Scratch Fever by Max Allan Collins Page B

it at first but it became obvious as soon as she came into it. Rigley could never have done it on his own.
    Rigley had come into the Pier, about a year ago, and announced to Nolan that he recognized him as one of the men who had held his bank up two years before. Rigley then blackmailed Nolan, and Jon, into helping him rob his own bank, to cover up an embezzlement The robbery had gone off without a hitch, but when it came to making the split at Rigley’s cottage on the Cedar River, he and his beautician girlfriend, Julie, put a double-cross in motion.
    But at the last minute, the banker panicked, and when Julie fired a shotgun meant for Nolan, Rigley got in front of the blast. Nolan dove for the girl, but she swung the now-empty shotgun around and whacked him in the head, and he went down.
    Jon was under the dead banker. He pushed the corpse off and grabbed for the girl’s arm as she fled, but she caught him in the gut with the gunstock, and then again on the back of the neck, when he doubled over.
    Moments later he came to, grabbed his .38 from off the floor, and went out after her.
    Julie was in her yellow Mustang, the laundry bag of money sitting in back like a person.
    He had her in his sights, but he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t shoot. Couldn’t kill her.
    So he shot at her tires; maybe hit one.
    Then she was gone.
    And minutes later he and Nolan were pursuing her. There were only two ways she could go: back to Port City, which on the heels of the bank robbery was unlikely, or toward West Liberty, a little town near where she’d lived before moving into Rigley’s cottage.
    On the outskirts of West Liberty, they saw it: the Mustang, with a flat tire, pulled over on the shoulder.
    In front of it was a blue Ford that said WEST LIBERTY SHERIFF’S DEPT. on the side. Julie was in the back seat of the Ford. So was the sack of money.
    The sheriff or deputy or whatever, a pudgy-faced guy with a weak chin, close-set eyes, five o’clock shadow, and a western-style hat, sat in front, getting ready to pull out on the highway, into town. He apparently had stopped Julie for driving recklessly in a car with a flat tire, and stumbled onto something a bit bigger.
    Julie saw Nolan and Jon as they drove by, but didn’t alert the sheriff. Nolan and Jon drove back to Iowa City to sit it out.
    That night, back at the antique shop, in the upstairs living quarters, they kept the radio on and the TV too, waiting for news of the West Liberty arrest. It never came.
    “I think we been snookered,” Nolan said. “I think that West Liberty hick was in on it with her.”
    “Nolan, that’s nuts,” Jon had said. “She couldn’t’ve planned ahead for a flat tire. She couldn’t’ve put something that complex together.”
    “Yeah,” he said. “You’re right.”
    “So now what?”
    “We keep waiting.”
    The next morning it was on the news: on a narrow bridge on the highway outside Ft. Madison, a gas tanker truck struck a car, head on. There had been an explosion. The two men in the truck were killed, as was the woman driving the car. Several thousand dollars in burnt bills in Port City bank wrappers linked the young woman driving the car to yesterday’s Port City bank robbery. In the days to come, the woman, though burned beyond recognition, was identified as the dead bank president’s mistress. The cops put a scenario together for the robbery and its aftermath that did not, thankfully, include Nolan and Jon.
    But Nolan had not been satisfied. He went to Ft. Madison and looked at the burnt wreckage of the Mustang.
    “I think we been snookered,” he said again.
    Again, Jon said, “You’re nuts. She was running, and it all caught up with her.”
    “You mean God killed her?”
    “Well . . .”
    “He doesn’t have that good a sense of humor.”
    There was one thing Nolan could still do, and Jon drove him, after a good month had passed, to West Liberty. The weak-chinned deputy sheriff—whose name was Creel—lived in a little