The Best American Mystery Stories 2013

by Lisa Scottoline

  “Easy. The two of us take the money and hit the road. We lock the deputy warden, the escaped convict, and his slut girlfriend in the storage garage with a new lock I’ll bring with me.”

  Hardesty’s smile now morphed into one of almost evil delight. “How Duffy will explain things when they’re found will be his problem. You and I will be, as the old chain-gang song goes, long gone to Bowling Green.”

  “How can you manage that? You’d be a missing FBI agent.”

  Now Hardesty chuckled. “I resigned from the Bureau a year ago, when I first started working on this plan. I just never got around to telling Duffy about it. So nobody’ll be looking for me. And if you’re smart, you’ll drop off your resignation at the prison’s administrative office in the morning, effective immediately, so nobody’ll be looking for you either. We just go our separate ways, me in my car, you in yours.”

  Now it was Cory who smiled. “Only problem with that is, you can follow me with your GPTS tracker. That would make me a little nervous.”

  “Hell, I’ll give you the monitor,” Hardesty said, shrugging. “Look, kid, we’ve got to trust each other to make this work. I’m not greedy. I’ll settle for six hundred thou if you will. Have we got a deal?”

  Cory thought about Billie Sue sitting in his apartment, and Duffy sitting back in his deputy warden’s office, and Lester Dragg who had been sitting in his prison cell for two years, and all that money lying in a storage unit a hundred and twenty miles away in Modesto . . .

  “Yeah,” he told Hardesty, “we’ve got a deal.”

  Hardesty finished unwrapping the item he had taken from the small box and showed it to Cory. It was slightly smaller than the box, made of metal, bluish in color, and was completely covered all the way around except for a small indented switch on one edge. “This side is magnetized,” he told Cory, demonstrating by laying it gently on the side of a car door, to which it attached without falling off. “The magnetized side has an ultra-high field strength which gives it a very strong resistivity once attached, so that even if your car should hit a large bump, the device will not fall off.”

  Hardesty got a rolled-up blanket from the back seat of his car and unrolled it under the rear of Cory’s Buick. Removing his coat, he handed it to Cory to hold for him while he lay down and scooted well under the car so that only his feet remained extended. Very carefully he placed the tracking device on the side of the vehicle’s muffler and switched it on.

  “Go look at the monitor on the dashboard of my car,” he called to Cory. “Tell me if the screen has turned from black to blue.”

  Hardesty watched Cory’s feet at he walked round to Hardesty’s car. While Cory was so occupied, Hardesty removed a second tracker, already unwrapped, from his trouser pocket, switched that one on also, and attached it to the opposite side of the muffler from the first one.

  “The screen is blue,” Cory called over.

  “Okay, good.” Hardesty scooted back out from under Cory’s car and pulled the blanket out, rolling it back up and tossing it into his car again. With his coat back on, he showed Cory how the tracking monitor on his dashboard worked. It was about the size of a paperback book, with most of its front being taken up by a small screen. Slowly turning a global-assist dial, he had Cory watch while a map materialized and a white blip blinked on and off, indicating exactly where Cory’s Buick was parked—right next to them. “Now I’ll always know where you are until this thing we’re doing is over,” he said with a wink. Unless, he thought, Cory double-crossed him and removed the first tracker. In which case, he would still know where Cory was, by simply changing the monitor’s frequency to the second tracker. As a former longtime FBI agent, Hardesty knew that a man couldn’t be too careful when dealing with dishonest people.

  Billie Sue Neeley was not, as Cory imagined, sitting in Cory’s apartment waiting for him, but instead was in her own shabby little Motel 7 room preparing for her part in the escape from prison of Lester Dragg.

  One of the main things in her preparation was to count how much money she had left of the $20,000 Lester had given her to subsist on in the event that after the bank robbery that had gone so badly they did not successfully escape to Mexico. Immediately following his getaway with the two canvas sacks of cash, Lester had marshaled up a rare presence of mind and located a storage facility in which to conceal the loot, even purchasing a heavy-duty combination padlock from a selection on sale in the rental office.

