Busted Page 3

  “Yes.”

  Faith seemed a little shocked.

  “At any rate,” Amanda continued, doling out the information she’d obviously gleaned on the drive down, “Walker’s accomplice worked at the same school – Spivey Senior High. Math teacher.”

  “He didn’t look like a teacher,” Will said. “He looked like a homeless man.”

  Amanda picked her way across the debris littering the floor. Will stepped in to help her when she knelt in front of the dead body, then he remembered he was in handcuffs and that people in handcuffs didn’t tend to help the police.

  She pulled back the sheet. “Douglas Raymond Pierce. Doug-Ray to his friends. Coached girls’ softball. School-wide teacher of the year last year.”

  Will accepted that he really was some kind of idiot. The John Deere baseball cap was tilted back on Doug-Ray Pierce’s head, giving Will a clear view of where dreadlocks had been sewn into the rim. Likewise, the bushy porn mustache was a fake. The spotty goatee was all Doug-Ray. Take off the disguise, and he looked like every math teacher/coach Will had ever had.

  “What about their next of kin?” Faith asked. She was scrolling through the closed-circuit footage. Will looked at the set. He saw himself dive behind the Little Debbies. And then the film reversed and he ran backward. And then the film played out and he went down again.

  Amanda supplied, “The driver, Wayne Walker, was born and raised in Forest Park. He got his degree from Clayton State College. He’s twice divorced, currently single. Both exes live outside the state – one in Idaho, the other in Massachusetts. He has a twenty-year-old daughter who’s stationed in Afghanistan. We’re trying to track them all down, but it’s rough going.” She paused, and Will could tell she was exasperated for other reasons now. “Walker has no history of violence except for slapping that student. He’s as financially stable as you’d think a high school counselor would be, usually pays his bills late, but he always pays them. He hasn’t been issued a speeding ticket in the last seven years. He has a master’s in social work, for what that’s worth. And I should add that universally, one word came up in all the interviews we’ve conducted so far: ‘asshole.’”

  “And Pierce?” Faith asked, not looking up from the TV. Will saw himself diving again.

  “On paper, Doug-Ray Pierce is more of the same. We found nothing on his record but a speeding ticket in Florida three years ago,” Amanda told them. “Personal details are still being filled out. He’s new to the area – been here less than two years. Before that, he taught in west Georgia. We’ve got people heading over to Spivey High to conduct interviews. Preliminarily, no one seems to know much about Pierce. His emergency contact is his father, who died three months ago. Pierce was a loner by all accounts, never talked about his private life. Except for Wayne Walker, he didn’t seem to have any friends.”

  “Gay?” Faith asked.

  “Not if you take off the mustache,” Amanda quipped. “What exactly are you doing?”

  Faith paused the footage again. She pointed to the screen. “Look here.”

  Amanda normally kept her reading glasses on a chain around her neck. Will guessed she’d left them in the car. She leaned forward, her nose almost touching the screen. “What am I looking at?”

  “Here.” Faith pointed to the fish-eye mirror. “This is the only camera in the store, but you can see some of the front entrance in the fish-eye mirror. Watch the truck.”

  Will leaned in, too. The footage was the kind you normally found in convenience stores. The equipment was old. The VCR tapes were reused. The average cell phone camera had a hundred times better resolution. Still, he could clearly make out a man crawling out of the back of the truck. He kept low, knees bent, back curved, as he shuffled away. Instead of going into the store, he headed toward the back.

  Three robbers, not two. One in the truck. One in the store. One securing the exit.

  Faith asked, “No known associates on either man?”

  Amanda had her phone out. She dialed a number as she told Faith, “We’ve got data processing running their backgrounds. It could be an hour or more before the computers spit anything out.” She held up her finger for silence as she put the phone to her ear. It was answered on the first ring. She said, “Nick, we’ve got a third suspect, possibly on foot. He was hiding in the back of the truck. Close down the perimeter for five miles. Pull all recently reported stolen vehicles. I want door knocks on every house within a two-mile radius. Send me a tracking team and start a fingertip search of the woods behind the store.”

