The Best American Mystery Stories 2020

by C. J. Box

  “Fell on it?”

  “Well, it was an accident, but yeah, she fell and landed on my leg.”

  Spencer was sweating now, his heart thudding in his chest. “Hold on a second, okay?”

  He rose and walked stiffly into the lobby and around to the teller area. Underneath the counter, in front of Helen’s chair, he found it—​a huge stack of bills. But they weren’t bills at all—​they were cash-sized bundles of blank paper. Helen’s trips to the vault, he realized now, weren’t to transport cash to it. They were to transport cash from it. If he’d been paying attention, he’d have noticed that the duffel bags the casino man had taken out of the bank were probably stuffed as full as they had been when he came in—​but with real bills this time.

  Quick as a flash, he pressed the alarm button under the counter, to alert the sheriff’s department, then sprinted back to the phone in his office. “Helen?” he said. “What did they look like, your two friends?” But he was afraid he already knew.

  “Look like? Well . . . the guy’s short, reddish hair, glasses. His wife is—​I don’t know, about my height and weight, I guess. In fact it’s a little spooky how much she does look like me, with the black hair and—”

  “Names,” Spencer blurted. “Do you have names?”

  She gave them to him: Clyde and Rhonda Felson. He scribbled them onto a pad, looked up at the window, and saw Sheriff Ingalls’s patrol car screech to a stop at the curb. As he leaped from his desk and hurried to meet the cops, Spencer realized he was trembling.

  But not from the cold.

  * * *

  “I can’t believe it,” Helen murmured. She was still propped up in her bed, her leg cast resting on a pillow. Her face was noticeably free of bruises and bandages. “Rhonda told me she told you I wasn’t coming in . . . when in fact she told you I was. She was setting the stage for”—​Helen swallowed hard—​“for impersonating me.”

  Gathered around her were Sheriff Marcie Ingalls, Deputy Jerry Pearson, and branch manager Spence Spencer.

  “That seems to be what happened,” Marcie agreed.

  Spencer, who seemed to have aged ten years, said, “You didn’t hear her make the call?”

  Helen shook her head. “No, she used my cell phone, from the other room. I was a little woozy anyhow, from the painkillers. But I remember her coming back in and waking me up and telling me you’d said that taking a day off was fine, and to get well soon.”

  “She must’ve been crazy, to stroll into the bank like that,” Marcie said. “But it worked.”

  “Without that damn parka it wouldn’t have worked,” Spencer said. “Between it and the fake bandages, we couldn’t see much of her face. Also, she disguised her voice.”

  “And her partner, husband, whatever—​he walked out with . . . how much?”

  Spencer shrugged. “We don’t know yet. A lot.” He ran a hand over his face. “With bags the casino gave him for free, for playing the slots. Insult to injury.”

  “You’ll get me the security video, right?”

  “Ernie Polk’s holding it for you. And our main office has already offered a reward.”

  The sheriff nodded and looked at Helen. “Clyde Felson, you said? And Rhonda?”

  “Yes.” Helen repeated the descriptions she’d given to Spencer on the phone. “She really does look like me. She’s prettier than I am, though.” She sighed. “He called her Ronnie.”

  “Ronnie and Clyde?”

  “Why not?” Deputy Pearson said.

  Everyone turned to look at him.

  Pearson shrugged. “They rob banks.”

  * * *

  Marcie and Pearson continued questioning Helen for another half hour, trying to come up with some kind of lead. The only thing helpful at all was the fact that the robbers and fake friends (Helen had to admit that’s what they were) drove a black Toyota Tundra. At least that’s the vehicle they’d taken Helen to the resort in. As for today, nobody remembered seeing what the imposter had driven to the bank.

  Sheriff Ingalls said it had probably been Helen’s Ford Focus, because of the possibility that someone might see it—​and the fact that its keys were missing from her purse. In any case, the Ford was now parked in its rightful place behind Helen’s house. The sheriff said they would check it over for prints but that it would probably yield no clues; Rhonda Felson would almost certainly have kept her gloves on during the drive to and from the bank.

