Last Call for the Living (3 page)

It didn't matter.

To Hicklin, everyone was a mark. Even his own partners.

He watched the bank. Had a good angle on the intersection and entrance. He waited until the armored car disappeared down Route 20. A rural county not yet awake. Not a goddamn car or pedestrian in sight.

Hicklin pulled the sugar sack over his head. The eyelets gave good visibility, a crudely cut hole over his mouth revealing a crooked slash of bottom lip. A long-sleeve black tee bulged from the body armor beneath. He wore black gloves, combat cargos, steel-toe boots.

He drove across the cracked pavement to the employee entrance of the bank, which had no customers.

Hicklin left the engine running. Popped the trunk. Grabbed the Mossberg.

There was also a foldout hand truck in the trunk. He lifted it out, not in a hurry.

Not yet.

*   *   *

Charlie was hand-counting
two thousand dollars' worth of hundreds, the bills facedown because the grip was better. Had to strap the money when he was done, lock it in his second drawer. The tellers had cash limits and he was right at his. He looked up at the sound of a glass entrance door being kicked open.

Niesha had finished initialing transfer and verification forms for about $150K worth of cash and coin. Half the cash still wrapped in the plastic from the distribution center. The vault door was wide open. She had left her coffee behind Charlie's teller terminal and was reaching for the cup when she heard
it,
too.

And all she could think of in that moment of comprehension was:
They don't pay me enough.

*   *   *

Hicklin chucked the
hand truck into the lobby of the bank. Place was as empty as he'd expected. He leveled the shotgun on a white boy behind the teller line. Charlie rose slowly from his stool, as if he might be about to ask a question. Hicklin swung the muzzle to a round black body in a flowery dress, hair done up nice. A hand crept underneath the counter.

“Let me see your fucking hands, nigger!”

Niesha's hand kept moving.

Hicklin squinted his left eye and shot her.

*   *   *

Charlie felt his
body spasm at the noise of the shotgun. His vision dimmed for a moment. Legs barely holding him up, Charlie held his hands out to Hicklin, palms up, as if gesturing for a man to stop at a crosswalk. He heard Niesha's body drop to the floor. Some of her head had splattered on the drive-up window behind them. Charlie raised his hands higher, eyes searching for a way out, but the masked man lunged forward, the smoking shotgun closer now.

*   *   *

With his left
hand Hicklin hoisted the dolly over the teller line. Charlie caught it on his forearms and staggered backwards from the blow. Hicklin backed up, then bounded like a panther onto the counter, deftly keeping the shotgun trained on Charlie. He turned and gave the lobby a once-over, his focus jumping from the front entrance out toward the parking lot. All clear. The vault door was cracked open. Dead woman sprawled on the floor.
Don't think she reached that button. But she was makin' a move.
Yet anytime now someone was likely to show up. They always did. Hicklin figured he'd been in the building about a minute. He was looking to shave time.

Another two minutes. Not a second longer.

*   *   *

Charlie felt himself
go in his pants. The training video during employee initiation hadn't prepared him for this.

Just give the robber what they want and this will all be over.…

Don't be a hero.

Police should be on their way.

But Niesha was dead and all he could think of was that he had left his mini-vault and the transaction drawer unlocked and there was no silent alarm alerting some remote dispatcher and
I wonder if I can use this as an excuse to get out of lunch with Momma?
while he stared at the 12-gauge muzzle, smelled it, saw Hicklin talking to him, and Charlie not hearing a word.

*   *   *

Hicklin pressed the
muzzle against Charlie's forehead.

“I said, open that fuckin' safe!”

The muzzle burned the skin near his hairline. Dropping to his hands and knees, Charlie reached with a shaky hand and pulled the mini-vault door open.

“And the fuckin' drawer!”

Charlie reached up and pulled the drawer open. He glanced at the panic button under the counter of his terminal. It was close enough, just within reach. A quick movement and he could push it, hold the button down long enough to trigger the alarm. But then what? Was it worth it? What was Niesha thinking? He looked up at the white mask, the dark eyelets, waiting for more instructions. There was an urgency in the man's eyes. Violence. Capability.

