where the presidential Halloween masks used during the bank robbery were purchased: a Celebration Nation party-supply store just outside Midland.
“I sped down there to check it out personally,” Mason says. “Turns out, the owner deletes surveillance footage taken inside his store after ninety days. We made it just under the wire, with only a few days to spare.”
Mason plays some grainy, black-and-white tape for the assembled group. It shows an older man—wearing giant sunglasses and a University of Texas baseball cap over his long, stringy white hair—paying cash for five familiar rubber masks: Lincoln, Washington, Nixon, Reagan, and Kennedy.
“We’ve sent it to Quantico to run facial recognition,” Mason adds. “And plastered it from here to Tucson to New Orleans. Now obviously—”
“Smells fishy to me, Agent Randolph.”
Mason hasn’t heard that voice in over two months.
But he recognizes it instantly.
It’s wrinkle-faced Texas ranger John Kim, standing at the back of the room, arms folded across his potbelly. The same local official who led Mason through the bank crime scene in Plainview—and gave the agent more than a bit of attitude.
“Nine weeks of nothin’, no leads, not a peep. Then this, all tied up with a bow, the same day as heist number two? I’m sorry, but I don’t buy it.”
“Ah. Ranger Kim. If I remember it right, you called my hunt for the purchaser of these masks…how did you put it? ‘Haystack-and-needle territory,’ I believe.”
“I’m just saying—why? These guys walked off with one-point-two. Think of all the work, all the planning. Not five hours later, one of them decides to squeal?”
Mason had already anticipated that argument—and has a theory. Multiple theories, in fact.
“Maybe the leader got greedy. Maybe a fight broke out. Dissent among the ranks. Maybe an accomplice felt he wasn’t getting a fair cut of the pot, so he picks up the phone to try to thin the herd.”
Kim considers all that. And nods, despite himself. The agent makes a fair point.
But then for good measure, Mason adds: “I’ll be sure to ask them. When I catch them. All of them.”
3 minutes, 15 seconds
Damn, it feels nice to have the top down and the wind in my hair.
True, I’m only going about five miles an hour.
And I’m not in a convertible; I’m steering our old green Deere tractor across the grassy fields of our ten-acre farm.
Still, I love it. I always have.
It reminds me of being a little girl again.
Growing up, there were always a million and one chores for my brothers and me to do on the farm. Pulling weeds, raking leaves, chopping wood, you name it. And like most kids, Stevie, Hank, and I would argue about who had to do what.
To put an end to our bickering, my father devised an ingenious system of sticks and carrots, tailored to each of his children’s specific preferences. Whichever two of us finished all our weekly chores first got to do something we loved. The one who finished third got the opposite.
In the case of Stevie, the future Marine, his prize was getting to shoot old cans and bottles using one of our father’s real rifles. His punishment was getting his fake BB gun taken away for a couple of days.
For Hank, the athlete, it meant getting to toss around the pigskin with our old man…or not being able to watch any Astros or Cowboys games on TV for the whole week.
In my case, the penalty was having to skip three desserts in a row. (I’ve always had a sweet tooth, I admit it.) But my reward was getting to sit on my daddy’s lap while he drove our tractor around the farm cutting the grass. I’d giggle and squeal with joy as it rumbled along. I remember the speed, the sense of danger, but always feeling safe and protected in his arms.
Well into my teens and adulthood, I kept riding that tractor and mowing the lawn every chance I got. The day my father died, I drove it before his funeral. Then I did it again after the service, trying desperately to re-create that sense of security and comfort.
Which I guess I’m trying to do again today.
But also, I’m celebrating.
I’m going over every square inch of our precious farmland, savoring every single one. Because official word just came from the bank.
We get to keep it!
Apparently, the twelve-thousand-dollar lump-sum payment my family “miraculously” managed to “scrounge up” thanks to “pinching pennies” was just enough to get them off our backs.
We’re still plenty in the hole. But at least we’re finally