Odds Against Tomorrow

Chapter Twelve

It was after nine o’clock when Sheriff Burns left the bank and returned to his office in the Municipal Building. He hung up his wet slicker and told Morgan to post himself at the bank to keep traffic moving through town. Already there was a congestion of curiosity on Main Street; people exchanging garbled versions of what had happened, cars from a dozen miles around converging on the excitement. “Keep it all moving,” the sheriff told Morgan. “I want that street clear. If the truckers get tied up we’ll have a jam all the way back on the highway to Middleboro.”

When Morgan left, the sheriff studied the large county wall map on the wall behind his desk. He had done all the routine things; calmed down the people at the bank and taken their statements. The wounded man had registered at the hotel as Frank Smith, and the sheriff had checked his room, finding nothing but a damp overcoat and a soft fedora. They belonged to the colored man, he knew. The dead man was at the morgue in MacPherson’s Funeral Home. A beefy man in his late forties. That’s all he added up to at the moment. There was nothing revealing in his clothes or wallet. This was routine. Now the harder job started — hunting down the Negro and the man who called himself Frank Smith.

The sheriff knew he had half failed tonight; he had stopped the robbery but two of the men had got away. That was his fault. He accepted the failure without guilt or remorse; it was a simple distasteful fact that he didn’t try to evade or reassess to his own advantage.

Footsteps sounded In the outer hallway. He turned as a tall young man in a damp gabardine topcoat walked up to the counter.

“Sheriff Burns?”

“That’s right.”

“My name is Kelly, sir.” The young man opened a small leather card case and placed it on the counter. “FBI.”

“Well, well.” The sheriff studied his photograph with care, then stared at the agent, noting his reddish-brown hair, sharp blue eyes and square, cheerful face. He didn’t have to look down at the man and that was an uncommon experience for him; six two or better, he judged, with enough bulk to give authority to his height. “You got here pretty fast,” he said pushing the wallet back across the counter.

“Our office in Philadelphia picked up the State Police alert about eight fifteen,” Kelly said. “The SAC sent me out first. There’ll be more men here soon. From Philly and Harrisburg. We’ll have riot equipment in an hour or so, and there’ll be two planes standing by at dawn if we need them.”

“A regular convention, eh?” the sheriff said. “What’s the SAC by the way?”

“Special agent in charge,” Kelly said.

“This is your show now, eh?”

“Practically every bank job is a federal case, Sheriff. Deposits are insured by a federal agency and that brings us into it. But we’re here to work for you. You know the area. We’ll co-operate any way we can. That sound okay?”

“It sounds fine,” the sheriff said, underlining the middle word faintly but unmistakably. He had an idea of what co-operation meant — a polite way of taking the reins out of his hands. “Come on in. You got some idea about what our next move should be?”

“There’s no identification on the dead man?”

“Nothing yet.”

“I’ll print him and Philadelphia can wire the information to Washington. When we know who he is it may lead us to the other man.”

“There’s two other men,” the sheriff said.

“The State Police just mentioned one. How come?”

“Nobody saw the other fellow.” The sheriff explained to Kelly what he had learned of John Ingram and the man who called himself Smith. “I called the State Police from the bank as soon as the shooting was over,” he went on. “I told them what I’d seen — not knowing the colored boy was in on the job. Everybody in the bank took him for a regular delivery man. When I got the whole story pieced together I decided to let the first report stand for a while.”

Kelly raised his eyebrows.

“Well, you may not agree with my reasoning,” the sheriff said dryly. “But it figured those two fellows will hear that report on the radio. The colored fellow may feel free to cut out on his own. And the other man — he’s wounded, remember — might try to stop him. It’s going to put pressure on them and that might prod them into making a break for it.”

“How long can we keep it quiet?”

“Until tomorrow morning, I guess. There’ll be talk in town about what really happened, and the reporters will be on our backs then.”

“You say they might make a break for it. You think they’re holed-up somewhere by now?”

“Come here a second.” The sheriff took a pencil from his breast pocket and walked over to the county map behind his desk. “Ingram and the wounded man drove out of town on Cherry Street. That took them into open country in four or five miles.” He drew a crude circle around the area southwest of Crossroads. “The State cops have roadblocked all that territory. But there’s back roads those fellows can use to slip around our roadblock. All we can do is plug up the likeliest holes — the main highways, the bridge approaches and so forth. And we’ll watch the buses and trains. They’re in a noose, but it’s awfully big and awfully loose.”

