Life or Death

by Michael Robotham

  ‘That’s my friend Clayton,’ says Billy. ‘He’s black.’

  ‘I can see that.’

  ‘I don’t have many black friends, but Clayton’s okay. He’s little but he can run faster than a bike unless you’re going downhill.’

  Audie cinches the belt on his trousers to stop them falling down. On the porch of a neighbouring house he notices a thin man in a checked shirt and black leather vest watching him. Audie waves. The man doesn’t wave back.

  Rosie appears. ‘Breakfast is on the stove.’

  ‘Where’s Ernie?’

  ‘Work.’

  ‘He starts early.’

  ‘Finishes late.’

  Audie sits at the table and eats. Tortillas. Eggs. Beans. Coffee. There are glass jars of flour, dried beans and rice on shelves above the stove. He can see Rosie through the window hanging washing on a line. He can’t stay here. These people have been kind to him, but he doesn’t want to bring them trouble. His only hope of staying alive is to follow the plan and keep hidden for as long as possible.

  When Rosie reappears he asks her about getting a lift into town.

  ‘I can take you at midday,’ she says, rinsing his empty plate in the sink. She brushes a strand of hair from her eyes. ‘Where are you heading?’

  ‘Houston.’

  ‘I can drop you at the Greyhound Depot in San Antonio.’

  ‘Is that out of your way?’

  She doesn’t answer. Audie takes money from his pocket. ‘I’d like to pay you something for the lodgings?’

  ‘Keep your money.’

  ‘It’s clean.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  It’s thirty-eight miles into San Antonio, heading north on Interstate 37. Rosie drives a small Japanese-made car with a broken exhaust and no air conditioning. They travel with the windows open and the radio turned up loud.

  At the top of the hour, a newsreader lists the headlines and mentions a prison break. Audie begins talking, trying to make it sound natural. Rosie interrupts him and turns up the volume.

  ‘Is that you?’

  ‘I’m not fixing to hurt anyone.’

  ‘That’s good to know.’

  ‘You can drop me off right here if you’re worried.’

  She doesn’t answer. Keeps driving.

  ‘What did you do?’ she asks.

  ‘They said I robbed an armoured truck.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Hardly seems to matter any more.’

  She sneaks a glance at him. ‘Either you did or you didn’t.’

  ‘Sometimes you get blamed for things you didn’t do. Other times you get away with things you did. Maybe we finish up even at the end.’

  Rosie changes lanes, looking for the exit. ‘I don’t have a lot of moral authority since I don’t go to church any more, but if you’ve done something wrong you shouldn’t run away from it.’

  ‘I’m not running away,’ says Audie.

  And she believes him.

  Pulling up outside the bus station, Rosie looks past Audie at the row of buses heading to distant cities.

  ‘When you get caught, don’t mention what we did for you,’ she says.

  ‘I won’t get caught.’

  6

  Special Agent Desiree Furness walks across the open-plan office on her way to see her boss. Anyone glancing up from a computer screen would see only her head above the level of the desks and think perhaps a young child had wandered into the building to visit a parent or sell girl scout cookies.

  Desiree had spent most of her life attempting to grow taller, if not physically then emotionally, socially and professionally. Her mother and father were both short and the genetic numbers had come up on the lowest percentile for their only child. According to her driver’s licence, Desiree was five foot two, but in reality she needed high heels to reach such lofty heights. She wore the same heels through college, almost crippling herself, because she wanted to be taken seriously and to date basketball players. That was another cruel twist of fate, her attraction to tall men – or perhaps she harboured some innate desire to have lanky progeny, dealing her children a different genetic hand. Even now, aged thirty, she still got asked for her ID at bars and restaurants. For most women this might have been flattering but for Desiree it was an ongoing humiliation.

