That didn't seem to Pray like much of a clue, but he nodded to keep Boles talking.
“The one man, he stuck a gun in my face and walked me backward to the vault. The second one rushed past us, and I heard him tell Eugene not to press any button, or he'd die with his finger on it.”
“What about the third man?”
“He ordered me to open the vault, which of course was where we kept the money after the armored car dropped it off yesterday.”
“And you did.”
“Open it? Damned right, with that spooky first man pressing his gun to my cheek.” Boles went to rub the spot.
“Mary, the man who stayed on you, he never spoke?”
“No.”
Pray always felt uncomfortable asking, much less repeating, the next question, but it was necessary. “And you don't know the race of that man?”
She shook her head. “Like I said before, they all wore masks and gloves, long-sleeved shirts, and pants. But from the voices of the two who spoke, I'd say they were white, so I'm guessing two grains of salt didn't ask a peppercorn to join them.”
Pray grinned, getting the impression Boles was trying to make him feel at ease for having to ask the question at all. People rarely behaved so considerately up north when probed by touchy questions.
“Anything else, Chief?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“Eugene.”
“I had to send him home,” said Mary Boles. “Poor boy was shaking like a leaf.”
“How about Josh, then?”
“Mary has her habit of opening on time,” said Josh Stukes. “I have mine of relieving myself just then.”
Pray blinked at the doughy, fiftyish man with sandy hair. “You couldn't wait till the first few customers came through?”
“Chief, you never worked in a bank around Christmas, let me tell you. There ain't never a time nobody's coming through the doors, so one time's as good—or as bad—as another.”
“Give me the sequence again, then, as you remember it.”
“All right.” Stukes pointed toward the rear of the bank lobby. “I was just finishing, and the flushing kept me from hearing anything. When I opened the door, I got the muzzle of a Ruger forty-four stuck in my face.”
“And you knew it was a Ruger …”
“… account of that's what I have next to my bed, for home protection.” Stukes pointed again. “This feller with the cannon walked me over to where they already had Eugene and Mary, kneeling on the floor, noses against the wall, and I joined them.”
“And that was it?”
“Mary already had the vault opened by the time I got out there, and all I heard was the one feller telling us all to be quiet and nobody had to get theirselves shot. So I was quiet as a little mouse.” Stukes suddenly grinned, but not pleasantly. “Speaking of mice, you gonna talk to Eugene again?”
Very evenly, Pray said, “Yes.”
“Hope for your sake he changed his undies first.”
“Chief, I really don't know what else I can tell you about that frightful experience this morning.”
Lon Pray watched Eugene Cornwell cradle a small dog in his arms. The dog was a little mop of brushed hair and cute as a bug, the living room decorated tastefully even without the handsome tree and draped bunting of pine branches.
“Eugene, I won't know what'll help me either till I hear you tell it again.”
Cornwell closed his eyes, then opened them. “Very well. I was behind my cage, just opening my cash drawer for the morning and arranging the currency and coins, as is my habit. Suddenly, I heard a stampede sound from the front door. I looked up to see these horribly dressed men barging past Mary, one stomping up to me and pointing a monstrous gun right here.” Cornwell's index finger reluctantly left the dog and tapped the owner's forehead over his nose. “They say your whole life is supposed to flash by in front of you? Well, I swear my only thought was,‘Who would take care of Florinda?’ ” Cornwell's finger returned to the dog, and his forehead dipped to touch the same spot on the dog, who licked it appreciatively.
Pray waited a moment. Then, “You did hear the men speak?”
“At least one of—no, two of them. But I was too terrified to recall anything they actually said.”
After striking out again on race, age, and idiosyncrasies, Lon Pray concluded with, “Anything else you remember?”
“Yes,” said Eugene Cornwell, “I remember that the reason I relocated here after college in Richmond was to be able to feel safe in a small town.”
“That was still pretty brave of you, Luis.”
