Ransom River (38 page)

“This is a guy thing, this need for a performance rating. ‘How good was I? Scrambled eggs good? Rice Krispies good?’” She waved a toaster pastry at him. “Pop-Tarts good. Oh, baby.”

Until then, hearing his laugh, that wonderful sound, she didn’t know how lonely she’d been. Her face must have shown something like gratitude and raw longing, because he reached out and wrapped a hand around her head, reeled her to him, and kissed her.

A wave of feeling slapped her. It made her think she was crazy, that she was scorched, fried, emotionally nuked, because Seth was a live wire, hot and ungrounded, and still so guarded that in a dozen ways he seemed a stranger. This was like stepping into a pool of water with her hand on an electrical switch. But she didn’t care.

He had dressed that morning before she opened her eyes. He’d gotten up and stoked the fire in the living room, had led Chiba out and fed and watered him. The dog adored him and wouldn’t have cared if Seth looked like a gargoyle. He was a guardian and trying to present a face of stone to the outside world. He didn’t want anyone to see his scars. But she wasn’t anyone.

She straddled his lap. She kissed him long and good. She felt upside down and, momentarily, spectacular.

His phone rang. She kept kissing him, waiting to see how long he could stand to let it ring. Finally she said, “You pass the test. Answer it.”

He checked the display and said, “Work.”

She climbed off his lap. He stood and went outside.

While he paced in the mist beneath the oaks, she gathered their things and phoned Nussbaum’s office to arrange a meeting.

When Rory went outside, Seth finished his call. He helped her load her belongings in the Subaru.

“I have to go in,” he said. “I’m going to stop by Dad’s, then head back to L.A.”

“I’m going to Century City later this morning.” She needed to tell Nussbaum what she’d learned about the heist, and she preferred to do it in person.

The sky looked smooth, silky white. The air seemed to brush like velvet along her skin. The morning felt close, quiet, almost smothered. Seth whistled and Chiba managed to jump in the back of the car. Seth scratched his ears and shut the hatchback. Rory stepped into his arms.

He said, “If Detective Zelinski pulls any stunts, if he so much as dangles handcuffs in front of you, call me.”

She smiled. It was a gallows smile, but still. “Bring your lock-picking tools.”

She climbed in the Subaru, backed out of the barn, and saw a flash drive on the floor in the foot well on the passenger side.

It wasn’t hers. She picked it up. The flash drive was clipped to a white
nylon lanyard. Written on the lanyard in black ink were the words
WATCH THIS
.

Seth pulled past her, honking as he went. She turned the flash drive over in her hand.

The only time her car had been unguarded and unlocked was when she left the engine running while she rescued Chiba from the freeway.

Elmendorf had left the flash drive in the car.

The muffled sky put a damper on everything. Lucky Colder poured water into the coffeepot and turned on the radio, an old habit he kept up even though the news was on the television too. Radio felt more like the old days, workdays. It felt like time spent in a patrol car, and with his compadres on the force. He turned on the coffeepot.

As the coffee brewed he listened to the local news report. The staticky sound was both soothing and a siren call. After a moment, he picked up the phone and punched a number.

It was early, but the shifts changed at eight. The switchboard put him through.

The woman who picked up sounded crisp and awake. “Xavier.”

“Detective. It’s Lucky Colder.”

She paused just a blink before saying, “What can I do for a fellow Ransom River officer?”

“It’s about a case file. The Geronimo Armored car robbery.”

Another brief hesitation. “Yes?”

“I’d like to come in and talk to you about it. There’s some evidence in the file we were never able to connect with the robbers. I think we need to take another look at it. It may be pertinent to a current case.”

Cautiously she said, “Go on.”

He didn’t know what to make of her reserve. “Mindy, this could be important.”

“Then tell me, Lucky.” She sounded more natural. “Please.”

He talked to her for several minutes. When he replaced the receiver, he felt reassured. He had done the right thing. He knew Seth didn’t want him to contact anybody in the department, but keeping this to himself, leaving Rory out there exposed, didn’t feel right.

The coffee brewed. He poured himself a mug, feeling better. Feeling confident. Hopeful, almost.

R
ory drove down the glen. The sun was burning off the marine layer. Blue sky overwhelmed the clouds and colors bloomed to life. Her skin seemed to tingle as well. She had no reason for her heart to drum, except that the moment came on her like a portent.

There had been times in her life when the oncoming vehicle was around the bend and she hadn’t spotted it coming. Hadn’t heard the two gunmen approach outside the courtroom door. But at others, she’d felt a thickening vapor in her chest, as though ghosts were rising and touching her, testing, as though to see how she would react to joining their ranks.

But right then, the road ahead was clear. The radio was playing Florence and the Machine. She couldn’t explain the premonition she was having. She knew she was in deep trouble, but it didn’t look like it was on the next several hundred yards of road. So why did she feel like some support beam had silently cracked, some fault line begun to fracture, deep down and thoroughly?

She drove. Maybe it had to do with Riss and Boone.

Baseline assumption: Her cousins were involved in the plan to attack the courthouse. She had no proof, and they would protest, but she had to start with that hypothesis. Ignoring it would be another bush-league mistake, and she was done with those.