  When she was growing up, her parents would say things like ‘Good things come in small packages’ and ‘People appreciate the little things in life’. These sentiments, however well-meaning, were hard to accept for an adolescent who still shopped for clothes in the kiddie section. At college, where she studied criminology, it had been painfully embarrassing. At the academy it had been mortifying. But Desiree had belied and defied her stature, topping her graduating class at Quantico, proving herself fitter, brighter and more determined than any of the other recruits. Her curse had been her motivation. Her size had made her reach higher.

  Knocking on Eric Warner’s door, she waits for his summons.

  Grizzled and prematurely grey, Warner has been in charge of the Houston office ever since Desiree was posted to her home city six years ago. Of all the powerful men that she’s met, he has genuine authority and charisma, along with a natural easy scowl that makes his smiles look ironically sad, or just sad. He doesn’t make fun of Desiree’s height or treat her differently on account of her gender. People listen to him, not because he shouts but because his whisper begs to be heard.

  ‘The escapee at Three Rivers – it was Audie Palmer,’ says Desiree.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The armoured truck robbery in Dreyfus County. 2004.’

  ‘The guy who should have ridden the needle?’

  ‘That’s him.’

  ‘When was he due out?’

  ‘Today.’

  The two agents look at each other, thinking the same thing. What sort of moron escapes from prison the day before he’s due to be released?

  ‘He’s one of mine,’ says Desiree. ‘I’ve been keeping an eye on the case since Palmer was transferred to Three Rivers for legal reasons.’

  ‘What legal reasons?’

  ‘The new US Attorney was unhappy with the length of the original sentence and wanted him retried.’

  ‘After ten years!’

  ‘Stranger things have happened.’

  Warner rattles a pen between his teeth, holding it like a cigarette. ‘Any sign of the money?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Take a drive. See what the chief warden has to say.’

  An hour later, Desiree is on the Southwest Freeway passing Wharton. The farmland is flat and green, the sky wide and blue. She’s listening to her Spanish language tapes, repeating the phrases.

  ¿Dónde puedo comprar agua?

  ¿Dónde está el baño?

  Her mind drifts to Audie Palmer. She inherited his file from Frank Senogles, another field agent who had moved further up the food chain and was tossing his scraps to Desiree.

  ‘This one is colder than a well digger’s asshole,’ he told her when he handed over his case notes, looking at her breasts instead of her face.

  Cold cases were normally divided up between active agents with newbies getting the oldest and the coldest files. Periodically, Desiree checked for new information, but in the ten years since the robbery none of the stolen money had been recovered. Seven million dollars in used banknotes, unmarked and untraceable, had simply vanished. Nobody knew the serial numbers because the cash was being taken out of circulation and destroyed. It was old, soiled and torn, but still legal tender.

  Audie Palmer had survived the robbery despite being shot in the head, and a fourth gang member – believed to be Palmer’s older brother Carl – had got away with the money. Over the past decade there had been false alarms and unconfirmed sightings of Carl. Police in Tierra Colorado, Mexico, reportedly arrested him in 2007 but they released him before the FBI could get a warrant for his extradition. A year later an American tourist holidaying in the Philippines claimed that Carl Palmer was runni
ng a bar in Santa Maria, north of Manila. There were other sightings in Argentina and Panama – most of them anonymous tip-offs that led nowhere.

  Desiree turns off the Spanish lesson and gazes at the passing farmland. What sort of idiot escapes the day before his release? She had already considered the possibility that Audie might have fled to avoid a reception committee. Surely he could have waited one more day. Under the reoffending policy in Texas he could get another twenty-five years.

  Desiree had been to Three Rivers FCI once before to interview Audie and to ask him about the money. It was two years ago and Audie hadn’t struck her as being an idiot. He had an IQ of 136 and had studied engineering at college before dropping out. Getting shot in the head could have changed his personality, of course, but Audie had come across as polite, intelligent and almost apologetic. He called her ma’am and didn’t comment on her height, or become annoyed when she accused him of lying.