Pray noticed that his words made the thirteen-year-old in the Atlanta Braves jersey stand a little taller, the wiry dog at his side whuffing.
“Without Mrs. Boles and her bank, we do not have our life here.”
Pray knew that the Cortez family had moved in over the store they were running after Luis's parents had decided the migrant life left a lot to be desired. But he also knew how impossible becoming shopkeepers would have been if their loan request had been turned down.
“Luis, can you tell me again what you saw?”
“Sure thing. I am outside our store, washing down the windows from the dust that seems to come during the night from nowhere. I hear the sound of people running, so I turn to see three men crossing the street from the bank, guns in their hands but not shooting at anybody. I drop my window brush into the pail, and I wait until they cannot see me before I run after them.”
“You get any kind of look at their faces?”
“Like I tell you before, they have masks over them, and gloves on the hands, too. But the way they run, I think they must be white.”
“Why?”
Luis Cortez scuffed at the dust with the toe of his sneaker, causing the dog to stick his nose down there and paw the ground himself. “Because they do not run so very well.”
Pray tried not to grin this time. “Go on.”
“I am coming after them down the path through the woods. I can hear them in front of me, making noise with their feet and hitting the branches with their arms, maybe, but not talking or nothing. Then I hear the sound of a car engine starting, only when I get to the edge of the fire road, I can see that it is a pickup. By this time, though, the truck is too far away to see anything but that it is dark in color.”
Which was what Pray had put out over the radio to his officers and the sheriff's deputies. Too bad half the vehicles in the county were pickup trucks, and half of those were blue, black, or brown.
“Nothing else, Luis?”
The boy and his dog pawed at the ground in unison. “Just that when I tell my mother what I did, she slap me hard enough to loosen a tooth.”
Chief Lon Pray tried to tell himself that, as a parent so close to Christmas, he wouldn't have done the same thing. Tried and failed.
“Anything?” said Pray.
Edna Dane, one of two uniforms on the roadblock, reached into her cruiser, a short pony-tail bobbing against her neck under the Stetson. Coming out with a clipboard, she looked down at it. “We've had fifty … five vehicles so far. Twenty passenger cars, three semis, two buses, five panel trucks. The balance were pickups, seven of them dark in color. We called them all in to Dispatch. None with more than two men in it, and no wants or warrants on any of the trucks or occupants.”
Pray squinted past the other uniform, standing hipcocked with the butt of a riot pump gun resting on his thigh. The pavement was otherwise empty in the noonday sun, people either working or doing holiday shopping at the mall ten miles away.
Dane said, “I'm guessing you haven't had any better luck at the other roadblocks or you wouldn't be here with me.”
Pray turned to her. “You grew up in town, right?”
“Born and bred, except for four years of Criminal Justice over to the university.”
“Answer me this, then. Three men hit our bank at opening, and then run for it instead of driving away. But they get into a pickup on a fire r
oad barely ten feet wide that would leave them no way out if just one of our cars—or hell, a county surveyor even—happened to be on the road at the same time. Now, why would a gang risk that?”
Edna Dane smiled, and Lon Pray thought he could see the teenager she'd have been a few years back shining through. “I guess if I knew that, Chief, you'd have stopped fifty-five vehicles this morning, and I'd be worried sick over what you didn't find.”
Chief Lon Pray stopped at his own house—a small ranch he rented on the edge of town—to let the dog out, as he did each day around lunchtime. Everybody else in the area just seemed to let their pets roam free during the day, and probably, Pray thought, in time he would, too. But back in Boston, before making detective, he'd tried unsuccessfully to comfort one too many kids kneeling in streets, crying uncontrollably while they in turn tried to will their pets back to life after being hit by passing cars.
And Lon Pray didn't think he could tolerate that happening to Grizzly at this time in his life. In Pray's own life, that is.
After his divorce, most of the marital property—house, car, even their TVs—went to the ex or her lawyer. Funny, Lon realized as he unlocked his back door. You thought of her as Sally in Boston but down here as the ex. I wonder if other guys—
Which is when Pray was knocked nearly flat.
