“Sure isn’t much,” said Karen.
Ray nodded. “Yeah. It doesn’t make sense. The type of business this guy was in, I don’t think he trusted banks that much.” He stood in the center of the room and took a better look. Then he took down the Picasso, and another painting, hoping to find a wall safe. There was nothing. He clenched his hands over his head, thinking.
“What is it?” said Karen.
“I don’t know. I think we’re missing something here.” He went to the walk-in closet again with its assortment of handmade suits, ties, and the unending number of shoes. Separating the suits with his hands, he examined the wall behind them and saw nothing unusual. As he reached the end of the rack, something finally caught his eye on the floor. A piece of the carpet looked unnatural somehow. Falling to his knees, he pried around the carpet with his fingers and a piece of it about two feet square came up into his hand. He cast it aside. “Found it,” he called out to Karen.
She poked her head into the doorway to the closet. “Found what?”
Ray pointed to the floor. “A safe. He’s got a floor safe here.”
After a good half-hour of chopping around the floor joists, Ben and Ray finally managed to lug the heavy safe from its hiding place under the floor. They carried it together and dumped it onto the bed. The impact crushed the bed frame and bent it downward. The bed sagged almost to the ground. Ben laughed. “Well, that bed’s junk,” he said.
“Yeah, well those safes are heavy, but they’re not that heavy. There’s something inside that thing and it weighs a lot, I can tell you that,” said Ray. “You know how to crack a safe?”
Ben smiled. “No. But I know how to get the combination.”
“How?’
“Call the manufacturer.”
“Are you kidding?” said Ray.
“No. That’s how most of them do it. I saw a guy do it once. They ask for the serial number of the safe, maybe the credit card you bought it with, the last four of your social, stuff like that. Once they establish your identity and that you’re the owner, they just tell you the combination.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Well, it depends on the manufacturer. You go through Customer Service.”
They went downstairs and Ben rolled Woodburn’s body over. He reached into the dead man’s jacket pocket and removed his wallet. It was wet with blood. Ben wiped it off on the carpet and held it up. “We can get his address and drivers’ license from this, and probably the credit card if they ask for that.” He flipped through the wallet, removing pictures, cards, and other items. He examined each one and either discarded it, or placed it on a nearby chair. “Ah, here’s his drivers license anyway...wait...here’s a business card from the safe company.” He flipped it over. Nothing was on the back. “Well, he’d have to be pretty stupid to put the combination on that.”
Karen reached down and picked up one of the pictures from the wallet that Ben had tossed to the floor. She examined it for a moment and then looked on the back. She handed it to Ben. “I think this is what you’re looking for,” she said.
Ben took it from her. It was a picture of a beautiful model, a blonde with a nice smile. “It’s a picture of his girlfriend.”
“No it isn’t,” she said. “Look again. It’s one of those pictures they include sometimes when you buy a new wallet.”
“Hey, you’re right. It’s a fake.” He turned it over. Printed on the back in neat lettering was a series of numbers and a name. Carolyn, it said. 44-28-34. “Shit!” Ben shouted. “The idiot tried to disguise it as a picture of his girlfriend with her measurements on the back!”
“Why would he keep the combination in his wallet like that?” said Ray.
“Life insurance. Or so he doesn’t have to call the safe company if he forgets. Who knows? He was an idiot.”
“Come on,” said Ray. “Let’s get it open.”
They ran back up to the bedroom and rolled the safe over until the combination lock was visible. Ben spun the wheel carefully, left 44, right 28, and left 34. He tried the handle. It didn’t budge. “Damn! It’s not working.”
Karen reached down and gently turned the wheel from the 34 and back to zero. “Bet he left off the zero,” she said. She moved Ben’s hand away from the handle and grasping it firmly, she turned it. The handle moved down and stopped with a soft click. “You’ll have to pull the door up yourself,” she said. “It’s too heavy for me.”
