by Meg Gardiner
Lucky looked at her.
“They attacked the courtroom, shot people, held sixty innocent folks hostage—it’s ghastly,” she said. “And if it’s about me…what the hell for?”
Lucky said, “You’re entitled to be mad.”
“I want to take a tire iron to somebody.”
“And scared.”
“I’m terrified.”
“But you’re not entitled to feel guilty about it.”
Her face burned. “How can I not?”
Seth’s cell phone rang. He checked the display and said, “Excuse me.”
He headed to the front door. He waited until he was outside before answering the call, saying, “Yeah.” He closed the door behind him and walked to the street, talking in low tones.
Lucky couldn’t take his eyes off him. Without turning to Rory, he said, “Seth’s not telling me something. And not giving me the full story.”
Finally he glanced at her. “He brought you to me instead of the police department.”
“You’re his closest source,” Rory said. “And you know the history of this town.”
Lucky smiled. It was rueful. “He doesn’t trust the department. It’s a point of contention between us,” he said.
“I can imagine,” she said.
His face tightened. “Did he tell you corruption runs through the department like a virus?”
She did not intend to get into a game of Dad said, son said. No way. “He didn’t use that phrase.”
“But he thinks the whole force is bent.”
She didn’t actually shrug, but Lucky got the gist of her reaction.
“He worked with good people. Gil Strandberg, Ray Nguyen—guys I knew. So where he got the idea…” He shook his head. Looked at his hands.
“Seth had a very bad experience,” he said. “The warehouse fire. It was every cop’s nightmare. Losing a brother officer—dealing with that’s always a killer.”
She frowned.
“But with the injuries Seth suffered…” He glanced out the front window. Seth was pacing on the sidewalk by his truck. “Everything came crashing in on him at once.”
He paused. Blessedly, he didn’t actually look at her. She was part of that everything. But she didn’t know what he was talking about.
He held still a moment longer. If she’d just walked into the room, she would have thought he had been stuck in the gut by a knife.
“Lucky?” she said.
He shook his head. “He had a terrible time getting perspective. It happened so soon after…”
The air felt heavy. “After I left?”
“Everything seemed to look like flames to him.” His voice thickened. “He looked for somebody to take it out on. He needs somebody to blame. He doesn’t know how to forgive. Or at least, he hasn’t found a way to let it go. Most of all, he can’t forgive himself.”
He finally turned his sad, troubled eyes on her. She sat stunned.
“Lucky, I haven’t heard any of this. Seth hasn’t spoken to me about a fire.”
Outside, Seth ended his call and strode briskly toward the house.
Lucky seemed to calculate whether he had sufficient time, and asked, “What’s going on with you two?”
“After I figure it out, I’ll let you know.”
She saw the pain on his face. It was deep and too much for him to explain. Whatever had happened when Seth’s undercover operation went wrong, whatever injuries and pain he had suffered, Lucky could barely speak of it.
She said, “What exactly happened to him at—”
Seth walked back in. He seemed to take the emotional temperature in the living room. His gaze flicked between his dad and Rory.
“Sorry for the interruption. That was a contact. I’m trying to get more information on Sylvester Church and Kevin Berrigan. They’re working on it.”
“Contact?” Lucky said.
Seth didn’t elaborate. After an uncomfortable second under his dad’s eye, he began to pace again.
Lucky said, “Son, sit down.”
Seth paced.
“You’re making me seasick. Sit yourself down and listen to me.”
Reluctantly, Seth took a seat on the arm of the sofa. “What is it?”
“You think money is behind the attack on the trial?”
Rory said, “Yes.”
Lucky set down his coffee. “My advice? Back away.”
“Dad,” Seth said sharply.
“Leave this alone.”
“No.”
“No good will come of digging into it.”
“Forget that. This isn’t a scavenger hunt at a birthday party,” Seth said.
“You’re talking about ‘huge money.’ A coordinated attack by heavily armed gunmen on a well-defended building full of law enforcement officers. Multiple casualties already.” He looked not just pensive, but fierce. “Back away. You think you can dig into this on your own? That’s foolish.” His mouth pinched. “That’s dangerous. Son, be sensible. Choose your battles.”
Rory said, “This battle has chosen me. I fight or I surrender. And I won’t surrender. Somebody else already dug the pit and set me up to get buried in it. And I’m not going.”
Lucky looked torn. For a moment resistance tugged at his features. He sat straighter.
“All right. You want to know what the gunmen were after. Where the big money is? There’s only one thing that makes sense.”
He turned to Rory. “The Geronimo Armored car robbery. When you were kids. That’s what it’s about.”
“Say that again,” Seth said.
“The armored car heist. It happened not ten miles from here. The robbers got away with twenty-five million dollars. And that money’s never been found.”
30
“That heist was almost twenty years ago,” Seth said.
“Twenty years ago this February twelfth,” Lucky said.
The heist was part of Ransom River’s folklore. It was up there with The Callahans and the Great West Side Tire Fire, which raged for weeks in a mountain of discarded radials behind the auto-wrecking yard. The heist was bigger than the prom queen’s float smashing into the pumps at the Union 76 station during the homecoming parade.
