Tahoe Dark (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller Book 14) Page 9

  Bosworth spoke up. “Is there, like, a command for, ‘Inspect the truck for contraband?’”

  “Probably your K-nine handler has one. But I doubt it would work on a Great Dane.”

  “Because of his rigorous business standards,” Bosworth said.

  “You got it,” I said.

  We got to the rear corner of the truck and turned to go across the back.

  Bosworth followed. “Do German Shepherds have better noses or something?”

  “Nope. Same nose. Different work standards.”

  Spot sniffed here and there but mostly was indifferent. We rounded the next corner and went back up the far side of the truck. When we’d gone around the front, I opened the passenger door. “Look up here, Spot.” I tapped the edge of the seat.

  Spot looked at me, then looked at the ground.

  “Spot.” I pointed. “Here.” I reached down, picked up one of his paws, and set it on the door sill. Spot raised his other paw to the sill. Looked around. “Now put your paws up here.” I patted the seat and lifted one of his paws.

  He pushed up and got his paws on the edge of the seat. The truck’s cab was high. But when Spot stands on his rear legs, he’s seven feet tall. I pointed into the cab. Spot stretched his head out, sniffing the dash, the video screen, the seat, the floor mat.

  “Anything in particular you’re expecting to find?” Bosworth said from behind me. He sounded concerned.

  “No. What I’m looking for is any sense that there is a smell out of the ordinary, in this case meaning smells that don’t usually fit with a vehicle, or smells in this general area that don’t fit with what he’s already learned are the standard smells in this part of Sparks. All dogs automatically pay attention to unusual smells. It’s in their nature.”

  Spot had shown no interest, so we backed down and away from the cab. I shut the door.

  “Is he trained at this?” Bosworth asked.

  “Actually, the dogs with less training are better at this particular exercise. A really disciplined dog learns to ignore any smell that he’s not been specifically scented on. Whereas a less trained dog pays attention to all smells. The untrained dog will do a better job of reacting to all unusual scents, and, if their owner is observant, the owner will notice the dog’s reactions. My dog is somewhat trained. But mostly he just wants treats.”

  I went to the back of the truck, opened the cargo door, and had Spot leap up inside.

  He inspected the empty money bags, moved to the video screen, took a sniff or two at the storage bins, then walked to the edge of the opening.

  I climbed down. “Okay, Spot, you can jump down.”

  He jumped down and then took off on another loop around the parking lot. I pulled out a treat and held it up.

  It took a moment before he recognized my posture. Then he swung in, stopped, and looked at me, his tail on medium speed. I gave him the biscuit.

  “Okay, boy. One more look.” This time I walked him clockwise around the truck, holding his collar with my right hand so he could be next to the truck. We went up the left side, past the driver’s door, around the front, down the right side. When we got to the rear corner, Spot made a small alert. He stopped abruptly and sniffed at the sidewall of the right, rear tire.

  “What is it boy?”

  He sniffed some more, nose almost pressed against the rubber.

  I squatted down and looked at the tire.

  “Can you see what it is?” Bosworth asked.

  “Nothing that seems significant. Something is smeared on the rubber.” I leaned in and sniffed. There was a smell of turpentine. “Ah,” I said. “Pine pitch. That would certainly catch a dog’s attention as a smell that’s out of place on a truck or even in this parking lot.” I turned to Bosworth. “Where has this truck been driven since it was last washed?”

  He thought about it. “We washed it the night before the robbery. Then we sent it out on the casino delivery to the South Shore. Their route was the five-eighty freeway to Carson City, then Highway Fifty up over Spooner Summit, and down to the casino.”

  “Did your men stop anywhere or turn off on side roads?”

  “No, we have strict rules for cash runs. No variation from the scheduled route.”

  I thought about the route he described. It would be difficult to get pine pitch on the sidewall of a tire on that route. “This is a pretty big smear of pitch,” I said. “So it probably got here because someone stepped in some pitch and tried to rub it off on the tire. Any chance your men aren’t telling the truth about where they drove?”