Reaching into the drawer, Hicklin intuitively grabbed straps of hundreds, fifties and twenties. Ignored the loose cash. He figured the paint pack was embedded in the stack of tens but he couldn't know for certain. He shoved Charlie aside, leaned over and took what was in the mini-vault.

Hicklin stuffed the wrapped money in a black duffel slung from one shoulder. Then, strapping the Mossberg over his other shoulder, unfolded the hand truck and began loading cardboard boxes of plastic-wrapped cash. This took less than a minute, but to Hicklin it felt like half a day. He wielded the shotgun and gestured for the boy to take the handle of the dolly and follow him out of the bank.

*   *   *

“Move! Move! Move!”

Charlie pulled the hand truck, struggling over a door runner and threadbare carpeting. He caught a glimpse of Niesha on her side. Blood everywhere. Fighting the urge to vomit, Charlie backed out of the rear employee entrance, where a sedan was parked, idling. He numbly began to load the vault monies into the trunk at gunpoint. Hicklin opened a backseat door and dumped the duffel bag's worth of teller cash into the aquarium.

*   *   *

Hicklin thought about
killing him right there in the parking lot. Leave no witnesses. But the adrenaline had Hicklin jumpy, hearing things like another car or sirens. He stared at Charlie, at his pale blue eyes, the dumpy waistline, the cowardly expression on the teller's face, before impulsively forcing him into the passenger seat. Useful later, maybe. Hicklin had trusted his gut for too long to second-guess the move, as stupid as it seemed.

But his skin prickled with warning. The message loud and clear.

This is all wrong.

*   *   *

When he got
into the car Hicklin punched the teller in the head. Charlie's eyes rolled and he slumped against the window. Hicklin put the car in gear and sped off. Away from the bank and down a wooded road. Heading north into the foothills.

Toward a refuge where the living were few and far between.

 

Put out the fire. There's men in the trees.

 

THREE

Tommy Lang had
just poured himself a cup of coffee from a thermos when he heard the call on his unit radio.

“All units, be advised, signal forty-four, signal fifty, possible signal five issued for North Georgia Savings and Loan, Peach Creek Circle, just off Twenty.”

He put his coffee in the cup holder and responded.

“Sixty-six-eleven code eight. Sure that's right, Terry?”

Lang already was backing the Crown Vic to the end of his driveway. He gunned it down a long, flat road that ran parallel to a field of sassafras and alfalfa often visited by white-tailed deer and other browsers. The bucks would be growing back antlers shed in February. Some Saturday mornings Lang sat on the front porch, Remington Woodsmaster across his lap, coffee topped with a splash of Gentleman Jack, thinking of the reddish-brown coat of a healthy twelve-point buck. But not today.

The radio crackled.

“Oh, hey, Sheriff?”

“Ten-four. What's the deal?”

“Yeah, Sheriff. It's bad. Someone killed a teller.”

“Copy that, Terry. Who's there?”

“Hansbrough. Deputy Bower is en route.”

Lang eased off the gas entering a bend, past a cemetery where the road began to rise and fall. Lang glimpsed the highway, but it was soon out of sight as the Crown Vic drove deeper into the county.

“Tell them not to touch a goddamn thing till I get there.”

“Ten-four, Sheriff.”

Lang glanced at the driver's side of his squad car, at the posse box full of paperwork, the clipboard, then at the empty mount on the floor. He'd forgotten his shotgun. Left it at home.

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered.

*   *   *

Lang parked beside
Hansbrough's and Bower's units in front of the bank, their flashing light bars signaling big trouble to any passersby. Bower, a lanky nicotine stain of a man, was kneeling by an elderly woman on the walkway. She wore overalls and a big straw hat. A red bandana around her neck darkened with perspiration. She trembled as she rocked, breathing hard, stuttering.

“I j-just come to get my quarters … c-cash my pension c-check. Like ever o'er Saturday.”

She repeated herself, as if the words were a mantra. Her face was pale and wrinkled. Strands of gray hair drifted from beneath the hat and stuck to her sweaty forehead. The skin under her arms hung from the bones and seemed to tremble with each beat of her heart. Bower regarded Lang wearily.

“Like this since we got here,” he said. “Name's Anabelle Walnut. Lives in that big old white house with the horses. Yonder where the creek splits.”

