Last Call for the Living (4 page)

“You gonna tell GBI to get their asses on up here?” Bower said. “We ain't equipped to deal with this, is we, Sheriff?”

Lang walked to his cruiser. Settled in the driver's seat again. He keyed the mic and relayed a request to his dispatcher, careful to follow protocol. Because Bower was right. They weren't prepared to deal with a heist
and
a homicide like this one. Not since Lang had been forced to eliminate two investigator positions due to budget cuts. Their job today was to secure the scene and then stay the fuck out of the way.

Lang watched as Hansbrough popped the trunk of his patrol car, produced a thick roll of police tape. They could faintly hear the sirens of an ambulance. The Sheriff took a sip of coffee, but it'd already gone cold.

*   *   *

Charlie felt hands
underneath his arms. He was dragged a long way. He smelled cigarette smoke and sweat-soaked clothing. Inside somewhere, a house maybe? It was a humid place. The rancid odor of squalor. He was dumped into a chair. Hands and feet were roughly bound. Rope paid out by calloused hands. He heard the voice of a woman.

“Oh my! We have a guest,” she said.

Then Charlie passed out.

*   *   *

The sun was
high and blinding, a yellow scab in the sky ripe for picking. Lang's shirt had sweat stains under the armpits. He stamped another cigarette under the heel of his shoe and pocketed the butt.

The paramedics arrived first and carted Anabelle Walnut off to the regional hospital for treatment. Helluva thing for the old woman to see, Lang considered. He and Bower tried to visualize the robbery, based on what little they had to go on. Fast, violent, probably well planned. Gunman hadn't hesitated to kill the manager. But why take a hostage? Unless the other teller had already been dumped somewhere else. Or escaped? A lot of back roads in Jubilation County, most of them just disappearing or turning to clay or gravel before the woods swallowed them. Old Indian trails, enclaves and hollows where hill people had lived for generations. Folks who seldom revealed themselves to the civilized world.

Hansbrough had walked across the street to the motorcycle repair shop. A woman came, roused from sedated sleep. She reeked of stale booze and was full of attitude. Said she hadn't seen or heard a thing. Hansbrough believed her.

So he and Lang stood outside the bank and waited.

Finally the state and federal cops arrived. Lang watched the procession turn off Route 20 and into the parking lot. The County Medical Examiner, an Operations Consultant from the bank. Three vans from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, followed by two black sport-utilities with federal plates.

You'd think the goddamn state fair was comin' to town
.…

But now it felt like a crime scene. Evidence Response Team in blue windbreakers rolled in with an assortment of equipment. CSIs went to work behind the teller line, photographing everything, a cold interest to their expressions. Lang's two deputies stood out of the way, hiding whatever awe they felt.

Lang spoke briefly with the state's investigators, told them what he knew, which was next to dog shit. Then Randy Ingram, the Jube County Medical Examiner, sauntered over, a toothpick in his mouth, his round face an irritable shade of pink. Lang had known the man for twenty years.

“Big boner of a fuckup we got here, Tom,” he said. “Been a while since we had one of these. '91?”

“'94. Hell, I get so used to dogfighting and meth labs I forget people still rob banks anymore,” Lang replied. They shared a polite laugh, but the Sheriff couldn't shake that feeling he'd had since arriving at the bank. As though the wind had been permanently knocked from his lungs.

A photographer walked slowly around the property. There was a lot of action near the employee entrance. The Operations Consultant emerged from the bank, talking nonstop on his cell phone, pacing and distressed. The look of a man mentally sending out résumés.

One of the state agents was a handsome woman who looked to be enjoying the first year of her forties. Hair so dark Lang thought it possible to catch his reflection in it. Light makeup, no jewelry. She wore khaki cargo pants and a blue cotton polo with the GBI logo.

Lang didn't tire of looking at her until she got around to him. On closer inspection he noted her full lips, a long-stemmed neck, cheekbones and a complexion that could have been the gift of Chickasaw bloodlines. He liked the way she wore her full-size Glock, butt-first for a cross-draw.

