The Last Kind Word (6 page)

Jimmy nodded some more.

“However, if the media gives you a nickname, ‘Iron Range Bandits Strike Again,' suddenly you're a priority. For one thing, you're making the cops look bad; you're hurting their professional pride. For another, a chief of police, a county sheriff, they have to run for reelection, right? Catching you helps their chances; letting you get away hurts them. Then there's the very real possibility that they might just say screw it and ask the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension to step in, and they have investigators and resources to burn. No, sir, you do not want a nickname. You have a nickname, they're never going to stop looking for you.”

“What do you know about it?” Roy asked.

“He's a big-time crook,” Jimmy said. He meant it as a compliment.

“Yeah, big-time,” I said. “I'm an escaped prisoner hiding out in the North Woods with the frickin' Waltons. Doesn't get much bigger than that.”

Six pairs of eyes regarded me cautiously.

“Oh, hell,” I said. “It's not like I have many options. Ms. Skarda, I will take you up on your kind offer.”

I stood and tucked the Glock back under my belt. I broke open the 16-gauge, removed the two shells, shut it, and handed it to the old man. He took it from my hand as if he were planning to take it whether I liked it or not.

“Che Guevara,” I said. “Really?”

“He wasn't afraid to stand up to the man.”

“Get a haircut.”

I handed Josie the key to the handcuffs, and she freed her brother. She wrapped her arms around him and hugged. She was shorter by about a foot, and her head slid beneath his chin. He hugged her back.

“I was so worried about you,” she said.

“Have you heard from Liz?”

Josie squeezed him tighter. “No,” she said. “What are you going to do?”

“About Liz?”

“About everything. You can't stay here, not in Krueger. Dyson's right. This is the first place the police will look. Even if they don't find you, so many people know you up here, can recognize you on the street—anyone can pick up a phone.”

“Drop a dime,” I said.

“What?”

I moved back to the kitchen table. Josie continued to hug her brother, but her eyes followed me.

“The correct phrase is drop a dime,” I said. “'Course, drop a dime, pick up a phone, it all amounts to the same thing—you can't trust anyone. Welcome to my world.”

Josie gave her brother a quick squeeze before releasing him. “Have you eaten?” she asked. “Would you like a sandwich?”

“I'm starving,” Skarda said.

Josie moved toward the refrigerator. I took a deep breath while she did and smelled fried everything—you could pull a handful of grease out of the air.

“Do you live here?” I asked.

“No one does. We use the cabin as a kind of staging area for our jobs. The only time we talk about our jobs is while we're here.”

“When you're here, who does the cooking?”

“I do. Why do you ask?”

“Just curious.”

“Tell me something, Dyson. Why did you help my brother?”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“Tell me the truth.”

“The truth is I was going to leave your brother handcuffed in the back of the squad car with an irate deputy. I took him with me because of the money, because of the fifty thousand he promised.” I wagged a finger in Skarda's direction. “Don't think for a minute I'm not still annoyed about that.”

Josie nodded her head, yet the expression on her face suggested that she wasn't satisfied with my answer.

“Ham and cheese okay?” she asked.

“Fine,” I said.

While she got out the sandwich fixings, Skarda disappeared through the doorway where Jill had first emerged. I took a look. The front part of the cabin consisted of one large room divided into a kitchen, dining room, and living room. The back had two bedrooms with a bathroom between them. Skarda had stepped into a bedroom with two sets of bunk beds and a large metal locker. The other bedroom had a queen-sized bed and a small dresser. Besides that, the living room area had two sofas that could also be used for sleeping, and I saw a couple of foam mattresses that were meant to be tossed on the floor for additional sleeping space. The cabin was small, yet apparently built by someone who expected a lot of overnight visitors.

Skarda stepped out of the bedroom wearing a pair of worn cowboy boots. He was carrying the county-issued sneakers in his hand. He dropped them on the floor and kicked them beneath a sofa.

“I need a shower,” he announced.