  “Wait a second,” Helen said. “I think they might’ve had two cars. One that I never saw.”

  “Why would you think that?” Marcie asked.

  “We went to the resort in the Toyota, but Rhonda drove. Once, on Sunday, I saw Clyde take a set of keys from his pocket. It was only for a moment—​he was looking for his ticket for the ski lift—​but the biggest key on the chain wasn’t for their Tundra.”

  “What kind of key was it?”

  “A Honda.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. It had that funny curved H that’s bigger on top than on the bottom.”

  The sheriff and her deputy exchanged a look. Both were thinking the same thing: since the robbers knew Helen had seen the Toyota, they would probably ditch that vehicle someplace and use another for a getaway. They could always steal one, but if they already had a second car waiting in the wings . . .

  “Okay, that helps. They’re probably driving a Honda,” Marcie said. “Anything else?”

  “Not that I can think of.” Helen heaved a sigh. “They even stole my crutches.”

  A silence passed. Marcie used it to look carefully around the room. When she noticed the old-fashioned telephone sitting on the floor between Helen’s bed and the potty chair, she blinked.

  “Helen, is that the phone you used earlier, to talk to the bank?”

  “Yeah, Spence called me on it. I had to dig it out from under the bedside table. It’s still connected, obviously, but I haven’t used it much since I got my cell phone.”

  “Where’s your cell phone now?”

  “Same place as my crutches, probably. Rhonda used my cell to call Spence last night, and must’ve kept it.” Helen looked up and added, “I bet they figured they were taking my only phone, so I wouldn’t be able to call anyone at the bank today—​or get a call from anyone—​and screw up their plans. They wouldn’t have seen my landline.”

  The room fell silent again. Then Marcie had a thought.

  “If your cell phone’s still turned on,” she said to Helen, “we can track it.”

  “It’s still on,” Spencer E. Spencer said. “Or at least it was, after the robbery.”

  Everyone turned to face him. Marcie had actually forgotten he was still there, and then realized he was probably reluctant to go back to an unheated bank and a heated interrogation by his bosses. As he’d mentioned, he hadn’t even determined yet how much money was taken.

  “How do you know her cell phone’s on?” she asked him.

  “Because I tried to call her on it first, and it rang. No one picked up, but it rang several times and went to voicemail—​it didn’t give me a not-in-service message or anything.”

  “Okay,” Marcie said, deep in thought. “That’s good. We’ll see if we can get the cell towers to triangulate the signal, try to pin down the whereabouts of the phone.”

  All of a sudden Helen’s eyes widened. “You won’t have to,” she said.

  “What?”

  For the first time today, Helen Wilson smiled. “It has a GPS chip.”

  “Excuse me?” Marcie asked.

  “A GPS locator. My aunt bought me the phone a few months ago and said if I ever lost it, this feature’ll find it. There’s an app that’ll point us straight to it.”

  “How exactly does that work?” Pearson said.

  “We just need Aunt Lettie’s phone. It’s tied to mine—​you click the app on her phone and it shows where my cell phone is, on a map. And where the Felsons are, if they still have it.”

  “Where does she live, your
aunt?”

  “Over past Battle Creek, near the edge of the reservation. About twenty miles—”

  “I know her house,” Marcie said. She pointed to the landline. “Will you call her?”

  * * *

  Within minutes Sheriff Ingalls and her deputy were in her cruiser and headed for Lettie Wilson’s home. As usual, Jerry Pearson sat silent and brooding in the passenger seat. Marcie glanced at him from the corner of her eye. She liked him, but could never quite figure him out. He’d been a Seattle cop for years before moving here to be near his wife’s folks, and had always seemed either unable or unwilling to adapt to local ways. Marcie sighed. Here she was, in a high-stress/low-pay job, freezing her butt off every year between September and May, with a deputy who was always in a bad mood. She couldn’t imagine two better examples of ducks out of water.

  She forced her mind back to the matter at hand. “Something’s worrying me here, Jerry,” she said. “Remember what the banker said about the heat being off in the building?”

  “I remember. What about it?”

