Chill Factor

by Chris Rogers

  He shaded his eyes against the glare, hesitating. Then he charged toward the truck, shoulder muscles bunching as he knotted his fists.

  Watching him storm at her like a raging javelina, Dixie mentally flashed on the .45 in the tool safe—too far to reach. Anyway, Voller wasn’t armed. She could handle him. She could.

  Snapping open the glove box, she kept one eye on the skip as she grabbed a pair of handcuffs.

  “Jimmy!” the girlfriend screeched from the front door. “Baby, don’t let them take my car!”

  Through the open truck window, Dixie kept the spotlight shining in Voller’s eyes. He blinked but charged onward, fists swinging like sledgehammers.

  Leaving the window down, Dixie locked the door. She slid backward on the truck seat, snapping the handcuff open.

  The thermos fell over. Iced tea soaked her crotch. Shit! And still no sign of that patrol car.

  Voller seized the door handle. Dixie lunged forward, reached through the open window, and clamped the cuff around his wrist.

  “What the fuck!!!?” He jerked his arm back as if stung.

  But Dixie yanked the handcuff tight and snapped the other end to the steering wheel.

  “Forget your court date, Jimmy? The judge suggested someone should drop by, see you don’t forget again.”

  “Goddammit to hell! This ain’t no repo!”

  His menacing free hand shot toward her. She ducked out of reach. He kicked the truck door but, barefooted, didn’t quite dent it. He howled.

  “Jimmy, baby? What’s happening out there?” The girlfriend, in a T-shirt and panties, minced across the yard swinging a butcher knife.

  Oh, great. “Back inside, lady! Jimmy Baby’s going to jail.” Dixie cranked up the window until it trapped Voller’s shackled arm. His curses grew more colorful.

  For a butt-numbing hour, with Voller snorting like an enraged bull and his girlfriend alternately cursing Dixie and pleading tearfully for her to let him go, they waited. Dixie’s cell-phone inquiry brought the curt assurance that a patrol car would be dispatched as soon as possible. Finally, a blue-and-white whipped into the driveway.

  “Sorry,” the officer muttered. “Bunch of 911s came in. Your call shuffled to the bottom.”

  Six minutes later, with Voller on his way to jail and the Camaro back on the ground where it belonged, Dixie pointed her tow truck down the twenty-mile stretch of highway toward home. Recalling the look on Voller’s face when he realized he’d been duped, she couldn’t help grinning. Skip tracing did have its moments of satisfaction.

  More moments, perhaps, than her decade on the DA’s staff. The realization always saddened her. She’d entered the study of law with an expectation of making a difference. Although law certainly was fallible and susceptible to human error, Dixie’d been callow enough to expect truth and justice would prevail.

  Truth, she soon discovered, was a pale ghost roaming lost in the courthouse halls. While Dixie sparred with legal swashbucklers over petty technicalities, confirmed criminals swaggered through revolving jailhouse doors. When she could no longer stomach the futile fencing, Dixie’d tucked her sword and shingle into a briefcase and drifted.

  Now, three years later, she still drifted, winning minor skirmishes like the one tonight. Her efforts didn’t count for much, but at least she could look her five-foot-four-inch self in the mirror and see truth standing behind her.

  Truth and the occasional bail bondsman with a fat check.

  Dixie clicked on the dome light and snatched up the bank statement from the passenger seat. Holding it so she could watch the deserted road and still scan the page, she tried to recall some withdrawal that would explain the overdraft. Obviously, she’d used the ATM on the fly, without jotting the amount in her checkbook, and the bank had neglected to apply her overdraft protection. Banks did occasionally make mistakes.

  The only other explanation she liked even less: Someone had snatched more than three thousand dollars from her account. Shot one hell of a big hole in the fee she’d earned that night.

  Chapter Two

  8:55 A.M.

  Historic Richmond awakened like a lazy cat as Dixie stopped her Mustang in front of Texas Citizens Bank. Once a fort, when Stephen F. Austin’s vanguard of colonists landed at a bend in the Brazos River, the small town now melded into the fringe of Houston’s southwest suburbs, where increasingly more urbanites sought greener, safer, quieter lifestyles.

