lived
in a newer area built up in the late eighties, and his apartment building had the tasteful, bland look of that decade. He
went in the so-called security door and hung a left in the hall to take the beige-carpeted stairs. He unlocked the door to
his apartment—also done in beige—and tossed his keys on the little table by the door. The wall above the table was blank.
Probably should’ve hung something there by now, maybe a southwestern print, but there never seemed to be time. Besides, the
apartment had come furnished. Why mess with the decor when it wasn’t really his?
On that depressing thought, he crossed the central living room to the bedroom. In the back of his closet he had a duffel he
always kept half-packed. He hauled it out now and threw in a couple of clean shirts and slacks, then went back out to the
kitchen and grabbed a box of granola bars—the old-fashioned kind that weren’t too sweet—and some plastic containers of microwaveable
stew. Meals could be real unreliable in small towns. John threw the food in his duffel and shucked off the jeans and T-shirt.
He replaced them with khaki slacks, a navy polo, his brown leather shoulder holster, and a brown blazer. Then he pulled on
bullhide Wilson boots with stitched swirls on the calves. Not that you could see the stitching, of course, with his slacks
over them, but he knew it was there.
John straightened and stood for a moment, looking around his generic apartment, trying to remember if he’d forgotten anything.
The AC kicked in, its mechanical hum loud in the silence. There were no plants to water, no cat to feed, no one to call. No
one who would care that he’d be gone a few days. In fact, he could pretty much walk out of this apartment right now and never
have to come back. He wouldn’t be leaving anything important behind.
Man, his life sucked.
If he stood here any longer he was going to eat his own gun. John stuck the Glock in the holster under his left arm, picked
up the duffel, and walked to the front door. He turned off the AC before he left.
I
t was after four by the time Turner parked her tan ’95 Ford Escort wagon on the curb by her little one-story cottage. Four
hours. Four hours of being questioned and requestioned and waiting to be questioned yet again about the bank robbery. And
all that time the contents of Calvin’s safe deposit box had been lying in the bottom of her prim brown leather purse. No wonder
her hands had begun to tremble just a bit.
Turner forced herself to get out of the car slowly. Deliberately.
Not
running in a scatterbrained panic up the front walk. The precaution proved to be a wise one. She was halfway to her front
step when Ernestine Miller, her next-door neighbor, hailed her.
“Turner!” Ernestine puffed. “Turner! I just heard!”
Her neighbor hurried as fast as her fat little ankles would let her. Ernestine owned a police scanner and had no doubt been
lying in wait for her. Turner paused for the short, round woman to reach her. She took a calm breath and didn’t let impatience—or
fear—show.
“Are you all right?” Ernestine asked, looking her up and down as if checking for bullet holes. “Did a gang of vicious bank
robbers really take all of you hostage?”
“I’m afraid so,” Turner replied. Technically, she supposed, there hadn’t been a hostage situation, and she wasn’t so sure
the bank robbers were all that vicious, but she didn’t have the time to debate that with her neighbor. “It was very frightening.”
Not as frightening, of course, as standing out here in the burning sun, waiting for police cars to come screaming around the
corner, but she didn’t mention that to Ernestine.
“Well, I guess!” Ernestine looked thrilled to death. “Did they have guns?”
“Shotguns.”
“And they blew up the doors!”
“It was awful.” Turner stomped on the urge to just walk away from the woman. The last thing she wanted was to look suspicious,
and in a small town, passing up the opportunity to rehash a real live bank robbery would look very, very suspicious indeed.
Fortunately, Ernestine didn’t need much help with the conversation. “I bet they were one of those youth gangs you hear about
on
Focus on the Family.
Probably from Superior . . .”
Five minutes later, Turner was able to tear herself away from the discussion by faking delayed shock and a headache. She walked
sedately up her three wooden steps and slowly opened her front door. She even paused for a final wave at Ernestine.
Inside, she closed the door and locked it, noticing only at that moment that her hands had started shaking again. Turner frowned
and stared at her palms until the palsy stopped. Then she dropped her purse by the door and ran on cautious tiptoes to her
bedroom, even though no one could hear her. They hadn’t noticed anything at the bank, so they couldn’t possibly be after her
already, but that didn’t stop her from feeling that the full arm of the law was just around the corner, waiting to capture
her. Her belly tightened.
