Dalesia said, “We’ve got to get out of this part of the country. We’ve just got to.”
“You haven’t been out there,” McWhitney told him. “I was just a few minutes each way, stayed on little nothing roads, I was stopped twice, show ID, search the car, thank you very much. One of the cops, I said I’m headed back to Long Island, he gave me a friendly advice, stay away from the MassPike, it’s a horror scene down there, roadblocks every exit, traffic backed up to Boston.” He laughed, without much humor. “There’s a lot of drivers out there this morning, Nick,” he said, “don’t like us guys at all.”
“But there’s still no choice,” Dalesia said. “We’ve still got to move on away from here.”
Parker said, “The problem is the cash. We can’t carry it, and we can’t stay here, so the only thing to do, we leave it. We can scoop out a handful each, but that’s it.”
McWhitney looked deeply pained. “Leave it? After what we went through to get it?”
Parker said, “You put even one of those boxes of cash in your pickup, on the seat beside you, or I put it in the trunk of my car, the first roadblock we come to we’re done.”
“I know that, Parker,” McWhitney said. “I was just out there. But there’s got to be some way we can move that cash around the cops or through them or something.”
“Nothing,” Parker said. “There’s nothing.”
McWhitney hated this. “So whadda we do, then? We just leave it all here? I can’t walk away from that truck out there, Parker, I rented that in my own name. So what are we supposed to do, just dump it all out on the ground?”
“No,” Parker said. “We stash it.”
Dalesia said, “That’s a lotta boxes out there, Parker. Where we gonna find to stash that much stuff?”
“The choir loft,” Parker said.
5
There was a windowless door on the right side of the church, down near where the altar had once stood. Outside the door was a small gray concrete slab, and two concrete steps going down to ground level. Wrought-iron railings on both sides had been broken off and taken away, leaving twisted iron stubs.
The door was locked, and would open inward. McWhitney went around to the outside, stood on the slab, and kicked it open. Then they started moving the boxes out of the truck, at first only as far as the side wall of the lean-to.
When the first part was done, McWhitney drove his pickup around to that side and left it next to the wall, just forward of the doorway, its front end toward the road. That would both explain the open door and hide their movements as they carried the boxes around and into the church.
After the last box had been lugged in and stacked on the front pews, McWhitney kicked the door shut again, because otherwise it kept sagging open. And now they started the third and final part of the move, which was the longest and the hardest.
First they shifted some of the chairs and hymnal boxes that were upstairs, crowding them all as far as possible over to the left. Then they started bringing up the money boxes, stacking them in the right corner, four high, with hymnal boxes stacked on top. When everything was upstairs, they rearranged the rest of the boxes and chairs again, so that at the end it had the same cluttered look as before, but more crowded.
The whole move had taken more than two hours. Downstairs again, sitting in the pews, drinking the last of the bottled water as they caught their breath, they were all quiet for a few minutes, until McWhitney said, “I figure a month.”
“At least,” Dalesia said.
“We can’t leave that stuff up there forever,” McWhitney said. “You never know, they could sell the building for an antique shop, clear out the choir loft and hello, what’s this?”
Parker said, “We’ll give it a month, then see how things look around here.”
McWhitney finished his water. “Time to go,” he said. “Nick, follow me while I turn the truck in, then I’ll drive you to your car.”
“I’ll shut down here,” Parker said.
Dalesia said, “Don’t anybody try to get in touch with me, I’m gonna be on the move. I’ll call you two one of these days.”
“I’ll be in my bar,” McWhitney said, “unless that Sandra decides to shoot me, so we can keep in touch through me.”
Dalesia said, “What’s she gonna shoot you for? You’re gonna make her rich with all that Harbin money.”
McWhitney grinned. “Maybe she’d like to co-own a bar.”
McWhitney and Dalesia left, McWhitney leading in the rental truck. After they were gone, Parker went through to remove things that might identify them later on, like coffee cups and water bottles. Everything went into the bag McWhitney had brought breakfast in.
He also went downstairs to be sure nothing had been left behind. He shut off the power, and used his flashlight to get back up to the main floor.
Finished with the church, Parker went to the front door, looked out, saw that the road was empty, and crossed over to the Dodge, which he’d left parked next to the empty house. He drove off, and the first town he came to, four miles away, he threw away the bag in a municipal trash barrel. Except for four thousand dollars in cash in his pockets, he was carrying nothing with him that he hadn’t brought here.
It was seven miles farther on that he saw his first roadblock, up ahead. It was positioned where a driver coming this way wouldn’t be able to see it until he was close enough to be seen, with no turnoffs.
This being a small road with little traffic, the cops weren’t dealing with anybody else at that moment, so all four of them, two each for the east and westbound lanes, waved him down. One looked at John B. Allen’s identification while another checked the trunk.
Parker said, when he got his ID back, “Where can I find a diner? I’m looking for lunch.”
“Sorry, pal,” the cop said. “We’re not from around here. Just keep on, you’ll find something.”
Parker kept on.