  “No. No chance at all. The GPS in the truck keeps a constant log of where it’s been. It automatically uploads to a map in the computer. I looked at the map after the truck was brought back. This truck hasn’t been anywhere else.”

  “I’d like to take this pitch off the tire to have it analyzed.”

  “What could you learn from that?” Bosworth asked.

  “I have no idea. Do you have a business card?”

  Bosworth pulled out his wallet, removed a card, and handed it to me. The card had ‘Reno Armored’ printed across the top in red letters. Under it, in black, it said, ‘Randy Bosworth, General Manager and Security Director.’

  I used my pocket knife to carefully slice behind the smear of pitch, trying to keep it from falling apart into little pieces. The pitch was somewhat brittle, but I managed to get a good part of it off the tire without scraping off more than a sliver of tire rubber. Then I scraped the pitch off the knife blade onto the back of the business card.

  Once the pitch was highlighted on the white cardstock, I saw a small dark object. It appeared to be a little bug about 1/8th inch long. “Any chance you’ve got a sandwich bag?” I said. “That would help me protect this.”

  “Seems like a lot of fuss for some pine pitch.”

  I looked at Bosworth but didn’t say anything.

  “We don’t keep sandwich bags in the garage,” he said. “I suppose I could fish yesterday’s lunch bag out of the wastebasket. Would that be acceptable?” He said it with a sneer.

  “If it’s clean.”

  “It was pastrami on rye with mayo, mustard, horseradish, the works.”

  “Maybe you could wash it out.”

  Bosworth paused as if he thought I was just making busywork for him. But he went back inside. After a couple of minutes, he came back out holding a wet baggie by the corner. I hoped the wash was thorough. If the bag had even a fraction of the chemicals that were on Bosworth’s breath, the pine pitch would spontaneously combust.

  I took it from him, turned it inside out and shook it repeatedly to get the water drops off. Spot walked up, his nose in the air near the baggie. His nostrils were flexing.

  The remaining moistness evaporated fast in the dry desert air. I carefully set the business card with its pitch and bug inside. I didn’t want the plastic to touch the sample. I just wanted the bag to enclose it, should any of the pitch fall off the card.

  “Was there anything on the video feeds that showed someone kicking the tire?” I asked.

  Bosworth shook his head. “No. But I’m not sure that any of the hidden cameras point toward the tire. Maybe that’s just out of view.” He pointed to the dark area inside the front of the wheel well. “These miniature cameras point up, so if the person rubbed their shoe on the bottom of the tire, it probably wouldn’t be in view of the camera. I’ll listen to the audio feeds again and see if I hear any kicking sounds.”

  Bosworth looked at his watch. “The guards will be showing up, soon. Where do you want to talk to them?”

  “Do you have an office where we can talk one at a time?”

  Bosworth nodded. “We have a small conference room.”

  THIRTEEN

  I put Spot back into the Jeep to hang out.

  Randy Bosworth and I were waiting outside the front door when the three guards showed up together in a 1970s Buick Skylark that had been rebuilt, repainted, and spit polished.

  Bosworth introduced me to
Matt, the driver of both the armored truck and the Buick, Jim, the guard who road shotgun in the truck and in the Buick, and Larry, the guard who was locked in the back of the truck with the money and who also occupied the back seat of the Buick. Bosworth explained that I was a private investigator that Mr. Timmens insisted on hiring.

  From what Bosworth said, I sensed that Larry was the most sensitive and least likely to put up a facade. So I chose Larry as my first interview, and we went inside and talked in the empty conference room. I had no doubt that, simultaneously, Bosworth and Matt and Jim were discussing me and my irritating presence rather than directing any thoughts toward how to solve the crime.

  Larry was slight of build, maybe 6 feet and 140 pounds. His thin, brown hair looked darker than it was because of the contrast with his pale skin. He had a small neat moustache, and small, crooked teeth. His ears stuck out, and he spoke with a soft, uncertain voice.

