Chill Factor

by Chris Rogers

  “You’ve got a bicycle. Perfectly good one.” But his father darted an anxious glance at the two men, another at the couple, still laughing as they entered a cabin, then back at his son. “That racer, boy, that’s a lot of money,” he added, as if the cost hadn’t already been discussed at length.

  “Yes, sir. My birthday’s only a month—”

  “Your mother worries you’re not mature enough to take care of a bicycle that expensive. Not a toy, it’s a responsibility.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What do you know about … responsibility?” His father spit the word at him, harsh and biting.

  “Keep my room picked up. Get good grades.” Ever since the blue racer appeared in the shop window, he’d been cleaning his room and doing his homework without being nagged. “Take out the trash.” He’d only missed one night this week.

  The crease between his father’s eyes sharpened like a hatchet mark. “Your mother has a great deal on her mind these days, church studies, the new housekeeper. I don’t like worrying her about … things.”

  “No, sir.” Some of his parents’ noisiest arguments concerned the amount of time his mother spent at church. “But the racer—” He stopped suggestively.

  “There’s no need to trouble your mother about my stopping off here. For one drink”

  “No, sir.”

  “Boy your age, old enough to understand responsibility, doesn’t worry his mother. You won’t be bothering her about … anything?”

  “No, sir.”

  They stared at each other in the afternoon heat. Sweat beads hung from the bristly hairs above his father’s ears; his eyes, small and green and hard, did not blink. Finally, his father looked away.

  “Guess I can put a bug in your mother’s ear about that bicycle, tell her you’re grown-up enough. I’ll talk to her tonight.”

  “Great! Thanks, Dad!”

  Later that week, as he zipped along on the gleaming blue racer, the situation between his mother and father and the gambling popped repeatedly into his mind. He suspected his mother would’ve reached a different decision about the new bike if not for his father’s encouragement … if not for that chance ride past the Cactus Bar & Truck Stop. He filed away the experience to examine again from time to time. To squeeze every bit of learning out of it. Thrum.

  A week later, at lunch, he sat beside Penny Hatcher, the most awkward, smelliest girl in his fourth-grade class. No prize himself—short, skinny, with big ears, freckles so dark and numerous he looked diseased—he knew well how it felt to be snubbed. When Laura Shane, the class beauty, strolled by their table and “accidentally” tipped over Penny’s milk, ruining her sandwich, he offered Penny half his lunch.

  At first, she was dubious. No one ever treated Penny kindly, probably not even at home. When she realized he wasn’t going to snatch the sandwich back at the last moment or tease her in some other monstrous way, she turned to him with the most astonishing look.

  “Grateful” was how he eventually tagged it, as his father had been grateful that his mother never found out about the continued gambling. But at that moment he only knew, instinctively, that Penny Hatcher would do practically anything he asked because he’d shown her that small courtesy. Ask her for something, the voice nagged, the voice he’d come to think of as his racer voice. Ask her now.

  But he couldn’t think of anything.

  “I’m failing arithmetic,” he’d stammered, finally. “And you’re the best in class. I wish I was as smart as you.”

  “Really?” Penny blushed. “I’d be glad to help you.”

  Thrum.

  Over the months ahead, he thought of Penny as a banjo that needed only a talented hand at the strings. He learned exactly what to say and do to intensify that look in her pale eyes.

  “Is that a new dress? The color looks great on you.”

  Penny started washing more often after that and doing something different with her hair.

  “I like it curly,” he told her. “You could be in the movies.”

  She laughed, but walked prouder and spoke up more often in class.

  “Your oral report,” he promised, “will be the best of anyone’s. Read it to me again for practice.”

  By the end of the school year, Penny had earned respect from the teacher as well as her classmates. She’d never win any beauty contests, but she no longer sat alone at lunch. And the look in her eyes when she gazed at him bordered on worship.

  In return, he rarely asked anything of Penny. A week before summer break, he decided it was time.

  “Did you see that catcher’s mitt at Johnson’s Sport Shop? I can’t believe Mom won’t buy it for me. I need that mitt for try-outs next week.”

