The 13-Minute Murder Read online

  Stevie fires a single shotgun blast into the bank’s wooden floor—intentionally strafing the kid’s right foot.

  The guard groans and hunches over. His pistol clatters to the floor.

  “You just got shot for bank money,” Stevie says. “Sorry about that.”

  Then the four of us book it like hell.

  We pile into the black Taurus. I’ve barely shut the door before we’re burning rubber.

  We did it! I think, ripping off my hot, slimy Lincoln mask, adrenaline still coursing through my veins.

  And all told, it was easier than I thought.

  Now comes the hard part.

  5 minutes, 5 seconds

  “Goddamn, these are some tricky sons of bitches.”

  Special Agent Mason Randolph barely nods at the observation—because he’d reached that same conclusion hours before he even stepped foot inside the bank.

  He came to it before his team boarded the Bureau-owned Gulfstream bound for Plainview. Before he even took his cowboy-booted feet off his desk on the third floor of the FBI’s El Paso field office.

  As he told his colleagues as they sped toward the local airfield, sirens blaring, Mason was aware they were dealing with some smart-as-hell bank robbers the moment he heard about the simultaneous bomb scare on the other side of the city.

  But that didn’t worry him. In fact, he was looking forward to the challenge.

  Mason had built his meteoric eighteen-year career at the FBI by cracking the Southwest’s toughest cases. Serial killers. Kidnappings. Drug trafficking. Human trafficking. Both bank robberies and potential terrorist threats—though never a deliberately fake one, and never together in the same case.

  Mason knew the region better than anybody in the Bureau. The land, the people, the culture, the criminals. And he knew how to use all that to his advantage.

  He also knew just how much he’d sacrificed throughout his life to get where he was today. At forty-one, tall and handsome, with a full head of thick, wavy brown hair, he’d had plenty of girlfriends, but none of them turned into a wife.

  He’d had plenty of “kids,” too—crime victims, that is. Countless innocent people, both living and dead, toward whom he’d felt sympathetic, protective, almost fatherly.

  It wasn’t the same as having a family of his own. Not even close. He knew that. But solving the trickiest crimes, putting away the worst of the worst—it was worth it to him. That’s just who Mason was.

  Today’s bank robbery/bomb threat wasn’t going to be any different.

  While their plane was cruising over the Texas desert, Mason and his team reviewed the facts.

  Earlier that morning, a suspicious package was discovered outside the Hale County Courthouse. It turned out to be empty—except for a handful of Tannerite, a legal explosive used to make novelty exploding gun-range targets. But that was enough to get a state-police bomb-sniffing dog barking. The entire block was evacuated. Every cop, sheriff, and ranger in the county was tied up for hours.

  Meanwhile, not two miles away, four armed men wearing gloves, hunting camo, and Halloween masks of four ex-presidents waltzed into a Key Bank and waltzed out with over eighty large. They disappeared into the scorching desert before the local dispatcher could find a free unit to respond.

  Yep, these bad guys were smart.

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” Mason replies to Texas ranger John Kim, the FBI’s local case liaison, as both men step around the bank’s shattered glass entrance.

  Born, raised, and employed in the Lone Star State his whole life, Mason has met thousands of Texas lawmen of every stripe. But a paunchy, bedraggled Korean American one with a drawl as thick as tar was a first.

  “I think that’s your job, agent. You’re the boy wonder, from what I hear.”

  Mason steps farther into the stiflingly hot lobby. The air-conditioning had been switched off to preserve possible evidence—which also preserves the triple-digit heat.

  The agent doesn’t want to spend more than two, maybe three uncomfortable minutes inside, tops.

  But that’s all he needs.

  He scans the crime scene with squinted blue eyes. He notices two spent shotgun shells and two clusters of buckshot. Some are embedded in the ceiling tile, others near a splotch of dried blood on the marble floor.

  “I’d normally suggest sending those shots to the lab,” Kim says, “but why waste the taxpayers’ money?”

