20

DORA BOX woke up at four o’clock in the morning, listened to Poole breathing beside her. They’d gone to bed early—Sturgill Darling always went to bed early, being a farmer—and now she was wide awake, alert, ready to go. She lay as still as she could for five minutes, then crept out of bed in the dark, got dressed, went to the door, and peeked out. Nobody in the hall.

She scurried down to her own room, where her suitcases were, pulled the bedcovers around, tossed the pillow to the foot of the bed, so that it looked like the room’s occupant had had a restless night, then headed for the bathroom to begin her morning rituals.

A lot of free-floating stress, she thought, as she washed her face. This would be a tough day and potentially a dangerous one. They didn’t know anything about what the federal marshals or the drug killers were doing, so they’d be flying blind.

On the other hand, Poole was confident in their maze of phony IDs. “They might eventually break them down, but by that time, we’ll have new ones in a new place.”

Box believed him; or believed in him. He hadn’t been wrong about much, in the time she’d been with him. Not until the Biloxi robbery, anyway. She thought, If only he hadn’t done Biloxi . . .

The night before, they’d agreed to stop at the storage unit in Dallas, pull out the truck for Box, and help her load a few pieces of furniture in the back.

She’d finished her shower, got dressed, and headed back to Poole’s room. As she opened the door, the alarm clock went off. Poole shut it down and a moment later was up and looking at her.

“Been up long?”

She shook her head: “Half an hour. I’m all packed. You hit the bathroom, I’ll start putting your bag together.”

“Don’t forget to search the room,” he said jokingly.

“Never.” Wherever they went, whatever they were doing, Box always searched the motel rooms before they left. Once, years before, she’d discovered a partially read paperback that Poole would have left behind. On two other occasions, she’d found pornographic magazines under mattresses, and while interesting, they belonged to somebody else.

“Call Sturgill, make sure he’s up,” Poole said. He yawned, stretched, and touched his toes.

“Yes.”

She called and Darling was ready to go. “You need help carrying stuff out to the cars?” he asked.

“If you want to, that’d help,” she said. They’d divided the money and gold the night before, about two-thirds to go with Poole, the other third to be packed in her car, neatly layered in two carbon-fiber suitcases. Darling looked wide awake when he knocked on the door. Between them, they got everything but Poole’s duffel bag out to the cars and locked away.

“Still dark,” she said, looking up at the bright overhead stars. “I’m hardly ever awake at this time of day, unless I’ve stayed up overnight.”

“It’s early for me, too,” Darling agreed. “I usually get up around five-thirty. That’s the prettiest time, especially in the summer. Dew on the grass, birds waking up, air smells clean.”

“If we can get Gar moving, we can be in and out of Dallas before it gets light,” Box said.

They were walking back across the parking lot when Poole came down the stairs, carrying his duffel bag. “Let’s just go,” he said. “We can eat on the road.”

Box insisted on checking the motel room one last time, to make sure they weren’t leaving anything; Poole and Darling waited impatiently until she got back. She said, “We’re good,” and they were on I-35 by four forty-five, traveling fast.

—

TWO HOURS LATER, they were at the storage units. Box traded her Audi for the pickup, backed down the narrow alley to another storage unit, and Poole and Darling helped her load a favorite table and chairs in the back and covered it all with a blue plastic tarp, tied tightly into the truck bed. Poole left his Mustang in another bay and loaded his share of the gold and money into Darling’s truck.

Darling waited while Poole and Box said good-bye. “I’ll see you in New Mexico,” he said. “Once we’re there, we’ll be okay.”

“Goddamnit, Gar, I wish we didn’t have to split up,” Box said, leaning into him.

“It’s safest this way. We should be okay, we’ve still got a jump on them, but if one of us gets stopped . . .”

“I know, I know . . .” They spent a minute kissing good-bye, Box’s arms wrapped around Poole’s neck, until Darling called, “Sun’s coming up.” Poole pushed her away and said, “New Mexico.”

“New Mexico,” she said, and got in the truck.

—

ALTHOUGH their separate routes would be roughly parallel, Poole and Darling took the longer run. They planned to go south from Dallas on Highway 281 to Burnet, then west until they picked up I-10 into El Paso. Box would take I-30 through Fort Worth and then I-20 most of the way across west Texas until she also hooked into I-10 to El Paso. El Paso bordered New Mexico to the north and west, and Mexico to the south. They all had passports: if worse came to worst, they might be able to hide the money in the States and cross the border to Juàrez, Mexico, at least long enough to slip the American law.

The sun wasn’t quite up when Box left the storage units and had just peeked over the horizon when she got on I-30. From there it was smooth sailing out on I-30 and then I-20, heading southwest. She’d decided she’d stop for breakfast at Abilene, and then push on. The manhunt would be in the Dallas area. The farther away she got, the better off she’d be.

Poole called at eight. “We’re outa town. How’re you doing?”

“Doing good. I’m on I-20. Thinking about breakfast at Abilene.”

“See you tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow, babe.”

Then everything went to hell, and all at once.

