The Last Kind Word (14 page)

“Sure you are.”

*   *   *

I studied the Mesabi Security Company's truck terminal from the parking lot of a roadhouse located on the other side of a county road about three miles east of Krueger. There wasn't much to it—a small shack and parking lot about the size of a gas station that had been carved out of the forest and surrounded by a high chain-link fence with razor wire strung along the top. There were eight vehicles—three cars, three SUVs, and two pickup trucks—parked inside the enclosure. A short driveway led from the county blacktop to the gate. The gate was open. A large padlock was attached to a thick chain hanging on the fence post. The padlock was open. There was no one in the yard. If there was someone in the office—and I assumed there was—I couldn't see him.

Josie kept twisting in her seat to look at the entrance to the roadhouse. It was called Buckman's, and it looked like it had been there since the last time the University of Minnesota went to the Rose Bowl—1962.

“Should we go inside?” she asked.

“Why? Are you thirsty?”

“Won't people be suspicious if we just sit here?”

“A man and a woman spending time together in a car outside of a bar—no one's ever seen that before.”

“They know me here.” That caught my attention. “They'll think I'm spending time with you.”

“Perish the thought.”

“You know what I mean.”

I gestured casually at the shack across the county blacktop. “Do you know who works here?”

“No. Why would I?”

“It's a small town.”

“Not that small.”

“Sweetie, my high school graduating class was bigger than this.”

“That doesn't mean we know everybody, and don't call me sweetie. Besides, the man who works there, he might not even be from Krueger. People don't necessarily live near their work up here. Distance doesn't mean the same to us that it does to people in the Cities.”

“Distance, though, that's why this place exists. I'm guessing Mesabi Security has a lot of clients up here. Instead of commuting all the way from Duluth, especially when the weather's iffy, they roll some of their armored trucks out of this terminal. Judging by the number of cars in the lot, I'm guessing three.”

“Is that a good thing?”

“Time will tell. Do you have a map?”

“Glove compartment.”

I opened it, found a three-year-old Explore Minnesota Official State Highway Map, and handed it to Josie.

“Tell me your cell phone has a camera.”

She did. I asked her to show me how it worked. Afterward I told her to drive the car to the shack, get out, and ask the attendant for directions.

“Directions where?”

“Josie, I don't care. I just want you to distract him for a few minutes.”

“Why?”

“So I won't be seen while I take photos of the padlock.”

“Why do you want to do that?”

“God, you're worse than your brother.”

“What a terrible thing to say.”

“Do me a favor. Before you walk into the shack, undo a couple of buttons on your sweater.”

“I most certainly will not.”

“Just a thought.”

I slipped out of the Taurus and walked casually down the county road. Josie drove her car out of the roadhouse parking lot to the nearest intersection, flipped a U-turn, and came back, pulling up in front of the shack. As soon as she disappeared inside, I jogged across the blacktop and followed the short driveway to the gate. The padlock was made by Abus, a company I had never heard of. I took photos of each side, plus the top and the bottom. Less than a minute later, I was back on the blacktop and walking away from the terminal. Six minutes after that, the Taurus pulled up, and I jumped into the passenger seat.

“What took you so long?” I asked.

“The attendant wanted to chitchat.”

I glanced at Josie's chest. She had undone the top three buttons of her sweater.

“I don't blame him,” I said.

Josie knew exactly what I was talking about. She tried to rebutton her sweater with one hand while driving with the other. The car swerved over the centerline.

“Want me to do that?” I asked.

“I hate you, Dyson. Honest to God I do.”

 

SEVEN

Grand Rapids was a real city with a population of about eleven thousand built on the Mississippi River where it was still narrow enough that you could pass a football from one side to the other. That put it in the heart of Minnesota's northern resort and recreation area, making it a prime retail center. The stores there sold everything I needed, including an Abus Solid Steel Chrome Plated 83/80 RK padlock. It had taken me about five minutes using Josie's office computer to identify it from the photographs and another three to locate the nearest store that sold it.

Josie was skeptical when I announced we were taking a road trip. “G. R. is in Itasca County,” she reminded me.

“Yes.”

“Itasca County Sheriff's Department—you escaped from them the day before yesterday.”

“Yes.”

“Aren't you worried that they're looking for you, that they might find you?”

“Nah.”

Famous last words.

It took us nearly ninety minutes to get there with Josie driving. Along the way I kept fiddling with the buttons, searching the available radio stations for something worth listening to.

“What are you looking for?” Josie asked.

“Jazz.”

Josie slapped my hand and punched the button for KGPZ, the FM station out of Coleraine. The announcer referred to it as a “real country” station and proceeded to play Taylor Swift.

“Where I come from, the person driving the car gets to pick the radio station,” she said.

“Country-western, though?”

“It's the voice of the people.”

“It's pop music. It stopped being the voice of the people when Johnny Cash died.”

“Take that back.” Josie's jaw was set, and her hands clenched the steering wheel with anger.

Is she really going to fight over this?
my inner voice asked.

“I mean it,” she added.

Yes, she is.

“I apologize,” I said.

Josie knew I was less than sincere, yet she said, “That's better,” just the same.

“You're nuts,” I told her. “You know that, right?”

“Do you want to drive, Dyson?”

“Yes. Yes, I do.”

“Well, you can't.”

I only knew Grand Rapids well enough to drive through it, so it took a while before we found the locksmith that stocked the Abus padlock. I matched it against the photos I took on Josie's cell phone and paid the man in cash. He asked if I needed a receipt. When I answered no, he put the bills in his pocket instead of the cash register and thanked me for my business. I found myself nodding as I left the store. Even when I wasn't pretending to be a hardened criminal, I appreciated any effort that kept taxable income out of the hands of the government.