  She nodded as Nick obviously relayed some new information to her.

  Will looked down at his cuffed wrists. His back had been to the window when the guy jumped out of the truck, but he still felt bad for missing what was obviously an important clue. And that wasn’t all he’d missed.

  Will asked, “Where’s the bag of money?”

  Faith said, “Is that what you had?”

  “What are you two talking about?” Amanda had finished her call. “What money?”

  Faith fast-forwarded the tape, and Will saw his mad scramble down the aisle, the plastic bag full of cash gripped tightly in his hand. Faith paused the image. The bag was on the floor. They all turned in unison and looked at the same spot on the floor.

  The money was gone.

  “Well.” Amanda paused dramatically before continuing, “If only we had a way to know what happened to that bag.”

  Faith took the hint. She fast-forwarded the tape. Will saw himself stand up again. This time, instead of walking backward, he was running forward to tackle Wayne Walker.

  “There you go,” Faith said. The girl from the front counter had apparently not run out the back door to find help. She’d stuck around, waited for the right moment, then sneaked back in and grabbed the bag of cash.

  Faith paused the tape. “This doesn’t make sense. The person who got out of the back of the truck looked like a man.”

  “That’s because he was. Is.” Will explained, “That’s the girl behind the counter. She took the money on her way out.”

  “No.” Faith shook her head. “We’ve got her outside. She’s a hundred years old if she’s a day.”

  Will shook his head, too. “She’s twenty, tops.”

  “How hard did you hit your head?” Faith indicated an old woman sitting in the back of a police cruiser. The door was open. Her long gray hair was disheveled. Her blue dress was faded from too many washings. Even from twenty feet away, it was obvious to Will that the woman’s face more closely resembled a dried apple core.

  Amanda supplied, “She’s the mother-in-law of the store owner. He’s currently out of town on business. She can’t recall where he is, and the Lil’ Dixie Gas-n-Go corporate phone number rings at the store.” Amanda indicated the old woman with a wave of her hand. “Samantha Lewis, or Maw-Maw, as she likes to be called, said she was working here all morning. She’s sketchy on the details, but I’ve had worse eye witnesses.”

  Faith pointed out, “She couldn’t bend down to pick up that bag of money, let alone run like that.”

  Will wondered if Faith was right about his head. Then again, Will could clearly recall the girl behind the cash register, the way she’d eyed him appreciatively after the cop had tried to rattle his cage.

  He walked around the counter and started searching the shelves, which was made infinitely more difficult because of his cuffed wrists.

  “What are you doing?” Amanda asked. “That area hasn’t been cleared yet.”

  Admittedly, Will didn’t know much about women, but he knew that they didn’t go anywhere without their purses. That is, unless there was an opportunity to exchange their purse for a bag of cash.

  He pulled out a pink handbag with green and blue spots all over it. Certainly not the kind of thing an elderly woman would choose. Will tried the zipper, but his hands were too close together to do anything useful.

  Faith already had on a pair of gloves. She grabbed the bag and dumped the contents onto the co
unter. Will felt an inordinate amount of relief when he saw the pink lip gloss he recalled the girl applying to her lips. Faith was more interested in the wallet. She read from the license, “Billie Eugenia Lam, born October 9, 1994.”

  The name sounded old-fashioned, but the photo showed the young girl Will remembered.

  He said, “That’s her. She was behind the counter the whole time.”

  Faith asked, “What the hell? Maw-Maw said in her statement that she was ducked behind the counter the entire time.”

  “What the hell, indeed.” Amanda crossed her arms over her chest. “According to the interrogating officer, Maw-Maw says she works here three days a week. When she’s not volunteering at the church, that is.”

  “What a sweet old lady.” Faith flipped through the photographs in the young girl’s wallet. Will looked over her shoulder. He saw the usual stuff—Billie and friends posing with pouty lips and too much makeup, snapshots from a fun day at Six Flags, a photo of the dance floor at some club they weren’t old enough to get into.

  There were no family photos, but the last picture showed Billie from a few years earlier. She must’ve been in high school. She also must’ve been into sports. She was wearing a red and white uniform. Her ballcap was low. She had a softball bat resting on her shoulder.

