Джеймс Паттерсон - The 13-Minute Murder

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.”