by Robert Rand
Sullivan closed the door slowly behind April, trying to keep the sheriff in view as long as possible. The black and white kept moving without so much as a glance in the direction of his or April’s homes. Still, he didn’t take a breath until the door was closed and the deadbolt secure.
“Did you see that?” he asked.
“See what? Is everything okay? Did you get the money? You didn’t get hurt, did you?” The nonchalance he had seen through the peephole had suddenly vanished as her calm dissolved and her questions came out in rapid-fire succession without pause for a reply.
Sullivan took her by the shoulders to steady her, “The cops just drove by as you walked in the house,” He stated.
Her eyes widened with fright and she started to say something, but he interrupted. “Could they have followed you?”
“No,” she responded immediately, “I’m positive that no one followed me. I would have noticed. I kept looking to be sure.”
“Okay,” he said as he turned and pulled the heavy gold baroque drapes enough to peer out the window. “It was probably that cop who always patrols this area.”
Releasing the drapes, he turned once more and walked back into the kitchen, April followed. He went straight to the backpack and pulled out the cash box. “I could only get one box,” he said as he opened its lid.
“How much is in there?” she asked.
Dumping the contents onto the kitchen counter, Sullivan replied, “We’ll soon find out,” and smiled. They each began grabbing twenties.
“Put them out just like at the bank,” April suggested. Demonstrating what she meant, she began laying down the bills in an overlapping pattern of five across, ten down for a total of $1,000.
Sullivan followed suit and in just a couple minutes, they had twenty such stacks.
“Twenty grand.” His voice was tinged with disgust.
April looked up, “It’s nowhere near enough.” She was numb.
The Aryan Brotherhood had demanded he begin making payments within 48 hours. They ware smart enough to know that he didn’t have the money and that this was their best chance of being paid. Sullivan Rourk needed $100 thousand in 12 hours. The money he had just stolen combined with their savings and everything in their checking accounts, added to a dozen credit card advances would put him at close to $60 thousand. That meant thee next bank he would have to get at least two of the three money boxes inside the ATM.
They talked about the job just completed, the need to reduce the explosive charge and April brought up the fact that neither of them had thought to cover the license plate on the motorcycle.
This last thought worried Sullivan. He decided to put a strip of duct tape across the plate once he neared the next bank. They hid the money and the box in a tool shed in the back yard then went back inside, where Sullivan grabbed the yellow pages and opened it to “BANKS.” He counted the number of banks then wrote those numbers out on strips of paper, thirty-seven in all. Once the numbers were written down, he folded each piece of paper and put them in a pitcher, then had April draw one number out. This, they jokingly referred to as the “Robbery Raffle” as they sought to lighten the stress they both felt.
April opened the paper, and with movements reminiscent of Barkers Beauties on The Price is Right, she showed the number to the imaginary audience, “Today’s lucky winner is number six,” she said in a sotto game show announcers’ voice.
Sullivan counted down the column in the phone book. “American Savings on Date Palm Canyon Road.”
“That’s kind of close to here, isn’t it?” April dropped the game show bit as real worry filled her.
“Yeah, but it’s also far enough away from the other one that it won’t be expected,” he assured her.
They went out to the garage, bringing the backpack and riding gear with them. Sullivan quickly wired two more charges, much smaller charges, and put them inside the backpack. April grabbed one of his double extra large tee shirts from the clothes hamper and suggested he tie it to the tank of the bike so it would look like a white motorcycle from a distance. He enthusiastically agreed and gave her a congratulatory kiss for her idea. With the tee shirt secure, he put on his helmet, jacket and gloves. He had April grab the garage door opener from inside the Vette and told her to go out the front door and go to her Jeep. He also instructed her to activate the automatic garage door opener once she was outside and could see that there were no cops in the area. A few minutes after April had left, the automatic garage door opener came to life and the door was pulled open. Sullivan had the bike started and moving before the door had fully opened. Turning right out of his driveway, he shifted into second and sped past April in the Jeep. It took him less than ten minutes to reach the American Savings. There was no one in sight as he pulled up close to the building and parked.