“That can wait,” Josie said. “Eat first.”

Skarda sat at the table. Josie slipped packaged ham, American cheese, lettuce, and tomato between two slices of white bread, set it on a paper plate, and slid it in front of him. She served me the same. Skarda ate as if he had just discovered food. Me, not so much.

“Coffee?” Josie asked.

“Thanks, sis,” Skarda said.

Josie poured a mug for both of us. It was so strong you could eat it with a fork. I told her it was excellent just the same. As I ate and drank, the old man moved between the refrigerator and the kitchen table. He opened the refrigerator and produced a can of cheap beer, which must have been tough to do because he was staring at me the entire time. He opened the beer and took a drink, then sat at the table across from me. He kept staring.

“Something I can do for you, Dad?” I asked.

“You look like a narc to me,” he said.

“You look like a district court judge.”

The remark caught him by surprise. It took him a few beats before he realized that I didn't mean it. In the silence that followed, Josie drifted to Jimmy's side and whispered in his ear. He gave me a quick glance and disappeared into a bedroom. After he emerged, he walked right out the front door without a word. He was carrying something in his right hand, but I couldn't see what it was.

“You want a beer?” the old man asked.

“No, thank you.”

“I don't trust a man who doesn't drink. Seems like he's hiding something.”

“I don't trust a man who drinks too much. He doesn't hide anything.”

He thought long and hard about that before replying. “Are you calling me a drunk?”

“Never crossed my mind.” I don't think he believed me, possibly because I was speaking around a mouthful of ham and cheese at the time. “Tell me about this job of yours,” I said. “This great grocery store heist.”

“None of your business,” Roy said. He was sitting on a sofa in the living room. I had to turn in my chair to see him. His young wife was sitting directly across from him. Her hands were folded in her lap and she was staring straight ahead. Her remarkable eyes now had the blank look of someone who had been gazing at an iPod too long.

“I don't know,” Skarda said. “Maybe he can help; give us some tips.”

“Us? You're not going.”

Skarda turned in his chair and glared at Roy. “Who says?”

“The job was planned for five,” Josie said. “Besides, what if someone recognizes you?”

“In Silver Bay? No one's gonna know me in Silver Bay.”

“We can't take the risk.”

“Well, then, who's going to be your inside man?”

“Jimmy.”

“Jimmy?”

As if on cue, the young man entered the cabin. He was carrying a black box about the size of an old transistor radio with a collapsible antenna.

“Car's clean,” he said.

Josie gestured toward me, and Jimmy stepped over and extended the antenna on his box.

“What is that?” I asked.

“It's a frequency finder that I bought on Amazon. We use it to detect GPS trackers and other bugs, hidden cameras, phone taps, that sort of thing. We once found a GPS transmitter in a bag of money we stole.”

I stood without argument, spread my arms and legs wide, and let him move the antenna over me. At the same time, I glanced down at Skarda's feet, noticing his boots again.

“Nothing,” Jimmy said at last.

“Good,” Josie said. “We don't mean to offend you, Dyson, but—”

“Now do your cousin,” I said.

“What?” said Jimmy.

“Do Dave. Check him out, too.”

“C'mon,” Skarda said.

“It'll only take a second,” Jimmy said.

Skarda stood, and Jimmy ran the antenna over him while watching the box's black and gold face. When he finished, he said, “He's clean, too.”

“Well, duh,” Skarda said.

“Everybody happy?” I asked. “How 'bout you, Dad?”

The old man smiled at me. He was a happy drunk. I liked that.

“Like I said, we don't mean any disrespect,” Josie told me.

“Please, don't apologize,” I said. “This is the only smart thing I've seen you people do since I've been here.”

“It's just that David escaping the way he did, escaping with you so soon after he was caught by the police, and both of you showing up here, it's such a coincidence.”

“You have every reason to be cautious, although I doubt the cops would go to such extremes just to catch the Iron Range Bandits.”

