Leave the Living by Joe Hart Page A

of Lockheed, said in his statement yesterday. “I fired two shots at one of the men and missed before my gun jammed. They then approached the vehicle and held me and my partner at gunpoint before demanding we open the truck. They were both wearing masks and gloves, and they were jittery, like they were nervous or real young, but I couldn’t tell for sure.”
    The robbers then proceeded to force the security guards to open the armored truck, taking several containers filled with cash that was being transported from four separate banks in the area. The assailants then drove away in their pickup, leaving the Lockheed employees tied up in the armored truck’s cab. A state patrol came upon the scene a half hour later and released the two bound men.
    “I was really scared,” Daniel Pell, Taylor’s partner, said when asked about the experience. “They were both carrying shotguns, and I thought Marty and I were dead for sure.”
    Police have no suspects in custody, and the Dodge pickup was found abandoned in a stand of brush near a Mississippi River public water access three miles from the scene of the crime. Local authorities have employed law enforcement assistance from the neighboring towns of Enfield and Warren to aid in the investigation. Andrew Klous, CEO of Lockheed Security, made a statement condemning the act and vowed to “take measures to assure nothing like this ever happens again.” Klous went on to state that this is the first successful robbery of an armored vehicle in Lockheed’s twenty-six years in operation. He did not comment on the amount of money that was taken in the robbery.
    Mick stared at the article before flipping through the other papers below it. All of the headlines were about the theft, chronicling the case’s progress, or lack thereof, over a month’s time. The last article stated at its end that the authorities had still not located the missing money or the assailants.
    Mick let the papers drop into place and sat back from the table. His mind was a cautious octopus, extending tendrils toward the ideas that floated just outside the light of his thoughts. It began to pull them toward him, revealing a broken mosaic that he refused to look at, to even consider. His breath started to hitch in his chest, and the light glancing off the ceiling was dimming at the edges as if the night was encroaching into the kitchen, closer and closer like a predator stalking its prey. His eyes fell upon the corner of the newspaper that had gotten wet, and he blinked, seeing how the moisture had seeped into the dry fibers, how it had veined downward like poison flowing through a circulatory system. The curled lines of water formed something where they bled through the paper, something familiar. Mick twisted the article counter-clockwise and saw that they were letters— r-u-n.
    “Your dad had just turned nineteen, and I was seventeen when we robbed that truck.”
    Mick leapt from his chair, knocking the flashlight over as he stood. It rolled in a swiveling flare, illuminating the far side of the room along with his Uncle Gary who stood in the doorway.

 
     
     
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    “What the hell are you doing here?” Mick said in a strangled voice, as he put a hand on the counter behind him to keep from falling. The shock of hearing his uncle’s words come out of nowhere was almost debilitating.
    “Stopped by to see how you were doing, kiddo. I see you found your dad’s articles. Never knew why he wanted to keep them around, kind of an admission of guilt, I’d say.”
    Mick studied his uncle’s lined face, now stranger-looking in the odd light, alien somehow, his eyes hidden in shadow.
    “You…you’re the ones who robbed the truck?” Mick felt his head shake before he realized he was doing it. “No, I don’t believe it. You’re fucking with me. Dad would never have done something like that.”
    Gary laughed. It was a hoarse, sick sound.
    “Come on, Mickey. You’re all grown up now.