Mr. Lucky

19

Sergeant Rodney Gaylord didn’t like the answers Tony Valentine was giving him. Call it a good cop’s sixth sense. But since he couldn’t figure out what it was he didn’t like, he kept his feelings hidden, fearful of looking stupid.

That was Gaylord’s greatest fear—looking stupid. Because he’d once taken steroids to build muscles and had developed a hair-trigger temper, his co-workers had stuck him with a mean nickname. They called him Time Bomb. Gaylord had been a cop his whole life, and took pride in the way he ran Slippery Rock’s finest. He deserved better, or so he thought.

It was almost five. He stood at his desk, typing up his report of the bank robbery. Tony Valentine sat in the seat next to his desk, blowing on a cup of coffee. The guy could sure down the caffeine. Gaylord reread the report still in his typewriter, trying to put a finger on his suspicions. Something didn’t sit right. Valentine wasn’t telling him the whole truth. Slippery Rock did some tourism business, but generally it was folks from Atlanta and Charleston that came here, mostly to antique shop or hike in the hills. Visitors from Florida were rare, and he had a hard time believing Valentine had come here to write his memoirs.

“Talk to me about Hi Moss,” Gaylord said, turning off his typewriter.

Valentine sipped his coffee. “I told you everything that happened.”

“I know, but something’s got me stumped. You said Hi Moss told you that Beasley said he’d gotten voted off the island. Hi said he thought this was why Beasley was robbing the bank. What do you think that meant, voted off the island?”

“It’s from a TV show,” Valentine said.

“Did Hi tell you that?”

“No, I remembered it a little while ago.”

“Which show?”

“Survivor.”

Gaylord felt his face burn. He religiously watched the tube every night and had seen Survivor more times than he cared to remember. Usually it was with a beer clutched in his hand, his eyes glued to the attractive women in bathing suits who were always contestants. “What do you think Beasley was talking about?” he asked.

“Well, I’d imagine he got thrown out of some group and he was sore about it.”

Sore. A real Yankee expression. Gaylord consulted his notes lying on his desk. He’d asked Ricky Smith the same question earlier and gotten the same response. He wondered if it was one of those things he’d never get to the bottom of. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Valentine shift uncomfortably in his chair.

“We’ll be done in just a second,” the sergeant said. “One other thing’s got me scratching my head.”

“What’s that?”

“Both Larry and Beasley had their weapons drawn, yet neither got a shot off. You were kneeling on the floor, they were standing, yet you managed to shoot both men in the face. What are you, a trick-shot artist?”

“No.”

“Then how do you explain it?”

“I was desperate.”

“That’s it?”

“And I got lucky.”

Gaylord gave him a hard stare. It just wasn’t ringing true. Killing one bank robber he could accept, not two. The odds of that happening were simply out of this universe. He went to the door and said, “You want another cup of coffee?”

“I thought you said I could leave,” Valentine said.

“I just need to check something out,” Gaylord replied.

Gaylord shut the door behind him on the way out. Standing for long stretches made his back sore, and he paced the hall outside his office. He could tell that Valentine was starting to get annoyed. He was definitely acting uncomfortable. If he started leaning on him too hard, it might blow up in Gaylord’s face.

Maybe Valentine had gotten lucky. Gaylord was starting to slide in that direction, for no better reason than he had nothing to go on but a hunch. The fact was, Valentine had foiled a bank robbery. He had done a heroic thing, and as a result Roland’s baby would have a daddy and Claude would get free lap dances for the rest of his life and Ricky Smith would solidify his reputation as the luckiest man in Slippery Rock. A happy ending if Gaylord had ever heard one.

At the hallway’s end was a conference room with a coffee machine. He fished two quarters out of his pocket and went inside. Two of his deputies were in the room, chowing down on hoagies while staring at a TV set sitting on the desk. Gaylord stared at the black-and-white picture on the screen. “What are you watching?” he asked.

“The videotape of the bank robbery,” one of the deputies replied.

Gaylord pulled up a chair without saying a word to either man. On the screen he saw the two masked bank robbers pointing guns at Ricky, Roland, Valentine, and the guard, who were kneeling on the bank floor. The film was grainy and had no audio. The camera was also at a bad angle, and Valentine was partially out of the picture.

It was an incredibly tense scene. The bank robbers yelled at their hostages, then they yelled at each other. Then, out of the blue, the two bank robbers were lying on the floor with bullets in their heads.

“Play it again,” Gaylord said.

One of the deputies rewound the tape and started it over. It happened amazingly fast. First there were two bank robbers, then there were none.

“You should sign him up, Sergeant,” the other deputy quipped. “That guy’s the Nolan Ryan of pistol-shooting.”

Gaylord made the deputy replay the tape a third time while staring at his wristwatch. Based upon his less-than-scientific calculations, Valentine had drawn from an ankle holster and shot the two robbers in slightly less than two seconds. It sent a chill through him. He was willing to bet his paycheck that no retired cop in America could handle a gun like that.

Back in his office, he found Valentine reading a newspaper he’d fished out of the trash. Gaylord tapped him on the shoulder, and Valentine dumped the paper into the basket and rose expectantly.

“You’re free to go,” Gaylord said. “I may want to question you some more, so I’m requesting that you stay in town until our investigation is finished.”

Valentine headed for the door. Gaylord could not help himself and said, “Take my advice, and stay out of trouble.”

Valentine stopped at the door, a look of concern on his face. “Is that advice, or a warning?”

“It’s whatever you want it to be,” Gaylord said.