  Of course, Mom would buy it—he knew by now that all it’d take was casually mentioning the Cactus Bar & Truck Stop when Dad was in the room—but he wanted to test Penny’s gratitude. Three days later, she gave him the catcher’s mitt wrapped in a brown gift box. He never asked how she got it.

  Over the following summer, he thought a lot about that experiment with Penny, never doubting that his friendship and coaching had elevated her from class embarrassment to class monitor. If he could do that with Penny, why not with someone more … promising? Thrum.

  During the next four years, he singled out seven classmates for special attention. The girls were by far more compliant than the boys, but he sensed the key lay not so much in gender as in some other quality he hadn’t quite identified, at least not consciously. Operating mostly by instinct, he created a network of devoted disciples, learned to play each one like an instrument, discovering when to strum a chord and when to thump it. By the end of grade school, his network had helped him acquire answers to a number of math tests and kept him supplied with the latest sports equipment.

  In high school, he discovered similar tactics that worked with select teachers. And he remained ever watchful for opportune situations. He found the gym teacher’s peephole into the girls’ dressing room. He caught Jane Greer letting other guys feel her up while her boyfriend ran laps at football practice. He discovered the marijuana hidden in Ms. Skinner’s bottom desk drawer.

  At college, his web encompassed every department on campus. Powerful enough to amass him a sizable bank balance, it got him laid as often as he wanted, prompted an associate professor’s dismissal, and encouraged a sophomore’s suicide. That last unfortunate incident forced him to relocate, sever all connections with his past, and change his name. Now his web reached from coast to coast and deep into the national bureaucracy. Every experiment captured another gossamer layer of knowledge toward assuming control of more power than any U.S. president had ever dreamed of.

  The brown spider swung a strand from a third mimosa leaf. The shimmering threads defined an area roughly thirty inches in diameter—ambitious, for such a small arachnid.

  When Edna’s blue Subaru zipped out of the bank parking lot right on schedule and passed through the intersection, the Shepherd meticulously penned the fact in his notebook. He waited ten seconds, allowing a pickup truck and two cars to pass between them, then pulled into the street. The Subaru turned at the boarded-up strip center as planned, to circle behind and exit on the side street.

  Would she drop the money in the clump of weeds behind the old pharmacy, as rehearsed? Or would she make the adjustment and drop it outside the workers’ line of sight?

  Spying the canvas bags lying in the shadows four yards beyond the original drop spot, he smiled, braking just long enough to pull the bags into his car. The merry widow had performed outstandingly. He recalled how determined she’d been to succeed at this assignment. All in all, Edna had been much happier over these past months than when he’d first met her: He prided himself on that. Too bad her usefulness had come to an end.

  Thrum.

  Chapter Four

  The officer interviewing Dixie couldn’t have been more than thirty days out of the academy, she decided. His shirt, so crisp it could stand on its own, retained the absolut
e blue of uniform fabric not yet faded from laundering. And judging from three fresh nicks on his face, he’d shaved after a bad night. His voice held the slow twang of East Texas. Officer G. Tobler.

  “You said your name is …?”

  “Dixie Flannigan.” For the third time.

  Dixie’s mind hadn’t yet assimilated the rush of events following the robbery—tellers babbling, a customer sobbing, Len Bacon patting the air, assuring all would be “fine, folks, absolutely fine,” if everyone simply remained calm. The young officer’s attention kept straying to his equally young partner communicating by radio with a patrol car on the Southwest Freeway—where the real action was unfolding in a highspeed chase. Apparently, someone had triggered an alarm, and a Richmond patrol unit had locked on to Edna’s Subaru. When she refused to pull over, the chase left Richmond, picking up patrol cars in two additional jurisdictions before entering Houston city limits. HPD assistance brought more units, including a helicopter—against one Subaru and a sixty-something woman who must’ve gone totally nuts.

  She hadn’t a prayer of outrunning them.

  Pull over, Edna. But as Dixie continued eavesdropping on the chase, a nasty, undisciplined little voice deep down inside her cheered, Go, Edna, go!

