Golden Prey

by John Sandford

  She had some hope, now. First chance, she left the track altogether, weaving through the trees. The truck bottomed once, twice, wheels grinding into the raw dirt, and then . . .

  The cop was gone. She could still see the multicolored red-and-blue flashers back through the trees but she kept going, and when she couldn’t see them anymore, stopped long enough to get the phone off the floor and call Poole, and started driving again.

  When Poole answered, she cried, “They’re all over me. The cops are all over me. I’m running through the trees . . .”

  “What? What?”

  “They must know the truck. I wasn’t speeding, I was in the slow lane, and the cop saw me and he came right after me,” she said. “I got off the highway into the woods, I’m running through the woods, I’ve lost them now, but I can’t go back on the roads . . .”

  “Listen,” Poole said. “Now listen. How far away are they?”

  “I don’t know, I’ve lost them. I’m lost, I’m off-road, I’m back in all these trees.”

  “Keep going. See if you can spot a house, or anything that you’d recognize later. Anything. Then get the money and gold out and stick it under a tree or somewhere people can’t see it. You gotta hide it. If you hide the money, they got nothing on you, babe. They got nothing.”

  The truck bounded over a hump of dirt and onto another dusty track. She wasn’t sure, but she thought she was moving away from the cop car, the sun still at her back. Up ahead, she saw the corner of a metal building, and she said into the phone, “Okay, I see this building up ahead. Just the corner of the roof, it’s silver. Okay, and off to the side, I can see the interstate through a hole in the trees. I must have come back to the interstate. I’m going to turn down that way.”

  She followed a line of dirt, not even quite a track, past the edge of a pond, and rolled up to a fence and said, “There’s a fence, I can’t get across it . . .”

  Poole, calm: “Can you stop there?”

  She couldn’t see anything in the rearview mirror. “Maybe. I’ll stop.”

  She stopped the truck, got out. She could still hear the cop’s siren, but it must have been several hundred yards away. One of the low scrubby trees, ten yards inside the fence line, had branches that dropped all the way to the ground. She popped open the back doors on the truck, got the two black cases with the gold and the cash, hauled them over to the tree, and pushed them back through the knee-high weeds to the tree trunk. She stepped back, to check: the briefcases were invisible.

  She walked back to the truck and said, “I put the gold and the money under a tree, in high grass. You can’t see it, the branches come right down to the ground. I’m going to the tree . . .”

  She went to the tree and paced off the distance to the fence.

  “. . . It’s ten long steps from the fence. Probably ten yards, and I’m right across from the entrance to a road on the other side of the interstate. I’m only a little way west from the exit to Gordon, Texas. North side of the interstate, west of the exit. Gordon, Texas. G-O-R-D-O-N. From where I am, I’m looking right past the pond to the silver roof.”

  “Got it all,” Poole said. “Get yourself out of there. Try staying on the back roads, see if you can find a place to hide until dark.”

  “I don’t think that’s going to work, babe,” Box said.

  “If it doesn’t, don’t say anything to the cops,” Poole said. “Not a word, except, ‘I want a lawyer.’ You’ve heard me talk about this. You want a lawyer.”

  “I’ve still got the gun.”

  Long silence, then, “You’ve never used one before. I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “I could ditch the truck and walk over to these buildings, see if I might catch somebody there.”

  “I don’t think so. You don’t have time to clean up the truck, get rid of prints and all that . . . You shoot somebody, kidnap somebody, then you’re in the shit. I think you better throw the gun away. Sturgill is saying the same thing.”

  “Okay. I’ll do that,” Box said.

  “Listen. Do you have that orange blouse with you? The one I bought in Dallas and you don’t wear?”

  “Yes, in my suitcase.”

  “If you have time, get it out of the suitcase and rip a piece out of it and tie it to the bottom of the fence like ten yards from the tree where the money is. Make it easier to find when we come back for it.”

  “If we come back.”

  “We will, babe. We will,” Poole said.