Ben pulled open the door on the safe. He saw a large number of clear plastic tubes with screw caps on top. They were filled with gold coins. “Jesus H. Christ!” He held the door open while Ray pulled everything out and dumped it all on the bed. In addition to the coin holders, there were stacks of $100 bills with ribbons around them indicating each stack was worth $10,000. The only other item was an old purple cloth bag from a bottle of Crown Royal whiskey. Ben let the door on the safe slam shut with a bang. He laughed. “We are fucking rich!” he exclaimed.
Five minutes later, they had totaled the contents of the safe. It contained twenty-seven plastic tubes, each with fifty South African Kruggerands inside. The bundles of cash equaled exactly $400,000. They dumped out the whiskey bag and saw a large handful of uncut diamonds, none smaller than an average fingernail. Some were the size of marbles. Ben let out his breath in a whoosh. “Can you believe this? There’s a fortune here.” He popped the cap from one of the coin holders and dropped a Kruggerand into his hand, turning it over. It felt smooth, cold, and heavy. He put the coin back into the tube and replaced the cap.
“How much is it all worth?” said Karen.
Ben was in awe. “Uh...the cash, well...you can see that. The diamonds? I don’t know. A lot, I bet. The gold, I’m not sure.”
“Twenty-seven times fifty is 1,350 coins,” said Ray. “Gold runs about 1,200 or more an ounce right now. That’s over a million and a half dollars. With the cash, we’re looking at almost two million even without the stones, and those could be worth a few million on their own.”
“Well, this means one thing for sure,” said Ben.
“What’s that?” said Ray.
“I don’t think we have to rob any more banks, guys. We just have to figure a way out of the country.”
Three loud thumps sounded from somewhere below. Ben whirled around and reached for his pistol.
Someone was downstairs at the front door.
Chapter 14
Special Agent Ryan McKenzie stared in disbelief at the message in his hand. It had arrived just a moment ago from the field office in San Francisco. A convenience store clerk in Garberville, California had finally come forward and identified Ben Cummings as the man who purchased a no-contract cell phone some months previously. Both the number and all the calls made to and from the phone were listed on additional pages in the message. McKenzie flipped the pages and began by looking at the area codes. There it is, he thought. He saw the occasional call by Cummings made to area code 206 in Seattle. All of those calls were to the same number. And that’s exactly where the son of a bitch is right now, McKenzie thought.
McKenzie took a seat at one of the computers in the office. In seconds, he had called up a database that listed all the phone numbers in that area code, whether they were unlisted or not. He entered the phone number from the cell phone record. A name popped up at once: Greg Woodburn of Mercer Island, Washington.
“Bingo!” he shouted. A dozen agents swarming around the office doing their own work stopped to listen. “We have the address for Cummings’ friend in Seattle!” he said. “His name’s Greg Woodburn. Lives on Mercer Island across the bridge. We’re moving out in five minutes.” These sons of bitches aren’t getting away from us this time, he thought. No fucking way.
He picked up the phone to call the Mercer Island police department. There was only one main road off that island. They would have to shut down the Interstate 90 freeway where it crossed over the island from Seattle to Bellevue.
The knock at the door sounded again, more persistent this time
.
“It’s the cops!” said Ray. “What the fuck do we do now?”
“Shut up,” said Ben. “It isn’t the cops. Remember, this place is gated. It’s someone who already has the gate code. Somebody Woodburn knows.”
“What do we do?” said Karen.
“We answer the door, what else? Karen, you stay here. Ray, come with me.”
The two men ran downstairs to the front door. Ben took a spot behind the door and made a motion for Ray to see who was at the door. Ben held the revolver at his side and waited.
Ray opened the door, saw two men in their mid-forties, one with jet-black hair, and dressed in a suit. The other man was dressed in tennis shoes and jeans. “Can I help you?” said Ray.
“You a friend of Greg’s?” the man in the suit asked.
Ray tried to be casual. “Yeah, I’m David. We’re doing barbecue. He’s upstairs cooking steaks. Come on in. Maybe we can toss some more on for you guys.”