  Mason knows what the ranger’s getting at. The inside of a shotgun is smoothbore. Unlike with a bullet, running ballistics on recovered buckshot or casings is almost always a total wash.

  But Special Agent Mason Randolph cuts no corners, spares no expense.

  “I wish I had superpowers like you, ranger,” Mason says, rolling his eyes. “You can tell just from looking, we won’t be able to pull any prints, any fibers, any DNA. Should we bother running tests on that dummy bomb by the courthouse?”

  Kim sucks his teeth. Doesn’t appreciate the sarcasm. Doesn’t like being called out for an oversight, either.

  “I heard you watched the security tapes,” Kim says. “In that case, it almost wasn’t worth y’all making the trip. Get anything on the suspects besides their heights and builds?”

  Mason nods. “Rubber.”

  Kim gives the agent a funny look. “Say again?”

  “Their masks,” the agent explains. “It’s the only lead we’ve got. For now.”

  He continues: “Witnesses say the four men had real west Texas accents. Impossible to fake to a room full of locals. Which tells me our bad guys hail from nearby. If your men want to help, tell them to start canvassing every knickknack and party-supply store for a hundred miles. Halloween’s a long way off. Find me some political junkies who purchased their costumes five months early. In cash.”

  Kim is plenty impressed by Mason’s creativity. And ingenuity. It’s an unorthodox angle he would never even have considered, let alone thought to pursue so aggressively. But the ranger also can’t hide his skepticism.

  “Far be it from me, Agent Randolph, to question one of the most formidable Feds in all the Southwest.…”

  “Then why do I feel like you’re about to do just that?”

  Kim forges on. “You’re asking for a miracle if you think—”

  “Here’s what I think,” Mason fires back. “We’ve got five felons on the loose, who disappeared right under our noses. Who set a trap that all of us stepped right into. Who, as my colleagues at the Department of Homeland Security reminded me on a conference call as we drove in from the airport, are smart enough to build a fake bomb—and Jesus help us if they ever decide to make a real one.”

  Kim frowns. “Fair enough. But starting with their masks? All I’m saying, that’s haystack-and-needle territory. And you know it.”

  If Mason does, his poker face doesn’t betray it.

  “When we find that needle, Ranger Kim—and we will,” Mason responds. Five minutes in the roasting bank lobby is far too long. “Watch you don’t get pricked.”

  45 seconds

  In 1933, my great-grandfather Joseph Rourke built the sturdy oak table that has stood in our farmhouse kitchen ever since. He probably imagined his descendants sitting around it sharing meals, stories, and laughs.

  He probably didn’t imagine them sitting around it counting out a small fortune, one that was stolen at gunpoint from a bank earlier that morning.

  “Eighty-two thousand one hundred seventeen dollars!” Hank exclaims after triple-checking his arithmetic. “Eighty-two thousand and one hundred seventeen goddamn dollars!”

  A bunch of gasps and laughter fill the room. But I can’t make a peep. The shock, the relief, and the thrill are overwhelming. The experience is out of this world.

  “It’s wild seeing all that money in one place,” says J.D., in total awe.

  “Crazy how little it looks,” Nick adds, helping Hank arrange all the rubber-banded stacks of bills together into a pile no bigger than a couple of phone books.

 
; He’s right. In the movies, the bad guys’ bounty is always stacked to the ceiling.

  But this is real life. And incredible things seem to always come in small packages.

  Then again, in the movies, the bad guys—that would be us, crazy as that is to admit—get caught in the end. There’s always some tough, good-looking, plays-by-his-own-rules cop out there who’ll stop at nothing to bring them to justice.

  But like I said, this is real life. What we’re doing is too big. Too important. It’s for our home. It’s for our livelihoods.

  It’s for my dead son.

  My plan is perfect. Getting caught—that’s just not going to happen to us. It can’t.

  Or can it?

  Stevie seems to be reading my mind. He picks up the notepad Hank had been using to scribble his figures on. He brings it over to the stove, lights a burner, and drops the pages into the flickering blue flame. They transform from evidence into ash in a matter of seconds.

