Parker saw the pickup drive in, and was out of the police car before Dalesia had stopped. Dalesia called out his open window, “Didn’t show! The damn party at the bank’s over, Parker.”
Parker got into the pickup. “I’ll direct you to her house,” he said, and removed the police hat and jacket along the way.
When they reached the Langen house, it was completely dark. There was a door at the end of the multi-car garage, with a window in it. They smashed the window, unlocked the door, stepped in, and the white Infiniti was there. They moved fast through the dark house, up to the second floor, found her room, switched on the light, and she lay on her back on the bed, asleep, dressed except for shoes.
“Wha?” she said, blinking, lifting her arms to protect her eyes. “Wha?”
“Up,” Parker told her. “Fast!”
“Oh, my God!” She sat up, horrified. “I forgot!”
“You got drunk. On your feet. Now!”
“I will, I will, oh, I can’t believe I—”
Wailing, she hurried away into the bathroom, and seven minutes later she was moving fast down the stairs with them, saying, “The maid sleeps way in the back, she won’t hear a thing.”
“You just go there and out,” Parker said.
“I can’t go back there for just one minute.”
They all went through the house to the garage, Parker saying, “Make it three minutes.”
“Five tops,” Dalesia said.
“Oh, God. I never thought I’d do a— It was the stress, it was my father’s— Oh, never mind.” Distracted, she triggered open the garage door. “I don’t know why I’m explaining myself.”
“We’ll follow you.”
Driving back toward the bank, seeing those headlights well back but constantly there in her rearview mirror, Elaine cursed herself for a fool. Everything she did was wrong. Shooting Jake, for God’s sake! Getting drunk and forgetting what she was supposed to do tonight, and for those people.
With a wince every time her eyes saw those headlights, small, sharp, accusing, she thought, what if they didn’t come after me until it was too late? It isn’t too late now, I can make up for it, but what would they have done if I’d spoiled the whole thing? They would not have let me live, she assured herself. They would not have let me live.
I want to get away from here. But not that way.
But she had another chance; she could still do it right. She’d go to the bank; she’d tell Jack she’d gone home for a nap but really wanted to see at least part of the big move, so here she was, back. She’d make chitchat for a few minutes, find out which armored car would contain the cash, and then plead tiredness, say she’d seen enough to get the general idea, and leave. Pausing next to that pickup truck.
She had just made out the lights and activity spilling out of the bank, far ahead, when the headlights behind her clicked off. She drove on, more and more slowly, and saw that the scene in front of the bank was of constant ordered activity, brightly illuminated. In order not to disturb the neighbors more than necessary, the lights had been set to shine toward the area in front of the bank but nowhere else, so it was a white cone of busy movement up there, surrounded by the blackness of this moonless overcast night, as though it were a scene on stage.
The parking spaces near the bank were all taken, by the armored cars and state and local police cars and vehicles belonging to the bank executives and the moving people and the private security firm. Elaine drove slowly by, seeing the blue-coveralled moving men coming out, pushing dollies on which the cardboard boxes rode. Bank employees with clipboards directed each dolly to the appropriate armored car. The back doors of the armored cars stood wide open, and all four cars, it seemed to Elaine, were already at least half full. So she hadn’t had much extra time to make up for her stupidity.
Slowly she rolled on by, and saw a dolly with a gray canvas bag on top of two boxes as a mover brought it to a stop behind the second armored car. More canvas bags were visible inside there.
Canvas bags were used for coins. This was the money car.
Elaine drove on by. On the driver’s door, as she passed it, were black, squared-off digits: 10268.
“One-oh-two-six-eight,” she whispered, and drove on, speeding up slightly. At the corner she turned right, and then at the next corner and the next, and then left, mouthing the five numbers over and over the whole time. A minute later, she angled into the left lane on the empty street to stop next to the pickup truck. “One-oh-two-six-eight.”
In the hospital, the pill Jake had been given had begun to weaken, but his turbulent brain had not. Closer and closer he came to real consciousness, though he didn’t want it. He wanted to be unconscious forever, but his brain wouldn’t let it happen.
Sandra Loscalzo listened to her scanners and studied her maps of Massachusetts. Unfortunately she didn’t have a detailed atlas of the state, and the road maps she did have wouldn’t show every minor road, but from what she was hearing out of the night, the thing, whatever it was, that was happening or going to happen, existed along a line that ran north and south, roughly from a town called Rutherford in the north to a town called Deer Hill in the south.
Neither of these towns meant anything to her. She had come to this part of the world in search of Michael Maurice Harbin, and this was clearly something else entirely. But something interesting.
Carrying one police scanner in its vinyl bag, plus her own leather shoulder bag with the .357 automatic in it and the best of her roadmaps, she left her room at three in the morning and went out to see what there might be to see. Rutherford seemed the largest town in the area. She’d start there.
Dalesia dropped Parker off at the police car, then drove back to the factory, where McWhitney had the weaponry already placed in the Celebrity, some in front and some in back. Dalesia drove the Celebrity; McWhitney sat in back, one palm resting on a Carl-Gustaf.
Sandra saw the police car behind the diner as she drove by, but thought it was empty. The next police car she saw contained two uniforms and was parked at an intersection with a traffic light in a very small town called Hurley.
I got to get out of here, Jake told himself, and when he realized he must be awake, he found he was sitting up, moaning slightly and moving his torso slowly left and right. It wasn’t bright in here, but he squinted as though it were. His whole head ached horribly, as though a clamp were being tightened around his skull. And he knew he had to get out of here; he had to get away; that was the only thing he knew.
He had not been on his feet since the shooting, but now he pushed himself off the bed and stood, tottering, bent forward, trying to find his body’s balance through the screaming ache in his head.
He shouldn’t have been able to walk. But the medicines he’d been given worked to combine now with the intense level of anxiety in his brain to short-circuit the pain signals his wounded leg tried desperately to send him, those lightning strokes of pain blurring and muddying before they could capture his attention.
He had too little strength in that leg now to accomplish a lot, but at least he could force himself to move. And did.
A door, in the right corner of the room. Would that be a closet? Would his clothes be in there? He wore only a two-piece blue-and-gray vertically striped pair of pajamas. He was barefoot.
Thinking hard about his balance, he moved away from the bed and toward that closed door. The knob was very hard to turn, the door much heavier than he’d expected, but yes, it was a closet. That was his zippered windbreaker hanging in there, and those were his shoes on the floor. No pants, which must have been messed up in the shooting.