  “I’m hanging up now. Oh, God, Gar . . . I’m hanging up.”

  —

  SHE FOUND the orange blouse, but instead of ripping it, simply bunched it up and tied it to the bottom of a fence post fifteen long steps west of the tree where the money was. She went back to the truck, got the pistol she’d kept for self-protection, and threw it under the tree with the money and gold. Then she got back in the truck, called Poole, and said, “Okay, baby, the orange blouse is on the bottom of the fence fifteen long steps west, that’s WEST of the tree where the money is. You have to walk along the fence to see it. The gun’s with the money.”

  “Move away from there, then. Take it slow. There’s probably a road past those buildings, or a driveway, see if you can sneak out of there . . .”

  “I’m gone again,” she said. “I need both hands to steer, I’m back in this really rough place . . .”

  She hung up, dropped the phone on the seat, and worked her way through the rough track to a smoother one, then down the track to the buildings. There was nobody around them, no vehicles, and she followed a driveway out to a dirt road and along the road for a few hundred yards parallel to the interstate.

  The thought of surrendering to the police frightened her, more than she’d ever been frightened in her life. She cut across a hard-surfaced road, hesitated—it felt too exposed—then turned toward the interstate and drove past a restaurant and under the interstate and then south.

  She might have gotten away, she thought later, if she’d only moved faster. Not a lot faster, if she’d just gotten under the interstate five minutes sooner. She’d crossed under it and was headed south, and she was thinking about the blue tarp on the back and how she ought to get rid of it because it was instantly identifying . . . when she felt the rhythmic beating on the windows.

  She didn’t know what it was, only that it was close, and a moment later, a helicopter passed overhead, and low, turning in front of her, the pilot looking straight down at her.

  The jig, she thought, was up.

  She kept going, a mile, a little more, then caught sight of the flashing light bar behind her, the helicopter still there in front of her. “Screwed,” she said aloud. She picked up the phone, did a redial. Poole answered and she said, “They got me, I’m throwing the phone. Love you, Gar.”

  “Love you, babe,” and he was gone.

  She accelerated suddenly and the helicopter turned ahead of her, and she took the moment to throw the phone out the window. Another two hundred yards, the cop car closing from behind, and she pulled over, took a deep breath, got out of the truck, put her hands over her head.

  The cop car stopped fifty yards away. The cop got out of the car, stayed behind his door, pointed a rifle at her; she thought it was a rifle. Maybe a shotgun. He shouted, “Everybody out of the truck.”

  “I’m all alone,” she said.

  The cop ducked back to the car, said something, and then shouted, “Walk toward me until I tell you to stop.”

  She did that, until he shouted, “Stop.”

  Another car was coming up from behind her, and she turned and saw another patrol car. The helicopter was higher now, but still overhead, still making noise. The two cops took a while to check out the truck, then patted her down and cuffed her.

  One of the cops had curly blond hair and a name tag that said “Oaks,” and he asked, “Where’d Poole bai
l out?”

  “Who’s Poole?” and then, “I want a lawyer,” she said.

  The other cop had dark hair with the shine of gel, and a name tag that said “Martinez,” and he said, “Listen, honey, if Poole’s back there in the trees and he shoots somebody to get a car, then you’re going to the death house with him. You can’t say, ‘I want a lawyer,’ and get out of this. You’re still an accomplice.”

  She said, “I’m alone. I was always alone. I don’t know any Poole. I bought this truck from a guy in Texas and when the police officer started chasing me, I panicked. I thought the price was too good, and I thought maybe the truck was stolen, so I panicked. I was always by myself.”

  Oaks said, “Nice try, Dora.” He reached into his back trouser pocket and took out a piece of paper and handed it to her. She remembered the photograph quite well: it had been taken at an office party when she was temporarily working at an auto parts place in Franklin before she went off with Poole. The likeness was excellent and her facial features had held up well over the seven or eight years since the photo was taken.