“You think you're something special, don't you?” Roy rose to his feet, although with his height it was more of an unfolding. He stood in the center of the living room, the legs straight without locking his knees, his feet about ten inches apart, his hands locked behind his back and centered on the belt. “If you're such a master criminal, how come you got caught?”

“I trusted a man who I thought was my friend. We all make mistakes.” I was staring at Skarda when I spoke, and I saw his Adam's apple bob. I thought I also heard him gulp, but that was probably just my imagination.

“I'm not impressed,” Roy said.

“I'm going to lose a lot of sleep over that.”

“I'm impressed,” Jimmy said.

“This coming from a kid who wanted to start a marijuana farm in the Superior National Forest,” Roy said.

“Claire liked the idea.”

“Claire?” said Skarda. “Claire hasn't got the brains God gave an aardvark.”

Jimmy turned and looked me in the eye as if he expected me to defend Claire, whoever she was. Like I'm an authority on the intelligence of aardvarks.

“I had a spot all picked out,” Jimmy said. “Deep in the forest where no one would have stumbled over it. I had processing equipment, packaging—in three to five months I would have been ready for distribution.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“No one in this family is going into the drug business,” Josie said.

“That happened,” Jimmy said as he gestured toward his cousin.

“We're consumers, not dealers,” said the old man.

Jimmy shook his head the way I expected Willis Carrier might have when his family pooh-poohed air-conditioning. He produced a laptop and plugged it into a phone jack. A few minutes later he had his browser up. He googled Nick Dyson and files appeared. The files were genuine. There really was a career criminal named Nicholas Dyson who specialized in robbing banks, jacking armored cars, and burgling the occasional jewelry store. We picked him because his physical description resembled mine—all we did was swap out his photo wherever we found it. The most recent file was from the Web site of the
Minneapolis Star Tribune
newspaper. It had booking photos of Skarda and me. In mine I had a scraggly beard and long hair that didn't appear fake at all.

“You get a haircut and shave after you were caught?” Jimmy asked.

“Wanted to make sure I looked like a sober, law-abiding citizen if my case came to trial,” I said. “I was even going to wear a sweater like the one that guy wore in
Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.
”

“You have an answer for everything, don't you?” Roy said from the living room.

He was being deliberately provocative, trying to goad me into a fight. Rushmore McKenzie would have ignored him, but then he had a job to do, and it didn't include beating up middle-aged punks with chips on their shoulders. Nick Dyson, on the other hand, had a reputation to uphold. He was a bad man, and if these people were going to do what he needed them to do, he might have to prove it.

“Roy,” I said, “do you really want me to go over there and fuck you up in front of your pretty wife? I know you'll slap her around later to prove you're a man, but she'll see it and she'll remember. So will everyone else.”

To show I meant business I stood up, took the Glock from where I had holstered it between my belt and the small of my back, and stepped away from the table. Jimmy went to his sister and pulled her out of the line of fire. The old man dodged out of the way as well. Skarda sat in his chair and watched. Roy eyed me cautiously yet did not move. It occurred to me that I might have played my hand too hard, forcing Roy to go all in even though neither he nor I wanted to. Fortunately, clearer heads prevailed. Josie stepped directly between us, slowly looking first at Roy, then at me, then Roy, and finally back to me again.

“I'm grateful for what you did for my brother,” she said. “But gratitude has an expiration date. Like a sack of donuts, after a while it just goes stale. You know?”

“I'll be out of your hair by this time tomorrow,” I said.

Josie glanced over her shoulder at Roy. He found something on the wall that seemed to demand his immediate attention and was pretending not to listen to us.

“Good,” she said. “On that happy note, I think we should be thinking about sleep. Jill, you're with me in the master bedroom.”

Jill drifted toward the doorway while watching her husband as if she expected him to stop her. When he didn't, she disappeared into the bedroom.

“Roy, why don't you, Dad, and Jimmy take the bunk beds. Dave, you stay out here with Mr. Dyson.”

“In case I decide to run off with the silverware,” I added.