Rivers to Blood (24 page)

Within two minutes of the truck leaving, Jake, sirens screaming, lights flashing, sped by in the direction they had gone. He was alone in his patrol car and I motioned for him to stop so I could jump in and help, but he didn’t see me.

I ducked into the bank to make sure everyone was okay.

They were.

The employees on duty at the time were all women, and though many of them were hysterical none of them had been injured in any way.

When I walked back outside, Merrill was pulling up.

“Somebody bitch slap me with they shotgun, I’m gonna wanna go after ’em.”

“We got that in common,” I said.

I rushed over as fast as my aching head would allow, dropped into the low car, and we took off after them.

Chapter Fifty-one

A
s usual Merrill’s sporty black BMW looked as if he’d just driven it off a showroom floor. The dashboard glistened in the sunlight, its moist sheen seeming to soak up the rays. The carpet was spotless, the leather seats immaculate, and it smelled like a new car though he had owned it for a few years.

“Is there something blossoming in here?” I asked.

He smiled.

“All the little honeys like a ride to smell nice. Hell, most of ’em get one whiff and start taking off their panties.”

I smiled. “Makes sense,” I said. “Spring. Pollination. New life.”

“Should try it in your new ride,” he said.

He was driving fast, shifting often, passing anything that got in his way, but we had yet to see any sign of Jake or the truck.

After clicking on my seatbelt, I gently felt the growing knot on the side of my head.

“Anything broken?” Merrill asked.

“Just my head.”

“Meant from getting whacked with the shotgun,” he said. “Wasn’t asking about preexisting conditions.”

In the distance we could see Jake turning onto River Road, the sound of his siren barely audible.

Merrill smiled. “Dead end.”

Four miles more and the road would dead-end into the river.

“Either these the dumbest bastards ever tried to rob a bank,” he continued, “or they got a boat waiting.”

After we turned onto River Road he sped up even more, taking took the numerous curves as if we were shooting a performance car commercial.

“Situation like this make you wish you didn’t work at the prison,” he said.

I nodded. I knew what he meant. Because it was a felony to have a weapon on state prison property—even locked in your car in the parking lot—the only weapons available were Merrill and his car.

“Won’t be an issue if we flip over and roll down the highway several times,” I said. “Or wrap around one of these big oak trees.”

“How often a black man get to drive like this ’round here?” he said. “Hell, we usually get pulled over even when we just Sunday-afternoonin’ it. ’Sides, I got this bitch ’cause it corners like it’s on rails.”

But he eased off the gas a bit and slowed down, especially around the curves.

As we neared the landing we heard gunshots and Merrill sped up again.

When we arrived, we found Jake crouched behind the open door of his patrol car, gun drawn, firing down into the river. We pulled up behind him, jumped out, and hunkered near the rear of his car.

He fired a few more times. Seemingly at nothing in particular. There was no return fire.

“Where are they?” I asked.

“Took off down the river,” he said.

The bottom of his left pant leg was soaked in blood.

“What happened?”

“One of their shots hit the pavement and ricocheted into my calf,” he said. “It’s not bad.”

“And why you shootin’ the river?” Merrill asked.

“Trying to make sure they don’t come back,” he said.

Merrill looked at me, his eyes narrowed over a smirk. “Thought we raced down here to try to catch ’em.”

Jake frowned and shook his head. “We were exchanging fire when they were trying to leave. I think I even got one of ’em. Anyway, they sped away so quickly, the bags of money fell out of the boat. I’m trying to keep them from coming back for them.”

Merrill nodded. “Good work, Deputy.”

I could hear sirens in the distance, faint, but growing.

“I’ve radioed in to let the others know they’re headed down river,” he said.

“All three of them?” I asked, looking around the landing.

“Yeah,” he said. “Why?”

“Don’t see their truck.”

“They drove it off into the water,” he said. “Over close to the boat launch.”

“How long’s it been since they’ve fired?” I asked.

“Why?”

“Wondering if it’s safe to get the money and get you to the medical center.”

“Should be,” he said. “Let me get my shotgun and I’ll cover you two while you get the money.”

“Shee-it,” Merrill said. “I know you the hero of the moment and all, but I ain’t about to have you shootin’ near my black ass. You could fuck up or just find it too temptin’ and say you did.”

“Then why don’t you cover me,” Jake said, “and I’ll limp down there and get it and try not to bleed to death in the process.”

“Much better plan,” Merrill said with a big grin.

The sirens were getting closer. “If we wait just a minute,” I said, “we’ll have plenty of help and neither one of you will be in a position to have to resist the temptation to shoot the other.”

Chapter Fifty-two

P
ottersville State Bank was a red brick building with a front consisting mostly of dark plate glass. Its interior decor had changed many times over the years but the old black and woodgrain teller counters, desks, and tall standing tables had not.

While Jake was being treated at Pottersville Medical Center, and FBI agents were on their way, Dad, Fred Goodwin, Merrill, and I were sitting with Cathy Morris and Lonnie Potter in his office. Lonnie was the bank’s president, a job consisting mostly of watching his family’s money. Cathy, the executive who actually ran the bank.

The bank was closed, the blinds pulled. We were locked inside. The furniture of the lobby had been pulled back, and long sheets of plastic had been spread out in the middle of the floor. The recovered money was stacked on it, and four tellers—under the watchful eye of one of the board of trustees—were drying and counting it.

