For a terrible instant he thought he’d done it wrong.
He closed his eyes and leaned against the wall, biting his lips, waiting for the alarm to sound.
A minute passed, perhaps two, before Duncan realized that he was free. He stood up dizzily and marched back to his office. He slumped down into his chair and tried to control his racing emotions. He commanded himself: Concentrate! and felt better. Do not think about what this means. Do not think about anything except stealing the money. He blanked his mind. Follow the plan, he thought. Follow the plan.
All right, he told himself. First, deception.
He unlaced the sneakers and tucked his feet into them. They were uncomfortable, but tolerable. He pulled two surgical gloves on each hand. He seized his briefcase, first pulling the cheap sweater out. All right, he said to himself, let’s get started. He walked down to the women’s bathroom at the back of the bank, flipped on the light switch inside and entered the stall. By climbing on top of the toilet, he was able to reach up and dislodge a ceiling panel. He clambered up higher, onto the top of the stall, and peered into the darkened area. He remembered the spot, from the design sessions before the building was constructed. The women’s bathroom ran adjacent to the heating/cooling ducts, and there was a small crawl space above, which was buttressed sufficiently to allow workmen inside and gain access to the area. Leaning in, using the small flashlight to illuminate the area, he took out a few strands of hair and left them on the floor. Then he added the cigarette butt, scrunching it down and shredding it. On the edge, where he’d pulled down the ceiling panels, he rubbed the sweater until he was certain that enough fibers had come loose.
He climbed back down and thought: There. That will give some forensic scientists something to work on.
Next, Duncan went into the bank president’s office, using the screwdriver and claw hammer to rip the door lock open. He was shocked and surprised at how easily he was able to force the door.
He felt a wave of embarrassment come over him, thinking how hard it would be to explain himself to old Phillips when it became time. But he recognized the critical importance of making the robbery appear to be something other than what it was. He needed time more than he needed friendship. He jammed the screwdriver into the locked desk drawer and began rifling through the papers. After creating enough diversion, he forced another drawer open, discovering the set of keys that he knew the bank president always kept on hand. He reached behind the drawer and found the piece of paper taped on the back of it. It was a list of combinations. Just like some high school kid trying to hide something from his parents. He is an old man, and he remembers a different era, Duncan thought. It was commonly known at the bank that the president kept the keys and the combination list.
Duncan left the office and walked over to one of the desks in the main office. He turned on the typewriter and swiftly rolled a sheet of paper onto the platen. Then he wrote down the seven-digit number for the interior key pad, as well as the four-digit number for the external perimeter defense. He crumpled this paper up and stuck it in the pocket of his sweatshirt.
All right, he thought. Now for the money.
Duncan went to the safe where the tellers stored their drawers, and opened it. There were eight drawers with cash, averaging about five thousand dollars. In addition, each drawer had a robbery stash: a pile of ten hundred dollar bills marked with infrared signatures and whose serial numbers had been recorded in the bank’s computer system. These were designed to be handed to any wild man who might stick a gun in a teller’s face. Duncan took them as well, thinking bitterly: Let the bitch chew on these, maybe they will put the feds on to her.
He stuffed all the money into his briefcase.
He went to a second safe, which kept the bank’s cash reserve, and opened it. Fifty thousand dollars in various denominations was stacked neatly on three shelves. His hand started to shake as he loaded the money into the briefcase. He felt an acid taste in his mouth and he wanted to spit, but his tongue was too dry and he fought off the urge.
Duncan stood and looked at the collection of cash. All right, he said to himself, keep going.
He walked down and unlocked the door to the automatic teller machines. These he opened, one after the other. Each could hold up to twenty-five thousand dollars in cash, but the bank customarily kept something less inside. They were restocked on Monday, after the weekend rush. In the first, he found seventeen thousand, in the second, twelve, in the third, fourteen, and in the fourth, only eight. That was reasonable, he thought—it is the one closest to the door and gets the most traffic. In each machine he left two thousand dollars, giving him forty-three thousand dollars. He knew that when the machines were empty, a shield automatically lowered over the area where cards were inserted. He did not want that to happen all at once. Someone from the bank might come in over the weekend and be suspicious.
Duncan walked back into the bank. He searched about for an instant, wondering whether he would ever be able to come back again. Then he shook the thought from his head and went back to his office.
He did not look at the money. He hoped it would be enough. He remembered: How much? and Olivia’s reply: What’s a life worth? He closed his eyes. Mine is worth nothing.
Depression and dismay seemed to suck him down for an instant, as if pulling him beneath some dark surface. It’s all wrong, he thought. Then he toughened himself. So? What of it? Tommy comes first.
Then he stripped off the sweatsuit and replaced his regular business suit. He left one sneaker on one foot and put his own shoe on the other.
He put the used clothes in a plastic bag, tore off some electrical tape and wire, and went back to the security key pad. He unscrewed the pad and pulled some of the wiring out, then bridged over a few random circuits and taped some back down. Further confusion, he thought.