He was better prepared this time and stepped right up to the ATM that was mounted in the wall of the bank facing Date Palm Canyon Road. From the backpack, which he now wore against his chest like an infant carrier, he withdrew the charges and quickly affixed them into place. Without so much as a backward glance, Sullivan stepped a few feet away to stand around the protective corner of the red brick building. As soon as he was out of the potential blast area, he depressed the activator button.
The blast was immediately followed by the audible alarm from the bank. However, this blast did not cause the damage that the first had wrought. The mangled remains of the ATM’s façade was tossed about forty feet by the force of the explosion, landing near the double yellow line in the center of the road.
Sullivan stepped quickly to the opening and grabbed the center moneybox, then managed to work the remaining two boxes out. The boxes he then shoved into the backpack, along with the detonator box, as he ran back to the motorcycle. Jumping astride the bike like it was a horse and he was a B-western cowboy, he was almost instantly on the go.
As he sped through the neighborhood south of the bank, he calculated that the entire process from the time he arrived at the bank until the time he was driving away was less than two minutes. He was nearly half way home when he passed April heading in the opposite direction. He watched her turn around in his side view mirror, then ripped the tee shirt from the tank and tossed it in the road. Then, reaching back, he ripped the duct tape from the license plate and tossed it aside as well.
April slowed down as she neared the discarded white shirt. As she pulled next to it, she stopped, opened her door and leaned out to retrieve it. Quickly she tossed the shirt aside and continued toward home.
Sullivan was standing in the open doorway of their darkened house when April pulled into the driveway.
They kissed briefly as she entered the house, but she had too many questions that forced passion aside. “What happened? Did you do it? I never got anywhere near the bank.”
He put a finger to her lips to silence her prattling and said, “Yeah, it was so fucking easy!” “Do you think they keep track of all the serial numbers?” she wanted to know, as she shoved the money in her purse.
Sullivan followed her into the house as he answered. “If they didn’t, they will.”
Chapter 6
“Sam-seven, control,” came the dispassionate female voice over the cars multi-channel tactical radio.
L.A Michaels was “Sam-seven.” The radio call sign signifying his Federal Bureau of Investigation rank of Supervising Agent (‘Sam’ being the radio code for the letter ‘S’ and the ID number assigned to his vehicle, car 7).
L.A. had been an agent with the FBI for going on sixteen years. For the past nine he had been the Supervising Agent in Charge of the Indio field office. He had put duty and country before everything else in his life. The final papers signaling the end of his third marriage sat on the seat beside him as testimony to that fact. He had been staring at those papers, which had been delivered to the field office that morning, when the radio interrupted his despairing thoughts. Reaching below the dashboard, L.A. pulled the radio mike free from its clip and presse
d the send key before answering. “Sam-seven.”
“One-one-six-seven-one Desert Drive, First Financial Savings, explosion, no known injuries, apparent robbery of ATM, locals on scene.” L.A. was making notes of the dispatchers call. “Also two-one-three-oh-nine Date Palm Canyon road, American Savings, explosion, no known injuries, apparent robbery of ATM, locals on scene. Respond to location number one as C.I.C., units delta-three, delta-nine to follow, units responding code three.”
“Copy, Sam-seven is code three, One-one-six-seven-one Desert Drive.” L.A. pulled the discreet emergency light form the floorboard and shoved it onto the dash before flipping the two toggle switches that would activate the flashing red light and siren. As he weaved in and out of the light nighttime traffic near Indio’s downtown and headed for Highway 10, which would take him west to Palm Springs, he keyed the mike again. “Control, Sam-seven.”
“Go ahead, Sam-seven.”
“Roll Tech teams Able and Baker, one to each twenty.”
“Ten-four, Sam-seven.”
“Also, have the deltas responding switch to this tac channel.”
