Rivers to Blood

by Michael Lister

  I looked from Lisa to Merrill.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  “Sorry. Just a little distracted.”

  “I heard about your dog,” she said. “I’m so––”

  “Ain’t the dog,” Merrill said. “That look mean he figuring shit out.”

  Lisa looked at me, her eyes wide beneath arched eyebrows.

  I frowned and shook my head. “Just the very vague beginnings of some farfetched theories. Go ahead. I’m sorry.”

  “I’ll get to that in a minute,” she said. “Does it have to do with Anna too?”

  “Everything has to do with her where he’s concerned,” Merrill said.

  I nodded.

  “Wanna talk about it some more?”

  “I’ve let go,” I said. “Let her go. Really and truly. Completely this time. And I’m still grieving. And that grief is always with me no matter what else I’m doing. Sort of like a low-grade fever. That’s it. That’s all it is.”

  “Sure you don’t want to talk about it?”

  I nodded. “Only the case right now.”

  She nodded. “When you’re ready I’m here. Okay. So … the rest of the list is made up of staff and COs. The ones at the top are the ones we know the least about. The ones at the bottom are the least likely.”

  We looked at the list again. I was having a hard time focusing on it.

  As I pushed my bowl of creole forward I noticed that Lisa had stopped nibbling on her red beans and rice, but Merrill’s work on his shrimp po boy showed no signs of slowing.

  Our waitress, a sweet but slow early twenties single mom working on her GED in night school, hadn’t been by our table in a while and all that remained in the bottom of our glasses was a small amount of a watered-down brandy-looking substance formed from melting ice and a touch of sweet tea.

  I glanced outside again.

  Across the street a slow-moving elderly man everyone in town called Uncle Charlie shuffled down the walkway beneath the bank’s sign toward the entrance. When he finally got there, he pulled on the left door to discover that he was either too weak to open it or it was locked.

  When I looked back in I could see Sandy Hartman watching me from his table near the back. A few minutes later when Merrill went to the restroom, he joined Lisa and me at the table.

  If possible he was even more pale, the circles beneath his eyes even darker. He seemed to be deteriorating, as if the center of him was slowly spinning apart and the rest of him imploding in on it.

  “Are y’all any closer to catching him?” he asked. “I feel like I’ve been out of the loop lately. What’s going on?”

  I told him what Carla and Cody had told me about the abductions and torture without using their names.

  His eyes grew wide, his gaunt face genuinely alarmed. “So it’s a staff member? He’s free? Just walking around out there somewhere?”

  “That’s most likely,” I said. “Could be a work squad inmate but it’s doubtful.”

  “I’ve actually felt somewhat safe when I wasn’t at the prison,” he said. “I’ve even been sleeping some at night.” He shook his head, his breathing becoming even more erratic. “He knows who I am. He could come after me anytime.”

  “We’re not going to let that happen,” I said. “We’re going to catch him very soon. We’re getting closer and closer all the time.”

  He took in a deep breath and let it out very slowly, then did it again, and I could tell he was trying to regain his composure.

  “Sorry,” he said, still slightly out of breath. “I feel like such a … like he really did turn me into his little …”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself. You’ve been through an awful experience. You’re still traumatized. It’s normal to be afraid.”

  We were quiet a few moments more as he seemed to continue to take control of his fear.

  “Anything else?” he asked.

  I wasn’t sure if I should tell him any more but decided to. I’m of the school that it’s always better to know.

  “I’m okay,” he said. “Really. It helps for me to know. It really does.”

  “I think the place he’s taking them is close to the river,” I said.

  “Why?”

  I told him what Cody said about hearing boats pass by.

  “It can’t be underground and close enough to the river for him to hear a boat pass by,” he said. “It’d be full of water.”

  “That’s true,” I said. “Any place where a boat could pass by would be.”