  Despite growth pains, the town’s heritage landmarks remained intact. Morton Street, where Dixie now parked, had floated rescue boats during the Great Flood of 1899. A clerk at the county courthouse six blocks away had issued a marriage license to Barney and Kathleen Flannigan, Dixie’s adoptive parents; at that same site, a doctor had registered their deaths. And five minutes down the farm-to-market road lay the family home and pecan orchard Dixie’d inherited from them.

  This morning she’d cut the trip to three minutes. Her overdraft problem loomed like a toothy monster.

  She loathed handling money and only sporadically balanced her checkbook. To counter her shortcomings, she used direct-draft banking, carbonless-copy checks, a single credit card, a CPA—inconveniently out of town this week—and a financial planner to handle her investments. She’d rather wrestle the meanest water moccasin on a Texas bayou than haggle over the money missing from her account, but she wanted the problem gone before her self-defense class later that morning.

  Ignoring the blinds still drawn shut across the bank’s expansive sweep of glass, she stepped from the Mustang and tugged on the door. Locked.

  Brown eyes, road-mapped from too little sleep, glared back at her from the sun-silvered glass. Her hair looked as spiky as a clump of swamp weeds in a drought—she’d been too impatient to use the hair dryer—and her hastily laundered jeans and shirt felt damp. Not one of her best grooming days.

  As soon as the lock clicked open, she pushed through the door, bank notice gripped in one determined fist—

  Three thousand dollars!

  —zipped past the startled young woman behind the new-accounts desk—

  Gone! How in Hades had a bank with thirty-odd years’ experience lost track of her hard-earned money?

  —stalked past the teller windows, past the loan desks, past the branch manager’s latest painted and coiffed secretary.

  “Ms. Flannigan, good morn—wait!” The secretary popped up from behind her desk. “You can’t go in there.”

  Facing Dixie’s glare, she backed off.

  Len Bacon, a phone at one ear, leaned back in his executive swivel chair, desk as clean as a new notepad. When he saw Dixie, his hound-dog jowls worked his mouth into a smile.

  “A customer just came in,” Len said into the phone. “Let me call you back.” Rising, he glanced behind Dixie to the secretary following at her heels.

  “Sorry, Mr. Bacon. I couldn’t stop—”

  “It’s fine, Dana, fine. I’ll handle it.”

  The secretary backed out, closing the door.

  Still smiling, Len offered a handshake.

  Dixie slapped the bank notice into his palm.

  “Three thousand dollars disappeared out of my account.”

  “Dixie, Dixie, Dixie.” The jowls shook amiably as Len wagged his unperturbed head. He patted the air toward a chair, which Dixie ignored. “If there’s a discrepancy, I’m sure it’s merely a computer error. Computers are wonderful at unexplained mischief.” When she continued to glare, he added, “Sit down, sit down. Let’s take a look at your file.”

  Grudgingly, she sank onto a tweed guest chair. Len settled his portly rump onto his leather executive model. The chair whooshed in protest.

  Turning to the computer on his credenza, he tapped a few keys. Over his shoulder, Dixie watched bright green numbers scroll on a gray screen and recalled the day she’d started banking here—the day after her thirteenth birthday. Barney had brought her in with twenty-seven dollars gift money stuffed in a pink vinyl purse.

  “You’ll never beg a l
oan, lass,” Barney told her, “if you remember the rule o’ thirds. One third o’ every dollar goes into a principal account. You daren’t touch it, even when wind howls through your roof and you’ve only one cold potato to ill your belly. You don’t touch it.”

  Before being adopted at twelve, Dixie’d known a day or two when she wouldn’t have turned up her nose at a cold potato.

  “The second third you tuck into a wishes-and-treasures account, mounting it up for a special treat, a vision that makes your innards quiver when you think about it.”

  As she wrestled with dividing twenty-seven dollars by three, Dixie’s wayward thoughts drifted toward a pair of white boots she’d seen in a magazine—

  “And the final third you spend on daily necessities.”