  “He said if it hadn’t been off, if the imposter hadn’t stayed bundled up in winter gear, he and the staff would’ve probably recognized that she wasn’t Helen.”

  “And?”

  “Seems pretty convenient,” she said, “that heating-system failure.”

  Pearson lapsed again into silence. Then: “Are you thinking they—”

  “I don’t know.” Marcie chewed her lip a moment. “But the people coming to fix it should be there by now. Why don’t you call Wanda, have her connect you to the bank. Ask to speak to the head fred on the crew.” She turned, and they locked eyes. “Humor me,” she said.

  Two minutes later they had the repairman on speakerphone.

  “You fellas see anything strange?” Pearson asked him.

  “Dern right we did,” the guy said. “The wires were cut to the heating system.”

  Pearson blinked. “Did you say cut?”

  “Yep. As in severed. Somebody took a crowbar to the panel door and cut the wires. The correct wires—​nothing else was affected. Whoever did it knew his way around a power board.”

  “Where is this panel? Somewhere in the bank?”

  “Above the bank. On the roof.”

  Pearson thanked the man, disconnected, and turned to the sheriff. “Whoa,” he said.

  “Sounds like they decided to improve their odds a bit.”

  “Sure does,” Pearson said. “They get two bags with the casino’s logo, find a bank employee with the right looks, befriend her, cause her to have a disabling accident, create a situation that makes a disguise even easier . . . They know what they’re doing, these two.”

  “So do we, now. We know one of them has teller experience and one’s an electrician.”

  “Does that make us any closer to catching them?”

  Marcie shrugged, her eyes on the road. “The more we know, the better off we are.”

  “We also know they’re smart,” he said.

  “Let’s hope they’re not smart enough to turn off Helen’s phone.”

  * * *

  Helen’s aunt Lettie took a while to find her cell phone, but when she did, she loaned it to them with her blessing. Marcie and Pearson arrived back at Helen’s apartment within an hour.

  And found that they had company.

  Two men in dark suits were standing in the bedroom. One of them, who looked like he’d just taken a bite out of a lemon, said, without a handshake, “Detective Murphy. State police.” He pointed to his partner and added, “This is Detective Ellington. We’ll take it from here.”

  Marcie glanced at Spencer, gave him a Did you do this? look. He shrugged and appeared clueless. She figured the big boys at the main bank had called the big boys in Cheyenne.

  “I doubt you have the vast resources required for something like this,” Murphy said.

  Grinding her back teeth, Marcie said, “The crime happened in my county, Detective.”

  “But I suspect the criminals are no longer in your county, Sheriff.” He looked down at the cell phone in Marcie’s hand. “And it sounds like this will tell us for sure. Ms. Wilson, would you do the honors?”

  Helen, still in bed, took her aunt’s phone from Marcie, tapped some buttons, studied it a moment, and handed it back. Everyone crowded in to see.

  On the screen was a map with a red dot in the middle. The location wasn’t approximate; it was exact. According to the GPS, Helen’s missing cell phone was now at an address on the northeast corner of Hill Street and Lancaster, in the small town of Florence. Sixty miles south.

  They watched the screen for several minutes. The red dot didn’t move.

  Detective Ellington took out his own phone and Googled the address shown on the GPS map. After a moment he looked up at his partner. “Two-twenty Lancaster Street,” he said, “is a place called the Traildrive Motel.”

  Murphy nodded, his eyes on the screen. The red dot stayed put.

  “We got ’em,” he said.

  * * *

  Rhonda Felson, although that wasn’t her real name, kicked off her shoes, stretched out on the too-small bed, and blew out a sigh. Her husband, Clyde, although that wasn’t his real name, hefted both duffel bags onto the rickety table in one corner of the room and stared at them lovingly. “So far, so good,” he said.

  “I’m glad you’re pleased,” she murmured, her eyes closed. “I’ll be pleased when we’re in Florence, Italy, and not Florence, Wyoming.”

  “All in good time, Ronnie my dear.”