“Roger.”
A moment later, the other two agents responded in turn.
“Delta-three, Sam-seven,” came the first voice, which was nearly drowned out by the screaming sirens at both ends of the radio calls.
“Delta-three, your ten-twenty?” L.A. asked.
“Nearing location number one, sir,” came the reply.
“Delta-nine, Sam-seven,” boomed the basso voice of the squads youngest agent
“Your twenty, Delta-nine?”
“On scene, Sam-seven.”
“Status?” L.A. asked.
“Locals here have area secure. I’ve claimed jurisdiction. It’s a mess, L.A.”
“Roger. You’ve got a tech team rolling your way and I’ll have a couple more agents A.S.A.P., but you’ll need to keep the peace with the locals. Keep me posted.”
“Ten-four. Delta-nine out.”
“Delta-three on scene,” came Henry Kellerman’s voice.
“I’m ten minutes out, Delta-three. Secure the scene and fill me in when I get there. Tech is en-route.”
“Roger, sir. Delta-three out.”
L.A. sped down the freeway, thoughts of his failed marriage replaced by duty and country. Just like when he was married.
The hole in the wall looked a lot worse than it was. The inner components of the ATM appeared, at first glance, to be a fragmented ruin of twisted metal and ripped wires. Closer inspection revealed that the machine consisted of so many twisted metal parts that it probably wouldn’t look much different absent the explosion that ripped its front cover off.
Henry Kellerman was a poster boy representation of the ideal special agent of the FBI. At thirty-eight, his six-foot frame was still the lean muscular 200 pounds that it had been when he was attending Cal State, Fullerton, following high school. After receiving his BS in Criminal Science, he was accepted to Harvard School of Law, where he graduated in the top 5% of his class. His academic standing caught the attention of FBI recruiters, who brought him to Quantico to train at the FBI Academy. However, his movie-star handsome good looks first caught the attention of June Saunders. She had been a part-time academy receptionist who was there until classes resumed in the fall at George Washington University, where she was studying Early Childhood Development. They had been married on the day he graduated from the academy. That was twelve years ago today. June understood duty, and for that he was very grateful.
“What do you think they used, secret agent man?” asked a sarcastic Riverside County sheriff’s detective, annoyed by the ‘Fed-sissies’ walking in and taking the case.
Kellerman wasn’t fazed by the man’s derogatory, intentional misstatement of his special agent status. Henry knew this backward-ass idiot with his community college education was tossing out bait, but he wouldn’t bite. “An EDUCATED guess would result in theorizing some sort of plastique as being the explosive compound,” was his reply. Either the emphasis on ‘educated’ went unnoticed by the Sheriffs detective, or, thought Kellerman, they didn’t teach the meaning of the word out here in the desert. The detective didn’t reply.
Agent Kellerman then asked one of the nearby uniformed deputies if they had located any witnesses. They hadn’t.
L.A. parked his car at the curb half a block west of the bank and turned off the flashing light, siren and engine. He sat in the car a few moments, surveying the scene before he touched any possible material evidence. He noted that there were twenty-seven storefront windows across from the bank that had been blown out by the blast. There was one car parked on the street across from the bank and it had only glittering shards of broken safety glass outlining the window frames. From the looks of things, there hadn’t been anyone shopping. The stores had been closed for the night when the blast occurred, he correctly surmised.
L.A. got out of his regulation Chevy Caprice, 4-door, blue sedan, closed the door, walked around to the rear and opened the trunk. He laid his sport coat inside and pulled on the dark blue windbreaker with the letters FBI printed across the back in a highly visible yellow. Next, he opened a large duffel bag and removed a portable two-way radio, checked its battery power level, and turned it on, before clipping it to his belt. He then removed his 35mm Nikon camera and its flash attachment. He checked the film frame number. ‘1’, as it should be, since he always, after having used it, loaded a fresh roll of film into his camera before storing it. He also shoved several pair of latex gloves into his pocket, followed by a fist full of clear plastic Ziploc evidence bags of various sizes. These were generally tools of the trade for the tech teams, since evidence collection was their purpose. L.A. sometimes found that due to wind, rain, or some other unknown, it was necessary to secure possible evidence before the Tech team could make it to the crime scene.