The plan, as far as she could see, must have been to take her from the courtroom along with three other people chosen at random. Taking multiple hostages would camouflage the fact that she was the actual target. And
attacking her in a public place was the only way they could make it look like she was a chance victim. They could have ambushed her at Starbucks, but the gunmen would have had to shadow her until the lucky moment when she walked into a building where other people could also be captured.

The courthouse attack eliminated those variables. They knew she’d be there. They knew the layout of the courtroom, and even where she’d be sitting. The sheer audacity of the attack, its absolute seeming madness, would convince the authorities it had to be political, or terrorism, or psychosis. Because nobody who wanted money would try to kidnap a bunch of civil servants and a laid-off aid worker. Right?

It was bizarre in its brilliance.

And then what? The desert, maybe. Or the national forest. Maybe they’d shoot the other hostages. Maybe they’d free them by the side of a backcountry road, blindfolded and cuffed. But in any case, they would have held on to Rory and taken her to a far and nasty place. Church and Berrigan would have been paid. Or killed.

And the bad guys behind the bad guys would have taken photos of her and recorded her screams and sent them as messages to force her uncle to reveal the location of the stolen money. Or they’d send the torture photos to her father and mother, to get them to contact Lee.

But instead the courthouse attack went wrong and Rory was freed—under intense publicity and public scrutiny. They’d seen their plan fried.

But Rory was sure they hadn’t abandoned it. They would regroup and come at her again, from a different angle.

And soon.

She drove through the rural borderlands of Ransom River. In the quickening sunlight, orchards slid by like cards being shuffled. The leaves of the lemon trees looked emerald green. She put down the window. The smell of fresh earth and sweet fruit filled the air.

The phone rang. It was Nussbaum, and he was on his way to court for an urgent appearance. He said they’d need to reschedule their meeting but could talk while he drove to the courthouse.

“That heist, the armored car robbery,” he said. “You’re on to something.”

“Tell me.”

“The Geronimo courier was attacked as it made its final cash pickup, at a branch bank in Ransom River.”

“The robbers knew how to hit when it was fully loaded with cash?”

“Indeed. The gang had two vehicles. One was a supercharged Audi Quattro getaway car. The other was an apparently old wreck of a van that actually had a 350 Chevy hemi engine and could hit one-forty on a straightaway.”

“That was their switch car?”

“Right.”

“Where’d they get the cars?” she said.

“One of the robbers, guy nicknamed Gully Crooks—his actual name—was an auto mechanic. He hooked the gang up with the vehicles.”

“What happened to Crooks?”

“Shot dead by the Geronimo guards during the robbery.”

Rory checked her mirrors. Traffic was light. She didn’t see any vehicles she’d seen thirty seconds earlier. “Where’d you get this information? You didn’t call the Ransom River police, did you?”

“Trust me, Rory.”

“Sorry. I have the heebie-jeebies.”

“Understood. You want to hear the rest?”

“Absolutely.”

“Geronimo Armored was an established secure courier in Southern California. They had contracts with a number of commercial banks for cash transport.”

“And was this fact advertised?” she said.

“Not widely. But it was known within the banking and security communities. And to the Fed, and of course to law enforcement. I think you see where I’m going.”

“The robbers were waiting for the armored car. They knew its route.”

“That’s the assumption the police and FBI made.”

“And I’m guessing that a well-established secure courier company was professional enough that they didn’t follow the same route on each cash pickup. They changed things up so nobody could predict which way they’d come and go.”

“That would be my presumption as well,” Nussbaum said.

The wheels of her Subaru droned on the concrete. Orchards and strawberry fields striped past. In the distance, tractors rolled and pickup trucks rumbled across the farmland. Along the rows of fruit and produce, workers bent to pick berries.

“But the robbers knew,” she said. “They had inside information.”

“They must have.”

“Who?” Rory said.

“The FBI spent months investigating. To no avail.”

“They cleared the Geronimo armed guards of involvement?”

“They were looked at with painful scrutiny. But the Bureau could never connect either guard to the robbery.”

“Somebody else from Geronimo?”

“That’s the most promising angle. But again, nobody could ever pin it on an employee.”

“The bank in Ransom River.”

“It was an Allied Pacific branch. The fibbies and the local police grilled everybody from the bank. Employees, their spouses, boyfriends, cats, parakeets, dogs, and the fleas on their dogs. And I mean grilled. Repeatedly, with tongs. Nobody ever came up with anything. That’s why this is considered a cold case.”

“But the FBI was convinced there had to be an insider connection.”

“As am I.”

“So, is this insider still around?” she said.

“And itching to get his or her fingers on the money?” Nussbaum said.

Rory’s mind jumped around, trying to put it together. “You think if we can find the insider, we’ll find who was behind the attack on the courthouse?”

“Well, that would be ideal. But I doubt
we’ll
be the ones to find this phantom after twenty years.”

Don’t be so sure of that,
she thought. “Then why did you tell me about this?”

“So you’ll watch your back even more carefully than you already were.”

Great. She glanced again in the rearview mirror. If any of the vehicles behind her were on her tail, she couldn’t tell.

“I have more to tell you,” she said.

She explained about her cousins and her uncle. Nussbaum listened without interrupting for five minutes. When Rory finished, he asked follow-up questions and said, “You’re convinced?”