  “I want a lawyer,” she said.

  “You’ll get one,” the cop said.

  They took her keys and locked up the truck and left it where it was: U.S. marshals wanted to take a look at it, they’d been told. Box was transferred to the back of one of the patrol cars, and then Oaks made a call.

  “Looking for a Marshal Davenport,” he said.

  “This is Davenport.”

  “We got your Dora Box for you,” Oaks said. “You gonna pick her up or you want her delivered?”

  “Tell me where you’re at,” Davenport said. And, “You’re the best news I’ve had in a long time.”

  “I haven’t ever been anybody’s best news, not since my second wife went off with a toolpusher,” Oaks said. “I truly appreciate you telling me that.”

  21

  LUCAS, BOB, AND RAE were eating breakfast at Happy Frank’s Barbeque and Flapjacks when the patrolman called Lucas.

  “Got her, got Box,” Lucas told Bob and Rae, when he was off the phone. “No sign of Poole, she was all alone. We gotta get out there.”

  “How far? This is a big state,” Rae said. “We need a helicopter?”

  Lucas ran out to the Jeep and got his iPad, brought it back to the table, and as he explained how Box had been spotted, he poked in Gordon, Texas, and found that it was a bit more than an hour away, by car, from Happy Frank’s. He called Forte in Washington to tell him about Box, and Forte went away for five minutes and came back with the name and a direct phone number for the head of the Dallas Region of the Texas Highway Patrol, a Major Louis Highstreet.

  Lucas explained the situation to Highstreet, the urgency of catching up with Poole. Highstreet was a slow-talking man with a dry Texas accent, but moved quickly enough.

  “You just sit right where you’re at and eat those flapjacks, Marshal, and I’ll have a patrol car there in a few minutes. He’ll run you back to your motel with his sy-reen, and then back through Fort Worth out toward Gordon. I’ll have the boys in Gordon transport Miz Box to the city of Weatherford, which is the closest nearby jailhouse, if I am recollecting correctly. You can interview her there. If you get out of that motel right quick, you’ll be talking to her in forty-five minutes. Then they can transport her to the federal facilities in Fort Worth or Dallas, at their leisure.”

  “Man, that would be great,” Lucas said.

  “And, Marshal Davenport?”

  “Yes?”

  “Say hello to Happy Frank for me, would you do that?”

  Lucas got off the phone and said to Bob and Rae, “I love this fuckin’ state.”

  —

  LUCAS, BOB, AND RAE had come to Happy Frank’s in a single vehicle, Lucas’s Jeep, because they hadn’t planned to do anything but eat and talk. Lucas didn’t like to ride with other investigators when they were working a case, because much of the time they wound up having to do different things, in which separate cars were necessary. They needed to get back to the hotel to get cars and clothes for the chase, wherever it might take them.

  “The problem is,” Lucas said, as they hastily worked their way through the flapjacks and sausage, “Poole is getting further away every goddamn minute. We need to squeeze Dora, and we don’t have much time to get it done.”

  “I’ve been reading your paper on her,” Rae said. “She could be tough.”

  Bob said, “Yeah, I saw that thing about her cutting some guy’s head off.”

  Rae: “I was thinking about her being a homecoming queen. Takes a mean, hard-eyed bitch to be homecoming queen. In my opinion.”

  “I haven’t explored this area with you,” Bob said. “I take it you weren’t the queen?”

  “Queen’s court,” she said. “This girl who beat me? If you’d told her that to be homecoming queen she had to kill her mom and grind her up to link sausage, her mom would have been a dead Little Sizzler the next day.”

  Lucas looked at the remnants of his sausage and said, “Thanks for that.”

  The highway patrolman arrived as they were waiting for the check: Lucas threw some bills at the table and they talked with the patrolman for a moment, got a cell phone number, then fell in behind him in the Jeep.