He closed the trunk and headed up the street to where he could see Kellerman poking around some bushes near the bank. He walked slowly, watching the ground around him, there was nothing in particular he was looking for, but he looked, nonetheless. He figured the first time he didn’t look would result in missed evidence. It wasn’t often that the slow, heads down approach, yielded any significant clues, but this time it just may have.
L.A. noticed a black streak along the sidewalk and curb in the wash of the streetlight adjacent to the banks’ driveway. Kneeling down for a closer look, L.A. figured it to be a partial burn mark from a motorcycle tire.
Agent Kellerman noticed his Commander in Charge (CIC) and walked over. “Find something, sir?” he asked as he approached.
The flash from the camera lit the area for a split second. “Maybe.” Adjusting the focus and changing angles, L.A. asked, “What have you found so far?”
“No eyewitnesses. One of three moneyboxes taken from the ATM following the use of an apparent plastique to blow the front cover off the machine. The concussion tore out twenty-seven windows across the street. No structural damage apparent to the bank, other than the face of the ATM. The bank manager is on his way down to give us a tally on the amount missing. But my guess is twenty thousand, since only one box was taken and they hold that amount in each box.”
“What about the alarm companies? Can you get them out here to shut this noise off?” asked Michaels.
“The locals took care of that; said there are three different companies who have an audible ringing right now and all have service people en-route.”
The uniformed deputy that Kellerman had talked to previously walked up. “We’ve got several people saying they heard a motorcycle moving fast right after the blast.”
“That fits in with this,” stated L.A., while pointing to the tire marks. Henry made the introductions,
Supervising Agent Michaels shook the deputy’s hand and asked him to follow up on the sound until witnesses to it ran out. “If it’s a local, we may just get lucky and follow him home. Also, check for the same thing from the other bank. If we get motorcycle sounds follo
wing that blast, maybe we can at least coordinate the direction and gain some sense of where this bastard went.”
“Sure thing, Agent Michaels,” replied the deputy, “I never would have thought of that angle. It’s a long shot, but still the best one we’ve got. I’ll get right on it.”
The deputy turned and headed back to his cruiser, glad to be working on the case.
“Be sure and get Tech to film and scrape this tire mark,” Michaels told Kellerman.
Henry leaned down for a closer look. “Fresh, alright. There is powdered rubber still on the edge of the curb,” he commented.
Frank photographed the spot as Henry pointed at it for clarification. Then, after handing Henry the camera and donning a pair of latex gloves, he removed a small clear plastic baggie and scraped a small amount of the rubber powder into it with the edge of his penknife. Sealing the bag as he stood, Frank then retrieved his camera from Henry and stuffed the evidence into his pants pocket.
They walked over to the destroyed ATM and continued noting the crime scene from there. The Tech team arrived half an hour later, followed by four more special agents who had been called from the warmth of hearth and home. Agent Michaels explained what he wanted done at the scene and left to check on the other bank.
The agents on the second scene had done a first class job of securing the area and gathering what little evidence there was. They had acted on L.A.’s motorcycle theory and, between the three agents and the dozen deputies that were now assisting, they had followed the sound of a motorcycle for approximately three miles. The path they were following, if it stayed true, would intersect with the path of the other teams motorcycle sounds somewhere near the city of Indian Wells.
“You’ve got things moving along just fine,” Commented L.A. after hearing their reports. “Anything else you think we need to be looking at before daylight?” he asked.
“No. Everything else belongs to Tech. I think it’s now a paper chase if we can get some people looking at DMV records for motorcycle owners. Any explosives in the area should be on the ATF report back at the office. The money isn’t logged, so there is no tracking it.”