“No thanks. I just have some quick business with him. He’s expecting me.”
Ray stepped back and waved the two men inside. He turned his back and headed up the stairs to the main floor.
Seeing this, the two men entered without hesitation. As soon as they did, Ben kicked the door closed behind them and pointed the revolver at their heads. “Move and you die,” he said.
On the stairs, Ray turned around and took out the Beretta. “Better listen to him,” he said.
Ben quickly frisked the two men and found a gun on each of them, which he slipped into his pocket. “Put your fucking hands behind your heads and get upstairs.”
“What is this?’ the man in the tennis shoes said. “ Do you have any idea who you’re fucking with? I’ll have your ass dumped into Puget Sound in a burlap bag.”
Ben jabbed his revolver into the man’s neck. “Shut your mouth before I put a bullet into the back of your head. Your friend Woodburn is dead. He and his goons tried to play some shit game on us and we killed them.”
“Oh, fuck.”
“That’s right, asshole,” said Ben. “And if you don’t want to end up the same way you better do like we say.”
“Hey, no problem mister,” said the man in the suit. The two men did as they were told and went upstairs to the living room. When they got there, they saw the three bodies on the floor. The man in the tennis shoes blanched white. The sheets covering the bodies were soaked in blood. “Oh, Jesus.”
“Down on the floor!” Ben shouted. “Face down!”
The men obeyed.
“Why are you here?” said Ben.
“Well, we were...” the man in the tennis shoes started to say.
Ben kicked him in the ribs, hard. “Not you, stupid. I’m asking the suit. What are you doing here?”
“I was supposed to deliver something to Woodburn and get paid.”
Ben laughed. “No shit. What a coincidence. Let me guess. Three passports, right?”
“Right. I should have recognized you at the door. You’re them.”
“That’s right. Where are these passports now?”
“In my suit jacket.”
Ben reached down and pulled out three fat envelopes from the man’s pocket. Karen walked in and he thrust them at her. “Open these up,” he said. “See what’s in them.”
Karen hastily tore open the envelopes and dumped their contents in three separate piles on the couch. She picked through them for a moment. “There are three U.S. passports, Washington State drivers’ licenses, and three birth certificates. Some cards with our pictures on them called NEXUS. I’m not sure what those are.” She flipped open the passports one at a time. “Our pictures are in them, but the names are different.”
“Put everything away in your purse,” said Ben. “And don’t lose them. The NEXUS cards are just a program between the U.S. and Canada so you can travel to Canada a little easier. Like being on the good fly list with TSA or something. You and Ray collect all that stuff from the safe and meet me down in the garage. Hurry up.”
“What about them?” said Ray.
“I’ll tie them up. But we need to get moving and quick. Step it up you two.”
Karen and Ray hurried upstairs to collect the contents of the safe. As soon as they were gone, the man in the suit turned his head slightly toward Ben, just enough to look up at him. “You’re not leaving us here tied up, are you?”
“No,” said Ben. He fired two shots into each of them from the revolver, directly into the back of their heads. Blood splattered across the carpet and onto the couch. “I’m not.”
Up in the bedroom, Ray shook his head. “I knew he was going to kill them,” he said flatly. He finished stuffing the cash and gold coin into a pillowcase.
“So did I,” said Karen. “He just didn’t want us to see it. I don’t want to go through that living room again with all the bodies. Let’s go through the guest bedroom instead.”
“Sure, honey.” He hefted the pillowcase. It was too heavy and he knew it would rip the second he tried to lift it. “Get out a suitcase from the closet,” he said. “The gold coins alone must weigh eighty pounds. We’ll have to transfer everything to the suitcase.”
“You knew I couldn’t leave them here alive, right?” said Ben as he joined the others in the garage. “Otherwise those new identities would be no good to us. They would have told the cops everything. He pointed to a heavy steel door at one end of the garage. It had a heavy steel hasp and a big lock. “Let’s get that open.”
“That lock? You need bolt cutters.”