“I remember,” Seth said.
“The meteor shower,” Rory said.
They’d seen the police lights that night. And the next day they’d heard the buzz in their fourth-grade classroom, boys and girls uneasy and excited, murmuring about bank robbers. On the news, reporters stood outside yellow police tape and talked in urgent grown-up tones about a shootout. Her parents had stared spellbound at the TV. Rory had been transfixed: a shootout.
“An armored car was attacked and robbed,” she said.
And the rest began to whisper at her. That night. The tree house.
Lucky said, “Do you remember anything else?”
“I was nine.”
Seth said, “What’s special about that robbery, Dad?”
Rory said, “Besides the twenty-five million bucks? I’m guessing that’s a megaton of money compared to your average daily L.A. County bank robbery.”
“That’s massive,” Seth said.
Lucky said, “The cash was being delivered to a Federal Reserve processing facility, where it was supposed to be destroyed.”
“Why?” Rory said.
“What do you know about the life cycle of money?”
“Little. I don’t have any.”
“Hold on.”
Lucky pushed to his feet and trundled to his bedroom. They heard a dresser drawer open, and close again. He returned with a money clip that held a slim stash of folded bills. His emergency cash, Rory bet.
“Paper money doesn’t last long,” he said. “Currency wears out. And the smaller the denomination, the quicker a bill deteriorates.” He slid the bills from the money clip. “A dollar barely lasts eighteen months.”
The one in his hand looked soft and tired and had a well-established crease in the middle of George Washington’s face.
“Same length of life, more or less, for fives and tens.” He handed her the single and held up a twenty. “This’ll last two years.”
He gave it to her and unfolded a fifty. “This’ll last longer because it doesn’t circulate as much.”
He flattened a hundred and held it up so Ben Franklin smiled at her. “This might last seven years.”
“Got it,” Rory said.
“When a bill gets mutilated or so worn that it’s unreadable, the government will replace it with a fresh one from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.”
He continued to hold up the hundred-dollar bill.
“I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be looking at,” she said.
Lucky turned to Seth.
“Is this a quiz?” After a moment Seth said, “It’s an older currency design.”
Lucky nodded and set it on the coffee table. “A classic.”
He showed them the last bill from the money clip. The difference was immediately apparent. On the new bill, Franklin’s portrait was much larger, and set to the left. The colors of the bill were more subtle and elaborate.
“Anticounterfeiting measures,” Lucky said. “It’s an ongoing battle between the Treasury and counterfeiters worldwide. The government’s rolling out another model as well, with three-D security ribbons that make it look like the Liberty Bell’s jumping up at you when you tilt the bill. Plus a second security thread, a portrait watermark, and images that change color when you turn the bill. The bell goes from green to copper.” He looked canny. “A U.S. hundred is the most-counterfeited bill on the planet.”
Seth said, “Why do you still have that old one? You’re a skinflint, Dad, but not that tight.”
“I’m still waiting for you or your brothers to earn it.”
Seth smirked, not exactly amused.
Lucky said to Rory, “I told my boys the first one of them to memorize the Bill of Rights would earn a hundred bucks. Not surprised the older boys never got around to it. But this one here”—he nodded at Seth—“I did think a young man who wanted to be a police officer might care about civil liberties. Or at least about knowing the Fourth and Fifth Amendments.”
Maybe it was intended as a joke, but Seth reddened and looked out the window. Lucky’s lips drew tight.
He tucked the bills back in the money clip. “When paper money wears out, the federal banking system replaces it. Branch banks set aside bills that are worn or damaged. Eventually, they’re collected and replaced with shiny new Federal Reserve notes. Damaged bills—dirty, torn, defaced—are sent to sites where they’re shredded.”
Rory said, “And the cash from the heist was on its way to the shredder.”
“The processing site was in eastern Los Angeles County. But the method they used to deliver the cash was prey to security flaws.”
“Geronimo Armored,” she said.
“A secure courier was always contracted to collect the cash from the branch banks. Geronimo Armored scheduled their collection runs so they could pick up large volumes of cash and take it to a company depot. The depot would bundle it up and then transport it to the processing site to be destroyed,” he said. “But on the occasion in question, somebody got wind of the huge collection and attacked the armored car en route to the Geronimo depot. Outside a branch bank in Ransom River.”
Seth finally looked at his dad. “It was ambushed with inside information?”
“Like almost all big armored heists,” Lucky said.
Rory said, “Wait. If the money was on its way to be destroyed, wasn’t it worthless?”
Lucky shook his head. “Branch banks set aside bills they think are too old. But the feds might disagree. Sometimes it’s obvious a bill’s too far gone, but other times a bill’s just soiled. The ones who decide whether a bill will be destroyed are the inspectors at the Federal Reserve processing facility. Plenty of bills are deemed usable. They’re sent back into circulation.”
“So the robbers gambled that they’d get legal tender,” Rory said.
“Yes.”
Seth said, “How did the robbery go down?”