Presently the woman made her way over to Lang, extended her hand. No wedding band, he observed.

“Sheriff Lang, is it?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“I'm Special Agent Sallie Crews. I'm heading up the investigation.”

“Pleasure, Agent Crews.”

“Call me Sallie.”

“All right then.”

“You know this bank, Sheriff?”

“I don't do my business here, if that's what you mean. County really thins out up this way. Only trouble we get out here is drunks beating on one another, occasional meth lab fireballing. Liquor store holdup. Nothing like this, well … ever.”

Crews nodded, her expression never losing its intensity. She crossed her arms, hunched her shoulders as though in deep thought.

Off her body language Lang finally said, “You don't think whoever did this is still in the neighborhood,
do
you?”

The look in Sallie Crews' eyes told him she thought so.

*   *   *

Agents found the
car just past noon. An observant helo pilot spotted something of interest in a stand of bull pines at the base of a ridge, forty minutes from the North Georgia Savings & Loan. Under the rounded crowns of branches a camouflage tarp had been pulled over a Toyota Camry.

It took an hour for the forensic team to reach the vehicle. The road the team took turned from gravel to dirt, then became a weedy track like some coiled snake in the heart of the woodlands. They sealed the car and waited for the tow truck. The gas tank was near empty. With only one way in and out the perpetrator must have dumped the Toyota and escaped. One agent speculated that there probably was a second getaway vehicle.

Heat lightning slowed beyond the valley to the west. The thunderclouds approached, swallowing the sun. It got dark quickly. On the forest floor the forensic team switched on their electric torches and went to work.

*   *   *

Tommy Lang stopped
his Crown Vic at the drive-up window of Dixie Liquors. He bought a fifth of Knob Creek, a six-pack of Budweiser and cigarettes. The kid working the drive-up asked him about the robbery. Lang grinned, never surprised at how fast news could spread around the county. He said he couldn't talk about it but advised the kid to report anything unusual. Lang paid in cash and tucked the bottle of whiskey between his legs.

The sky had darkened considerably in advance of a coming storm, lightning backlighting the tapestry of clouds. Lang parked the cruiser in the carport, juggling the brown bag and sixer in one hand, his house keys in the other. He heard the claws of his basset hound scraping against the front door. The hound howled when Lang got to the porch.

She went by the name of Lady.

Lang let the dog out through the back door, regarding the swaying pines in his yard with an unease he hadn't felt since grade school. He watched Lady piss. Then she looked up at the sky and barked.

Yes, you damn fool, it's gon' rain. Git!

Afterward Lang locked the back door. Something he hadn't done in years.

*   *   *

The house was
cool thanks to a few open windows. Lang undid the first few buttons of his uniform. Walked into the bathroom. Saw that Lady had shat on the newspaper he'd laid down for her.

“That's a
good
girl,” he cooed. “A
good
girl.”

He folded the newspaper and returned to the kitchen. Dumped it in the trash can. Having found her favorite place on the couch, Lady followed him with her eyes. Lang poured three fingers of whiskey in a glass, went into the living room, pushed the dog out of the way. He turned on the television.

Rain pelted the roof, the signal from the dish disrupted by the storm. He caught the tail end of a stock car race from Richmond. There was a weather bulletin for Jubilation County. Tornado Watch in effect until midnight.

Lang started drinking.

The day's events swirled in his memory. He'd watched as Agent Crews reviewed the surveillance tapes from the time-lapse recorders inside the bank. Five cameras in the lobby. No sound.

High, tight angle from the corner-mounted camera. Armored car comes and goes. Minute later a dark figure in a white mask puts a boot to the door. Then comes the hand truck and shotgun. Manager foolishly tries for the alarm and gets her head liquidated. But not the teller? The kid looks terrified. Not like in the movies.

It reminded Lang of the footage captured during earthquakes. Security cameras in a grocery store, a restaurant, an office building. The shaking starts and the people suddenly look frantic, their day going from zero to pole position in the blink of an eye. That was real terror. Nothing to hold on to, trying to find balance in a situation where there's none to be had.