6
Staying north of the MassPike, but still meeting roadblocks now and again, and with more than the usual traffic on these secondary roads, Parker traveled as due west as he could, figuring to leave Massachusetts and drive well into New York State before turning south. He wanted to get out of the search area as fast as possible, but he did need to eat.
The diner he found was still in Massachusetts. They had placed a television set on the back counter, because an Albany station was doing a special on the robbery and the search for the “bandits,” as they called them. Parker gave his order, looked at the television screen, and the first thing he saw was Dr. Madchen.
It was some sort of press conference, a podium in front of a blank yellow wall. Standing at the podium was the doctor, with a hangdog expression on his face, and a balled-up white handkerchief in his right hand that from time to time he pressed to his eyes. Standing beside him was a thirtyish woman, slender, with severe good looks and black hair in a bun. She wore a black broad-collared suit and high-neck white blouse, and it was soon obvious she was the doctor’s lawyer.
A number of reporters were apparently out of sight behind the camera. When Parker first looked at the screen, the doctor was answering a question from one of them:
“I just feel so sorry for poor Jake right now. I know he tried to reform himself, I sincerely know he sincerely wanted to live a good life. If my own personal tragedy hadn’t just now occurred—I mean, it’s so hard for me to think after what’s just happened—if I could, I’d do what I could to help Jake. He’s a weak man, I admit that, but he isn’t a bad man. He was led into this, just led into it.”
One of the unseen reporters, male, asked, “Do you think there’s any chance the authorities will think you were involved, Doctor?”
Looking more surprised than worried, the doctor said, “Well, I certainly hope not. I mean, I can’t think why they would. I’m a doctor, not a— Why would those people even want me with them, those robbers?”
The lawyer leaned in at that point to say, “We are in discussion with the authorities, a
nd there is no doubt that Mr. Beckham said some very strange things while he was in his delirium, when the police first talked to him. We take those statements, from a delirious and apparently guilt-racked mind, at face value, which is to say none, and we expect the police will make the same evaluation. It is of course a terrible accident of timing. This is a moment when Dr. Madchen should be permitted the solitude of his private grief. Instead of which, he cannot grieve for his departed wife, as anyone else would be able to, but has to defend himself against the ravings of a temporarily disordered mind.”
Another reporter’s voice asked, “Doctor, did your wife have a history of heart disease?”
“Not at all.” Dr. Madchen could be seen to be overcome for just a moment as he lowered his head, dabbed the handkerchief against his eyes, and clung hard to the podium with his other hand. Then he took a deep breath, nodded out at the reporters, and said, “I was not my wife’s primary physician, of course. I’ve been on the phone with her regular doctor, and he did tell me things I hadn’t known. That he had counseled Ellen about her eating habits, for instance, and the lack of exercise in her life. I’d been aware of all that, but I had never— Ellen was so healthy, and then all at once—” And he lowered his head again.
Parker’s burger and fries arrived. As he ate and watched the press conference, he remembered what the good doctor had said, that time in his car when Parker and Dalesia had told him to stay away from Jake. “If this thing you two are doing doesn’t happen, I’m going to die. I can’t live. You’re my last hope.”
“Yes, the police phoned me at seven thirty this morning,” the doctor was saying. “They wanted to tell me to stay at home, because they were coming to interview me. They told me about poor Jake, but not at that time about those . . . things he was saying. I said I’d wait at home for them, and I went to tell Ellen, and that’s when I . . . I found her.”
Parker ate his lunch. As soon as Dr. Madchen had been told, in that phone call, that Jake had been picked up, he’d known, no matter whether the robbery worked out or not, there would be nothing in it for him. As he’d said, in that case, somebody was going to die. He’d thought he would be that somebody, but when it came down to it, he’d found a substitute.
Parker ordered coffee, and when he looked back at the screen, a commercial was ending, to be replaced by a black-and-white drawing of a head shot, faced forward, the kind of thing done by police artists based on the memory of eyewitnesses. Like all such drawings, the guy looked too mean to be true, glaring out at the television audience. Over the picture, a woman’s voice was saying, “One police officer in our area does seem to have encountered at least one of the robbers shortly before the crime took place.”
The television picture cut now to two women seated at a table, with a bank of television screens on a wall behind them, showing an array of news and sports scenes. The woman on the left, about forty, was metallically pretty, with ironed-on blonde hair, a lemon- yellow sports jacket, and pale yellow blouse. The woman on the right was the cop who’d braced Parker.
The first one made the introductions: “I have with me now Detective Second Grade Gwen Reversa of Massachusetts CID, who seems to have tied together some of the loose ends in this case. Welcome, Detective.”
“Thank you.” Detective Reversa smiled, happy to be there, but showed she wasn’t going to be overly impressed by her moment of fame.
“Detective Reversa, your encounter with the alleged robber began with your investigation of what seemed to be a very different case, did it not?”
“Yes, Sue. I was assigned to investigate the shooting of Jake Beckham. In a case like that, where there doesn’t seem to be any reason for what happened, you want to talk to as many of the victim’s acquaintances as possible, and one of those was Elaine Langen.”
