The Matter of the Dematerializing Armored Car

by Steve Levi

  Considering the distance between the Kuroshio and the Bering Sea is between a dozen miles and zero feet, the mixing of the weather patterns creates the most unpredictable weather in the world. Worse, weather systems do not build; they arrive. Weather patterns also change so quickly, flying in the Aleutians is not only hazardous but also time warping. It is possible to land in False Pass in clear weather and then suddenly be socked in immediately for a week with a storm no one saw coming. Having to crab to the port to take off from Cold Bay and then, halfway down the landing strip, being forced to crab to starboard because there are fifty-mile-an-hour winds at 180 degrees dividing the runway is not unusual. As Alaskan humorist Warren Sitka says, “Every time I think about flying in the Aleutians, I don’t.”

  The best description of the weather in the Aleutians is it arrives. It just arrives. You cannot see it coming. You cannot predict its pattern. You cannot expect it to snow just in winter, and rain falling on ice pack is not uncommon. No announcement; just an arrival.

  At 3:00 p.m. Tuesday, the future arrived at the Swensen Armored Car Company garage. It did not come on little cat feet like Carl Sandburg fog. It came in like Operation Overlord. One moment the Germans on Normandy were looking at an empty ocean, and in the next there were landing craft from horizon to horizon as far as the eye could see along the coast.

  With the two Jacksons AWOL, the rest of the security personnel were doing double-duty. Steigle had come in from a pickup-anddeposit run and had gone back out on the road. He had one more run of the day and was expected back by midnight. Delgado and John Swensen had been split up by necessity. Delgado was on his way to Tarboro with an insured load, and John Swensen was doing a deposit run to a half-dozen banks. Charlie Schanche was up to his elbows in the mechanical shop struggling with a recalcitrant drive shaft. Noonan, Sandusky, the three auditors, and the Cookie-Cutters were in the midst of their discussion about who was to sign the official document as to the ownership of the estimated $10 million on the palette in the vault when the future arrived.

  “You’re not going to believe this,” John Swensen said when he came into the breakroom door, looking directly at Noonan. “I know you’re not going to believe this, but it’s true.”

  “OK,” Noonan said. “I’ll bite.”

  “The missing armored car. It’s back.”

  “Back?” Noonan was not often taken by surprise. “I never saw this coming” was all he could say. “You sure?”

  Sandusky, the auditors, and the Cookie-Cutters were flabbergasted.

  “What do you mean ‘back’?”

  “Where’s it been?”

  “What about the drivers?”

  “Are you sure?”

  “How do you know?”

  “Don’t give me guff.”

  “N-n-n-nooooo!”

  There was a maelstrom of expletives until Noonan held his hand to silence everyone. “What do you mean, exactly, by ‘the armored car is back’?”

  “It just arrived. I . . . we don’t know how. All of a sudden we noticed the GPS for the missing armored car had popped on.”

  “Where is it?” Sandusky was almost beside himself with fiscal relief.

  “You won’t believe me.”

  “Try us,” said Cookie-Cutter one. Cookie-Cutter two simply nodded like a dashboard figure.

  “In the garage. Here in the garage. Against the mechanical shed wall. I thought it might be an error, so I did a quick count of the cars. We’re back to sixteen armoreds. The missing armored just arrived.”

  “Someone had to have driven it in,” Sandusky said. “I mean, it didn’t just get here on its own.”

  “Oh, I know that,” Swensen said, giving Sandusky a mild “I’m not an idiot” look. “I checked with the guard. Six armoreds have come in over the past four hours. Three have gone out. Everyone coming in is checked for identification if the guard doesn’t know them. The guard said no one he didn’t know came in.”

  “Well,” Cookie-Cutter one scratched his head, “this clearly means one of your trusted employees must have driven it in.”

