I pushed myself off the cruiser hood, my shoulder throbbing where Vance's weight had pinned it. I walked slowly back to my 2004 Ford, keeping my hands visible, the gravel crunching under my boots. I climbed in, pulled the door shut, and reached under the dash to where the magnetic auxiliary antenna connected to the hidden recorder unit.
Through the passenger window, I watched Hayes climb into the cruiser's passenger seat. He pulled out the envelope, snapped the rubber band against his wrist, and flicked the edge of the bills with his thumb, grinning into the side-view mirror.
What neither of them noticed was the tiny purple ink streak Clara had accidentally smeared across the back of my left knuckles when she counted out the cash. The exact same purple smudge was now sitting fresh on the thumb of Marcus Vance's black leather patrol glove.
TO BE CONTINUED: The Smudged Glove Held The Cash While The Cruiser Rolled Away
CHAPTER 2: The Log That Left Out My Name
The white cruiser accelerated south down Old State Road, kicking dry pea gravel against the undercarriage of my pickup before its taillights flattened into two red embers against the dusk. I did not shift the Ford into gear. I sat with my hands wrapped around the bottom curve of the steering wheel, waiting for the vibration in my thumbs to settle. My collar felt damp where Marcus Vance’s knuckles had dug into the gristle of my neck, and every swallow carried the copper taste of the latch iron that had caught my chin.
Above my head, the cab smelled of old cedar sawdust, motor oil, and sun-baked vinyl. On the passenger floorboard sat three empty canvas mail sacks and the yellow carbon duplicate of the lumber order I was supposed to pay for by five o'clock.
I leaned forward, unscrewed the plastic casing beneath the glove box, and pulled the transmitter harness down into my lap. The magnetic auxiliary wire was still seated firmly in its port, the tiny red indicator light pulsing once every three seconds to show the relay had held. The signal had not gone to dispatch, and it had not gone to the county sheriff. It had run directly to the bench terminal inside Miller County Supply, where Roy Gidley had kept the landline recorder spliced into our yard intercom since the county began skimming timber trucks two summers ago.
I turned the key, eased the truck out of the ditch grass, and drove the three miles back toward the bypass. I kept the speedometer pinned at twenty-four, well below the posted limit, my left blinker ticking heavy and dry in the quiet cab.
Miller County Supply was a long, low-slung metal building perched behind two rows of stacked white oak ties and three covered bays of corrugated tin. The yard gate was swung halfway open, hooked back with a length of rusted chain. Inside the side office, the yellow insect light over the entrance showed Roy standing behind the wire-mesh counter, his glasses pushed up onto his bald forehead and a pair of worn plastic headphones clamped over his ears.
When the screen door slapped shut behind me, Roy did not look up right away. His pencil was moving across a ruled yellow legal pad, scratching out timestamps beside a list of four-digit numbers.
"He took the whole strap," Roy said without taking the phones off. His voice had the flat, dry rasp of a man who had smoked filtered Luckies for forty years and spent the rest of his life breathing green pine dust. "Twenty crisp ones. I heard Hayes laugh when the Velcro pulled open. He called you Arthur like he was your nephew."
"He's not my nephew," I said. I pulled two paper towels from the roll beside the washbasin, ran them under the cold tap, and pressed them against the split on my chin. The paper came away spotted with rusty streaks. "Where did the packet save?"
Roy tapped the metal casing of the reel-to-reel deck bolted beneath the counter. "It's on the solid-state drive behind the drawer, and it’s duplicated on the quarter-inch tape. You came through clear enough to hear the gravel grinding under your knees, Art. But it’s just your word and two voices on an open frequency unless you've got the transfer paper."
"Clara stamped the strap with the four-digit branch mark," I said. "Purple ink. She got it on her thumb, and Vance got it on his glove when he pinched the paper out of my pocket. She’ll remember."
Roy finally slid the headphones down around his neck. He looked at my shirt, at the torn pocket seam where Vance’s glove had snagged the thread, then down at the yellow legal pad. "Clara’s brother is Vance’s first cousin on the mother's side, Art. You think she’s going to swear out a warrant against her own blood over two thousand dollars of commercial cash that wasn’t even logged on a road bill?"