  Outside, the traffic on Lancaster Street, which consisted mostly of pickup trucks, was sparse. That was to be expected, probably: it was 11 a.m. on a weekday. But Clyde had a feeling traffic here was always sparse.

  “So this is part of your plan?” she said. “Check into a motel only an hour away from the scene of the crime, in broad daylight?”

  “This is one of the final phases of my plan,” he said. “We’re almost done here.”

  “We’ll be done, all right, if they find us.”

  He smiled, still looking at the bags. “They won’t find us.”

  * * *

  Sheriff Marcie Ingalls pushed through the door of her office, tossed her hat onto the desk, and sagged into her chair. Deputy Pearson followed.

  Seconds later Wanda Stalworth stuck her head in, from dispatch. “What are you guys doing back?” she said. “Did you catch ’em?”

  “We’re here because we were told to be,” Marcie said. “It’s not our case anymore.”

  “Then why are you frowning?”

  Marcie rubbed her eyes. “Because something’s bothering me.” She looked all around, studying her surroundings as if seeing them for the first time. “Something small, something I think we talked about, right here in this office. I just can’t put my finger on it.”

  “You think the state cops are wrong about heading down to Florence?” Pearson asked.

  “I’m just saying we’re missing something. As for Florence, those two detectives are in no hurry. I heard Murphy say he’ll be taking several state troopers along with them and making this a big deal. He wants all the glory, I promise you that.”

  Pearson snorted. “While we stay here and write parking tickets. Right?”

  Marcie blinked, then scowled. Slowly she turned and focused on her deputy.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  “That’s it. That’s what I was trying to remember. That car you said you ticketed this morning, in the alley.”

  “What about it?”

  “That alley runs beside the bank, Jerry. Right beside it.”

  “So?”

  “And I bet there’s a ladder on the side of the building, to the roof.”

  They stared at each other for a long moment.

  “The car,” she said. “Was it a Honda?”

  * * *

  Seventy-eight minutes later, Clyde Felson was relaxing in the room’s only chair, reading a travel brochure he’d found in the d
rawer of the nightstand, while Rhonda counted the money in the two bags. She’d been counting for half an hour now.

  In spite of Rhonda’s doubts, the motel was everything Clyde had wanted: small, cheap, quiet, and perfectly located. He didn’t plan to be here long.

  He turned to Rhonda, idly watching the glow of the lamplight on her jet-black hair. He had just opened his mouth to speak to her when he heard the screech of tires somewhere outside their window. A lot of tires. Then the slamming of car doors.

  Clyde was on his feet in an instant, dashing to the window and easing the curtains aside to peek out.

  The Law had arrived.

  * * *

  Detective Michael Murphy was pleased with what he saw. As soon as he had assembled his team of patrolmen, they had hit the road and headed south. Now they were spread out evenly along the inside of the U-shaped row of twenty-four motel rooms. Ellington had already fetched the Hispanic owner—​a man named Roberto Gonzales—​from the motel office, and had learned from the register that only one couple was checked in at the moment: a Mr. and Mrs. Curtis Allen, from Laramie, in Room 12. Murphy was now standing outside that door, his weapon drawn and his mouth dry. As planned, he caught Ellington’s eye and nodded once.

  Ellington took Aunt Lettie Wilson’s cell phone from his pocket and punched in Helen’s number . . . and everyone went dead quiet. Helen had told them her ringtone was loud and distinctive: the “Throne Room” theme from Star Wars. Every cop on the scene held his breath, waiting and listening. Five seconds passed.

  And then Murphy heard it. It was ringing. The phone was here.

  But not behind the door of Room 12. The ringtone was coming from somewhere off to Murphy’s left. He turned, alert and searching, and saw others turn as well. Moments later they found the source of the music: a small blue mailbox on the outside wall of the motel office.

  Frantically Murphy signaled one of the troopers, who fetched a tire iron from the trunk of a cruiser and pried open the lid of the mail drop. Inside were half a dozen stamped envelopes and a model 5 iPhone, which had finally stopped playing John Williams’s music and was now calmly instructing the caller, in Helen Wilson’s recorded voice, to please leave a message.