  “When’d you last use this thing, Molly?” Stevie asks with a little smile, running his finger along the top of the oven through a film of old grease and dust.

  I answer quickly and quietly. “Eighty-nine days ago.”

  The instinct of my brother and his friends is to chuckle—until I explain that number’s significance.

  “I guess I just haven’t felt much like cooking since Alex died.”

  Which sucks the air right out of the room.

  I feel a deep pain in my gut as the memory of him seeps back into me. It’s still so fresh, so raw. So real.

  But I also feel sorry for ruining the festive mood. For putting a damper on a celebration we all desperately need. My oldest brother picks up on that immediately.

  “How’s Taco Bell sound?” Stevie asks. “I’m buying. Double Decker Supremes for everybody!”

  The gang gets happy and rowdy again.

  “Make mine a gordita—no, a chalupa!”

  “Fresco Chicken for me!”

  “Gotta throw in some nachos, bud!”

  “Hell no!” I interject, brandishing a cast-iron skillet high above my head. “You bet your asses we’re having tacos tonight. But they’re gonna be homemade.”

  My family likes this idea even more. And so do I.

  I still miss my precious baby boy every second of every minute of every day.

  But I’ve missed cooking for all the other people in my life I love, too.

  So tonight, for the first time in nearly thirteen weeks, dinner on the Rourke family farm looks almost normal again.

  1 minute

  Some say midnight is the scariest hour to be in a cemetery.

  They’re wrong.

  The scariest time is the first light of dawn. Because there’s nowhere left to hide. From your grief. From yourself.

  I just couldn’t fall asleep last night. (But what else is new?) I’m sure the buzz from the morning’s bank robbery was part of it. But maybe my guilt was, too. Not guilt from committing any crime. Guilt about feeling the tiniest flicker of happiness again. Of hope. We could save the farm.

  That my “hell of a plan,” as Stevie once called it, might work.

  I was still tossing and turning when the old clock radio beside my bed read 2:30 a.m. Normally I’d tough it out and keep lying there till dawn, when I’d finally decide to drag myself out of bed and officially start my day.

  But last night felt different. I couldn’t just keep lying there.

  I had to get up now. Had to go somewhere. And I knew exactly where.

  I hopped in my truck and drove the twenty-six miles to Trinity Hills Cemetery. I parked outside the front gate and walked the rest of the way in on foot.

  I’d visited this place more times than I could remember. At least once every day since the funeral. Sometimes twice. On some occasions, I might stay for just a minute. Others, I might linger for hours.

  I knew last night would be the latter.

  As I neared Alex’s resting place, my flashlight casting long, eerie shadows, the first emotion I felt was rage.

  Someone left trash at my son’s grave!

  But as I got closer, I identified the pile of wrinkled papers strewn at the base of his headstone.

  It was a stack of comic books.

  Alex and his comic books. How he loved them. How his bedroom was stuffed to the gills with them, a library of illustrated stories of daring and adventure.

  I figured some of his friends must have visited yesterday and left them there. That thought melted my heart.

  Because Alex adored his friends. Even more than comics. Camping with them, shooting old bottles and cans with them, riding that blue dirt bike around with them—the one that’s still leaning against our back porch. The one I still can’t bring myself to move.

  And his friends loved Alex right back. Sometimes, when he’d have a few pals stay the night, I’d creep down the hall and stand outside his bedroom door. Not to eavesdrop, just to hear them laugh.

  Is there any sound more perfect to a parent’s ear than her child expressing joy?

  These memories and so many others came flooding back to me all night long. For the past three hours, I stood, sat, paced, knelt, prayed, and cried—oh, did I cry—at the grave of my fifteen-year-old son.

  But now, I start to realize the sky has changed from inky black to glowing blue. Alex’s favorite color, I can’t help but think. I hear birds begin to chirp. I look down at my cell phone. It tells me it’s nearly six o’clock. In just a few minutes, this dark cemetery will be flooded with warm light.