Afterward, we headed for an electronics megastore off of Highway 169 where a fetching young lass with eyes that matched the color of her shirt gave me a quick tutorial on the pros and cons of a variety of GPS transmitters. We settled on a passive GPS logger that recorded locations, speed, and time and, when plugged into a computer's USB port, displayed the data it collected on an interface powered by Google Maps.

“It has a motion sensor,” the tech told me with a pretty smile. “When the vehicle isn't moving, the device will go into sleep mode to conserve battery power.”

I bought three, plus magnetic boxes to put them in.

“You should be ashamed of yourself,” Josie told me when we entered the checkout line.

“Now what did I do?”

“Flirting with that salesgirl. She's young enough to be your daughter.”

“She wasn't a salesgirl. She was a trained tech assistant—it said so on her name tag.”

“I was standing right there, too. Who knows what she thought.”

“Probably that we had a boring sex life that could only be improved by her technical expertise.”

“You're disgusting.”

Not me, I told myself, Dyson. Dyson was disgusting, and he was kind of enjoying it. After I paid for the electronic devices, I made sure I was walking behind Josie as we left the store.

“My, my, my,” I chanted.

“Stop it.”

“It must be jelly cuz jam don't shake like that.”

Josie turned sideways to glare at me as she passed through the automatic doors. “Now you're just being obnoxious,” she said—and walked directly into the arms of Deputy Ken Olson of the Itasca County Sheriff's Department, hitting him hard enough that they both nearly fell over.

“Excuse me,” she said.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“I wasn't looking where I was going.”

“Don't worry about it.”

It was then that Josie noticed the uniform, noticed the badge. She took a step backward. Her voice became thick with anxiety. “My mistake,” she said.

Deputy Olson smiled his pearly whites at her. He looked over her shoulder at me. His eyes grew wide, the smile disappeared, and he rested his hand on his Glock—apparently he had replaced the one I had stolen. Josie saw the movement and her expression displayed her panic. Like her brother's, her face didn't hide anything.

“No harm done,” I said.

I moved closer to the deputy. I was counting on the fact that Bullert had briefed him after the escape and had even told Olson's boss that Olson had been in on it from the beginning so he wouldn't be disciplined for his incompetence.

“Beautiful day, isn't it, Deputy?” I added.

Olson read my eyes. He removed his hand from the butt of the Glock and visibly relaxed.

“It is, sir,” he said. “Anyone who wonders why we suffer through Minnesota winters should come up here on a day like this. Are you sure you're okay, miss?”

Josie nodded a little too vehemently.

“Are you from around here?” the deputy asked.

“No,” I said. “Just visiting friends. I should be back in the Cities in a couple of days.”

“Enjoy your stay.”

The deputy offered his hand, and I shook it.

“Thank you,” I said.

A moment later, Josie and I were crossing the parking lot, my hand gripping her elbow. We walked to her Ford Taurus as casually as I could make her.

“What just happened?” she wanted to know.

Instead of answering, I directed her to the passenger side, took her keys, unlocked the door, and eased her inside.

“I'll drive,” I said.

She didn't object.

A few minutes later we were heading out of town.

“He recognized you,” Josie said. “I saw it. He even reached for his gun.”

“He thought he recognized me. When I came up and started chatting with him like we were old friends he realized, no, I couldn't possibly be the same guy. If I were the same guy, I'd be running or shooting it out. I wouldn't be asking him how he was doing.”

“You were so calm. You just—you just talked to him. How could you do that?”

Because you're not actually wanted,
my inner voice said.
You had nothing to be afraid of. You can't tell her that, though.

“We all have a fight-or-flight response mechanism built into our DNA,” I said. “It's an instinct that's left over from when our ancestors slept in trees. Animals have it, too. The trick is knowing when to suppress it, knowing when being smart is preferable to doing battle or running like hell.”

She stared at me for a few beats after that and then asked the question I knew was coming. “Why are you doing this? You're so intelligent, you're so—you could be doing anything you want.”

“I am doing what I want. Few people enjoy their work as much as I enjoy mine.”

“You don't have to steal.”

“Neither do you.”

Josie shifted in her seat and gazed out the passenger window. She didn't speak until I started fiddling with the radio stations again. “Just pick one,” she said.

She was angry, only I don't think she was angry with me.

*   *   *

The sun was still high in the sky by the time we returned to Krueger. I drove Josie's Taurus past the Mesabi Security terminal again. It was the same as it had been hours earlier: eight vehicles parked inside the enclosure, no armored trucks to be seen.

“What should we do?” Josie asked.

“I don't think the attendant would fall for the same trick twice no matter how many buttons you open.”

“Thanks a lot.”

I glanced at my watch. “Let's come back in an hour.”

We did, this time stopping in Buckman's lot. Two of the armored trucks were now parked within the enclosure, and most of the other vehicles were gone, leaving just a single car and two pickups. It was after 8:00
P.M.
, but thanks to daylight savings time, dusk was still a long way off.

“Go inside the bar,” I said. “I'll meet you there in a minute.”

“What are you going to do?”

“We can't afford to wait. The third truck could arrive at any moment and we'll lose our chance.”

Josie kept staring at me.

“Go inside the bar,” I repeated slowly.

Josie gave it a beat and then scampered out of the Taurus. When she disappeared into Buckman's I left the car and walked swiftly across the county blacktop to the terminal's driveway and down the driveway to the gate. I was carrying my Abus padlock. It was unlocked. When I reached the gate, I slipped Mesabi Security's padlock off of the chain and replaced it with my own. Careful not to accidentally close the shackle on Mesabi's padlock, I returned to Josie's Ford Taurus and set it gently on the driver's-side floor. The entire process took less than ninety seconds, and as far as I could tell, no one saw me, yet I was sweating profusely. A moment later, I entered the roadhouse.