  “Not possible.” Swensen held up a logbook. “This is our logbook. Every delivery every day is listed. Every driver is listed. Every driver is accounted for. What I think may have happened—and let me say may because I don’t know for sure—is someone who is not with the company drove the armored car into the garage. Incoming vehicles are not checked. Then the unknown person simply walked off the premises. As long as the person in question was not carrying anything like a box or bag, the guard would not have stopped him on the way out. Or her.”

  “Well, there can’t be many people here,” Sandusky said. “The guard must have seen someone strange; someone who was not a regular.”

  Swensen gave him another of those are-you-kidding-me looks. “Harry, this place is crawling with people the guard doesn’t know. There’s you and the auditors,” he said, pointing to the three men in black suits. “Then there’s the feds,” he pointed to the Cookie-Cutters, “Captain Noonan here, and a dozen cops in blue uniforms. They’re in uniform, out of uniform, they’ve got shift changes. I don’t know who they are by sight. The only place with any kind of secure entry is the vault! We’ll look at the security tapes for the garage, but, at this moment, all we know, all I know, is that the missing armored truck is back.”

  “So we don’t know who might have brought the armored car back?” Sandusky was still perplexed. “Well, at least that’s one less worry for North Carolina Mutual Indemnity.”

  “I don’t have a clue how the armored got here,” said Swensen. “And I don’t care. Armored cars cannot sue! I want my drivers back! Where are my drivers?”

  “I can’t answer that,” Noonan said quickly. “But we’d better lock down the armored car.”

  “I already have.” Swensen was edging toward upset. “I didn’t know what to do, so I told two of your people,” he looked directly at Noonan, “to guard the truck. I also pulled the security tapes for the garage for the day.”

  “The armored truck and the security tape will have to go to the police lab,” Noonan said. “For the moment, we’ll have to lock down the garage.”

  “I have! But it’s like locking the barn door after the horse has been stolen. I don’t know how long the armored car’s been there! The only reason I know it is here is because the GPS popped on, and I happened to spot it.”

  “Is there any kind of time frame on the GPS monitor?”

  “Only when the GPS in the vehicle is one. Then it’s real time. It will tell me where my cars are. I have never cared where they have been. I just want to know where they are in real time.”

  “Well,” Noonan said as he stood up. “As of right now this place is locked down. How many armored cars do you have on the road?”

  “Four right now and two set to take off within the hour.”

  “Well, I’m afraid those two are going to have to wait until we search them. Once they get a clean bill of health, they can go.” Noonan had slipped into his professional mode.

  “Looking for what?” asked Swensen, now starting to boil. “They’re going out empty!”

  “I don’t know,” Noonan said. “It’s procedure.”

  “This is a business, Captain . . . er . . . Heinz. I have a business to run. I can’t stop my business. Can’t you just search the armoreds and let them go?”

  “That’s not up to me, but I’ll see what I can do. Now, for the four armoreds on the road. When are they due back?” Noonan pulled out his notepad.

  “Well, there’s Steigle, and he’s not due back until midnight or later. Delgado is on his way to Tarboro, and I don’t expect him back until tomorrow morning. My nephew, John, is doing deposits, and he should be finished by six and back here by seven. And I have a new man, Jerome Muhammed. He’s meeting another armored car for an exchange in Durham.”

  “Muhammed?” Sandusky suddenly became nervous. “Is he a Muslim?”

  “I don’t know,” snapped Swensen. “And I don’t car
e. He’s new, but he checked out.”

  “Well, what’s in the armored car he’s driving?” Sandusky was jumpy.

  “Nothing. He’s doing a pickup.”

  “Are you sure he’s not carrying anything?” Sandusky’s nervousness was growing.

  “Yeah. I checked him out myself. He’s new. The new drivers get extra checking.”

  “You are sure there’s nothing in Muhammed’s armored car?”

  “Not until he gets to Durham. Then he’s got an insured load.”

  Sandusky came alive. “Well, we’ve got to check that armored car! We’d better be monitoring him every mile of the way. When’s he going to get to Durham?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Swensen slowly. “Midnight. Maybe. Depends on road conditions. Why not just have the Durham Police meet him at the transfer point?”