  I’m not ready for that. Not even close.

  I have to get home. I have a lot more work to do.

  I’ve only just begun.

  1 minute

  I’ve been crouching and crawling with Stevie through prickly three-foot-high shrubs for the last hour. My whole body hurts like hell.

  My back aches. My knees and wrists throb. Every inch of exposed skin is either drenched with sweat or scratched up by the bramble or bitten pink by mosquitoes.

  But I forget all about the pain—when I remember why I’m here.

  Step two of my plan will happen in less than a week, just a few hundred yards from where we’re both hidden now: the outskirts of Golden Acres Ranch, a sprawling horse farm not far from the Texas–Oklahoma border.

  Tonight, the place is teeming with some of the area’s wealthiest families. Pony rides and circus performers for the kids. Grilled lobster and bubbly for the adults.

  It sure is one fancy way to celebrate the Fourth of July.

  And the perfect cover for me and my brother to stake the place out.

  God help us if we get caught.

  “I count six—no, seven—exits on walls three, four, and five,” whispers Stevie, peering through the slender scope he borrowed from the top of his hunting rifle.

  He’s checking out the giant beige stable in the center of the property. It’s not the long, slender kind I’m used to seeing. With elegant stone columns and pristine white gables, it looks more like a massive open-air mansion.

  A whole lot of money passes through Golden Acres. More than goes through most banks in this part of the state—especially at auction time.

  And we’ll be coming for every penny.

  “Can you make out the other walls?” I ask, still scribbling Stevie’s observations in a tiny notepad, struggling to see my chicken scratch in the pitch dark.

  Stevie glances at his watch. “I will any second now…”

  Before I can ask what he means—boom!—an explosion shatters the quiet night. My heart jumps into my throat. Then a second. Boooom! A third. And then…

  Fireworks light up the evening sky.

  They light up the rest of the stable, too.

  As the crowd oohs and ahs, Stevie rattles off more details about the barn. Like the positions of more exits. Their lines of sight. The locations of security cameras. The positions of plainclothes security guards.

  I write down every word. What we’ve got in store for this place will m
ake the Key Bank heist look like a cakewalk. We can’t be too careful or too prepared.

  “All right, that does it,” Stevie says. “Let’s use the noise for cover and split.”

  Fine by me. We slowly turn around in the brush and begin inching back the way we came, toward the road. We’ve barely made it a couple of yards.…

  “Over there!”

  I hear a young man’s voice. Then footsteps. Coming up on us fast.

  Shit. Stevie gives me a look: Stay still, stay calm.…

  My breath catches in my chest. I crouch down even lower in the spiky shrubs. I slowly crane my head to see who’s spotted us. Golden Acres security? Police?

  Then I hear a girl’s giggling. And I relax.

  It’s just two teenagers, sneaking off to fool around.

  They collapse onto a hilly patch of grass nearby, kissing and groping, clueless that two fledgling criminals are so dangerously close.

  As my brother and I scamper away, I can’t help but think: Next time, we won’t be so lucky.

  1 minute

  As a former Miss Scurry County for three years in a row, I know a few things about putting on makeup. I’ve been dolling myself up going on three decades.

  But this is the first time I’ve applied it on someone else.

  “Quit twitching,” I say, dabbing a glob of brown cream and smearing it all around. “You made it through Parris Island, you can deal with a little foundation.”

  That’s right. I’m putting ladies’ makeup on my retired-Marine big brother.

  The rest of the room chuckles—Hank, Nick, J.D., and my sisters-in-law, Kim and Debbie. The mood is tense, and I figured we could use a little laugh.

  “Don’t pretend you’ve never tried to look pretty before, Sergeant,” J.D. cracks.

  More laughter. Except from Stevie. “Very funny…Corporal.”

  I pick up an eyebrow pencil. “How about giving me a big fake smile, at least?”

  My brother flashes a toothy grin, scrunching his face up tight. Hank, Nick, and J.D. are all doing the same while Debbie and Kim apply their makeup.