  In the garage-size unit, he had used a pocket knife he habitually carried to cut open one of the locked canvas money bags and remove $20,000 in mixed unmarked currency, which he subsequently boxed up at a nearby private post office and mailed to Billie Sue Neeley care of General Delivery in Modesto. All this was accomplished in one hour immediately following his getaway from the bank. His hastily formed plan was to escape to Mexico, lie low for a while on several hundred dollars he had taken for expenses, then when things cooled down following the holdup send Billie Sue back to Modesto to pick up the package at General Delivery. They would then go somewhere and live off that money until it was safe enough to retrieve the bulk of the loot from the rental facility.

  It was a brilliant plan, doubly so being conceived so quickly in the mind of an oaf like Lester. And it may well have worked had he and Billie Sue not been stopped trying to cross into Mexico in a car stolen, unknown to Lester, by his two now deceased cohorts the evening prior to the robbery. After Lester’s apprehension and subsequent conviction for grand theft auto, Billie Sue, who could not be charged with anything, moved to Sacramento to be near the prison where he was incarcerated and to live, as he sternly instructed, a very frugal, almost indigent low-profile life, so as not to suggest that she or Lester had any knowledge of the whereabouts of all that bank loot, which in fact had never left, and still remained within two miles of the bank from which it had been stolen.

  Billie kept the $20,000 from General Delivery hidden in a space under the bottom drawer of a shabby dresser in the dumpy motel in which Lester insisted she lived. Access to the money, from which she removed only a pittance at a time, was by removing the drawer completely, revealing a four-inch space between the dresser and the floor upon which it stood. Billie had no qualms about the possible theft of the money; only an imbecile would think of stealing anything from the premises of a Motel 7.

  Now, however, after her last visit with Lester, during which the plan for his escape had been finalized, he had given her specific instructions to take out all of the remaining money and to use part of it to buy him a handgun. He had explained exactly how she was to do it.

  The name of the establishment to which Billie had been directed, on information Lester had been given by a fellow convict, located on the fringe of what passed for Sacramento’s skid row, was the Three Balls Pawn Shop. It had, as was customary for such a business, an overhang above its entrance, with three shiny white balls, under which was a sign that read MONEY TO LOAN.

  When Billie Sue entered, she was greeted by a smallish, balding man wearing a hearing aid. “I’d like to buy a gun,” she said.

  “The ones I have are back here,” the pawnbroker said, with not a hint of surprise. He led her to the rear of the store. “These are the ones I have that are out of pawn and available for sale. Did you have anything particular in mind?”

  “A thirty-eight-caliber.”

  “I have two,” the pawnbroker said, opening the display case and taking out a revolver and an automatic. Billie frowned. Lester had not told her there would be a choice of models. “The Smith and Wesson revolver is seven hundred dollars,” she was told, “and the Colt automatic is eight hundred.”

  Beginning to feel nervous, and silently thinking what a complete ignorant asshole Lester was, Billie said, “I’ll take that one,” pointing to the Colt.

  “Of course. You realize that California has a three-day waiting period before you can actually take the weapon with you.”

  Now she recalled the rest of the ignorant asshole’s instructions. �
��Oh? I was told by a friend that the waiting period could be waived for a thousand-dollar fee.”

  The pawnbroker frowned. “Who, may I ask, is the friend who told you that?”

  “His name is Lester Dragg. He’s in Folsom.”

  “Ah, yes. I did receive a message about him. You are, ah, prepared to pay cash for the purchase and the waiver fee?”

  “Yes.” Billie looked down at the display again. “What’s that little one over there in the corner?”

  “Oh, that. That’s a Guardian twenty-five-caliber automatic. Not very powerful. Only holds six shots—”

  “I’ll take that also.”

  “It’s two-fifty. And you’ll have to pay for another waiting-period waiver, you know.”

  “That’s okay. I’d like bullets for both of them, too.”

