The Buck Might Stop Here but the Bus Doesn’t
Megan
The bus driver squinted, as if doing so would somehow help him better see the mental vision of the bus-jackers in his mind. “All three wore sunglasses and hats with ear flaps. The taller white guy wore a plaid flannel one with button-down flaps. The black man wore a tan one with fleece on the edges. The shorter white guy wore a knit one with those yarn braids hanging down the sides. His hat was green with big eyes on top.”
“Una rana,” clarified a Latina woman who stood at the front of the crowd that had gathered around me.
“A frog?” I’d learned some basic Spanish, and obtained my Spanish surname, from my father. From my red-haired Irish American mother, I’d inherited a tendency to freckle and that quick temper I mentioned.
“Sí,” the woman replied.
I jotted some notes on my pad and looked up again. “What about the rest of their clothes?”
The people exchanged uncertain glances.
“Loose windbreakers, I think,” said the bus driver.
“No,” insisted a blonde woman with a chubby-cheeked toddler on her hip. “They were wearing oversize sweatshirts.”
“No no no.” A gray-haired man raised a palm. “I’m sure they were in sports jerseys.”
“Which teams?”
The man who’d been so sure only a second ago now seemed uncertain, offering only a shrug in response.
I sighed inwardly. “Can we at least agree on a color?”
No consensus there, either. The responses ranged from dark green to navy blue to black. It wasn’t surprising that the witnesses had different takes. Eyewitness testimony tended to be unreliable. Memories malfunctioned under surprising or stressful situations. People tended to be more concerned about saving their own lives than making mental notes of the criminals’ fashion choices.
The only thing the crowd agreed on was which direction the bus had gone.
“That way,” they said in unison, pointing off to the east.
“What was the bus number?” I asked the driver.
“Five ninety-three.”
“Do the buses have LoJack?” I asked. “Or some other kind of tracking device?”
“Not that I’m aware of,” the man said. “I mean, who’d steal a city bus?”
Who, indeed? A bus wasn’t exactly the typical getaway vehicle. Robbers usually tried to make a quick and subtle exit. Riding off in a large, lumbering vehicle was a bold move. And the bolder a criminal was, the more likely it was that things would not end well.
“You said the men had a rifle,” I noted. “Which one of them was carrying it?”
“The black man in the tan hat.”
I saw no harm in giving the man some details. “The men who took your bus robbed a bank down the street first.”
His jaw fell slack. “Holy cow!”
I squeezed the button on my shoulder mic to speak with dispatch. “Be on the lookout for city bus number five nine three. It was hijacked at the corner of Rosedale and South Henderson by the men who robbed the bank. Suspects are armed. Repeat—suspects are armed.”
The dispatcher responded. “We’ll get a chopper in the air.”
I collected contact information from the people who’d been riding the bus, thanked them for their time, and turned to the bus driver. “The detective who gets assigned to the case will want to speak with you. What’s your cell number?”
“I could give it to you,” he said, “but it wouldn’t do any good. I left my phone on the bus. One of the riders had to lend me her cell to call in the hijacking.”
A squad car pulled up to the curb. Officer Hinojosa sat at the wheel. He unrolled his window and cocked his head in question. “Heard someone stole a city bus?”
“Crazy, huh?”
“Must be spring fever. You need some help here?”
“Thanks,” I told him, “but I’ve got it.”
“All righty, then. Later.” He lifted his fingers off the steering wheel in a casual good-bye gesture, cast a glance over his shoulder, and pulled back into traffic.
I gestured for the bus driver to follow me. “Come with me to the bank. A detective should be there shortly, and I’ll see that you get a ride back to the city bus depot.”
After I clipped Brigit’s leash onto her collar, she stood and followed me and the bus driver back to the bank, her nails click-click-clicking along the pavement.
When we arrived at the bank, I found several other officers, including Mackey, working crowd control, keeping customers and looky-loos at bay until the detectives and crime scene techs could arrive and do their jobs.
“Fire cool off already?” I asked as we walked past Mackey. “What did you do, ask it on a date?” Okay, so it was a dig, and a lame one at that. But the guy never missed an opportunity to point out my shortcomings or give me crap. I was only returning the favor.
“You missed out,” he snapped, treating me to another smirk. “Turns out the fire was intentionally set.”
Arson, huh? Interesting, sure, though arson crimes fell under the jurisdiction of the fire department. They had their own team of investigators who were specially trained in fire science and could identify accelerants.
Detective Audrey Jackson pulled into the lot in her unmarked white cruiser, took the first available spot outside the perimeter of yellow tape, and climbed out of her car. Jackson was an African American woman in her forties, with short perky braids adorning a sharp, perceptive mind. She was dressed in her usual khaki pants, which she’d paired today with a white blouse and a basic navy blazer. Before closing the door, she reached into her car and retrieved her zippered laptop bag that doubled as a briefcase.
