Deadline

She sighed. “I almost wish it had played out that way.”

“No,” he said emphatically. “You don’t.”

“At least it would be over now.”

“True. But you would probably be dead.”

Diary of Flora Stimel—April 16, 1984

We killed three people yesterday. Last night we celebrated to the point that everybody except me is still unconscious.

It was a great day for us, not only because the robbery was successful (over $60,000), but it also took place on income tax day. Which was symbolic. That was Carl’s way of thumbing his nose at the federal government.

I don’t feel so bad about the two guys guarding the armored truck. They were careless and—when you think about it—let down the people they work for. As Carl said, if they’d been doing their job the way they should have been, they’d be alive, the money would still be there, and we’d be the ones dead. None of us got hurt, except that I broke a fingernail when I pushed our hostage into the back of the van.

I don’t know her name yet. The news people said it won’t be released until her next of kin is notified.

She was Latino. Her hair had a bit of gray in it. In her younger years she might have been pretty. She was wearing little gold cross earrings. She was scared half to death and as we sped away from the scene, she started crying and blubbering in Spanish. I don’t know the language, but I guess she was pleading for her life. Carl was frantic to escape and kept yelling at Mel to drive faster.

Carl was nervous because taking a hostage hadn’t been part of the plan, and he likes to stick to the plan. But the armored-truck driver must have sent a silent alarm before Carl shot him, because a cop car roared up out of nowhere, taking us all by surprise.

The Mexican lady was an innocent bystander—that’s what the newsman called her. Carl grabbed her and pushed her toward me and told me to get her into the van while he held off the cop. The cop, seeing that we had a hostage, didn’t shoot back. Carl shot him, though. He’s in the hospital in critical condition. On TV they showed all the cops who’d come to the hospital to show their support. Carl laughed and said it was too bad we couldn’t attack the hospital and take them all out at once, save ourselves the trouble later.

Anyway, back to the Mexican lady, she didn’t do as Carl ordered. She kept crying and chattering until she became hysterical and started wailing something terrible. But I’ve never heard anything as loud as the gun blast inside that van. After Carl shot her, it was awfully quiet except for the ringing in my ears. I guess it was that way with Carl and Mel, too, because nobody said anything for the longest time.

We left her body in that van when we switched to another. I think because I touched her, they may get evidence off her clothes that will nail us. Since we started this, more than ten years ago now, the feds have gotten real smart about forensic stuff like that.

Sometimes I wish we could just quit, collect Jeremy, and go someplace quiet and pretty and be a regular family. Jeremy is in third grade now. He’s making straight A’s and he’s on a Little League team. I doubt I’ll ever get to see him play, but I got to talk to him on the phone last week for ten whole minutes.

Carl says maybe we can meet next month. I hope so, but, after today, he might not want to risk it. So far, nobody’s caught on to Randy and Patricia. To look at them, you’d think they were Beaver Cleaver’s mom and dad. But Carl says when you stop being careful is when you get caught. And if we got caught, that would be the end of us seeing Jeremy at all. They’d lock us away for a long, long time, if they didn’t just skip that part and execute us.

I got off the subject again. (Jeremy is always on my mind!) We left that Mexican lady’s body in the ditched van. By the time we got to this hideout, we had all calmed down and started breathing easier. Carl declared the day a victory, especially after we counted the money.

That’s when the party started. Everybody got wasted. I smoked and drank more than usual, because it bothered me some, the way Carl had shot that woman just because she was making a fuss. We had nothing against her. She wasn’t guarding that truck. Just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. She looked to be in her midforties, making it almost certain that she had a husband, kids, grandkids maybe. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for them. They weren’t partying last night.

This is the first job Mel has done with us. He came recommended as a driver with nerves of steel. He lived up to his reputation and got us out of there, so I guess Carl felt that he deserved a reward. Me.

I hate it when he lets another man you-know-what me. Because after, when Carl sobers up, he’s mad at me, like it had been my idea. When actually, I never like it. It makes me feel dirty. Like I’m trash. And I get to thinking that if I’m no more valuable to him than that, he might leave me behind if we ever got trapped.

But I really don’t think he would. He didn’t leave me behind at Golden Branch, when I thought for sure he was going to.

He’d have my skin, though, if he ever caught me with this diary. I don’t want to think about how mad he’d be. He might give me to somebody like Mel and never take me back.

Chapter 17

Jeremy Wesson idly scratched his full beard as he listened to a ten p.m. local radio news update, which obliged him with a shorthand summation of Willard Strong’s courtroom testimony earlier that day.

Willard’s time line had been off by a few hours, but otherwise his recollections and suppositions were damn near on the money as to how things had gone down the day Jeremy had killed the man’s wife with his shotgun while he was sleeping it off in the cab of his pickup truck.

Whether or not a jury bought Willard’s explanation was a wait-and-see, but it wasn’t looking good for the accused. Jeremy didn’t hold a personal grudge against Willard, wh

o had been handpicked to play an essential role, and he’d served his purpose well. He looked the part. He’d acted the part. And had Jeremy not been directing those events, Willard was of such a violent nature, he eventually might have killed both Jeremy and Darlene for their cheating.

However, there was never a chance of that happening. Jeremy had propelled the plot from the beginning to the end. Willard’s conviction would seal the deal, so to speak. In everyone’s mind, beyond a reasonable doubt, Jeremy Wesson would be dead along with poor Darlene.

The mission—to set up Jeremy Wesson’s ruination as a testament to America’s turpitude—had been painstakingly planned and meticulously carried out. He had set himself up as someone who’d seemingly had everything a man could want: beautiful wife, esteemed father-in-law, two perfect sons, a bright future. Ruination of that American dream had occurred when he returned from war—damaged, self-destructive, and on a slippery slope to a disastrous end.

It had taken years to pull off, and some of the guises he’d had to assume were more easily adaptable and maintainable than others.