“Grizzly!”
The combination German shepherd/Irish wolfhound had already bounded by him, loping around the yard like a racehorse around its paddock. Watching him, Pray couldn't stay mad. Grizzly had been the first creature in his life after the divorce, and the chief knew that, in a very basic way, the dog kept him sane.
By the time Grizzly got the pent-up energy burned off, Pray already had washed out his water bowl and filled it with fresh from the tap. Placing the bowl down in the yard, Pray watched Grizzly pad over in that slightly prancing way he had from the Irish side of his family. Lon decided to let the dog run free for another ten minutes, then grab a sandwich-to-go at the restaurant before wracking his brain again on why the robbers had planned their escape as they had.
And why the roadblocks hadn't turned them up.
But meanwhile, he'd take a page from Joe Bob Brew-ster's book and just sit on his porch, giving himself an early Christmas present by watching Grizzly enjoy the habit of midday exercise.
Driving by the Brewster place, Lon Pray gave a thought to stopping and asking Joe Bob a third time if he'd spotted anything, but the man was holding up a newspaper instead of the usual book, just the carroty hair visible above the top of the paper. Pray thought Joe Bob must be deep in thought, too, because he wasn't rocking, and Old Feller wasn't in his customary position but rather a full yard away from the chair.
It was five minutes later that Pray, ordering his trademark ham and cheese on wheat with mayo, suddenly registered what he'd seen. Then he put it together with what he'd heard, both as answers to his questions and as statements that had seemingly been offered gratuitously.
And, sprinting to his cruiser, Chief Lon Pray thought he'd figured it out.
Twenty minutes later, the man in the rocker was still holding the newspaper, and Old Feller was still lying a good three feet away.
Which was fine by Lon Pray, now crouched behind a tree rather than sitting behind a wheel.
Pray waited for three minutes more, until he heard the shrill whistle from the back of the house. Then he leveled his Glock 17 and yelled over the sound of breaking glass. “Let that paper fall from your hands without lowering them!”
Old Feller looked first toward Pray, then to the rocker. The paper trembled, but didn't fall from the fingers holding it.
“Be smart!” yelled Pray a little louder. “Nobody's been shot yet. Don't make yourself the first.”
From the back of the house, Officer Edna Dane's voice rang out with, “Clear in the house. I say again, the house is clear.”
Pray yelled a third, final time, “Last chance to see Christmas.”
The paper then wafted down, the hands staying in the air and about even with the carroty hair and the face below it that was almost, but not quite, Joe Bob Brewster's.
Chief Lon Pray said, “Just a day of bad biorhythms, Earl.”
“Chief, I was beginning to think I'd have to hit you in the head with a hammer.”
Lon Pray watched the Santa coffee mug shake as the man holding it shuddered in his rocking chair. “You did everything you could, Joe Bob. It just took me a while to catch on.”
“I mean, I lead with my brother, I flick my head toward the house, I even go on about Old Feller and‘strangers.’ But all you do is kind of grin and drive off.”
“Joe Bob, I just didn't get what you were telling me till I drove past half an hour ago.”
“When my brother Earl was out here.”
“Right. I'm guessing he wasn't too pleased with your mentioning his name to me.”
“He thought he had a tight plan, all right,” said Joe Bob, taking a slug of coffee. “Him and the other two hit the bank, then run down to the fire road. One gets in his own pickup that they left there, the other runs with Earl almost to my place. Old Feller didn't kick up any fuss when his owner's brother happens to stroll around from the back and ask how I'm doing. Then Earl tells me that him and his‘friend’ are gonna be in the house for a few days, waiting for things to cool down before they call their third friend to come back and pick them up.”
“Along with the guns and the money.”
“The money Earl never showed me, but he sure did wave that gun under my nose, and I knew I couldn't say anything direct-like to you, or he'd have shot through the window there and killed the both of us.”