  “I don’t know,” said Sandusky carefully. “What if he stops and drops off something before he gets there?”

  “Drops off what?” snapped Swensen, now visibly angry. “There is nothing in the armored car! There will be nothing in the armored car until it gets to Durham! Then the load is insured. Besides, we’re concentrating on the wrong thing. Where are my drivers? The Jacksons?”

  “Well, you know,” Cookie-Cutter one started. “Now we’ve got a Muslin involved, and that changes a lot of things.”

  “Like what?” Swensen leaned across the breakroom table toward Cookie-Cutter one. “There is nothing in common with a driver who might be a Muslim with two drivers who disappeared two days ago! I don’t care if he’s a Muslim. I want to know what happened to my drivers!”

  There was no point in arguing the point, so Noonan didn’t. Hate it as much as he did, he was going to have to use the tool of Satan: his cell phone. Within an hour, Swensen’s Armored Car Company was in lockdown except for three police officers tracking the four armored cars on the GPS monitor. John Swensen was escorted to the Swensen Police Headquarters when he arrived back at the garage at 7:30 p.m. Ramon Delgado joined him at police headquarters around midnight, and Jerome Muhammed was put up for the night in Durham. (His armored car was still empty.)

  That left Steigle the only one on the road. When the monitoring began at 3:30 p.m., Steigle was stopped. He remained in place for about half an hour and then was moving again. He made several stops, which matched bank locations indicated on the GPS monitor, and then returned to where he had been when the monitoring began. That was at about 6:30 p.m. He was at the location for about ten minutes, then he was off. This time he wandered off the main road and made momentary stops at six different locations.

  A little before 10:00 p.m. the GPS suddenly went ghost.

  After five minutes, the Sandersonville Police sent a squad car to the last-known location for the armored car, a grocery-store parking lot with a liquor store, pizza parlor, hair salon, and a United States Post Office substation. When no armored car was located, the police put out an APB for Steigle and the armored car.

  WEDNESDAY

  Chapter 34

  It took until noon Wednesday for Muhammed, Delgado, and the young Swensen to make it back to the armored-car garage. None of them were happy campers. Surly would have been a better description. First, they had absolutely no idea why they had been detained. Second, no one at the police station in Sandersonville or Durham had told them anything of substance. None of them were under arrest, but all were considered “persons of interest,” and it was made clear if they did not cooperate, they could darn well sit in a jail cell until they decided to do so.

  There was no reason for any of the three to be uncooperative. The problem was not that they had something to hide. It was they knew nothing, and that in itself was a red flag for the police. Cops do not believe anyone, and anyone who claims to “know nothing,” at the very least, has information of value but does not know it.

  Yet.

  Thus, it is the job of law enforcement to “help them” recall information the suspects had no way of knowing was valuable.

  The problem the police had with Muhammed, Delgado, and young Swensen was, there was nothing missing. Each of them were clean as whistle when it came to their record. Each of them had left the Swensen Armored Car garage on time. Each of them had remained on schedule, proof being the GPS tracking. Each of them had made every stop they were assigned to make. Muhammed’s armored was empty when he was picked up in Durham. His armored was supposed to be empty. Delgado’s insured load was transferred to him in Tarboro. Young Swensen’s route was charted on the monitor, and Wednesday morning the Sandersonville police retraced the route and double-checked every pickup and delivery. They got zip.

  John Swensen did not return to the garage until late in the afternoon. Exhausted, he had spent the night at the Sandersonville police laboratory watching the forensic team swab the armored car inside and out and match every fingerprint to the national database. Every fingerprint inside the armored car—cab and secure room—matched that of the employees of the Swensen Armored Car Company. There were a few fingerprints on the outside that were not in the database, but they were so small it was assumed they were children’s prints.