I led both Brigit and the bus driver over to her. “Detective Jackson.” I gave her a polite nod and held out a hand to indicate the man next to me. “This is the driver of the city bus the bank robbers hijacked for their getaway vehicle. I thought you might want to speak with him first.” After all, if Fort Worth PD could track down the bus soon, they might find the bank robbers still on board, and the case could be closed quickly and easily. “He says the buses don’t have tracking devices, but he left his cell on board. C-Could his phone be traced?”
“Good thinking, Megan.” After setting her computer bag between her feet, Detective Jackson whipped out a notepad, jotted down the bus driver’s name and cell number, and pulled out her own cell to call Melinda, her administrative assistant who also served as the office manager and receptionist for the Fort Worth Police Department W1 Division. “Get a triangulation on the cell phone ASAP,” she told Melinda. “Call me once you know something.” Jackson ended the call, slid her phone back into her pocket, and returned her focus to the bus driver, beginning with an open-ended question. “What happened?”
“I pulled up to the stop at Rosedale and South Henderson,” he said. “There were a couple of people waiting. They climbed aboard and I was just about to shut the doors when I heard someone yelling for me to wait. I looked in the side mirror and saw three men running toward the bus. I thought they wanted to get on so I left the door open and waited for ’em. When they climbed aboard, one of them raised a rifle in the air and told everyone to get off the bus.”
Jackson held up a finger. “Did the hijackers rob the riders first? Make them hand over their wallets and purses? Jewelry?”
The bus driver shook his head. “No. They only seemed to be interested in the bus. I expected them to force me to drive them somewhere, but they ordered me off the bus, too. Next thing I knew, they’d closed the door and driven off.”
Jackson’s head bobbed slightly as she took in the information. “What did the three men look like?”
“Hard to say,” the bus driver replied. “They were all wearing sunglasses and hats that covered their ears.” He cupped his hands over his ears to demonstrate. “Roomy jackets, too.” He lifted his elbows now to simulate a loose-fitting garment. “But I could tell that two of them were white. One of the white men was average size, but the other was short and chubby. The third man, the one with the gun, was black. A little on the tall and thin side.”
“Any guess as to their ages?” the detective asked.
The man squinted again. “If I had to guess, I’d say the black man was older than the others, maybe even middle age. But I couldn’t tell you for sure.”
“Hair color?”
The man shrugged. “Couldn’t tell. The hats covered their hair.”
“Facial hair?”
“None to speak of. The smaller white guy might of had a little reddish-brown stubble, but it all happened so fast it’s hard to remember for sure.”
Jackson jotted some quick notes on her pad before continuing. “Any distinguishing marks, such as moles or scars or tattoos? Birthmarks, maybe?”
“None that I noticed,”
I chimed in now. “You said they drove off in the bus. Did they have a hard time handling it?” My personal ride was a Smart Car. I could hardly imagine driving something as large and unwieldy as a city bus, at least not without taking out a street sign or two.
“No,” the driver replied. “I couldn’t tell which one of them was at the wheel when it took off, but whoever was driving handled it like a pro.”
Interesting. The detective’s arched brow told me she’d had the same thought.
She eyed the driver closely. “Do any of the drivers you know seem like the type who might rob a bank? Any of them having financial problems?”
“Nobody gets rich driving a bus,” he said. “Most of us are just making ends meet. But I can’t see any of the drivers going so far as to rob a bank. That’s pretty cuckoo.”
“People snap,” Jackson said with a casual lift of her shoulder. “They do things nobody would ever expect. I’ve seen it happen plenty of times.”
I’d seen this kind of behavior myself. I recently responded to traffic call in which a spurned woman intentionally T-boned her ex’s pickup when she spotted him out on a date. Clearly, she’d acted on impulse. Otherwise she’d have realized her lightweight Prius was no match for a Ford F-150 SuperCab. Her entire hood crumpled like an accordion, while the truck had hardly a dent.
The driver glanced down at his watch. “Can I get that ride back to the station now?”
Jackson glanced around at the officers on site. “Mackey!” she hollered, waving him over. When he stepped up, she hiked a thumb at the driver. “Give this gentleman a ride back to the city bus depot.”
“Can’t.” Mackey tugged on the waistband of his pants in his typical nut-juggling maneuver. “Gotta protect the crime scene. Get Luz to do it.”
Jackson arched another brow, this one incensed. “You aren’t stupid enough to disobey a direct order from a superior, are you, Officer Mackey?”
Mackey had enough sense to look sheepish. “No, ma’am. It’s just…” Seemingly unable to come up with a good reason why he shouldn’t have to follow orders, he simply completed his sentence with a grunt and motioned for the bus driver to go with him.
As soon as Mackey was out of earshot, Jackson said, “That man is a pain in my ass.”
He was a pain in mine, too. But we had to tread with some caution. Chief Garelik considered Mackey his golden boy. Unless we wanted to get on the chief’s bad side, we had to tolerate his pet officer.
As the whup-whup-whup of the approaching police helicopter grew louder overhead, Detective Jackson and I headed inside to interview the bank employees.