“Yeah, I know her,” Lang said, looking around. He squatted next to Anabelle.

“Anabelle? It's Tommy. You see what happened?”

She looked up at Lang. Eyes empty. Nobody home.

“Told me before
this
started,” Bower said, gesturing to the rocking woman. “Manager's name was Neisha Livingston. Always worked Saturdays. Other teller was usually a guy named Charlie.”

“Where's the manager?”

Deputy Bower grimaced, nodded toward the bank. He leaned over and patted the old woman on the back. She'd settled into a gentle sway, hands clutching her knees, eyes focused on a mysterious space that must have held some sanctuary for her

Lang left them and walked into the bank. Lobby door was busted open. Shards of glass on the carpet sparkled in the sunlight.

Deputy Hansbrough stood near the teller line, a crew-cut head cocked to one side like a puppy hearing its name for the first time. He was the son of a judge who'd had a heart attack in court, dying with his fingers taut around the gavel. The kid was taller than Lang, broad shouldered, a tight end on a state championship team his senior year. Lang liked Hansbrough, but when he saw the rookie's hand on the counter he lost his temper.

“Put your hands in your pockets, goddammit!”

Hansbrough jolted to attention. Then he looked at the counter and the glossy finger- and palm print he'd left there.

“Don't touch nothing in here!” Lang said, his eyes finding the blood spray on the drive-up window. He approached the line, stepping around an expended shotgun shell, as a red-faced Hansbrough backed away. Lang looked over the counter at Niesha Livingston's body. She had pretty rings on a couple of fingers.

To his right Lang noticed an open teller drawer. Big bills were gone. The vault door open, too. Looked ransacked. Not his business to check that out.

“Y'all notify the GBI?” he said to Hansbrough. The kid still didn't know what to do with his hands.

“Yes, sir. I told Dispatch soon as I got here. Said it might take 'bout an hour. The bank got people coming up from Atlanta. The lady outside, Miss, eh, Miss…”

“Walnut.”

“Yes, sir. She said there was usually two or three tellers in the bank on Saturdays. We can account for only two.”

“You run the plates from vehicles parked out back?”

“Yes, Sheriff. The LeBaron belongs to Niesha Livingston. Ford is registered to a Lucille Colquitt. There's a ‘Charles Colquitt' on a lunch schedule behind that center desk there.”

“This the only body?” Lang said.

“That one there's all we got. I looked around some.”

“I hope you did your looking around with your hands in your pockets.”

Hansbrough whispered something under his breath, apparently upset with himself, looking a little unsure. Lang thought to tell the kid later that it was a mistake he'd made himself once. But not now. He didn't need his deputies contaminating the crime scene.

Lang motioned to him and they walked back outside.

“Look sharp. Pavement, Dumpster, that entrance around the corner. Mark anything seems out of the ordinary. And for Chrissakes, don't touch nothing.”

Bower had helped Anabelle Walnut to her feet. She was unsteady, almost tipsy.

Lang walked past them, back to his prowler. He took off his campaign hat, ran a hand through a shock of gray hair, then hustled a pack of Marlboros from the breast pocket of his uniform. He had hoped to wait till lunchtime before he had his first smoke, but he'd had enough of this day already. He lit a cigarette and started across the parking lot, slowly, studying the ground as if there were answers in the asphalt.

“Where you going, Tommy?” Bower said, using Lang's first name as he was prone to when excited.

Lang didn't reply. He turned and faced the bank, inventorying the scene. Front entrance, the walkway, a dozen or so parking spots. Drive-up lane to the right. Employee door, some additional parking behind the building. A year ago the bank and the shopping center across the street would have been bustling this time on a Saturday morning. Now there wasn't a car on the road. The businesses were all closed. And Lang knew that someone could drive for five minutes and disappear into the goddamn wilderness.

Bower watched Lang curiously. The old woman clung to Bower, her eyes still tracking a phantom in the open space of her mind. Near the intersection a pickup slowed. The driver stared. Two black Labs in the flatbed barked. Moments later another pickup, the bed weighed down with day labor, tried to pull into the bank's parking lot. Lang shook his head at the driver, who did a quick U-turn and sped off.