  “I understand you have a family,” I said to Larry. “That’s got to be the first thing on your mind when you find yourself in a dangerous situation, huh?”

  “Yeah. It’s really scary. Matt and Jim are all about tough. Tough physically, tough mentally, tough attitude. I’m just, you know, a regular guy. When people stick rifles in my face, I get scared. I’m not ashamed to admit that. But with Matt and Jim, it’s like no big deal. On the way back over here, they were debating about how they might have taken all four robbers out. I’m thinking, guys, these robbers had automatic weapons. They were psychos. You don’t try to be heroes with psychos. Reno Armored even has a policy about not being heroes. I take that stuff seriously. Better to be an alive coward, able to take care of your family, than a dead hero, worthless to anyone who needs more than a memory of someone.”

  “I think you’re sensible, Larry. And being sensible doesn’t mean you’re a coward. If someone hurt your family, and you could intervene, I have no doubt you would.”

  Larry nodded. “Yes, I would. Matt and Jim would probably think I wouldn’t be brave enough, but I would. They’d be surprised.”

  “Tell me, Larry. Is there anything about the robbery that stands out to you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m wondering if any aspect of the robbery seemed unusual or unexpected or strange.”

  Larry frowned, thinking.

  I continued, “For example, when the police asked you to give your version of events, was there anything that you might have mentioned but didn’t because no one asked about it?”

  Larry started to talk, then stopped.

  I waited.

  “I think what stood out to me was that the robbers didn’t act the way I expected.”

  “In what way?”

  “Well, whenever you see robbers on TV and in the movies, they act real tense. Like they’re high on some weird drug, and they make mistakes, and they’re loud, and they have disagreements. But these guys were more like professionals.”

  “Like soldiers? Professionals with weapons?”

  Larry shook his head. “Well, maybe they were soldiers, but that’s not what I was thinking. I meant they had their act together like it was something they rehearsed multiple times. Of course, to pull off a robbery and not talk meant they had to rehearse, right? But even so, these guys seemed like…”

  I waited again.

  “They seemed like professional actors. I’m not sure how to describe it.”

  “You mean, they performed the robbery like it was a play?” I asked.

  “Yeah. That’s it. That’s exactly it. It was like watching a play where everyone knew their lines. Except no one spoke at all.”

  “Have you wondered if Matt and Jim or anyone else at Reno Armored might have played an inside role?”

  Larry went stone-faced, and his skin pinked up a bit. “I have to confess that when I was in the back of the truck, and I first saw the robbers on the video screen, that was what I wondered. One of the robbers held up instructions on pieces of paper. Then he held up a phone with a video of a truck blowing up. The moment I saw that, I thought, this is too perfect. This is too effective. This isn’t like stupid convicts making up a plan in prison for some job they’ll do when they get out. This was like something a mastermind would plan. And a mastermind would always get inside information, right?”

  “Makes sense,” I said. “As you think about the potential for an inside job, consider all the people who work here at Reno Armored. Can you imagine that any of them could have worked with the robbers?”

  “As I said, I’ve already thought about it,” Larry said. “But I believe the answer is no. I think Mr. Bosworth is too full of himself to play informant to robbers. He’d want to be the boss. But I don’t think he’d want to run a robbery operation. Rita the receptionist is too meek to do anything she might perceive as wrong. Harold the mechanic is a straight shooter. It’s a big deal to him to play the role of law-abiding citizen. The other guard team are three guys who are – I don’t know how to say this – they’re not real smart. I don’t think they’d have the ability to help robbers in a meaningful way. That leaves Matt and Jim as the only Reno Armored employees with personalities that could fit what you’re talking about. Neither of them is focused on a lawful, ethical life, or whatever you want to call it. But they’re both smart enough to put together a serious assault on the operations of a company. Give them enough money, they might go along on a robbery scheme. But the problem with that idea is that they’re angry that they got robbed. It’s like a personal attack. Jim was in Iraq, and Matt was a jock in high school. He lettered in something like four sports. I didn’t even know it was possible to play four sports. They both have a kind of action movie-star fixation. If someone tried to rob an armored truck, guys like them would always want to kick the robbers’ asses.”