  “Well, now, wait a minute,” he said, his voice rising. “The river is low right now, the water table too. I guess it could … I remember reading something about a few bunkers built into the banks of the river during the Civil War. What if he’s using something like that?”

  I nodded. “Could be. Thanks. We’ll check it out.”

  He stood and nodded at us. “Please let me know if … if anything new … if there’s anything I need to know.”

  “I will.”

  “Thanks,” he said, and returned to his table in the back.

  “See a name on the top of the list who spends a lot of time on the river?” Lisa asked.

  I glanced back at the list.

  She tilted her head to the right a couple of times, indicating a table about ten feet away. Shane Bryant and Todd Sears sat in silence eating the Southern fried special designed to attract lunch customers like them who had no interest in anything except meat, potatoes, and vegetables.

  Shane was on the list.

  “He was in or around the medical building every time one of the rapes occurred, and he’s always on the river,” she said. “He could have found that Civil War bunker or whatever it is and turned into his own little rape room.”

  Merrill returned from the restroom shaking his head. “Guess what I just heard. Inspector found a shank with traces of blood on the tip hidden in Michael Jensen’s duffle he left on the van when he escaped.”

  “When?” I asked. “Why’d it take so long?”

  “That the kicker,” Merrill said. “Was a while back. New warden told the inspector not to tell anyone––especially you or your dad.”

  “So he’s the doer,” Lisa said. “That’s how the rapes are both inside and outside of the prison.”

  “We need to find out if the one outside of the prison took place after Jensen’s escape and if there have been any others inside since he’s been gone.”

  “I’ll find out about the inside ones,” she said. “You take the outside.”

  I nodded and looked back over at the bank. Uncle Charlie was still standing outside trying to get in. He was pulling on the right side door now, but it didn’t budge either.

  Scanning the restaurant, I spotted the bank president and a couple of the tellers. They were normally here at this time, and the bank usually stayed open.

  “I’ll be right back,” I said, standing and dropping my napkin on the table.

  “Something wrong?” Lisa asked.

  By the time I was outside a small group of people had gathered around Uncle Charlie. They were pulling on the doors and cupping their hands around their faces as they pressed against the glass to see inside.

  As I crossed the street an alarm began sounding and the small group was scattering, Uncle Charlie shuffling away as best he could.

  Running toward the door I heard a vehicle speed up behind me and screech to a stop. I spun around hoping it was a deputy.

  It wasn’t.

  It was an old mud-covered Ford truck. The driver was wearing a black ski mask, and holding a small handgun, which he had yet to point at anybody.

  When I spun back around, two men in similar masks were unlocking the front doors of the bank and walking out. The large man in front held a shotgun in one hand and had a large black canvas bag draped over his opposite shoulder. The smaller man behind him had an identical bag and carried a handgun.

  Reflexively I held up my hands.

  I could hear crying and a few screams coming
from inside the bank and the sound of a siren in the distance.

  The man in the truck honked his horn and I turned my head toward him. He was motioning frantically to the two men coming out of the bank.

  When I turned back toward them, the big man in front hit me on the side of the head with the butt of his shotgun. My knees buckled and I went down.

  The pain in my head was so intense that I threw up and couldn’t see for a moment.

  As soon as I could I rolled over to get a better look at the robbers. They tossed the canvas bags in the back of the truck, jumped in the cab, and sped away.

  I searched the bumper for the tag but there wasn’t one. They had probably stolen the truck and removed the plates and would abandon it soon.

  By the time I had gotten to my feet, people had emptied out of the Cajun Café and the other downtown businesses and were craning to see what was going on.

  Within two minutes of the truck leaving, Jake, sirens screaming, lights flashing, sped by in the direction they had gone. He was alone in his patrol car and I motioned for him to stop so I could jump in and help, but he didn’t see me.

  I ducked into the bank to make sure everyone was okay.

  They were.

  The employees on duty at the time were all women, and though many of them were hysterical none of them had been injured in any way.