Duncan returned to his office and put on his coat and hat. He took the time to tape a plastic bag over his sneakered foot. Then he collected money, clothing, equipment, locked his office door, and headed out. He paused for one instant, surveying the brightly lit vestibule and the darkness just beyond it. This is the most dangerous time, he thought. If someone were to enter now, all would be over. He hesitated for a second, then put his head down and surged forward, thinking: No sense in stopping now. He used his own key to leave the bank, then pushed himself past the automatic tellers and out. For the moments he was caught in the light, he felt sick; then, as the cold dark surrounded him, he felt relieved. The external alarm box was adjacent to the front door. He took the piece of paper with the security digits typed onto it and dropped it into the mud of the shrubbery. Then he took his sneakered, bagged foot and squashed it down, leaving an indistinct footprint.
He stepped back and swiftly tore the bag from his foot and jammed sneaker and bag into another plastic bag. He pulled on his own shoe and stepped quickly away from the front door.
Suddenly, he was aware that he was out, that the night surrounded him and embraced him in its cold arms.
Duncan looked up at the streetlights, and felt their glow curl around him like a mist.
He started to walk up the street toward the lot where he’d hidden his car. The bag of items he carried in one hand and the briefcase in the other seemed to he gleaming, neon electric signs that shouted out what he had done. A car rolled past him in the street and he wanted to scream. Another’s headlights caught him briefly, and he thought it was like being tossed by a wave in a stormy sea. He hesitated, then walked on. Greenfield’s streets seemed alien, unfamiliar. He stared at stores and shops that he’d known for years and could not recognize them, as if they came from some different space of time. He hurried on, forcing his steps, picking up speed, finally breaking into a run, which lasted only a few yards before he slowed, winded, gasping for breath. He stopped, sucked in freezing air, and then continued at a steady pace. A funeral march, he thought, with slow, dea
dly cadences, walked by a ghost.
He thought: Now it is complete. I have betrayed everyone.
Except my son.
With the weight of what he’d done pressing on his mind, Duncan slid through the night.
9
SATURDAY
Judge Pearson sat on a bunk with his grandson’s head in his lap, stroking the child’s forehead with slow, rhythmic caresses. Tommy slept, occasionally moaning slightly, as if his dreams lapped the shores of nightmare. But his breathing was deep and steady, apparently normal, and far different from what it had been earlier, when Olivia had locked them away, and the child’s wind had been shallow and wheezing, filling his grandfather with fear. The judge glanced down at his watch and saw that it was well past midmorning, and hours since his own eyes had finally nodded shut for a few brief moments. He let Tommy continue to sleep, imagining that his grandson’s body was steadily restoring itself. Grow stronger, he thought. Rest and recover. He let his hand wander over one of the bruises on the child’s arm, which was already turning an ugly purplish-blue. He gingerly touched a red scrape on the boy’s forehead, wishing somehow that he could transfer all the hurts and pains to himself.
We’re lucky, though, he thought. He has no broken bones, concussion, or internal injuries that I can discern. He has no bullet wounds. He was not certain whether it was because Olivia was a poor shot or because she had hit what she was aiming at.
He whispered to his grandson, “We’re going to be okay. You’re going to be just fine. Don’t worry.”
Tommy’s eyes fluttered, and he awakened.
For an instant he looked panicked, and his grandfather hugged him tightly. Then reason returned to the child’s eyes and he sat up, looking about himself with a curiosity that encouraged the old man. Judge Pearson smiled at him, feeling the child’s vitality surge through him as well. Last night I thought they’d killed him. Children are always stronger than adults give them credit for. They always know more, see more. He admonished himself to keep that in mind.
“How long have I been out?” Tommy asked.
“Almost sixteen hours. It was a long night.”
Tommy tried to stretch, but caught himself midway.
“Ouch! Grandfather, I hurt.”
“I know, Tommy. It’ll pass, trust me. They knocked you about a bit. Me too . . .” He ran his fingers gently over his own bruised forehead. “But nothing serious. You’re just going to be stiff, I think. But tell me if anything really hurts.”
Tommy rubbed at his arms and at his legs. He stood up gingerly and shook his arms and legs out, like an animal after a lengthy nap. He looked about the attic room.
“I’m okay.” He paused. “Well, here we are again.”
“That’s right,” his grandfather replied, encouragement racing through him. “Here we are again. Listen, now, I need to know: Any pain in the stomach? In the head?”
Tommy hesitated, as if running an internal inventory. “No, I’m okay.”
“I thought so,” his grandfather said. He smiled. “Boy, it’s good to see you.”
“I thought they were going to kill me.”
His grandfather started to say, So did I, then thought better of it.
“Nah, I don’t think so. They were pretty angry and they wanted to teach you a lesson, but they need you. They really do. They’re not going to do anything to you, don’t worry.”
“When the gun went off—”
“Yeah, that was scary, wasn’t it?”
“I almost made it. I could see the treeline and forest for just a minute. If I could have gotten through the window, they never could have caught me.”
“I think they knew that.”
“It looked real cold and real gray outdoors. It looked like the kind of day where you would never want to go out to play, no matter what your mom and dad said. But I wanted to be out so bad. I guess I just wasn’t thinking.”