“What kind of country is it?”

“Farms and woods, twenty-five square miles of it. Lots of houses, barns, outbuildings, old mills and so forth. We know their car, so they can’t travel. And they can’t stay outside in this weather. Likely they’ll move in on somebody. That’s why I want to make ’em run for it. Get ’em into the open where we won’t run the risk of killing innocent people.”

“Is the area too big for a house-to-house search?”

“We could try, but it would take a lot of time.”

“Have you alerted all the doctors around here to be careful?”

“We did that first thing.”

“The call might sound pretty innocent,” Kelly said. “An old familiar patient with a touch of stomach trouble maybe. But talking with a gun at her head.”

“We reminded them of that,” the sheriff said. “They’ll check with us before they go out on any calls tonight.”

“Good.” Kelly belted his topcoat. “I’ll get those prints into the works. You’ve got everything running along fine.”

“Why, thanks,” the sheriff said, deadpan. He was human enough to have enjoyed this little session; there was very little the FBI was going to tell him about affairs in his own backyard.

Kelly stopped and glanced at him from the door. “You’ve got some fox-hunting down this way, I think. Is that right?”

“The Chesterson hounds. Why?”

“Well, just an odd thought. It might be a good idea to ask them to keep their eyes open. A hunt covers a lot of territory, and they might stumble across something interesting. A car hidden in the woods, or smoke from a deserted house.” Kelly shrugged his wide shoulders. “Can’t hurt in any case. I’ll see you.” He waved and walked out.

The sheriff stared after him, scratching his chin. Then he smiled reluctantly. He should have thought of the fox hunters; they trooped through the back country in all kinds of weather, completely isolated in their small, intense world of horses and trails, hounds and foxes. He’d give the master of hounds a ring in the morning; it wouldn’t hurt them to keep their eyes open for something besides foxes for a change. Kelly was all right, he thought, still smiling a little.

Three more agents arrived fifteen minutes later, quiet, competent-looking men who introduced themselves to the sheriff and then went down to the coroner’s office to check with Kelly. Within half an hour, Kelly returned to put in a call to the Department of Justice in Washington. “I sent one of the boys back to Philly with the prints,” he said while waiting for the connection. “They’ll wire them to Washington. We’ll probably have something in a few hours.”

“How do you know you have him on file?”

“It’s a good bet. A man his age has usually been printed. Military service, defense work, civil-service application, any kind of arrest or jail sentence — that’ll do it.” He lighted a cigarette and perched on a corner of the sheriff’s desk, filling the office with a sense of vital, healthy energy. When his connection was made, he said, “This is Kelly. That’s right. Crossroads, Pennsylvania, the bank job. Now here’s the right- and left-hand count on an unidentified male about forty-five or fifty. The prints are on their way to Philadelphia, and you should have them on the wire in an hour or so. All set?” Kelly took a notebook from his pocket and read a list of numbers into the phone. Then he said, “He’s a high-arch, I see. That should help a little... Yeah. So long.”

The sheriff hadn’t understood what Kelly was talking about but he was reluctant to ask for explanations. Finally irritation at himself overcame his dignity. “How the devil can they start working in Washington before the prints get there from Philly?” he said.

“Well, they know where to start looking,” Kelly said. “They’ll pull the cards on one category — high-arch, in this case — and sift out the impossibles. Deceased and women and children. When the prints arrive they’ll check them against the ones left — and they might have the field narrowed down to just a few hundred by then. It’s not my specialty, but the experts in Washington read prints the way we’d read a newspaper.”

Morgan came in a bit later and reported that the crowds had thinned out, and that traffic was flowing smoothly through Main Street.

The sheriff swiveled around in his chair and looked up at the circle he had penciled around the area southwest of Crossroads. Nothing to do but wait. The rain made any tracking impossible. But time was on their side now. They could sit tight: the hunted men would have to make the first move...

After a few minutes he glanced at Kelly. “You had dinner yet?”

“I was about to ask if any restaurants are open.”

“How about coming home with me? There’s a roast waiting on the stove. With all the trimmings.”

“I don’t want to put you to any trouble.”

“It’s no trouble at all. In fact it might be a big help. Morgan, keep your ear on that radio. We’ll be back in half an hour or so.”