  “Ma’am, what were you doing alone in the manager’s office?”

  Dixie’d answered this question before, too, but she repeated her explanation, her gaze drifting toward a clock. Fifty-six minutes until her self-defense class. Not that Officer G. Tobler’s interview wasn’t important, but the women Dixie taught were all victims of abuse or, for other good reasons, fearful of attack. The unexplained absence of their instructor could send them wailing back to their support groups.

  “And you say the perpetrator fired through the glass after you dialed 911?”

  “Before I could finish—”

  The radio captured the officer’s attention again. From the crackling communication between patrol cars, the dispatcher, and Tobler’s partner, Dixie deciphered that the Subaru had exited the freeway and finally pulled over. Good, Edna. Now, tell the nice officers it was all a mistake. The devil made you do it, or late menopause craziness, or—

  POP! POP! POP! crackled from the radio, then “OFFICER DOWN!”

  Dixie groaned. “Oh, Edna, no!”

  Officer Tobler stared at her.

  “Ma’am, are you acquainted with the suspect?”

  Before Dixie could answer, more shots sounded. She held her breath. The next words were like stepping from a humid, sunny day into an open freezer.

  “SUSPECT DOWN.” Dixie’s stomach turned queasy. Down … did that mean dead?

  “I have to get there,” she told Tobler in a voice she hoped held the snap of command.

  Maybe it was the rookie’s own eagerness to be involved in the drama, or maybe it was the fact that Dixie knew most of the senior officers in the Richmond Police Department, but Tobler radioed the patrol officer who’d originally tagged the Subaru. After a moment, a voice came back with a brusque order to escort the witness to the scene of the shooting. The suspect has no identification, Dixie figured. They need my assistance.

  Praying she’d been mistaken, that a trick of light had betrayed her into seeing Edna’s face on the shoulders of a stranger, Dixie hurried with Tobler to his car. Then realization finally trickled through to her resistant brain cells. If the suspect were still alive, Tobler would’ve been instructed to take Dixie to the hospital.

  Her steps faltered beside the police car. When the officer opened the door, the sharp scent of floral freshener engulfed her, and Tobler’s earnest young face suddenly looked too eager, his black shoes too shiny, too new. He was too goddamn ready to sharpen his experience on the death of an old lady who’d baked the best peanut-butter cookies ever stolen from a cookie jar. Dixie didn’t want to stare down at her neighbor’s dead face and pronounce her a thief—or worse—if the wounded officer had died, too, a capital murderer.

  Tobler’s insistent grip on Dixie’s arm urged her onto the passenger seat. He shut the door and circled to the driver’s side, speaking quietly into his cell phone.

  Does he think I’m an accomplice?

  Dixie shrugged it off. On the drive, she almost convinced herself it would not be Edna. Whoops, sorry, guys. Sure looked like my neighbor, there in the bank, but out here in daylight …

  It was Edna. Even without seeing her face, Dixie instantly recognized the heart-shaped mole scar on her neck. Marty had insisted his mother have the mole tested after Dixie’s adoptive mother died of cancer. An inch-long, gray hair grew from the scar. With Edna’s snappy new clothes and expert makeup, the hair looked grotesque.

  A bilious knot lodged in Dixie’s throat. She looked away from the corpse, scarcely hearing Tobler’s comments to the ranking sergeant. Her gaze slid around the secured area. When any HPD officer discharged a side arm, especially if injury or death resulted, a crime scene instantly became enormously complicated. The officer’s supervisor appeared, along with his union lawyer, Internal Affairs, Homicide, and the DA’s Civil Rights Division. The HPD training team, self-billed as Heckle and Jeckle, occasionally showed up. Today the whole gang had gathered.

  Outside a yellow-tape perimeter, the media crowded close with cameras and microphones. Civilian vehicles rolled slowly along the nearby freeway, rubbernecking, causing traffic to back up. A few cars had pulled off and stopped.

  Dixie realized she stood at the center of the crowd, still grappling with the idea that the neighbor she knew growing up could be the same woman who now lay dead at her feet, the same woman who just minutes ago had calmly held a gun to a teller’s head. The images refused to merge.