She didn’t see the highway patrolman until she was right on top of him. She’d crossed a bridge, where low trees crowded right up to the highway, and there he stood, a radar gun in his hand. His car was parked behind him, off the side of the road.

Box tapped the brake, saw that she was no more than two or three miles an hour over the speed limit—she was in the slow lane, being passed regularly by most of the traffic—and her first thought was, Okay.

Then she looked in the rearview mirror and saw the highway patrolman running for his car. She was a quarter mile down the highway before he got to it, and another few hundred yards when the light bar came up and the patrol car hit the highway. She had no doubt in her mind, he was coming after her, and that was confirmed when he moved into the same lane.

She said, “Shit,” and with panic tight around her heart, she floored the gas pedal. There was no way she’d outrun him, not on the highway—she could see him closing—and a few seconds later, saw an exit sign coming up. She took the exit, Highway 919 North, and a sign that said “Gordon.”

There was no town at the end of the exit ramp and the cop was getting very close, hitting the end of the exit ramp as she made the turn onto 919. Still coming.

On 919, she pushed the truck as hard as she could, tried to get the phone up to call Poole, fumbled it, saw it drop into the passenger foot well: no way to get it.

“Oh my God,” she cried. The cop was no more than a hundred yards behind her, and still closing. To her left, a dirt road cut off into the scrubby trees, and she said, again aloud, “Fuck it,” and took the turn. By the time she got straight, the cop was right on her bumper, siren wailing into the morning. There’d been no rain for a while, and she started throwing a cloud of dust and could see the cop back a ways, and up ahead, an even narrower track. She took that one, deep into the woods, crashed across a dry creek bed, powered away, saw the cop hit the dry bed, get across it, still coming.

She had some hope, now. First chance, she left the track altogether, weaving through the trees. The truck bottomed once, twice, wheels grinding into the raw dirt, and then . . .

The cop was gone. She could still see the multicolored red-and-blue flashers back through the trees but she kept going, and when she couldn’t see them anymore, stopped long enough to get the phone off the floor and call Poole, and started driving again.

When Poole answered, she cried, “They’re all over me. The cops are all over me. I’m running through the trees . . .”

“What? What?”

“They must know the truck. I wasn’t speeding, I was in the slow lane, and the cop saw me and he came right after me,” she said. “I got off the highway into the woods, I’m running through the woods, I’ve lost them now, but I can’t go back on the roads . . .”

“Listen,” Poole said. “Now listen. How far away are they?”

“I don’t know, I’ve lost them. I’m lost, I’m off-road, I’m back in all these trees.”

“Keep going. See if you can spot a house, or anything that you’d recognize later. Anything. Then get the money and gold out and stick it under a tree or somewhere people can’t see it. You gotta hide it. If you hide the money, they got nothing on you, babe. They got nothing.”

The truck bounded over a hump of dirt and onto another dusty track. She wasn’t sure, but she thought she was moving away from the cop car, the sun still at her back. Up ahead, she saw the corner of a metal building, and she said into the phone, “Okay, I see this building up ahead. Just the corner of the roof, it’s silver. Okay, and off to the side, I can see the interstate through a hole in the trees. I must have come back to the interstate. I’m going to turn down that way.”

She followed a line of dirt, not even quite a track, past the edge of a pond, and rolled up to a fence and said, “There’s a fence, I can’t get across it . . .”

Poole, calm: “Can you stop there?”

She couldn’t see anything in the rearview mirror. “Maybe. I’ll stop.”

She stopped the truck, got out. She could still hear the cop’s siren, but it must have been several hundred yards away. One of the low scrubby trees, ten yards inside the fence line, had branches that dropped all the way to the ground. She popped open the back doors on the truck, got the two black cases with the gold and the cash, hauled them over to the tree, and pushed them back through the knee-high weeds to the tree trunk. She stepped back, to check: the briefcases were invisible.

She walked back to the truck and said, “I put the gold and the money under a tree, in high grass. You can’t see it, the branches come right down to the ground. I’m going to the tree . . .”

She went to the tree and paced off the distance to the fence.

“. . . It’s ten long steps from the fence. Probably ten yards, and I’m right across from the entrance to a road on the other side of the interstate. I’m only a little way west from the exit to Gordon, Texas. North side of the interstate, west of the exit. Gordon, Texas. G-O-R-D-O-N. From where I am, I’m looking right past the pond to the silver roof.”

“Got it all,” Poole said. “Get yourself out of there. Try staying on the back roads, see if you can find a place to hide until dark.”

“I don’t think that’s going to work, babe,” Box said.

“If it doesn’t, don’t say anything to the cops,” Poole said. “Not a word, except, ‘I want a lawyer.’ You’ve heard me talk about this. You want a lawyer.”

“I’ve still got the gun.”

Long silence, then, “You’ve never used one before. I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“I could ditch the truck and walk over to these buildings, see if I might catch somebody there.”