  “Like what?” Dixie blurted. Carla Jean, her birth mother, had considered hair ribbons and nail polish necessities, though Dixie’s underpants might pinch and only a layer of cardboard kept dirt from creeping through the soles of her shoes. At the Flannigans’, food, clothes, books, and anything else Dixie needed were hers for the asking. Not that she’d think of asking for something as frivolous as white boots.

  “What are necessities, lass? Well, whatever you think they are. Birthday card for a friend? Strawberry sundae with Amy after the movies?”

  Fifteen-year-old Amy, Dixie’s adoptive sister, had bought her a sundae just last week. Dixie hadn’t thought about where the money came from. Should she pay Amy back?

  Money … her own money … money of her very own. Dixie’s teenage head suddenly ached. She opened the pink purse and shoved the bills into Barney’s broad hands.

  “Please. You take care of it for me.”

  Despite Barney’s patient counseling, she’d avoided dealing with money ever since. And the bank officer who’d opened that first “principal” savings account had been a much younger, much thinner Len Bacon.

  “Here it is,” Len said now. “Here’s the problem. A two-thousand-dollar check you deposited, Dixie, was returned from the payee’s bank, marked insufficient. My dear, when you made the deposit, you apparently withdrew a thousand dollars of the money in cash.” His voice dropped into the sympathetic zone. “When the check was returned to us unpaid, we had to debit your account for the cash you received.”

  A handful of unopened mail lay in a basket in Dixie’s kitchen, where she’d tossed it before her thirty-six-hour skip-chasing flurry.

  “That’s one thousand. What about the other two?”

  He scrolled through the numbers and hit a couple of keys.

  “More of the same … yes, more of the same. You deposited four more checks … hmmm, that’s interesting, at four different branches in one day … each time withdrawing part of the funds in cash. All five deposited checks were returned insufficient.”

  Five deposits? Hell, she hadn’t received that many checks last month. And she never used another branch, except for ATM withdrawals.

  “Who are the checks from?”

  “Hmmmm, let’s see … here it is—Cook. All five checks—for different amounts—were written on the personal account of a Mr. James Cook.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  Len swiveled to face Dixie. “You’re saying you didn’t make those deposits?”

  “No, I—”

  The office door popped open, and Dana stuck her head in.

  “Mr. Bacon! This … this lady says you’re to come out here immediately!”

  Through the glass wall separating Len’s office from the lobby, Dixie could see people lying prone on the floor. At the teller’s window, a smiling, middle-aged woman pointed a revolver at a teller’s head. A holdup?

  Watching Len scurry to comply, Dixie mentally ticked off a half-dozen stupid tactics that might stop the robbery and would likely get someone shot. Her gaze took in the video camera near the lobby ceiling, the frightened teller, the woman with the gun.

  She looked familiar …

  Then Dixie’s gaze locked on the desk phone, inches from her hand. Her fingers flexed toward it—

  No … wait for the right moment.

  Through the glass partition, she studied the bank robber. Five-three, late fifties, blond-gray hair stylishly combed. Pleasant, round face. Blue silk dress, matching shoes, gold earrings. Impeccably groomed. Hell, she was the TV version of every kid’s Aunt Bea.

  Aunt Bea wouldn’t actually pull the trigger and blow a teller’s head off.

  But then, neither would she rob a bank.

  Two other Texas Citizens branches had been robbed recently, Dixie recalled—one just yesterday. In both cases, the thief was a woman over fifty—but that woman was killed after the second robbery. The police shoot-out had been all over the evening news. One middle-aged female bank robber seemed impossible, but two?

  As Len hustled behind the tellers’ counter to the vault, the robber shifted slightly to watch him. Dixie waited a beat, then reached across the desk, eased the receiver up to open the line, and tapped 9—1—

  Something crashed through the glass, zinged past Dixie, and slammed into Len’s leather chair. A bullet! She dropped the phone.

  Her heart thumped hard enough to break a rib.

  The bank robber, smiling her sweet Aunt Bea smile, shook her head at Dixie and motioned her down to the floor. As Dixie knelt, glimpsing the woman’s face from a new angle, she recognized her: not Aunt Bea but Aunt Edna, her own neighbor!