  “Except they didn’t,” I said.

  “Right. They did the right thing. They did what they were taught to do. But that means they didn’t do what they wanted to do. They let the robbers rob us. And they are still alive as a result. And I know that their mothers are glad for that. But they’re not. They feel that they failed in some way.”

  “Let’s go back to the robbers,” I said. “Did you get the sense that one of them was the leader?”

  Larry thought about it. “It’s hard to say. They all looked the same in their hoodies and masks. So as they moved around it was very hard to keep track of any one of them. But, yeah, I do think there was a leader.”

  “What was the indication?”

  “Just one, really. When they got me out of the back of the truck, everyone was standing there. Three of the robbers held their rifles up, watching Matt and Jim, and then me. They looked ready to fire. The fourth had his rifle hanging over his shoulder like you see in war movies. He held the sheets of paper with instructions. The other three kept glancing at that fourth man. It made it seem like he was the leader. But it could be that they were looking simply because he had the papers.”

  “How did he act when he showed all of you your instructions?”

  “He didn’t reveal any attitude, if that’s what you’re wondering. He just held up each sheet of paper with our names and instructions about where we were to walk. Then he held up a sheet that said, ‘We have three accomplices following you. If you deviate from these instructions, we will kill someone in your family.’” Larry’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed.

  “What happened to those pieces of paper?”

  “He folded them a couple of times and put them into his pocket.”

  “Was there anything about that leader that was notable. His size? His mannerisms?”

  “No. He was about the same size as the others. Although I suppose the uniformity of their clothes might add to a sense of uniformity of size.”

  “Smart observation,” I said. “What about Mr. Timmens, Bosworth’s boss? Have you met him?”

  Larry nodded.

  “Do you think he could have been involved?”

  Larry frowned with great intensity. He shook
his head. “No, I can’t imagine it.”

  “Thanks, Larry. You’ve been a big help.”

  I walked Larry out and brought Matt back into the office.

  Based on what Larry had told me, I could have predicted everything about Matt. He was big and strong, blond and blue. We hadn’t talked more than a minute before Matt managed to change the subject to his high school jock history.

  Eventually, he said, “I wanted to kill those guys. One guy, he didn’t keep a firm grip on his rifle, and I was really tempted to step in and take that piece from him. But I didn’t because Bosworth was real firm on the rules.”

  After we spoke for fifteen minutes, I asked him the question I asked Larry. “Is there anything about the robbery that struck you as unusual?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “These guys who robbed you. Was there anything about it that you didn’t expect? Anything weird or strange?”

  “I don’t know. They didn’t talk. That was pretty strange. Right there, not talking. How weird is that? Pretty weird, you ask me.”

  “Okay, thanks,” I said. I stood up.

  “That’s it? That’s all you want?”

  “For now.”

  “Hey, let me ask you,” Matt said as he stood up. “I’m thinking that driving a lockbox is, you know, a dead end. This PI thing. Is it a pretty good gig? You meet lots of women? Make lots of money? You don’t have to go to cop school or anything, right?”

  “Sorry to disappoint, Matt. PIs don’t make much money, don’t meet lots of women, and yes, if you want good prep, you have to go to cop school and then spend twenty years as a cop.”

  Matt looked up at the ceiling, then at the floor, sighed, and walked out fast.

  I followed and came back with Jim.

  My interview with him was a repeat of Matt but with his war experience as a substitute for Matt’s high school sports. With his dull, curly red hair, Jim wasn’t as flashy pretty as Matt. But he made up for it with a steely hardness that probably made him appealing to a wide range of people who liked the idea of the strong, quiet, deadly, soldier type. He was more reticent than Matt, which may have made him seem smarter than he probably was. I didn’t doubt that he could help someone plan an armored truck robbery, but like Matt, Jim seemed too upset about getting robbed to be much of a suspect. Maybe both Matt and Jim were acting, but I doubted it.