Pray said, “So you tried to tip me, Earl didn't like it, and he came out onto your porch here to impersonate you.”
“Which was pretty smart of him, what with my habit of sitting out here.” Joe Bob took another slug from the mug. “Only my book wasn't big enough to cover his whole face, so he had to use a newspaper, which I doubt you've ever seen in my hands. That was what tipped you, right?”
“That plus some other things. I wondered how out-of-towners would know about the mill money and the fire road. I also wondered why the third man in the bank never spoke.”
“Simple,” said Joe Bob around another sip of coffee. “Old Mary Boles might've recognized his voice.”
“Another thing was, when I drove by a little while ago, your brother wasn't rocking in the chair like you do.”
“Earl tried that, but his rhythm was all off, and he caught Old Feller's tail underneath.”
“That's the last thing.”
“What is?” said Joe Bob.
Pray gestured toward the sleepy hound. “Old Feller wasn't switching his tail under your chair, and that seemed to me oddest of all.”
“Habits.”
“What?”
“Habits,” said Joe Bob Brewster. “We all have them. Sometimes they hurt, but sometimes they help, too.”
Chief Lon Pray found himself nodding in time to Old Feller's tail.
Eye Witness
David Leitz
Author of numerous short stories and the Max Addams fly-fishing mystery novels, DAVID LEITZ splits his time between a 250-year-old farmhouse on the north coast of Massachusetts and a cabin in the woods of southern Vermont. For more information about Mr. Leitz and his writing, see www.whitefork.com.
“I wish I was half the man my dog thinks I am.”
Anonymous
I watched him murder her; his bare left knee pressed hard between her soft, white, flopping breasts, holding her down as his thumbs pushed knuckle-deep into her neck. Her face turned blue, her mouth gaped, and her long legs kicked around his naked hips like she was running somewhere.
And as usual, I yawned.
I was used to it. I'd been watching him do it all week; hump her and then flip her to her back where she would twist and claw as he climbed roughly to her chest, straddled it and, throttling her neck with one hand, leaned over her face.
; They were like that; violent in their lovemaking … growling, biting, slick with sweat when it was over … only this time she didn't cough or laugh or even slap him.
She just sprawled there on the bed of twisted sheets. And smelled of death.
He walked to his chair by the now-dead fire, wrapped his bony shoulders in the afghan, and sat. Then he lit a cigarette, exhaled at the ceiling, and scratched me behind the right ear. “I think I've got a problem, Jack, old buddy,” he said to me. “A big problem.”
It was the first time he'd touched me in days. I licked his hand. It was strangely warm and tasted of her.
He pulled it away. “Jesus, Jack.”
After he finished his cigarette, he flipped the butt into the fireplace and we both slept.
When I awoke, he was gone. So was she. The bed was stripped to the mattress, the pillows were on the floor, and I could hear voices in the downstairs hall.
“It just got out of hand,” I heard him say. “We went crazy. It was like she was begging me to do it.”
“I told you she was a bad one,” a man's voice I'd never heard before said. “I told you. When she first started coming here I told you she'd find a way to fuck you over. Didn't I?”
My man didn't answer.
I got to my feet, stretched, shook, and went to the big carved door. It was ajar but my nose wouldn't fit in the opening. I couldn't open it.
I whined.
They were still talking and couldn't hear me.
I barked. Two short, sharp ones like I use when I get trapped in the kitchen bathroom after drinking from the toilet bowl. I barked again.
“Shit,” my man said. “I must've shut Jack in the bedroom.” His feet started up the stairs.
“The bedroom … ?”
“Yeah. The bedroom.” The footsteps were almost to the top of the stairs.
“You telling me he was there?” Now I heard the other man start up the stairs. He was heavier. “The fucking dog saw you do it?”
They were in the upstairs hall now. “She seemed to get more turned on when he watched,” my man said.
The door opened before I could get out of the way, and it caught my left foot as it swung in. It startled me more than it hurt and I yelped.
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