The Plodder's Mile -- Chapter Five

CHAPTER FIVE

Officer Greg Jones had a few jobs to complete. But first he had to call his deputy, who was part-time, to come over and help him catalogue the evidence. Regulations said two people had to count money, and even if he wanted to flip through the pile and see if there were more bills inside, he would still have to wait for Larry to arrive.

He worried as he waited that his good friend John may have tainted the evidence, but this still seemed to be a straight-forward robbery, and the serial numbers on the bills would match, or they wouldn’t. It wouldn’t matter once Larry was there if they could reassemble the pile of papers and money to look exactly like it had, because they would take some Polaroids and those could be used as evidence as well.

That would be the next job. He would have to call the store and have the delivery boy bring over some more film. The stuff in the camera was so old Greg doubted it would still work, and delaying any more while they waited for film would destroy the fun of the investigation.

They would together and dissect this package, and try to figure out just what had happened. Why would someone make a bundle that looked like it was a lot of money when it wasn’t? And who had the rest of the money?

Raymond Johnson was not the most patient man in the world. He had once stabbed himself in the hand with a potato pitchfork, and rather than wait for an emergency room technician to pull it back out of his hand, he calmly walked over the concrete step and pulled it out himself. He also pulled dirt back into the wound and had to have intravenous antibiotics for 3 days, but the pitchfork was out. He even went to the doctor down the street and convinced him to sew it up rather than go the next town to the emergency room.

But with $100,000 sitting somewhere out here on the tracks, Ray had developed a patience he had never experienced before. This was his fourth trip down the tracks and he still couldn’t find the bundle. He was pretty sure where the train had stopped, since there were only two road/railroad intersections in the entire town. He knew it was farther south on the tracks than the Ridgeway city limits sign he had seen from the train.

This was the right place, but there was no package. It was beginning to grow dark as Ray tried to think of what would be the next step. Without the money, he could see no future prospects, unless he was to go and rob another bank himself. The fifteen years he had spent in prison for trying to rob a bank by himself had convinced him that it was best to have a partner these days, a front man, and his best front man was enjoying cable TV back at in jail.

Tonight, Ray would have to spend a few dollars on a motel in town. Then he would think about where the money might have gone. One way or another, he was going to find that money.

John Graham was not usually a nervous person. He was able to stand in line at grocery stores while clerks took their own sweet time trying to find the subtotal key on the register. He could sit in traffic that wouldn’t move, no matter how hard the people around him honked, just enjoying the radio. He even liked standing in long lines because it gave him time to notice what the others in line really looked like, and let him wonder where they came from and what the real story behind their lives really was.

But now almost $100,000 was sitting in his house, and John was a guy who didn’t like to break a $20 because the money would then vanish in a matter of hours. He had been daydreaming at work all that day about what he could spend the money on if no one found out he had it.

He had cycled through sports cars, motorcycles, motorized parachute flyers, ultra light airplanes, cruises, hot tubs, house remodeling, expensive watches, fine art, diamonds, rare coins, expensive electronic toys, shoes, suits, and safaris. Then he would chastise himself for even thinking about spending the money since it really wasn’t his and it would probably end up back at the bank safe in the depositors’ accounts.

Then the next cycle would begin, and to relieve the guilt, John would think about what he could by for Reba. Expensive clothes, figurines, exotic trips, jewelry, furs and fast cars. Then another wave of guilt for even considering spending this windfall on such ridiculous extravagances. He should be thinking of college and books for his daughters or their husbands, trust funds for his grand-children, contributions to his church.

Would. Should. Could. John recognized this ridiculous cycle of thinking for what it really was, and thought about the fact that he might not be the best person for God to tempt with such a great temptation. He wasn’t dealing with it very well, and he realized that his preoccupation with this would soon turn into some type of mental disorder, with the end result being an institution. He could almost picture himself being carried away in a straight-jacket muttering “Rings, watches, vacations, tuition. Rings, watches, vacations, tuition….”

It was time to get focused on the matter at hand, and that wasn’t how to spend money that wasn’t really his. It was time to talk about who really wrote Shakespeare’s plays to students who didn’t really care who Shakespeare was.

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