  Faith asked, “What do you wanna bet Doug-Ray Pierce was her coach? Only this uniform isn’t from Spivey High.” She explained, “Jeremy used to play Spivey during regionals.” Her son had been a basketball player. “Their uniforms are green and white. The mascot is a Mustang. This looks like a ladybug on her chest.”

  Amanda reminded them, “Doug-Ray Pierce taught in west Georgia before he moved to Forest Park two years ago.”

  “Maybe he was diddling his players, Billie being one of them. She followed Mr. Pierce from west Georgia. She gets a job here, they do this heist.”

  Amanda finished, “And Maw-Maw lies to keep her granddaughter from going to prison.”

  Will didn’t completely buy the theory. “That would make sense if Pierce did it on his own. There’s Walker and the third guy from the back of the truck. Plus, Pierce is a pretty crappy bad guy. He wasn’t easy with the shotgun.”

  “Winchester Model 24.” Faith looked at the weapon on the floor. Someone had secured it with a zip tie, looping the plastic through the breach. “Pistol grip, beavertail forend, full choke.”

  Amanda cut to the point. “That’s not the kind of weapon you rob a convenience store with.” She started typing into her phone. “I’ll put a fire under ballistics and see if we can trace ownership.”

  Faith bent down by the weapon. “Serial number’s been sanded off.”

  Amanda gripped her phone.

  Will ran it through his head again, Doug-Ray Pierce’s shaking voice as he told Billie to give him the money, the man’s strange rebel yell before he pulled the second trigger.

  Will said, “Pierce didn’t seem to know that he only had two shots.”

  “So, our math teacher isn’t an evil genius.”

  “My money’s on the school counselor.” Faith had watched the tape through and was ready to render her opinion. “He shot Pierce in the head, bull’s-eye, straight on. He nearly killed you, too, by the way.” She gave Will a look that he really didn’t need to see. “Wayne Walker is thoughtful, methodical, a planner. He knew when to cut rope. He could’ve grabbed the cash, but he ran when he heard the sirens.”

  “Scared of getting caught?” Will suggested.

  “Too smart to get caught,” Faith countered. “Remember what Amanda just said: everybody anybody’s talked to so far says Walker’s an asshole. He’s probably the kind of guy who tries to control things. Look at the tape when he gets back into the truck. He doesn’t have to think about it. He jumps in, heads straight for the road, takes his turn onto the interstate. If this stupid store kept their surveillance tapes, we’d probably see him doing dry runs for the past two weeks.”

  Will looked at Amanda. She could be a horrible person, but she’d never gone after them for tossing around theories.

  “Spit it out,” she told him, rolling her hand to urge him on.

  He said, “Walker got fired for slapping a student. That doesn’t sound like somebody who has everything under control.”

  “Have you been in a high school since you graduated?” Faith asked. “I’d probably slap those kids until my hands fell off.”

  She wasn’t exactly the poster child for patience, but Will said, “Walker hesitated when he hit the main road. The turn onto the interstate was at the last minute.”

  “On purpose?” Faith asked, and Will couldn’t really answer the question. Walker’s last-minute turn had sent the cruiser straight into the bridge railing. Except for Will, he probably would’ve gotten away.

  “All right.” Amanda ended the speculation. She was staring at Samantha Lewis sitting in the back of the cruiser. Maw-Maw knew how to work the old-lady thing. Someone had brought her a blanket and a bottle of water. “What now?”

  Faith indicated Billie Lam’s license. “We go to Billie’s address. This license was issued less than a year ago. She probably still lives there.”

  “You think she’s stupid enough to go home with the money?”

  “I think criminals being stupid is what keeps us in business.”

  “Fair enough,” Amanda allowed. “Report back. And run down every detail you can find on this Billie Eugenia Lam. I want to know what she had for lunch yesterday afternoon.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Out of habit, Will started to follow Faith.

  “Not so fast, Mr. Black.” Amanda smiled like she meant it. “I’ve got other plans for you.”