They couldn’t capture her. Not yet.
Turner pulled her old navy nylon suitcase out from under her bed and threw in a change of underwear, shorts, and a couple
of T-shirts. She stared at the suitcase a moment. There was no way to tell how long it would take. She figured only overnight,
but if there were difficulties . . . She tossed in more underwear, another change of clothes, and her small bag of travel
toiletries. Then she went to the kitchen and gathered the scissors, her old pair of binoculars, a box of saltine crackers,
some apples, and three jars of pickled herring. At the last minute she threw in a jar of olives, some Vienna sausages, and
half a dozen bottles of water.
She dragged the suitcase to the front hall and dropped it there. By the door was a narrow coat closet. Turner opened it and
stood on tiptoe to reach a cardboard box on the shelf inside. The box held winter clothes packed away for the summer. She
set it on the floor and began rummaging until her fingers touched plastic. At the bottom of the box was a Ziploc bag containing
one thousand dollars in cash. She pocketed the cash and returned the box to the closet.
Turner opened the front door and looked out. Her cottage was in the old section of Winosha on a street unimaginatively named
Elm. The street looked serene in the heat, a typical hot August day. The cicadas buzzed loudly in the maple trees along the
walk. No police cars marred her sleepy neighborhood. You couldn’t tell that the town bank had been robbed only hours ago—or
that she had finally made her move after four very long years.
She took off her glasses and set them by the vase on the hall table, then picked up her suitcase and lugged it down the walk
to her car. Ernestine popped out her front door, but Turner waved and didn’t break her stride. She threw the suitcase into
the back seat of the Escort and was pulling away from the curb while her neighbor was still trotting down the walk.
Main Street took her by the bank again. Turner slowed like any other gawker. The two sheriff’s cars were still parked out
front, although they’d been moved to the side of the street. As she drove past, she saw Calvin Hyman enter the bank, his silver
hair shining in the sunlight.
She shuddered and accelerated north out of town on Highway 53, turning up the AC to counter the sweat that had started along
her spine. Outside of town, tall evergreens crowded in on either side of the road. They’d been planted after the forest here
had been clear-cut. But the rows of evergreens were too straight, too ordered to ever take the place of a natural forest.
They looked manmade.
Seven miles down, she exited on State 77. The shoulder was pale brown here from the drought, and she passed a forest preserve
sign that warned, DANGER OF FIRE TODAY: HIGH. After another twelve miles, Turner took a right down County H and then a left
on a dirt track. In the rearview mirror, clouds of tan dust bloomed, kicked up by her car. The dust would coat the outside
of the Escort. Not that it mattered, since the Escort was essentially dust-colored anyway.
Tommy Zucker’s house suddenly materialized out of the trees on the right—a surprise every time, even though she made this
trip at least weekly. The house was stained a dark, almost black color that blended with its surroundings. She put the Escort
in second and drove carefully up the primitive lane beside Tommy’s house. Usually she parked the car in front, but today she
continued around back to the shed where Tommy kept his excess vehicles. She killed the engine and listened to the stillness
of the woods. A blue jay flew through the baking sunlight, attracted by the peanuts Tommy put out on his back deck.
He might not be here.
She jerked slightly as the thought intruded. She’d driven out assuming that he’d be home, but Tommy had no schedule. She’d
talked to him by phone only last night, and he’d not mentioned any plans then. What if the old man had decided to go to the
lake today? And if he had—
“That you, Turner?”
She started, her car keys clattering to the floor. She bent to pick them up and glanced toward the sound of the call. Tommy
stood in the open doors of his barn, khaki trousers hitched nearly to his chest, a faded T-shirt looking too big on his skinny
frame. His thin white hair ruffled in a small breeze. A great sigh of air puffed out of her.
Thank God. Thank God Tommy hadn’t left.
Shoot, she had to pull herself together. Turner got out of the car and walked to the old man, knowing there wasn’t much use
in calling him from here. He didn’t like to admit it, but he was getting deaf.