  “Well, I’m not licensed to sell ammunition. I have some of my own, however, and I can load each piece for you for fifty dollars. Let’s see now, that comes to thirty-one hundred dollars even. You did say cash, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.” Billie stepped over to another counter, turned her back on the pawnbroker, and counted the exact amount from her purse. Moments later she left the pawn shop with the two loaded pistols in a plain brown bag.

  The night of the escape was upon them.

  Cory packed a few belongings in a duffel bag and retrieved his service revolver, a .357 Ruger GP-100, which he was required to wear only when assigned to perimeter duty outside the walls of the prison or on tower duty inside.

  Out at his car, he put the pistol under the driver’s seat and spread a vinyl raincoat on the ground behind the car. With a pen light, he scooted under the car and located one of the tracking devices Hardesty had attached to the car’s muffler. Removing it, he scooted back out, tossed the device into some bushes, and drove off to pick up Billie Sue at the Motel 7.

  In her room at the motel, Billie had also packed a small overnight bag she had and put the little Guardian automatic in a pocket of her coat. She wrapped the larger pistol she had bought for Lester Dragg in a newspaper, which she put into a grocery bag that contained a six-pack of beer. Then she sat down to wait for Cory.

  Hardesty, wearing his usual service revolver as well as a .32-caliber backup pistol in an ankle holster, drove his own car onto the prison staff parking lot just as Deputy Warden Duffy exited the administration building and came onto the lot to join him. As Duffy got into Hardesty’s passenger seat, he unobtrusively adjusted himself to accommodate the pistol he had stuck in the waistband of his trousers.

  “Everything okay?” he asked nervously.

  “Everything’s fine,” Hardesty replied quietly. He drove off the lot and turned onto the highway toward Sacramento.

  As they drove, Duffy looked off in the distance at the night lights just coming on at the prison dairy farm where Lester Dragg had started work that day and from where, with Duffy’s help, he was probably blithely escaping at that very moment. Duffy’s mouth went dry. From an inside coat pocket he took a flask and drank from it.

  “What the hell’s that?” Hardesty asked gruffly.

  “Scotch,” Duffy said. “Want some?”

  “No thanks,” Hardesty said. “But you go ahead.” Let the fool get smashed, he thought. Be easier to handle him that way.

  Reaching to the dashboard, Hardesty turned on the tracking monitor and watched its small screen fade from black to blue. Adjusting a dial, he watched a blip materialize on the location of the apartment building where Cory Evans lived. The blip settled and remained steady. Hardesty frowned. Cory’s car was not moving yet.

  Cory drove up to the door of Billie’s room at the motel. Watching for him out the window, she came out at once and he opened the trunk to put her bag in with his duffel.

  “What’s that?” he asked, bobbing his chin at the grocery bag she carried.

  “Six-pack of Budweiser,” she said. “I figured we could drink one each and give the rest to Lester.”

  They got in the car. Billie took two bottles of beer into the front seat and set the grocery bag on the back seat. Cory started the car and pulled away from the motel. “Can’t say I’m going to miss that dump,” Billie muttered to herself.

  Twilight had settled and low clouds were hanging in the sky like gauze. The first light raindrops hit the windshield and Cory turned the wipers on low. “Looks like Lester might get a little wet walking to the highway,” he said.

  Billie Sue glanced at him but said nothing.

  Hardesty was watching the blip on the monitor. It was still not moving. Glancing down at the car’s digital clock, he wet his lips. Something was wrong. He began turning the monitor’s frequency dial.

  “What’s the matter with that thing?” Duffy asked testily. “Isn’t it working?”

  “It’s working fine,” Hardesty snapped. “Have another drink.”

  Still north of Sacramento, they now passed the rest stop where Cory and the woman were to pick up Lester Dragg. Hardesty drove another mile, then turned into a truck stop and parked.

  Leaning forward, he manipulated the frequency dial more slowly and a few seconds later was able to pick up a new blip, this one moving away from Sacramento toward them. It was a signal from the second tracking device Hardesty had placed on Cory’s car.

  That son of a bitch, he thought. He crossed me. Hardesty’s jaw tightened. Okay. Fine. Now there wouldn’t be a split of any kind.