  A few feet away stood a tight blue circle of officers: the shooters. Male. Female. From a medley of jurisdictions. Some appeared stunned. A few looked as ill as Dixie felt. Others wore hard, insolent veneers.

  Taking two long strides, Dixie confronted a male HPD officer who looked totally alert, yet horrified.

  “Nine hotshot shooters against one old lady?” The words felt puny leaving her lips, shoved out by a cold rage. “Isn’t this how that robbery ended yesterday in Webster?”

  The astonished officer opened his mouth to reply—

  But Dixie pressed on. “Don’t you idiots talk to one another between jurisdictions?”

  A hand grasped her upper arm.

  “Flannigan, what’s going on here?” HPD Homicide Sergeant Ben Rashly tugged her away from the officer.

  Dixie tried to yank her arm from his grip. When he didn’t let go, she allowed herself to be pulled aside.

  “They could’ve handled it better, Rash! She didn’t have to goddamn die.”

  He glared back at her. “You know that woman or not, Flannigan?”

  “I’ve known her family since I was a kid.” The sharp burst of words had loosened something inside her. “Her name is Edna Pine. Next of kin is Marty Pine, her son, owns an art gallery in Dallas—Essence or Pleasance or something—and Edna wouldn’t do this, Rash, not the robbery, not the shooting, and she never wore high-heeled goddamn shoes in her life, at least not … not … Shit! She was a good person. Something’s wrong here, Rash. Totally wrong!”

  “Okay, okay.” His scowl softened. “Let’s move along now and let these people finish up.” Taking her arm, he led her toward his unmarked sedan. “We can talk downtown, if you want.”

  “I can’t go downtown. I have a class to teach in fourteen minutes. We can talk here.”

  The sight of Ben Rashly’s strong, square hands filling his pipe, and the familiar scent of Middleton’s Cherry Blend tobacco, dropped a layer of normality against the morning’s horror. Dixie’d worked with Ben while she was with the DA’s office. They’d developed a mutual respect as he bounced from Fraud to Sex Crimes to Accident Division. A year ago, he’d transferred to Homicide.

  “Actually, Flannigan, we’re glad to have the quick ID, so we can move on this.” He took her statement and let her go, knowing where to find her if he had more
questions.

  And he would have more questions. Dixie only wished she had more answers.

  Chapter Five

  Rose Yenik perched on a straight-backed chair in a plain room, two feet from her tiny television, and watched a news flash that had interrupted her favorite soap. For a sizable chunk of the year, Rose’s sixty-fifth year on God’s earth, she had occupied this room at appointed intervals. She found the plainness soothing. Natural pine furniture, white bedding, and a single garden window provided a blank canvas for thought. Rose spent hours at that window. But her church allotted only an hour a day for television, so when the dolly-faced news anchor broke in with a flash report, Rose was at first annoyed.

  Now she stared at the screen, unwilling to believe her ears. First Lucy, now Edna … how the dickens had both women failed so pitifully? Of course, the newswoman didn’t yet know it was Edna she reported about so dispassionately. But Rose knew.

  And what good were those roving videocams when all they showed of the shooting scene was another reporter, with the crowd milling behind?

  A little square picture of Lucy popped onto the screen.

  “Last week a similar robbery occurred at a Houston branch of Texas Citizens Bank. Yesterday a robbery at the Webster branch ended in the shooting death of Lucy Aaron Ames …”

  “Oh, my good friends,” Rose murmured, reaching a trembling hand to touch the screen. The first stickup had gone without a hitch last week. Lucy’s insider information came through as good as gold … as good as the sixty-seven thousand and change that now lined the church’s coffer.

  “It’ll be a snap,” Lucy had promised in her matter-of-fact style. “Bank employees are trained not to risk lives. We go in quiet, we go out fast. The money is government-insured, and we’ll certainly make better use of it than Uncle Sam ever has.”

  Amen to that.

  But then the bank’s security people must have wised up and changed tactics. Lucy was dead, and now Edna. Dead.