  ‘I don’t remember much about that day,’ Audie told her. ‘Someone shot me in the head.’

  ‘What do you remember?’

  ‘Being shot in the head.’

  She tried again. ‘Where did you meet the gang?’

  ‘In Houston.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Through a distant cousin.’

  ‘Does your cousin have a name?’

  ‘He’s very distant.’

  ‘Who hired you for the job?’

  ‘Verne Caine.’

  ‘How did he contact you?’

  ‘Telephone.’

  ‘What was your job?’

  ‘Driving.’

  ‘What about your brother?’

  ‘He wasn’t there.’

  ‘So who was the fourth member of the gang?’

  Audie shrugged. He did the same when she mentioned the money, spreading his arms as though ready to be searched then and there.

  There were more questions – an hour of them – taking them in circles and over hurdles and through hoops until the details of the robbery were a tangled mess.

  ‘So let me get this straight,’ said Desiree, not hiding her frustration. ‘You only met the other members of the gang an hour before the robbery. You didn’t know their names until afterwards and they all wore masks.’

  Audie nodded.

  ‘What was going to happen to the money?’

  ‘We were going to meet up later and divide it up.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘They didn’t tell me.’

  She sighed and tried a different approach. ‘You’re doing it tough in here, Audie. I know everybody wants a piece of you – the screws, the cons. Wouldn’t it be easier if you just gave the money back?’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Doesn’t it bother you that people are out there spending it all, while you’re rotting away inside?’

  ‘The money was never mine.’

  ‘You must feel cheated. Angry.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Don’t you begrudge them getting away?’

  ‘Resentment is like swallowing a poison and waiting for the other person to die.’

  ‘I’m sure you think that’s very profound, but to me it sounds like bullshit,’ she told him.

  Audie smiled wryly. ‘Have you ever been in love, Special Agent?’

  ‘I’m not here to talk about…’

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to embarrass you.’

  Recalling the moment, she experiences the same emotion again. Blushing. Desiree couldn’t remember ever meeting a man, let alone a prisoner, who was so self-assured or accepting of his fate. He didn’t care if his stairs were steeper or if every door was closed. Even when she accused him of lying, he didn’t get annoyed. Instead he apologised.

  ‘Will you stop saying you’re sorry.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am, I’m sorry.’

  Arriving at Three Rivers FCI, Desiree parks in the visitors’ area and stares out of the windshield, her eyes travelling across the strip of grass to the double line of fences strung with razor wire. Beyond she can see guards in the towers and the main prison buildings. Zipping up her boots, she steps out of the car and straightens her jacket, preparing for the reception rigmarole – filling out forms, surrendering her weapon and handcuffs, having her bag searched.

  A handful of women are waiting for visiting hours to begin – girls who ended up with the wrong guys, or the wrong criminals, the ones who got caught. Losers. Bunglers. Swindlers. Throwbacks. It’s not easy to find a good criminal or a good man, thinks Desiree, who has decided that the best of them are usually gay, married or fictional (the men if not the criminals). Twenty minutes later she is ushered into the chief warden’s office. She doesn’t take a chair. Instead she lets the warden sit and watches him grow more and more uncomfortable as she moves around the room.

  ‘How did Audie Palmer escape?’

  ‘He scaled the perimeter fences using stolen sheets from the prison laundry and a makeshift grappling hook made from a washing-machine drum. A junior officer had let him into the laundry out of hours to collect something he left behind. The officer didn’t notice that Palmer failed to return. We believe he hid in the laundry until the tower guards changed shift at 2300 hours.’

  ‘What about the alarms?’

  ‘One of them triggered just before eleven, but it looked like a fault with the circuit. We rebooted the system, which takes about two minutes. He must have used that window of time to go over the fences. The dogs tracked him as far as Choke Canyon Reservoir, but we think that was probably a ruse to throw us off the scent. Nobody has ever escaped across the lake before. Most likely Palmer had somebody waiting for him outside the fence.’