Watching the tapes, Lang noted how quick the robbery went down. The masked man was out the door in under five minutes. Timed it just right. It was as ruthless a sight as Lang had ever seen. A wanton execution. He hated himself for appreciating how remorseless it had been.

*   *   *

Hearing a cousin
to the storm rumbling over Lang's home, Crews sat in a cubicle at a regional office of the GBI's Investigative Division, a patchwork of photos from the North Georgia S&L crime scene atop her desk. She closed her eyes and rotated her neck counterclockwise, several hours of built-up tension relieved with a long-drawn-out sigh.

The perp had parked out of sight of the exterior cameras. Forensics got nothing but a tentative shoe size and caliber of the shotgun. Crews already could tell from looking at the tape that the shotgun was a 12-gauge. Double-aught buck judging from the kick and how it had blown that young woman's head apart. No prints on the lone shell casing, probably wiped down or handled with gloves. The robber's sidearm was difficult to identify, but it was definitely a full-size autoloader.
And that son of a bitch was wearing some sort of armored vest
. She figured the man had been prepared for anything, including a shoot-out. His shotgun and sidearm might have been only part of the arsenal in the getaway vehicle.

But a CSI found what proved to be the only solid lead of the day. Replaying the footage from the surveillance cameras, he'd frozen the action on his computer just as the suspect was about to chuck the dolly into the bank lobby.
There.
The tech sharpened the image. Crews and her team glimpsed the wrist of the perpetrator, a flash of skin, the gray markings of a tattoo just between a gloved hand and the long black sleeve.

Tighter now.

The letters
A
and
B
initialing the leaves of a clover leaf.

Crews had spoken first, the words freighted with meaning.

“Aryan Brotherhood. We have ourselves an ex-con.”

*   *   *

She had left
the crime scene for a few hours, taking two agents with her. They met a detective on loan from another department's Robbery-Homicide Division, himself working a year-old heist that had—according to him—gone colder than his “ex-wife sucking on an ice cube.”

They headed southwest from Jubilation County, toward a city north of the Chattahoochee River. They drove past the naval air reserve base and Lockheed Aircraft, where F-22s and C-130s were assembled. Then came the historic business district. Government buildings. The courthouse. Parking islands and traffic. Railroad tracks.

She turned onto a street lined with old frame houses and square manicured lawns. White oaks provided some shade from the sun. Two shirtless kids, showing off physiques sculpted in the high school weight room, tossed a football in what wasn't so much a cul-de-sac as it was a dead end.

Crews stopped in front of Lucy Colquitt's house, immediately noticing the big oak in the front yard. It didn't take but three steps to spot the touches of a quaint country décor. The bird feeder hanging from a tree branch, a steel handcrafted weathervane mounted on a pole. A copper rooster that pointed west. Charlie's mother had planted hydrangeas along a brick walkway that led to the front door. The house needed painting, but it hardly detracted from the charm of the little residence.

Next to the screen door a folksy sign read:
The Colquitts. Do Drop Inn.

An official from the North Georgia Savings & Loan had arrived and joined Sallie's team. They stood like sentries behind her as she knocked and waited. Knocked again. Crews watched a spindly woman with blond hair slowly approach the door with an expression of muted anxiety. The door was opened. Still wearing her scrub pants and top from the hospital, Lucy Colquitt stared at them and braced herself.

“I visioned this! Clear as the voice of my own mother, God told me you'd come!”

Crews raised a hand palm up and said, “Miss Colquitt, I'm—”

But Lucy Colquitt only moaned, shuffling backwards. Crews reached for her as she slumped to the floor.

The man from the bank looked as if he wished they'd come to the wrong house.

*   *   *

Thunder shook the
house like a loose drumhead. Tommy Lang poured another drink. Whiskey over ice and a splash of Coca-Cola. He sat at the kitchen table, occasionally glancing at the television in the living room. Earnhardt's kid had won the stock car race and was getting doused with beer in victory lane. Lady snored, twitching as if she was deep in a dream, tracking some critter up a tree or down a hole.