“One of the Geronimo guards exited the bank with the money on a dolly. The other guard opened the door to the armored car so he could load it. That’s when the robbers attacked,” he said. “But it went bad. The Geronimo guards fought back. One robber was killed. Two were captured and imprisoned. Both guards were injured.”
Lucky stopped, his eyes gleaming.
“And?” Seth said.
“The money disappeared and has never been found.”
“Twenty-five million dollars,” Rory said.
Lucky nodded.
They were quiet for a moment. A clock ticked. Lucky’s face was flushed. Seth had gone back to avoiding his father’s gaze. But this time, Rory thought, it wasn’t because his dad was poking an old wound. It was because Lucky was exposing a crusty scab of his own.
“Does that mean it’s an open case?” she said.
“A cold one,” Lucky said. “The convicted robbers have never spoken one word to the authorities about what happened to the money.”
“It’s still out there,” Seth said.
“Yes.”
“So somebody got away with it.”
Lucky nodded somberly. “But they never spent the money. The serial numbers of those bills were recorded, and they haven’t shown up again. Plus nobody has ever tried to collect the reward. And that reward is big.”
Rory said, “And you think that robbery is connected to the attack on the courtroom yesterday.”
“Hunch. Intuition. Call it an old detective’s gut acting up. But yes. Ransom River, something so risky and outrageous—that’s what I think.”
Seth said, “Were you assigned to the case?”
Lucky’s mouth pulled to one side. “Every detective on the force was assigned to the case one way or another. This was national news. Our fifteen minutes. It had everything people wanted in a heist. Guns, money, a getaway. A dead man. It was a big deal.”
“You investigated the currency angle?”
“At the time I was in Crimes Against Property. That put me on the task force assigned to hunting down the stolen money.”
“But you never found it.”
Lucky stared at his coffee. “Maybe the getaway driver’s up in the Cascades with D. B. Cooper, using it as kindling for his campfire.”
Seth rubbed a knuckle across his chin. He ambled back to the window, stared at the street, and thought about it.
“Why now?” he said.
“Why do I think people are after the money now? Because the robbers are getting out of prison. They’ve waited a long time for that cash. And with new greenback designs getting phased in, the old bills get more and more distinctive. Soon they’ll be too distinctive.”
“But the older currency is still good,” Seth said.
“Yes. Until it goes into the shredder, every bill that’s been issued by the U.S. government since 1861 remains legal tender. But with each day, passing the cash from the heist gets more difficult. Soon those old-style bills will look so unusual that they’ll stick out like a sore thumb. And remember, the serial numbers were recorded. A strange-looking bill—especially if it’s a hundred—passing it will become nearly impossible. If anybody’s going to get rich, they need to find that money ASAP, before it becomes so risky it’s useless.”
Seth said, “Twenty-five million. I can buy it.”
Rory said, “I can’t. Because a heist that took place when I was in fourth grade has absolutely no connection to me.”
For a second, Lucky’s expression was zealous, as though he was about to spring a trap, or hit her with the last, triumphant bit of evidence. But his ardor dimmed. He looked almost sad.
“It does,” he said. “Nobody could prove it, and nobody would talk. But rumor has it, the man who got away was your uncle Lee.”
31
“Lee?”
“Lee Mackenzie. None other. I’m sorry, Rory,” Lucky sa
id.
She felt stunned. “That’s crazy. Lee isn’t a bank robber.”
“He was a person of interest in the investigation.”
Seth turned from the window. His face was dead solemn. Her heart sank.
Uncle Lee—sweet, crazy Uncle Lee, who was half-assed at everything he did. She really knew nothing about him. Except that he had been in jail several times and had scooted across the border to Mexico and stayed there.
She closed her eyes. “What did the police know about him?”
“Nothing tangible,” Lucky said. “A few bits of hearsay, mostly from unreliable characters. His previous run-ins with the law were…let’s call them small-time but aspirational attempts at criminality.”
“Aspirational. Meaning he was looking to get into things in a bigger way?”
“He liked money,” Lucky said.
Rory put her elbows on her knees and leaned her head against her hands. “Person of interest—so, a suspect. But you had no evidence against him.”
The silence was pounding. She looked up.
Lucky had shed his jolly exterior. She saw the stony resolve he must have had as a cop. The teddy bear had teeth.
“Lee got busted three or four times over the years I was a detective,” he said. “Fencing stolen property, one time using a stolen prescription to obtain Vicodin, I think it was. Things like that. He pled out, got probation the first time, did a couple of months in county lockup for one of the other charges. Small-time stuff.”
“So why, if none of the others involved in the robbery would talk…”
“Sometimes it’s what doesn’t get said, as much as what does.”
“Oh God.”
“Nobody had heard about Lee being involved with the heist. The other robbers were from L.A. But they had Ransom River connections. They ran in the same circles. And Rory, there’s one big stonking clue in all of this.”
She knew but hated to say it. “No. Lee left town before the robbery. I’m sure of it.”
“Your uncle left town right around the time of the robbery. And he hasn’t been back.”
She wanted to argue. It was the thinnest of links. But she also suspected that Lucky had more evidence than he’d revealed. Maybe much more.