  Memories flashed through Dixie’s mind: She’d gone to school with Edna Pine’s son, Marty. Dated him in high school. Every summer, Edna and her husband Bill had taken the three teenagers—Marty, Dixie, and Amy—camping at Brazos Bend State Park, bowling at Richmond Lanes. The last time Dixie’d seen Edna—a year ago, at Bill’s funeral—she’d hugged the widow as she sobbed into a handkerchief.

  But even at Bill’s funeral Edna hadn’t been gussied up as she was now—looking not a day over fifty-five when she must be a decade older. No wonder Dixie hadn’t recognized the woman.

  Gussied up or not, the Edna Dixie knew was a loving mother, a gentle soul. Kind. Thoughtful. A good neighbor. No way was Aunt Edna a gun-wielding bank robber.

  Yet, pressed to the floor, Dixie watched through the glass partition as her neighbor of nearly twenty-eight years carried away three canvas bags bulging with stolen money.

  Chapter Three

  Humming “The Merry Widow,” fingers marking perfect waltz time on the steering wheel, the Shepherd of The Light watched for Edna’s blue Subaru to exit the bank parking lot. Balanced on his knee was a small, gold-edged notebook where he’d recorded the subject’s progress. The careful jottings included phrases he knew would brighten the widow’s smile or cause her pain, key words that, used in the right order, would entice her into a lion’s cage should he choose to suggest it.

  He’d tuned Edna like an exquisite piano. In precisely ninety-two seconds she’d sail past him, eagerly delivering the bank’s money.

  The only hitch had come when the Shepherd arrived to find a Houston Lighting & Power crew working on a transformer near the drop point. Subject will realize she must drop the bag outside the workers’ line of vision, he penned, in his precise style. The minimal script change will not cause her any confusion.

  But as he capped his pen, the Shepherd’s pulse quickened. No subject was entirely predictable. Yet, he felt certain his merry widow could easily handle such an insignificant correction in the script, and each test she passed reinforced his belief in the power of positive—or negative—persuasion.

  Outside his car window, a brown spider dropped a thread from the splayed fingers of a mimosa leaf and hung suspended, swinging gently in the morning breeze. The Shepherd watched, fascinated, as the slender, jointed legs worked at casting a second thread.

  Sometimes the Shepherd liked to imagine himself a mighty arachnid, commander of a giant web spanning the underbelly of the country’s control centers, touching the most powerful offices, the most influential homes. Thrum any strand and the entire web vibrated.

/>   He’d learned about vibrations on an October afternoon when he was nine years old. School let out early. Whooping with glee and bounding with energy, he rode his bike the long way home, knowing his mother wouldn’t arrive from her Bible study group until later. She’d promised to decide today whether he’d get the new racing bike in Johnson’s shop window.

  But passing the Cactus Bar, he noticed something that caused him to brake hard and pull over into the shadows, the gossamer fabric of an idea materializing in his brain.

  During one of his parents’ arguments, loud enough to hear throughout the house, his father had promised to stop gambling. Yet, here he came now, out of the Cactus Bar & Truck Stop. And the scowl dragging the corners of his mouth southward suggested his pockets had been plucked clean.

  A moment later one of his father’s gambling buddies exited, shoving a wad of bills deep in his pocket. A woman clung to the man’s arm like a sand burr to socks. Both laughed, heading toward a row of cabins. His father tossed a hard look after the pair, then staggered to his Plymouth sedan.

  The bike seemed to move on its own. Rolling right up to the car, its front wheel bumped his father’s leg.

  “What the hell?” His father’s billfold fell to the dirt.

  “Sorry, Dad.” But as he picked up the empty leather wallet, he resisted a smile, recalling his mother’s words during the noisy argument … If I hear you’re gambling again, I’m calling a lawyer and filing for divorce. “What’s wrong with a friendly poker game,” his father had whined. Friendly? Your friends lining their pockets with my money? I won’t have it.

  Dusting off the billfold, he asked, “Did Mom talk to you about the blue racer?”

  “The blue what?” His father’s words sounded mushy and smelled of the Scotch whiskey he liked to drink. “You mean that bicycle you’ve been on about?”

  “In Johnson’s Sport Shop. She’ll buy it if you say to.” He let his gaze drift toward the bar, where two more of his father’s gambling pals had stepped out the door.