  When I walked back outside, Merrill was pulling up.

  “Somebody bitch slap me with they shotgun, I’m gonna wanna go after ’em.”

  “We got that in common,” I said.

  I rushed over as fast as my aching head would allow, dropped into the low car, and we took off after them.

  Chapter Fifty-one

  As usual Merrill’s sporty black BMW looked as if he’d just driven it off a showroom floor. The dashboard glistened in the sunlight, its moist sheen seeming to soak up the rays. The carpet was spotless, the leather seats immaculate, and it smelled like a new car though he had owned it for a few years.

  “Is there something blossoming in here?” I asked.

  He smiled.

  “All the little honeys like a ride to smell nice. Hell, most of ’em get one whiff and start taking off their panties.”

  I smiled. “Makes sense,” I said. “Spring. Pollination. New life.”

  “Should try it in your new ride,” he said.

  He was driving fast, shifting often, passing anything that got in his way, but we had yet to see any sign of Jake or the truck.

  After clicking on my seatbelt, I gently felt the growing knot on the side of my head.

  “Anything broken?” Merrill asked.

  “Just my head.”

  “Meant from getting whacked with the shotgun,” he said. “Wasn’t asking about preexisting conditions.”

  In the distance we could see Jake turning onto River Road, the sound of his siren barely audible.

  Merrill smiled. “Dead end.”

  Four miles more and the road would dead-end into the river.

  “Either these the dumbest bastards ever tried to rob a bank,” he continued, “or they got a boat waiting.”

  After we turned onto River Road he sped up even more, taking took the numerous curves as if we were shooting a performance car commercial.

  “Situation like this make you wish you didn’t work at the prison,” he said.

  I nodded. I knew what he meant. Because it was a felony to have a weapon on state prison property—even locked in your car in the parking lot—the only weapons available were Merrill and his car.

  “Won’t be an issue if we flip over and roll down the highway several times,” I said. “Or wrap around one of these big oak trees.”

  “How often a black man get to drive like this ’round here?” he said. “Hell, we usually get pulled over even when we just Sunday-afternoonin’ it. ’Sides, I got this bitch ’cause it corners like it’s on rails.”

  But he eased off the gas a bit and slowed down, especially around the curves.

  As we neared the landing we heard gunshots and Merrill sped up again.

  When we arrived, we found Jake crouched behind the open door of his patrol car, gun drawn, firing down into the river. We pulled up behind him, jumped out, and hunkered near the rear of his car.

  He fired a few more times. Seemingly at nothing in particular. There was no return fire.

  “Where are they?” I asked.

  “Took off down the river,” he said.

  The bottom of his left pant leg was soaked in blood.

  “What happened?”

  “One of their shots hit the pavement and ricocheted into my calf,” he said. “It’s not bad.”

  “And why you shootin’ the river?” Merrill asked.

  “Trying to make sure they don’t come back,” he said.

  Merrill looked at me, his eyes narrowed over a smirk. “Thought we raced down here to try to catch ’em.”

  Jake frowned and shook his head. “We were exchanging fire when they were trying to leave. I think I even got one of ’em. Anyway, they sped away so quickly, the bags of money fell out of the boat. I’m trying to keep them from coming back for them.”

  Merrill nodded. “Good work, Deputy.”

  I could hear sirens in the distance, faint, but growing.

  “I’ve radioed in to let the others know they’re headed down river,” he said.

  “All three of them?” I asked, looking around the landing.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Why?”

  “Don’t see their truck.”

  “They drove it off into the water,” he said. “Over close to the boat launch.”

  “How long’s it been since they’ve fired?” I asked.

  “Why?”

  “Wondering if it’s safe to get the money and get you to the medical center.”

  “Should be,” he said. “Let me get my shotgun and I’ll cover you two while you get the money.”

  “Shee-it,” Merrill said. “I know you the hero of the moment and all, but I ain’t about to have you shootin’ near my black ass. You could fuck up or just find it too temptin’ and say you did.”