  He would leave four people locked in that storage garage.

  At the rest stop up the highway, Cory pulled his Buick into a spot next to several cement picnic benches and turned off the headlights.

  “How will he know we’re here?” he asked Billie.

  “He’ll know.”

  “How do we find him?”

  “He’ll find us.”

  At that moment a knuckle rapped on the passenger-side window. Billie unlocked the door and got out. In the subdued light of the rest stop, Cory saw her embrace a slim figure with a head of thick black hair combed straight back. “Hey, baby,” he heard a male voice say.

  “Hey, sugar,” Billie answered. “Get in the back seat; there’s a little surprise for you.”

  As Lester got in the back seat, Billie slid back in front next to Cory. “Okay, let’s go,” she said. “Cut over to Route 99 and head south.”

  Hardesty watched the blip of Cory’s car as it drove away from the rest stop and swung left onto the state highway going south. Calculating that he was about six miles behind Cory, he pulled back onto the highway and eased down on the accelerator to catch up.

  “That gadget working all right now?” Duffy asked edgily from the passenger seat.

  “Working just fine.” Hardesty threw the deputy warden a disgusted look. Couldn’t depend on anybody anymore, he thought. “Have another drink, why don’t you? Help you to relax.”

  “Don’t mind if I do,” Duffy said, retrieving the flask from his inside coat pocket again. As he drank, he felt the reassuring grip of the pistol sticking out of his waistband. Nobody was going to put anything over on him, he thought a little woozily. No, sir.

  Outside, the pesky rain increased to a steadier downpour. Hardesty turned the car’s windshield wipers on to high. The slap-slap-slap of the rubber blades made Duffy feel a bit drowsy. His eyelids lowered a little.

  In Cory’s car, the modicum of tension that had risen when Lester Dragg first got in had dissipated after they reached Highway 99 and turned south. Lester was drinking his second beer, and having found the gun Billie Sue had bought for him, had it tucked securely under his left thigh.

  Billie had turned on the radio, found a country-and-western station, and was humming along to a Freddy Fender song about wasted days and wasted nights.

  “How far are we going?” Cory asked Billie Sue after a bit, as if he did not already know. Lester answered for her.

  “Don’t you worry about how far we’re going, Mr. Screw,” he said with a loud belch. “Jus’ keep on driving.”

  “Whatever you say.”
>
  “Damn straight on that. You ain’t the boss out here.”

  The rain had increased by now to a heavy downpour, and Cory kept his speed at 55 as they kept driving, monotonously, past the next off-ramp, past the next lights up ahead in the California rural darkness, and then through stretches of nothing but the wet night.

  Cory had checked his odometer at the rest stop where they picked up Lester, so he knew when they passed the off-ramp for Stockton that they were within a half-hour or so of their destination. That was confirmed by a highway sign just outside Stockton that read MODESTO 25.

  Inside the car, the windshield began to steam up from the body heat of the occupants.

  Hardesty by now had come up to within a dozen car lengths of Cory’s Buick and was following in a trained law enforcement pattern of nondetection observance: a frequent change of lanes in the flow of traffic, occasionally exiting the highway at an off-ramp, then crossing the underpass street and reentering via an on-ramp, where he accelerated just enough to again come within range of Cory’s blip on the monitor.

  Next to him, Duffy’s head was leaning against the passenger window and he was not quite snoring but breathing heavily. Drunken fool, Hardesty thought. He began to contemplate pulling over, putting a round into Duffy’s temple, and dumping him on the side of the road. He even considered killing them all: four bodies in that storage garage, locked in with a bicycle lock he had purchased that morning—hell, it might be weeks before anybody noticed the stench and found them. By then he would be living easy down in Argentina, where there was no extradition treaty with the U.S.—assuming that he was ever even connected with the bodies.

  Suddenly, as he was considering his options, Hardesty saw Cory’s blip leave the highway at an off-ramp next to a sign that read MODESTO NEXT RIGHT.

  I’ll be damned, he thought, as he approached the same off-ramp. That was the town where the bank heist went down. Could it be that the money never left town?