Clive Cussler: The Chase

Castle and Roy, believing the robber was now about to make his getaway, stretched out flat on the floor, with their hands stretched over their heads. The robber pulled a heavy woolen scarf from one of his pockets and wrapped it around the muzzle of his automatic. Then he systematically shot both men in the head. It sounded more like two loud thumps than the sharp crack of gunfire. Without another second’s hesitation, he heaved the sack over one shoulder and walked from the vault without looking back.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t finished. The woman under the counter moaned and tried to rise to her elbows. With utter indifference, he leaned down, lowered the gun, and shot her in the head like he had the bank owner and teller. There was no remorse, not the slightest hint of emotion. He didn’t care whether any of them left families behind. He had murdered three defenseless people in cold blood with as little interest as he might have shown stepping on a column of ants.

He paused to search for one of the shell casings he thought he’d heard fall to the floor from inside the scarf wrapped around the gun but could not find it. He gave up and walked casually from the bank, noting with satisfaction that no one had heard the muted gunshots.

With the gunnysack bulging with cash slung over his shoulder, the man walked through the alley running behind the bank. Stepping into a small alcove under a stairway where he would not be seen, he took off the grimy clothes, removed the gray wig and beard, and threw everything in a small valise. Now revealed in an expensively tailored suit, he perched a bowler hat at a jaunty angle on his head and its neatly brushed carpet of red hair. He slipped on a necktie and knotted it before also tossing the scuffed boots in the valise. He was a short man, and the soles and heels of the boot had been raised nearly two inches. Next, he pulled on a pair of English-made leather shoes, with lifts in the heel to make him appear taller, before turning his attention to a large leather suitcase he had hidden under a canvas tarp along with a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. Glancing up and down the alley every few seconds, he transferred the huge pile of cash from the gunnysack to the suitcase, which he strapped on a rack over the rear wheel of the motorcycle. The valise containing his disguise he tied on a front rack.

At that moment, the man heard shouting coming down the alley from Tombstone Canyon Road. Someone had discovered the bodies in the Bisbee National Bank. Unconcerned, he pushed the motorcycle forward and started the three-horsepower, twenty-five-cubic-inch one-cylinder engine. He threw one leg over the seat and rode deserted back alleys to the railroad yard. He moved unseen along a siding where a freight train had stopped to take on water.

His timing was perfect.

Another five minutes and the freight train would have moved back onto the main line and headed toward Tucson. Without being noticed by the engineer and the brakeman, as they pulled a big pipe down from the wooden tank into the tender for water to make steam, the man took a key from his vest pocket and opened the padlock to the door to a boxcar that was marked with a painted sign that read O’BRIAN FURNITURE COMPANY, DENVER. He slid the door open on its rollers. The presence of the boxcar in this time and place was no coincidence. Acting as a fictitious representative of the equally fictitious O’Brian Furniture Company, he had paid cash for it to be included in the freight train passing through Bisbee, en route from El Paso, Texas, to Tucson, Arizona.

He took a wide plank, attached by brackets to the side of the boxcar, and used it as a ramp to ride the Harley-Davidson aboard. Then he quickly closed the rolling door and reached through a small hinged opening to replace the lock as the whistle on the engine tooted and the train began moving forward from the siding onto the main track.

From the outside, the boxcar looked like any other that had been in use for several years. The paint was faded, and the wooden sides were dented and chipped. But its appearance was deceptive. Even the lock on the door was fake, making it look like the car was buttoned up tight. It was the inside that was the most deceptive, however. Instead of an empty interior or one packed with furniture, it was luxurious, ornately constructed, and furnished as ostentatiously as any private railcar belonging to the president of a railroad. Mahogany paneling spread over the walls and ceiling. The floor was covered by a thick carpet. The décor and furniture were extravagantly magnificent. There was an opulent sitting room, a palatial bedroom, and an efficient kitchen with the latest innovations for preparing gourmet meals.

There were no servants, porters, or cooks.

The man worked alone, without accomplices who might reveal his true name and occupation. No one knew of his clandestine operations as a bank robber and mass murderer. Even the railroad car had been built and decorated in Canada before being secretly transported across the border into the United States.

The robber relaxed in a plush leather settee, uncorked a bottle of 1884 Château La Houringue Bordeaux, chilled in buckets, and poured himself a glass.

He knew the town sheriff would quickly form a posse. But they would be looking for an old mangy miner who murdered while in a drunken fit. The posse would fan out, searching the town, almost certain he was too poor to own a horse. None of the townspeople had ever seen him come and go on horseback or driving a buggy.

Immensely pleased with himself, he sipped the wine from a crystal glass and studied the leather suitcase. Was this his fifteenth, or was it his sixteenth, successful robbery? he mused. The thirty-eight men and women and two children he had killed never entered his mind. He estimated the take of the mining payroll at $325,000 to $330,000. Most robbers wouldn’t have come close to guessing the amount inside the case.

But it was easy for him, since he was a banker himself.

The sheriff, his deputies, and the posse would never find the murdering robber. It was as if he had disappeared into thin air. No one ever thought to connect him with the dapper man riding through town on a motorcycle.

The hideous crime would become one of Bisbee’s most enduring mysteries.

SEPTEMBER 15, 1906 THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER BELOW HANNIBAL, MISSOURI

SOON AFTER THE TWENTIETH CENTURY WAS BORN, steamboating on the Mississippi began to fade. Few passenger steamboats still reigned in style. The Saint Peter was one of the last grand passenger boats to have survived the onslaught of the railroads. Two hundred fifty feet long and seventy-five feet wide, she was a splendid example of palatial elegance, with side-curving stairways, plush passenger cabins, and a magnificent main dining room with the finest food to be found anywhere. Ostentatious salons were provided for the ladies while the men smoked their cigars and played cards in handsome rooms adorned with mirrors and paintings.

Card games on steamboats plying the river were notorious for their cardsharp gamblers. Many passengers left steamboats poorer than when they boarded. At one table in the gambling room of the Saint Peter, in a quiet corner away from the main action, two men were enjoying a game of five-card stud.

At first glance, the scene looked like any other in the room, but a closer look revealed that no chips sat on the green felt table.

Joseph Van Dorn calmly studied his hand before laying down two cards. “A good thing we’re not in this for the money,” he said, smiling, “or I would owe you eight thousand dollars.”

Colonel Henry Danzler, director of the United States government’s Criminal Investigation Department, smiled in return. “If you cheated like I do, we’d be even.”