  “Then why don’t you cover me,” Jake said, “and I’ll limp down there and get it and try not to bleed to death in the process.”

  “Much better plan,” Merrill said with a big grin.

  The sirens were getting closer. “If we wait just a minute,” I said, “we’ll have plenty of help and neither one of you will be in a position to have to resist the temptation to shoot the other.”

  Chapter Fifty-two

  Pottersville State Bank was a red brick building with a front consisting mostly of dark plate glass. Its interior decor had changed many times over the years but the old black and woodgrain teller counters, desks, and tall standing tables had not.

  While Jake was being treated at Pottersville Medical Center, and FBI agents were on their way, Dad, Fred Goodwin, Merrill, and I were sitting with Cathy Morris and Lonnie Potter in his office. Lonnie was the bank’s president, a job consisting mostly of watching his family’s money. Cathy, the executive who actually ran the bank.

  The bank was closed, the blinds pulled. We were locked inside. The furniture of the lobby had been pulled back, and long sheets of plastic had been spread out in the middle of the floor. The recovered money was stacked on it, and four tellers—under the watchful eye of one of the board of trustees—were drying and counting it.

  “With as small as we are and as electronic as banking has become,” Lonnie was saying, “we just don’t keep a lot of cash around anymore.”

  Lonnie Potter was a tall, thin, soft and soft-spoken man in his fifties. He had big blue eyes that were so wide he looked to be in a perpetual state of surprise, and his face was always red, as if from wind or razor burn.

  “How much you think they got?” Dad asked.

  “Oh, we know exactly,” Cathy said.

  Cathy Morris was a rigid, nervous single woman in her mid-forties, critical of most everyone and everything. She was so unc
omfortable with herself, she made those around her uncomfortable—a defense mechanism she used to great advantage.

  Dad raised his eyebrows. When Cathy didn’t respond, he said, “How much?”

  “Two hundred thousand,” she said. “Exactly. They only took what was in the vault. They really seemed to know what they were doing.”

  “Really?” I asked, my voice full of surprise. “I didn’t get that impression from their escape plan.”

  “And yet as I understand it,” she said, “they have, in fact, escaped.”

  A boat Jake identified as the one the robbers used to escape was found about two miles down from the landing. If Jake had hit a man as he thought, the man hadn’t bled in the boat. No blood, no prints, no trace evidence whatsoever had been found.

  “So far,” Dad said, “but there’s only so many places they can hide out there. We’ll find them.”

  “Like the inmate?” she asked.

  Fred Goodwin laughed out loud.

  “What made you think they knew what they were doing?” Dad asked, his voice firm and demanding.

  “Well,” she said, sitting a little straighter, “they came at the perfect time. We eat in two shifts—eleven to twelve and twelve to one. The hour from eleven to twelve has the least amount of people in the bank—and all women.”

  I glanced out at the women in the lobby drying and counting the recovered money. Two of them were recent high school graduates, two in their late thirties or early forties, none of them in shape. They did their work without talking, and I suspected it had more to do with the presence of Cathy Morris than concentration or post traumatic stress.

  “Is that it?” Dad asked.

  “Not even close,” she said. “They came in through the back door, so no one passing by or in the shops across the street saw them. My office is back there, so they came in and got me first. They had me open the safe first. It’s on a timer, so while they were waiting for it to open, they went in the lobby, got everybody to lie down on the floor, and locked the front doors.”

  “They had to know what they were doing,” Lonnie said. “No question about it.”

  “Anything else?” Dad asked.

  Cathy nodded. “They got the tellers out from behind the counter before they could push the alarm, and they didn’t take any of the money from their drawers. That means they sacrificed over fifty thousand dollars, but it was the smartest thing they could’ve done. Every drawer has marked bills—not only that, but when you lift them up it sets off the alarm.”