“Get out of the way,” said Ben. He jumped into the van and started the engine. Backing it up slightly, he turned toward the door and eased on the gas pedal. A moment later, he smashed into the door at about ten miles an hour and imploded it into the dark room behind it. He backed up a few feet and then switched off the motor. Anti-freeze from the radiator poured onto the concrete floor. “The one time I was here before, that’s where he kept his guns. Let’s have a look.” Digging out a set of keys, he handed them to Karen. “Here’s his keys. Go outside and see if that motorhome starts.”
“All right.” She went out through a side door to the driveway.
Ben turned on the light and stepped around the fallen door. “Oh my God, Ray. Check this shit out.”
Across one wall were about fifty assault rifles of various types laid upright into a long wooden frame. Several military-inscribed crates sat on a nearby table. Both men did a quick inventory. There were grenades in two of the crates, and some C-4 plastic explosive bricks in another.
“Any det cord with that C-4?” said Ben.
“Yeah. There’s some number eight Primacord in a box over here. And some blasting caps.”
“Okay,” said Ben. “Take three of the rifles, a case of the grenades, and that C-4 with the cord and the caps. Make sure you pick up plenty of ammo for the rifles. Let’s go.”
As they hauled the items to the garage door, they heard the rumbling of the diesel engine on the motorhome. Ben hit the wall switch and the door swung upward. “Let’s get this stuff on board and get the hell out of here,” he said.
Two minutes later, they were heading north on Island Crest Way and back to the interstate. This time, Ben had taken the wheel while Karen and Ray sat at the dining table in the back with the curtains drawn.
“How far to the freeway,” said Ray.
“Not long. We’ll be there in a few minutes. Can’t speed too much though. I just hope we don’t hit too many lights or run into the cops. The neighbors may have heard that .38 when I used it back there. It’s a lot louder than the Beretta.”
Martha Simmons peered out her kitchen window, straining to see across the hedge that separated her house from Woodburn’s. All she could see was the roof of the house. She picked up the phone and tapped in a number.
“9-1-1. What’s your emergency?”
“My name’s Martha Simmons. I think I heard some gunshots next door. Several of them.”
“What’s your location, ma’am?�
��
“18742 East Mercer Way.”
“And these gunshots came from north of you, or south of you.”
“North. Right next door. The address there is 18740.”
“Do you know who lives at the home?”
“He’s my neighbor. Greg Woodburn.”
“Did you see anyone with a gun?”
“No. You can’t see over the hedges to his property. But I’m sure I heard gunshots. Maybe three or four of them.”
“All right, ma’am. I’ll dispatch some officers to the address to check it out. Stay inside your house. The officers will want to contact you.”
“Okay.”
As Ben Cummings approached the east-west on-ramps to Interstate 90, he saw several police vehicles coming from the Seattle side. They were racing toward Mercer Island with their lights and sirens going. He took the ramp toward Seattle, putting the motorhome on the other side of the bridge from the cops. As he merged onto the freeway and toward downtown Seattle, he checked the rear view mirror. Several more police cars were screaming toward the island from the east side, out of Bellevue.
Ben laughed. “Boy, they are going to be pissed off when they don’t find us,” he said. “That has got to be about us, but I don’t know how they figured it out.” He continued watching through the mirror and saw that some of the cops were already starting to close down the entire freeway at the on-ramps. “You know,” he said, “I think we just missed them. One more minute and they would have had the whole island shut down with us still on it. That was fucking close.”
“What do you think we should do now?” said Ray. “We can’t just cross over to Canada on the freeway. They’ll be watching for us, and this motorhome is going to be screaming hot pretty damn soon.”
“The only way we’re ever getting out of this country is on a boat. We need a boat. The safest place to get one is probably up in Blaine, at the Birch Bay marina. You’re right about this motorhome. We have to ditch it and buy our own rig. Once the cops find Woodburn and those other guys, they’ll find out we took his motorhome. We need another rig fast and I think we should get it somewhere south of Seattle.”
Revenge Story Page 18