“Hey!” Garfield called to one of the uniforms manning the cordon. “Get them out of here, would you? This is a crime scene.”
“Actually, sir, dispatch just patched them through-they said there’s something the agent in charge should see!”
Thompson and Garfield exchanged a glance, and then both took off at a run for the officer. Garfield’s legs were longer, his soul more desperate in that moment for a win, and he beat his partner there. When he grabbed the radio, he didn’t bother to identify himself, instead saying: “Tell me you people have eyes on the guy who did this.”
“Wish we did!” came the shouted, radio-garbled reply.
“Then why’re you calling?”
But their answer didn’t make any damned sense. Garfield asked them to repeat it, assuming he’d simply misheard, but he hadn’t. They’d said, “There’s something written on the ambulance.”
Garfield and Thompson trotted back over to the upturned wreck. After a moment’s hesitation while she considered scaling it herself, Thompson laced her hands together and offered them to Garfield. He placed a foot inside, and Thompson hoisted him up. He clambered awkwardly onto the skyward-facing side panel of the ambulance and was faced with letters, upside down and three feet high-letters scrawled in blood.
He tilted his head. The message resolved. Garfield read it along with several hundred thousand viewers at home- to say nothing of the millions who’d see it that night when the story of the day’s events went nationaclass="underline"
BE SEEING YOU, COWBOY.
32
Michael Hendricks crouched in darkness beside a red-brick foursquare on a quiet suburban street, hidden between its porch and an azalea bush. The night sky was full of stars. The air had taken on the sort of chill that always struck Hendricks as summer’s death knell. His breath plumed. His muscles ached. His shoulder throbbed dully in time with his heartbeat.
The metal cover on the outdoor electrical outlet clacked loudly when he opened it. He winced and glanced toward the window to his left. But no one inside noticed. The children suggested by the swing set out back had long since gone to bed. The couple who owned the place were glued to CNN, which was broadcasting helicopter footage of the message left for him in blood. But although it held their interest, it was nothing for them to worry about. It had happened almost four hundred miles away.
Once the call about the ambulance came in, the Feds were forced to reallocate their resources to search both the hotel and the neighborhood surrounding the crash site, which left local PD and Pendleton’s security in charge of wrangling the frightened casino patrons. It was easy enough to slip past the barricades.
Hendricks knew he’d be likelier to escape suspicion if he weren’t traveling alone, so he’d cozied up to an octogenarian gambler who’d been separated from the rest of her senior-center tour group. He bummed a Windbreaker from a kind stranger on her behalf, which, once zipped, hid her neon-yellow Gamblin’ Grannies T-shirt. She was grateful for it, because the temperature was dropping, but when he offered to help her find her friends, she balked.
“Son,” she said, “I’m old, not stupid-and you don’t want no such thing.” Her tone was sharp enough to chastise, but she was smiling when she said it, and her suspicion was of a benign sort. It was clear she wasn’t afraid of him- why would she be, when he’d already been cleared by the agent at the gate?
Hendricks smiled, too. “You got me,” he said. “I’m just tired of standing around. Plus, my girlfriend must’ve seen the news by now, and I’ve got no way to tell her I’m okay. You wanna help me get outta here so I can let her know I’m not dead?”
“Sure,” she said, “but it’ll cost you.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me, young man. I left eighty bucks in chips on the table when they made me leave, and Lord knows these yahoos ain’t gonna give it back. So if you can make it right, I’ll help you get back to your little lady-friend.”
“You want me to pay you?”
“Damn right I do. You’re lucky I didn’t ask you for double. I expect I-ain’t-dead whoopee’s great. And if you want some, you’re gonna hafta pay the piper.”
Hendricks laughed and took his bankroll from his pocket. The old lady’s eyes went wide. He peeled off two hundred even and handed it over.
“Shit,” she said-though it came out more SHEE-it-“I shoulda gone higher. You must be one lucky sumbitch.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” Hendricks said.
But as sarcastically as he’d intended that, he was lucky in one respect: Lorraine-this was the woman’s name- went from mark to coconspirator in the time it took her to pocket Hendricks’s payoff.
She’s the one who hatched the plan. She’d toddle, addled, up to the greenest officer they could find. Hendricks-the doting grandson-would follow close behind, apologizing for her sorry state; she gets confused when she hasn’t had her medicine. It’s at home, and hours past due. No, they wouldn’t need a ride: Hendricks’s car was in the garage at the edge of the lot. That part was true, not that it mattered-Hendricks had no intention of returning to his rental car, for fear it had been burned.
Lorraine played it to the hilt, and the kid bit so hard he might’ve cracked a tooth. Hendricks had to suppress a laugh when the officer slid aside a panel of steel barricade just wide enough to let them pass, and Lorraine shuffled through, arms out like a blind man’s, headed back toward Pendleton’s.
Hendricks trotted after and, with affection not entirely faked, gently turned her around so that they faced the outer lots and the parking garage beyond. Then they strolled arm-in-arm into the distance.
They entered the parking garage just for show and exited the other side, out of sight of the casino. It was there they parted ways. “You sure you’ll be all right?” Hendricks asked her. He was reluctant to strand her so far from her group, in the vast commercial stretch that surrounded the Pendleton’s grounds.
“I ain’t an invalid,” she replied. “I’ve got a cell phone, and thanks to you some spending money, too. I’m gonna call a cab, and I’m gonna have him take me to Winstead’s for a bacon cheeseburger and a chocolate malt. I’m convinced that low-fat crap they feed us at the home don’t actually make you live longer-all those years of not being able to taste your food just makes it feel that way. I’ll cab it back when I’m good and ready.”
Hendricks smiled and peeled another hundred off his roll for her. “In case you ever feel the need to break out for a decent meal again.”
“You’re a dear. You care to split that cab?”
“That’s all right,” he said.
She looked appraisingly at him a moment. “Take care of yourself, would you?”
“I will try.”
Lorraine pecked him on the cheek, and Hendricks set out walking, heading south until he hit the Missouri River, then following its lazy eastward arc until he disappeared from Lorraine’s sight.
Hendricks walked for miles in Norm Gunderson’s god-awful, pinching boat shoes before he came across a set of railroad tracks. He knew the Feds would be covering all passenger rails out of town, as well as airports and rental-car companies, but that was fine by him, since he didn’t plan on availing himself of any of those. He followed the tracks until they crossed a roadway, then waited for a freight train to roll by. It wouldn’t take long, he reasoned- Kansas City was a major shipping hub, servicing freight carriers both local and national-and he knew that trains crossing streets were required to slow. He waited just beyond the intersection in a shallow ditch, shielded from view of the street by a stand of trees. An hour later, his waiting paid off, and he climbed onto an empty cargo car headed for Peoria-not that Hendricks knew that until he’d arrived.