“I don’t think so. You don’t have time to clean up the truck, get rid of prints and all that . . . You shoot somebody, kidnap somebody, then you’re in the shit. I think you better throw the gun away. Sturgill is saying the same thing.”

“Okay. I’ll do that,” Box said.

“Listen. Do you have that orange blouse with you? The one I bought in Dallas and you don’t wear?”

“Yes, in my suitcase.”

“If you have time, get it out of the suitcase and rip a piece out of it and tie it to the bottom of the fence like ten yards from the tree where the money is. Make it easier to find when we come back for it.”

“If we come back.”

“We will, babe. We will,” Poole said.

“I’m hanging up now. Oh, God, Gar . . . I’m hanging up.”

—

SHE FOUND the orange blouse, but instead of ripping it, simply bunched it up and tied it to the bottom of a fence post fifteen long steps west of the tree where the money was. She went back to the truck, got the pistol she’d kept for self-protection, and threw it under the tree with the money and gold. Then she got back in the truck, called Poole, and said, “Okay, baby, the orange blouse is on the bottom of the fence fifteen long steps west, that’s WEST of the tree where the money is. You have to walk along the fence to see it. The gun’s with the money.”

“Move away from there, then. Take it slow. There’s probably a road past those buildings, or a driveway, see if you can sneak out of there . . .”

“I’m gone again,” she said. “I need both hands to steer, I’m back in this really rough place . . .”

She hung up, dropped the phone on the seat, and worked her way through the rough track to a smoother one, then down the track to the buildings. There was nobody around them, no vehicles, and she followed a driveway out to a dirt road and along the road for a few hundred yards parallel to the interstate.

The thought of surrendering to the police frightened her, more than she’d ever been frightened in her life. She cut across a hard-surfaced road, hesitated—it felt too exposed—then turned toward the interstate and drove past a restaurant and under the interstate and then south.

She might have gotten away, she thought later, if she’d only moved faster. Not a lot faster, if she’d just gotten under the interstate five minutes sooner. She’d crossed under it and was headed south, and she was thinking about the blue tarp on the back and how she ought to get rid of it because it was instantly identifying . . . when she felt the rhythmic beating on the windows.

She didn’t know what it was, only that it was close, and a moment later, a helicopter passed overhead, and low, turning in front of her, the pilot looking straight down at her.

The jig, she thought, was up.

She kept going, a mile, a little more, then caught sight of the flashing light bar behind her, the helicopter still there in front of her. “Screwed,” she said aloud. She picked up the phone, did a redial. Poole answered and she said, “They got me, I’m throwing the phone. Love you, Gar.”

“Love you, babe,” and he was gone.

She accelerated suddenly and the helicopter turned ahead of her, and she took the moment to throw the phone out the window. Another two hundred yards, the cop car closing from behind, and she pulled over, took a deep breath, got out of the truck, put her hands over her head.

The cop car stopped fifty yards away. The cop got out of the car, stayed behind his door, pointed a rifle at her; she thought it was a rifle. Maybe a shotgun. He shouted, “Everybody out of the truck.”

“I’m all alone,” she said.

The cop ducked back to the car, said something, and then shouted, “Walk toward me until I tell you to stop.”

She did that, until he shouted, “Stop.”

Another car was coming up from behind her, and she turned and saw another patrol car. The helicopter was higher now, but still overhead, still making noise. The two cops took a while to check out the truck, then patted her down and cuffed her.

One of the cops had curly blond hair and a name tag that said “Oaks,” and he asked, “Where’d Poole bail out?”

“Who’s Poole?” and then, “I want a lawyer,” she said.

The other cop had dark hair with the shine of gel, and a name tag that said “Martinez,” and he said, “Listen, honey, if Poole’s back there in the trees and he shoots somebody to get a car, then you’re going to the death house with him. You can’t say, ‘I want a lawyer,’ and get out of this. You’re still an accomplice.”

She said, “I’m alone. I was always alone. I don’t know any Poole. I bought this truck from a guy in Texas and when the police officer started chasing me, I panicked. I thought the price was too good, and I thought maybe the truck was stolen, so I panicked. I was always by myself.”

Oaks said, “Nice try, Dora.” He reached into his back trouser pocket and took out a piece of paper and handed it to her. She remembered the photograph quite well: it had been taken at an office party when she was temporarily working at an auto parts place in Franklin before she went off with Poole. The likeness was excellent and her facial features had held up well over the seven or eight years since the photo was taken.

“I want a lawyer,” she said.

“You’ll get one,” the cop said.

They took her keys and locked up the truck and left it where it was: U.S. marshals wanted to take a look at it, they’d been told. Box was transferred to the back of one of the patrol cars, and then Oaks made a call.

“Looking for a Marshal Davenport,” he said.

“This is Davenport.”

“We got your Dora Box for you,” Oaks said. “You gonna pick her up or you want her delivered?”

“Tell me where you’re at,” Davenport said. And, “You’re the best news I’ve had in a long time.”

“I haven’t ever been anybody’s best news, not since my second wife went off with a toolpusher,” Oaks said. “I truly appreciate you telling me that.”