More Twisted

touch-up—to give him the excuse to park his car elsewhere and to check into the motel. Then, using their surveillance against them, he’d fooled the cops into believing he was indeed the Anco burglar and was getting ready to do one last heist and flee the state by buying the travel books, the bullets and the tools and logging on to the alarm and travel agency websites. At the motel he’d tempted Billy Carnegie into stealing the suitcase, creditcards, phone and car—everything that would let the cops track the kid and nail him red-handed.
    He now said to Carnegie, “I’m sorry, Detective. But you didn’t leave me any choice. You just weren’t ever going to believe that I’m innocent.”
    “You used my son.”
    Muller shrugged. “No harm done. Look on the good side—his first bust and he picked a victim who’s willing to drop the charges. Anybody else, he wouldn’t’ve been so lucky.”
    Carnegie glanced through the blinds at his son, standing forlorn by Hager’s desk.
    “He’s savable, Detective,” Muller said. “If you want to save him . . . . So, do we have a deal?”
    A disgusted sigh was followed by a disgusted nod.

    Outside the police station, Muller tossed the suitcase into the back of his car, which had been towed to the station by a police truck.
    He drove back to his house and walked inside. The workmen had apparently just finished and the smell of paint was strong. He went through the ground floor, opening windows to air the place out.
    Strolling into his garden, he surveyed the huge pile of mulch, whose spreading had been postponed because of his interrupted nap. The businessman glanced at his watch. He had some phone calls to make but decided to put them off for another day; he was in the mood to garden. He changed clothes, went into the garage and picked up a glistening new shovel, part of his purchases that morning at Home Depot. He began meticulouslyspreading the black and brown mulch throughout the large garden.
    After an hour of work he paused for a beer. Sitting under a maple tree, sipping the Heineken, he surveyed the empty street in front of his house—where Carnegie had stationed the surveillance team for the past few months. Man, it felt good not to be spied on any longer.
    His eyes then slid to a small rock sitting halfway between a row of corn stalks and some tomato vines. Three feet beneath it was a bag containing the $543,300 from Anco Security, which he’d buried there the afternoon of the robbery just before he’d ditched the public works uniform and driven the stolen truck to Orange County Airport for the flight to Chicago under a false name—a precautionary trip, in case he needed to lead investigators off on a false trail, as it turned out he’d had to do, thanks to compulsive Detective Carnegie.
    Jake Muller planned all of his heists out to the finest of details; this was why he’d never been caught after nearly fifteen years as a thief.
    He’d wanted to send the cash to his bagman in Miami for months—Muller hated it when heist money wasn’t earning interest—but with Carnegie breathing down his neck he hadn’t dared. Should he dig it up now and send it off?
    No, he decided; it was best to wait till dark.
    Besides, the weather was warm, the sky was clear and there was nothing like gardening on a beautiful spring day. Muller finished his beer, picked up the shovel and returned to the pile of pungent mulch.

B ORN B AD

    S leep, my child and peace attend thee, all through the night.  . . .
    The words of the lullaby looped relentlessly through her mind, as persistent as the clattering Oregon rain on the roof and window.
    The song that she’d sung to Beth Anne when the girl was three or four seated itself in her head and wouldn’t stop echoing. Twenty-five years ago, the two of them: mother and daughter, sitting in the kitchen of the family’s home outside of Detroit. Liz Polemus, hunching over the Formica table, the frugal young mother and wife, working hard to stretch the dollars.
    Singing to her daughter, who sat across from her, fascinated with the woman’s deft hands.
    I who love you shall be near you, all through the night.
    Soft the drowsy hours are creeping.
    Hill and vale in slumber sleeping.
    Liz felt a cramp in her right arm—the one that had never healed properly—and realized she was still grippingthe receiver fiercely at the news she’d just received. That her daughter was on her way to the house.
    The daughter she hadn’t