“Hey, Tommy.” She tried to keep her voice light. “Can I borrow the Taurus?”
The old man’s eyes narrowed, but his words were the same grumble that he always used. “Nope, ’fraid not.”
Just like that, all the tension was back in her muscles. It hadn’t occurred to her that Tommy wouldn’t want to help. “Why
not?”
“Don’t work.” The old man gestured over his shoulder to the barn. “Think it’s the battery, but it might be somethin’ else.
Don’t like these new cars.” New in this case was fifteen years old. “Wanna try the station wagon?”
The car in question was built like a boat and took forever to accelerate. Turner tamped down panic. “Can I have the Chevy?”
Tommy crossed his right arm over his chest to scratch at his left shoulder while he thought out her request. Finally, he said,
“Well, I don’t know. It’s old, you know, like me. Might not start. And I hafta find the keys.”
“Oh, it’ll start. I’m counting on it.”
“Humph. No way to know that. But suit yourself. Lemme get the keys.” Tommy ambled back to the house.
Turner closed her eyes and tilted her face to the burning sun, trying to still her impatience. The lake. Think of the lake.
The water was blue and calm and so very deep. She listened to the air flowing from her lungs and tried to steady it. She had
to remain calm. Cool. Her goal was so close.
Tommy’s footsteps sounded hollowly on the wood of the deck, and she opened her eyes. He came back carrying a bunch of keys
tied together with a frayed piece of string. “One of these, I think. Maybe. Question is, which one.”
Turner kept herself still and watched the old man carefully sort through the keys. Tommy was a slight man, no taller than
five-eight, and as he’d aged he’d slumped a bit. Add to that some weight loss in the last few years, and he’d become frail-looking.
His wrists were narrow and bony, the skin easily bruised. He probably didn’t weigh much more than Turner herself, and she
was a small woman.
He looked up and caught her watching him but didn’t comment. “Think I got it here. ’Spose we can give her a try.”
He gave an extra hitch to his khaki pants and led the way into the barn. Turner followed. Inside, the dark interior blinded
her temporarily after the harsh sunlight. The air was still and hot and smelled of oil and sawdust. Lined up against the side
were three vehicles: a huge station wagon with fake-wood panels, a lumbering late-eighties Ford Taurus, and the baby blue
’68 Chevy pickup. The Chevy wasn’t the most discreet of cars, but it wasn’t like she had a whole lot of choice now.
“Okeydoke.” Tommy wrenched at the driver’s side door and it opened with a screech. “Oughter oil that.”
Turner got in the passenger side and watched Tommy insert the key and start the engine. It made a horrible squealing sound.
“Starts right up,” Tommy yelled over the revving. “That’s because I take it out every month or so to keep her in shape.” He’d
apparently already forgotten his prediction that the truck wouldn’t start.
He turned and cautiously, carefully, and very slowly backed out of the barn.
Once out in the sunshine, he switched the engine off again. “Better put some oil in. These old trucks will run forever, but
this one just about drinks oil.”
He hopped down from the cab and disappeared back in the barn. Turner got out and fetched her suitcase from the Escort. Tommy
had reemerged by the time she’d stowed the suitcase on the passenger floor. He slowly opened the hood and began tinkering.
Turner sighed and drove the Escort into the barn to take the Chevy’s place. When she came out, Tommy was still under the hood.
She walked over and laid a gentle hand on his back. His shoulder blade felt sharp under her palm. The bone was covered with
only a thin layer of skin; there wasn’t any fat or muscle to spare. “I have to go now, Tommy.”
“Eh?” He withdrew from the hood and looked at her, old blue eyes sharp. “What’s the gol dern hurry?”
“I’ve got to do an errand for Rusty.”
Tommy stilled for a moment, then slammed the hood down. “Okeydoke. Just remember to put oil in her every couple hundred miles
or so.”
“Will do.” Turner got in the cab.
“I put some extra cans of oil under the front seat.” Tommy slapped the hood and stepped away. “Take care now.”
She nodded and backed out of the drive. When she looked back, he was still staring after her, the breeze gently lifting his
grizzled hair. Turner made sure to memorize the image. It might be the last time she ever saw Tommy.