“No, you did right.”
“You know, Grandfather, it was all sort of like it was happening to someone else. Like it wasn’t me that jumped up and ran, but someone faster and stronger and smarter.”
“I can’t imagine anyone being those things. Or braver.”
“Really?” Tommy winced as he moved about. But he smiled.
“No. Nobody.”
“Anyway, I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For leaving you.”
Judge Pearson forced a laugh.
“You did great. You took everyone by surprise. It was the best damn sneak attack I’ve ever seen. You were really something. You showed them what you’re made of. Tommy, you’re a whole hell of a lot stronger than they are, and don’t forget it. I was proud of you. Your mom and dad and sisters will really be proud of you when I tell them how you almost made it.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
Tommy dropped his head against his grandfather’s chest and asked, “How much longer?”
“Not too much.”
“I hope not.”
The two were quiet for an instant. Tommy’s eyes caught a pile of clothesline coiled in a corner and he looked toward his grandfather.
“They tied you up.”
“But how?”
“Well, after they left, I untied you. They said not to, so they will probably be pretty angry when they come in to check on us. I don’t know why they didn’t tie me up as well. I think they were just as confused and scared as we were. Maybe they actually wanted me to untie you. We’ll see.”
Tommy nodded. He realized that nothing made much sense any more.
“Why do they hate us?” he asked.
“Well, Bill probably got chewed out something awful—”
Tommy smiled. “I’ll bet he did.”
“—and the little one just seems slimy and angry all the time. He kept hitting you, slapping at you really, after you covered up your head. Actually, it was Bill who pulled him off.”
Tommy nodded again.
“He probably hates everyone who has had a better life than he has.”
The judge hesitated, then continued:
“And Olivia? Well, her bitterness knows no end, does it?”
Tommy shook his head.
“How do you think she got that way, Grandfather?”
“I don’t know, Tommy. I wish I did.” A dozen different psychological profiles slid into the judge’s mind, but he discarded them all. “It seems to me that everyone grows up with love and hate and all sorts of other emotions inside them. Well, somewhere along the line, she lost all the good emotions and just kept the bad.”
“Like the Grinch.”
The judge burst out laughing.
“Precisely. Exactly like the Grinch.”
Tommy smiled. “Born with a heart two sizes too small.”
He hugged the child.
After a moment, Tommy pulled loose.
“I think we should work on the wall,” he said with a military confidence.
The judge nodded. “If you’re up to it.”
The boy rubbed his arm where the bruises were forming.
“Might as well,” he said. He walked over to the spot where they’d been scraping the day before. Then he turned and smiled at his grandfather. “You can really feel it,” he said. “The air coming in. We’re gonna get free yet, Grandfather. I know it.”
The old man nodded, and watched as Tommy began to worry away at the joints. Judge Pearson slid down next to where Tommy was working and put his back against the wall. He closed his eyes and rested, suddenly suffused with exhaustion. The boy’s resiliency strengthened him and comforted him at the same time. He wanted to sleep, but knew it would be impossible, that he needed to keep his eyes on Tommy and to protect him in case they tried to tie hi
m again. He blinked his eyes open, fighting fatigue. Tommy turned to his grandfather and gave a little wave.
“Why don’t you take a rest, Grandfather. I’ll be okay.”
The old man shook his head, but relaxed. He closed his eyes again and thought of his own youth. He recalled a moment when he’d fought a neighborhood bully. How old was I? He couldn’t remember precisely. He could see himself, thin, wiry, perpetually dirty, clothes usually a bit tattered, his own mother’s millstone. He smiled. What was the kid’s name? It was a good bully’s name, like Butch or Biff or some such. They’d fought in the playground after school. It had been springtime and warm; he remembered the light breeze moving the new greenery about. His tongue could taste the blood and dirt. Butch or Biff had thrashed him easily, knocking him down a half-dozen times, bloodying his nose, loosening a tooth. He’d absorbed so much punishment that the older and larger boy grew weakhearted, finally apologetic. The judge remembered the tears that had streaked down his face as he rose and kept flailing away, until finally Butch or Biff had pushed him down and departed.
He blinked open his eyes and saw his grandson.
The judge wanted to laugh out loud. It must be in his gene pool, he thought.
The judge thought of hundreds of criminal cases that had landed before him. The problem was that victory or defeat in the courtroom rarely paralleled real life. I dealt in degrees of guilt and innocence, levels of success or failure. The man charged with first degree, convicted of second, thanks to an impassioned speech by a defense attorney: It is a success for him because of what he could have faced, a failure for his victim’s family. The same was true of the drunk driver acquitted of vehicular homicide because the state trooper failed to read him his rights before administering a sobriety test; justice handed on a platter to the guilty man, but stolen by neglect from the survivors. The robber convicted of burglary because his weapon was discovered during an illegal search; one reality changed into another by dogged adherence to rules. Those were the ordinary moments of the criminal court, distinctions of degrees. It was all a theater where each side was trying to promote one version of the truth versus another. It was a cold, heartless place, filled with hundreds of little lies conspiring to make a single truth.
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