  They were back at the hotel in ten minutes, out of it in five, and headed west for Weatherford, three vehicles tagging behind a cop with lights and a sy-reen, pushing aside the mostly incoming traffic until they were on the interstate, and after that, across suburban countryside mixed with small farms and blocks of dark green woodlots at a steady ninety into Weatherford.

  The Parker County jail in Weatherford was a low beige building that looked like it might be used for the storage of cardboard boxes, or something equally innocuous. The sheriff came out to see them and take them to the interview room where Box was being held.

  Lot of cops were hanging around: this all felt like something large. Lucas, Bob, and Rae filed into the interview room. They’d taken the cuffs off Box, but she sat behind an interview table looking like an elf, a small slender woman with an oval face who’d been crying hard enough to mess up her eye makeup, giving her a raccoon-like appearance.

  Lucas said, “I’m Lucas Davenport, I’m a federal marshal, and these are Bob and . . .”

  Box interrupted: “I want a lawyer.”

  —

  THE COLLEGE-SOUNDING GUY called Annie and said, “The highway patrol has arrested Dora Box.”

  “Damnit. Where are they?”

  “They’re at Gordon, Texas,” the College-Sounding Guy said.

  “Where’s that?”

  “West out I-20, an hour and a half from where you’re at,” he said. “Hang on a second. Something is happening.”

  He went away for much longer than a second, then came back and said, “They’re moving her to the Parker County jail in Weatherford, for Marshal Davenport, who will interview her there. Davenport is on his way. Weatherford is about an hour from where you’re at.”

  “Where did you get this from?”

  “Monitoring the cop frequencies. Since Poole and Box started running, there wasn’t anybody who was going to find them and move them other than the highway patrol, so I’m listening in,” the College-Sounding Guy said. “Although nobody’s calling it the highway patrol, they call it the DPS.”

  “That’s short for Dipshits?”

  “Could be, but it’s actually the Department of Public Safety,” the College-Sounding Guy said.

  “Anything about Poole?”

  “Nothing that I’ve heard. I think they only got her,” the College-Sounding Guy said.

  “Now what?” Annie asked.

  “I don’t have anything to do with that. You might want to talk to the Boss.”

  They called the Boss, got switched around from the original person who answered the phone to the man himself, and a
fter some discussion, the Boss asked, “There is very much money involved here. Is there a chance to, ahm, to retrieve the Box lady?”

  “Don’t see how, right now. We could go take a look,” Annie told him.

  “If you try, we pay you two hundred thousand dollars. If you succeed, and get the money back, we pay you another two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

  “We will take a look,” Annie said.

  —

  ANNIE HAD the phone on speaker and Rosie and Kort had been listening. When the Boss went away, Kort asked, “What do you mean, take a look? Are you crazy? Is he talking about shooting cops to get Box?”

  “Not necessarily shooting cops,” Rosie said.

  “Listen, there’s only one thing to do,” Kort said. “We pretend to take a look, and call the Boss and tell him there’s no way to get at her. Too many cops, all over the place. I mean, the Boss wouldn’t want us shooting cops. Nobody cares about these criminals like Poole or Darling or even Darling’s old lady, but they care about other cops. If we shoot cops, and they find out it goes back to the Boss, then the Boss is in big trouble. They’ll go down there and kill him.”

  “You forget one thing,” Annie said.

  “What?”

  Rosie: “There’s four hundred and fifty thousand dollars on the table.”

  “Four hundred and fifty thousand, for shooting it out with the Texas cops?” Kort was incredulous. “You guys must be rich already. What’s that money mean if you’re dead?”

  “You’d be surprised. They pay us okay, but we aren’t getting rich. We drive from Galveston to Charleston dropping off the load, we get twenty thousand per run, two hundred thousand a year,” Annie said. “Costs us a hundred thousand just to stay on the road. If we do it for too long, we’ll get caught. We want to retire before that happens. Two hundred thousand . . . that’s worth thinking about. Four hundred and fifty thousand if we get the money back . . . we won’t be able to retire, but we’ll be a lot closer to it.”