  ‘Does he have any cash?’

  The warden shifts in his chair, not enjoying this. ‘It has been ascertained that Palmer had been withdrawing the maximum amount of $160 bi-weekly from his prisoner trust account, but spending virtually nothing at the commissary. We estimate he could have as much as twelve hundred dollars.’

  Sixteen hours has passed since the escape. There have been no sightings.

  ‘Were there any unfamiliar cars in the parking lot yesterday?’

  ‘The police are checking the footage.’

  ‘I need a list of everyone who has visited Palmer in the past decade along with any details of correspondence he may have had by mail or email. Did he have access to a computer?’

  ‘He worked in the prison library.’

  ‘Does it have an internet connection?’

  ‘It’s monitored.’

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘We have a librarian.’

  ‘I want to talk to them. I also want to speak to Palmer’s caseworker and the prison psychiatrist, as well as any member of staff who worked closely with him. What about other inmates – was he close to anyone in particular?’

  ‘They’ve already been interviewed.’

  ‘Not by me.’

  The warden picks up the phone and calls his deputy, speaking like he has a pencil clenched between his teeth. Desiree can’t hear the conversation, but the tone is clear. She’s about as welcome as a skunk at a lawn party.

  Warden Sparkes escorts Special Agent Furness to the prison library before taking his leave, saying he has calls to make. There is a foul taste in his mouth that he wants to wash away with a shot of bourbon. On better days than this one he drinks too much and has to draw the blinds and cancel meetings, claiming to have a migraine.

  He pulls a bottle from the drawer of a filing cabinet and pours a shot into his coffee mug. He has been chief warden at Three Rivers for two years, having been promoted and transferred from a smaller low-security facility because he came in under budget with minimal reportable incidents. This gave a false impression of his skills. If men like these could be controlled, they wouldn’t be locked up.

  Warden Sparkes has never troubled himself with the debate about whether nurture or nature is primarily to blame for criminal behaviour and the degree of reoffending, but he does believe it’s society’s failure, not
the correctional system. This sentiment doesn’t fit with the times in Texas, a state that treats offenders like livestock and gets the dumb beasts it deserves.

  Audie Palmer’s prison file is open on his desk. No history of narcotics or alcohol abuse. No penalties. No suspension of privileges. He was hospitalised a dozen times in his first year following altercations with other prisoners. Stabbed (twice). Slashed. Beaten. Strangled. Poisoned. Things settled after that, although periodically somebody would make an attempt on his life. A month ago a prisoner sprayed lighter fluid through the bars of Audie’s cell and tried to set him ablaze.

  Despite the attacks, Palmer had never sought to be isolated from the general prison population. He had not asked for special treatment or courted favours or tried to bend the rules to suit his circumstances. As with most prison files, there was little by way of background. Maybe Audie grew up in a shithole. Maybe his father was an alcoholic or his mother was a crack whore or he was unlucky enough to be born poor. There are no explanations or revelations or red flags, yet something about this case makes the warden itch in a place he can’t politely scratch. It could have been the two unfamiliar cars he saw in the visitors’ parking lot this morning, one of them a dark blue Cadillac, the other a pickup truck with a bull bar and spotlights. The man inside the Cadillac didn’t bother coming to the visitors’ gate but occasionally got out and stretched. Tall, thin and hatless, he was dressed in a tight-fitting black suit and heavy boots; and his face was a queer bloodless colour.

  The second driver had arrived at 8 a.m. but hadn’t made his way to the reception area until three hours later. Powerfully built, although thickening around the middle. His hair was neatly trimmed above prominent ears and he wore a sheriff’s uniform that had sharp creases from a hot iron.

  ‘I’m Sheriff Ryan Valdez of Dreyfus County,’ he’d said, offering a hand that was cool and dry to the touch.

  ‘You’re a long way from home, Sheriff.’