“With as small as we are and as electronic as banking has become,” Lonnie was saying, “we just don’t keep a lot of cash around anymore.”

Lonnie Potter was a tall, thin, soft and soft-spoken man in his fifties. He had big blue eyes that were so wide he looked to be in a perpetual state of surprise, and his face was always red, as if from wind or razor burn.

“How much you think they got?” Dad asked.

“Oh, we know exactly,” Cathy said.

Cathy Morris was a rigid, nervous single woman in her mid-forties, critical of most everyone and everything. She was so uncomfortable with herself, she made those around her uncomfortable—a defense mechanism she used to great advantage.

Dad raised his eyebrows. When Cathy didn’t respond, he said, “How much?”

“Two hundred thousand,” she said. “Exactly. They only took what was in the vault. They really seemed to know what they were doing.”

“Really?” I asked, my voice full of surprise. “I didn’t get that impression from their escape plan.”

“And yet as I understand it,” she said, “they have, in fact, escaped.”

A boat Jake identified as the one the robbers used to escape was found about two miles down from the landing. If Jake had hit a man as he thought, the man hadn’t bled in the boat. No blood, no prints, no trace evidence whatsoever had been found.

“So far,” Dad said, “but there’s only so many places they can hide out there. We’ll find them.”

“Like the inmate?” she asked.

Fred Goodwin laughed out loud.

“What made you think they knew what they were doing?” Dad asked, his voice firm and demanding.

“Well,” she said, sitting a little straighter, “they came at the perfect time. We eat in two shifts—eleven to twelve and twelve to one. The hour from eleven to twelve has the least amount of people in the bank—and all women.”

I glanced out at the women in the lobby drying and counting the recovered money. Two of them were recent high school graduates, two in their late thirties or early forties, none of them in shape. They did their work without talking, and I suspected it had more to do with the presence of Cathy Morris than concentration or post traumatic stress.

“Is that it?” Dad asked.

“Not even close,” she said. “They came in through the back door, so no one passing by or in the shops across the street saw them. My office is back there, so they came in and got me first. They had me open the safe first. It’s on a timer, so while they were waiting for it to open, they went in the lobby, got everybody to lie down on the floor, and locked the front doors.”

“They had to know what they were doing,” Lonnie said. “No question about it.”

“Anything else?” Dad asked.

Cathy nodded. “They got the tellers out from behind the counter before they could push the alarm, and they didn’t take any of the money from their drawers. That means they sacrificed over fifty thousand dollars, but it was the smartest thing they could’ve done. Every drawer has marked bills—not only that, but when you lift them up it sets off the alarm.”

She paused for a moment, but it was obvious that she wasn’t finished.

Lonnie’s office held black-and-white photographs from the early days of the bank, color portraits of his wife and two daughters, and newspaper clippings from various significant Pottersville events, especially those involving the bank. Everything was professionally matted in expensive frames that matched each other and the office.

One look at his family and you knew they had money. I wasn’t sure what it was exactly, but I suspected it had far less to do with their clothes and jewelry and the quality of the photographs than their features and the way they held themselves.

“The other thing is they were patient,” she said. “It takes fifteen minutes for the safe to open. They seemed to know that. And they stayed cool while they waited for it. They were professionals. Never endangered anyone’s life, never even raised their voices.”

“Sounds like you were quite taken with them,” Dad said.

Ignoring him, she added, “As far as I could tell, the only thing that they didn’t count on was how little money there was in the safe. That’s the only time they seemed the least bit upset or angry.”

We were all quiet a moment.

“Recovering the money so fast has got to help with the primary tomorrow,” Lonnie said to Dad.

He shrugged. “Maybe. Hard to say.”

“Well, you’ve got my vote. And Jake has my admiration and appreciation.”

“Did they sound local?” I asked.

Everyone turned and looked at me.

“Huh?” Cathy said, seemingly distracted.

“When the robbers talked,” I said. “Did they have strong Southern accents? Did they sound like they were locals? Was there anything familiar about the way they sounded?”

She thought about it, looking up and squinting as she did. After a while, she began to nod. “They didn’t say much, but they were definitely Southern.”

“You got any thoughts?” Dad asked.

I nodded. “A few.”

“Any you’d care to share?”

“They need to develop a little more first,” I said.

He looked at me, frustration filling his face.

“If I had anything worth saying I would tell you,” I said.

He frowned and sighed. “Okay.”

Suddenly, there was additional tension in the room, and when he turned and looked back at the others, no one said anything.

In a moment, the head teller walked over nervously and stood in the doorway of Lonnie’s office. She was a tall, big woman, but her sheepish demeanor made her seem small.

“Ms. Morris,” she said.

Most professional women in small Southern towns are called
Miss
whether they are married or not. The fact that this woman, Cathy’s age or older, was calling her
Ms.
had to be a result of Cathy demanding it.

“Yes,” Cathy said, her voice cold and intimidating.

“We’ve got a problem,” she said, as if it was her fault.

“What is it?”

“It’s the money,” she said.

“What about the money?”

“Are you absolutely certain there was two hundred thousand in the vault?”

Cathy looked at her in narrow-eyed, open-mouth shock, as if utterly appalled. “Absolutely certain.”

“Then—” she began.

“What is it?” Cathy said. “Is some missing?”

“No, ma’am,” she said.