“The most astonishing character in the whole event,” the other woman said, with a big happy smile. “You could have had no idea, when you first went to interview Elaine Langen, that she was in the middle of a scheme to rob her own husband’s bank.”
“No,” Reversa said, with her own little smile, “that one was not going to occur to me. Nor that she was the one, in fact, who’d shot Mr. Beckham, who it turned out was a former lover of hers.”
“Elaine Langen’s gun had gone missing.”
“Yes, Sue, that was the first hint that the situation might not be as clear-cut as it seemed. And a car outside the house when I arrived she said belonged to a landscape designer. When I later saw that same car—”
“Which turned out to be stolen.”
“Yes, from New Jersey, but I didn’t know that then, I don’t think it had been reported yet. But since, by that time, I had the feeling there was something wrong with Mrs. Langen, although I didn’t yet know what, when I saw that landscape designer’s car at another time, I decided to take a look at him.”
The other woman chortled over this. “Some landscape designer, eh?” Then, looking at the camera, she said, “This is Detective Reversa’s memory of that landscape designer,” and the mug shot drawing came on again.
They think that’s me, Parker thought, and studied it, as the interviewer’s voice, over the picture, said, “This is almost certainly one of the robbers.”
An 800 number appeared, superimposed over the drawing. “If you see this man, phone this number. Rutherford Combined Savings has posted a one-hundred-thousand-dollar reward for the capture and conviction of this man and any other member of the gang, and the recovery of the nearly two million, two hundred thousand dollars stolen in the robbery.”
Parker looked up and down the counter. Half a dozen other people were gazing at the television set. None of them looked to be ready to go off and make a phone call. It seemed to him, if you told one of those people, “This picture is that guy. See the cheekbones? See the shape of the forehead?” they’d say, “Oh, yeah!” But if it wasn’t pointed out, they’d just go on eating lunch.
The screen showed the two women again. The interviewer said, “Detective Reversa, what was the result of your meeting with this man?”
“I obtained an identification, in the form of a New York State driver’s license, in the name of John B. Allen.” She spelled it.
The interviewer nodded, and produced another smile. “Detective, would you like to meet up with John B. Allen again?”
Reversa laughed. “If I had the appropriate backup.”
“Check,” Parker said.
He paid and started for the door, then stopped. Outside, off to the right, a police car was stopped behind the Dodge. Parker studied the newspapers in the rack beside the entrance, and the police car moved away to the right and stopped again, at the end of the lot, facing the road.
John B. Allen. One computer talks to another, and it doesn’t take long. He’d been moving through the roadblocks just ahead of the news. John B. Allen is wanted for robbery over here. John B. Allen rented a car over there. Let’s find the car, and wait for Allen to come back to it.
That was the only identification he had on him. He had cash, but nothing else. He couldn’t drive the Dodge away from here. He couldn’t walk away from the diner onto a rural road past those cops, because they’d want to have a word with him.
The diner’s parking area was across the front and both sides. The Dodge and the cops were to the right. Parker stepped out the door and turned left, walking as though to his car. When he made it around the corner of the diner and out of sight of the cops waiting for him, he looked ahead and saw that behind the diner was a patch of weedy ground, and then scrub trees like the ones McWhitney had hoped to hide his pickup in among, and then a slope upward into more serious woods, some of them already rich with fall’s yellows and reds.
Casual but steady, Parker walked out away from the parking lot and toward the trees. No one noticed or called to him.
7
It starts with technology, but it still ends with tracker dogs.
At first, Parker climbed up the slope through the thin trunks of the second
-growth trees, wanting only to get high enough to see without being seen. He moved left and right across the slope until he found a spot where he could look down and get a clear view of the diner and its parking lot. The Dodge was still there. So was the police car. He leaned against one of the thicker trees to wait and watch.
So the bank said they’d been hit for two million. He knew from experience that that would be a lie. Because of the insurance, the company that got taken down always pumped the loss by between a quarter and a third. The money hidden back in the church would be closer to one million five.
That was less than they’d expected. What would Dr. Madchen have gotten out of it, if things had worked the way they were supposed to work? A third of Jake’s third, less the piece for Briggs. Two hundred thousand at most, probably less. He was better off giving the wife a little injection.
Down below, one of the cops got out of the police car and went into the diner. It had been twenty minutes since Parker had come up here.
What he wanted to do now was wait for them to decide he’d gone away, seen their car, and decided to leave his own. Once they were gone, he could come back down and decide what to do next.
The cop was inside the diner ten minutes, and came out with a paper bag. He got back into his car, but it didn’t move. Which meant they weren’t going away. They were waiting for reinforcements. They were going to start the search from right down there.
Yes. When the police bus and the enclosed police van drove into the parking area a good half hour later, he knew what it meant, and turned away, moving uphill. He didn’t have to stick around long enough to see the hounds come out of that van.
Soon he heard them, though. There was an eager echo in their baying, as though they thought what they did was music.
Parker kept climbing. There was no way to know how high the hill was. He climbed to the north, and eventually the slope would start down the other side. He’d keep ahead of the dogs, and somewhere along the line he’d find a place to hole up. He could keep away from the pursuit until dark, and then he’d decide what to do next.
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