  --3--

  Will sat in the manager’s office of the Gas-n-Go, counting backward in his head by sevens. He’d started at a thousand and was in the low two hundreds when he heard Amanda’s voice from somewhere inside the store.

  Or at least he thought it was Amanda’s voice. He’d never heard her sound so kind in his life.

  “I know, dear,” she said. “I’m sorry we have to keep you. We’re just going to leave you back here for a few minutes while I find someone to drive you home.”

  There was a low hum – a woman’s voice, frail and incoherent. By process of elimination, Will guessed Amanda was speaking to Samantha Lewis, a.k.a. Maw-Maw.

  Sure enough, a moment later, the old woman appeared in the office doorway. Amanda’s hand was cupped underneath her elbow, her arm wrapped around the woman’s waist as she helped her shuffle into the room.

  Amanda said, “Oh,” when she saw Will, as if she’d forgotten he was there.

  Will stood up, muscle memory compelling him to go to his feet when a woman entered.

  Amanda’s tone was more what he was used to when she directed, “Stay out in the hall, Mr. Black. Keep your mouth shut and your eyes where they belong. And be mindful that there are at least a hundred police officers surrounding this building.”

  Will muttered some soft obscenities as he walked into the hallway. He watched Amanda help Maw-Maw settle into the chair. She needed the assistance. Up close, Will would’ve put her age somewhere in the mid-eighties. Her balance was off. She didn’t sit in the chair so much as fall back and trust there was something to catch her.

  Amanda asked, “Ms. Lewis, are you sure I can’t get you anything? Is there someone I can call?”

  “Oh, no, dear. I wish I could remember where my son-in-law is, but so much has happened today that it’s set my brain all a’buzz.”

  Amanda pressed, “We haven’t been able to locate a phone number for him other than at the store.”

  “I’m sure it’ll come to me. I don’t set much by these new-fangled telephones you can carry around in your pocket.” Maw-Maw patted Amanda’s hand. “I’ll let you know the minute I remember.”

  “I’ll be right outside the store if you need me.”

  Amanda gave Will a nasty look as she left the office. He was fairly certain he would’ve gotten the
same response even without the old woman. He watched her walk up the hall. Instead of heading toward the exit, she stopped about fifteen feet away. Amanda leaned her shoulder against the wall. She crossed her arms and waited.

  Will looked back at the old woman in the office. She was probably under a hundred pounds, even with her heavy orthopedic shoes on. Her dress was too big for her frame. He imagined it was the smallest size she could find. She was built like a bird, from her narrow shoulders to her tiny wrists, which reminded him of Pixy Stix because of the various rubber bracelets she wore. Livestrong. Breast cancer research. Support our troops. Will had seen a display of the bands by the cash register. He wondered if she’d paid for them, and then he felt guilty for thinking that the old woman would steal.

  Of course, she had already lied to the police, so there was that.

  “Well.” Maw-Maw glanced up at him, curious, but too polite to stare.

  Will turned his attention to the scenery out the back door. Amanda wasn’t lying about the cops. He counted at least ten men walking around the field behind the building, and that was just the cops who were in his line of sight.

  The old woman asked, “Is the lesbian gone?” There was a waver to her voice, like a weak signal from a radio station. She tried to make it stronger, yelling, “I asked, is the—”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.” Maw-Maw was smiling at him like she hadn’t just said what she’d said. “She thinks she’s hiding it with that skirt, but you can always tell. We can’t forget that Satan was the most beautiful angel before the Fall.”

  Will didn’t know what to say, so he concentrated on not looking up the hallway, where Amanda was probably pulling her gun out of her purse.

  Maw-Maw whispered, “Why’d you cover for me?”

  Will cleared his throat. He took his time answering. “Cover for what?”

  She seemed exasperated. “About this morning. You know I wasn’t here.”

  Will shrugged. He assumed Bill Black would lie to the cops as a matter of pride.

  “Is it money you’re after?” Tears came into her eyes. She clutched the neck of her dress in her frail hand. “I’m an old woman on a fixed income. There’s nothing I can offer.”