  The police paid special attention to the GPS. The problem was no problem. There was no sign of tampering. But it had gone ghost and stayed silent for two days. And the armored car had not been in the garage for those two days.

  So where had the armored car been for those two days?

  And where were the Jacksons?

  And why steal an armored car that had no money?

  Then there was Steigle. Rather, then there was not Steigle. He and the armored car he had been driving had simply vaporized into the ether. This vanishing of the armored car, Noonan said with frustration, was getting to be routine. On the usual side, Noonan said to the four men in the breakroom, Steigle’s armored truck had been carrying cash. Not much, John Swensen said, but enough for a fine two-week vacation.

  At the most.

  John Swensen spread the logbooks for the previous three days on the breakroom table, when he got a cell call. Swensen looked at the number and then said to Noonan, “I’ve got to take this. It’s your department. They want me back at your station.”

  Noonan just nodded as Swensen left the room. Then Noonan looked at the drivers who were still there. Delgado reached across the table and picked up the logbooks. “Do you want me to translate the books?”

  “No,” said Noonan. “Maybe later but not right now. What I want now are some answers.”

  “Well, we’ve already told the police all we know,” Muhammed said and yawned. “Which is nothing.”

  “Maybe you think it’s nothing.” Noonan smiled. “But there’s a lot you know which is just knowledge to you but important to me. So let’s start from the beginning and see what pops, OK?”

  None of the three objected, so Noonan started. “Muhammed, how long have you worked here?”

  “Six or eight months.”

  “Who have you worked with?”

  “Well, everyone. We all get moved around a lot.”

  “I know. You’ve worked with these two?” Noonan pointed to Delgado and the young Swensen.

  “Sure. A lot.”

  “When you worked with them, were you all on motorcycles?”

  “No, sometimes I drove and sometimes I rode. Like I said, we switch around a lot.”

  “Were you ever the senior on those trips? I mean, did you do the check-in when you rode or drove with them?” Again, Noonan pointed at the two others.

  Muhammed thought for a moment and then said cautiously, “I don’t know where this is going but, no, not really. The senior person does the check-in. In the six or eight months, I’ve been here for a while, and I’ve only done the check-in one or two times. That was because the truck was empty.”

  “So you never checked an armored truck when it had money?”

  “There’s security, you know. When the truck is going to have money, there’s a procedure. The money is checked out of the vault and put in the truc
k. Only the senior people can do that.”

  “How many senior people are we talking about?”

  “A dozen, maybe. Some of them are vault people. They’re bonded and whatever, so they just work in the vault.”

  “OK, how many people who are not full-time in the vault are authorized to load the trucks?”

  “Six or seven. There’s President Swensen, of course; George Steigle, but you know that already; the Jacksons, but they’re missing; and maybe Charlie Schanche. The rest of them have nothing to do with this missing armored car matter.”

  “Why do you say maybe Schanche?”

  “Well,” Muhammed gave the other two a strained look, “Charlie is . . . well, kind of . . . you know . . . kind of burned out. He may be senior, but he doesn’t do any check-ins. He just rides bikes. Never drives.”

  “OK. So when someone does a check-in, he gets the money from the vault and loads it into the armored car. Does he do it alone?”

  “Not usually. There’s the person inside the vault who gets the delivery. The senior person signs the log and puts the money in the armored. But that’s not the only way it can happen. If you have access to the vault, you could just go and sign out the money.”

  “So some senior person could go, steal money, and leave and not be caught.”

  “Could, but it hasn’t happened yet. There’s a pretty tight rein on the money.”

  “But it could happen?”

  “Sure. But it hasn’t happened yet.”

  “OK, when you check out an empty armored, do you actually look inside?”

  “Yes. If I do the check-out, yeah. It’s procedure.”

  “But you only check on empty armoreds. Have you ever checked out an armored with something in the back?”

  “On runs where I’m making a delivery, like with an insured load, yes. I check the package, whatever it happens to be, with the log-in information to make sure they match.”