Last Stand at Gowler Canyon by Joseph W. Michels

Author:Joseph W. Michels [Michels, Joseph W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781663203359
Publisher: iUniverse
Published: 2020-06-16T04:00:00+00:00

Late that night, while alone in his bedroom working on a particularly difficult crossword puzzle he’d begun earlier that evening, he paused to mentally walk himself through the sequence of actions involved in pulling off the bank robbery. He’d done this time and time again when robbing the bank was just an imaginary exercise, meant mostly to offer himself some measure of emotional satisfaction. But now that the thing was going to actually happen…now that James had agreed to be a part of it…his fear of failure had become unnerving.

It wasn’t failure in the sense of not being able to pull it off—the technical aspects of the job were fairly straightforward for someone like himself. No, what he worried about was being caught and sent to prison. He knew he’d be the logical suspect—no way he could get around that. That’s why he believed James’ involvement was so important. Because for him to avoid being found guilty he needed there to be no possibility the authorities could link him with the stolen money…ever!

The most the bank could do in that case would be to fire him for negligence in not having secured the timer controls for the vault or ensuring the alarm system for the exterior doors couldn’t be overridden. He could argue in his defense that he wasn’t the only employee who knew how to do these things—a couple of the bank’s executives needed to have such knowledge, and a few of the longtime employees probably could have picked up the necessary knowhow. But he knew the bank would choose him to be the scapegoat.

As he thought through the steps he’d have to take to protect himself, he realized he’d have to make the robbery look amateurish, but not too unsophisticated…things like leaving a coding cheat sheet behind that contained software of the sort he’d use to overcome the building security system, or entering an obviously false passcode, purportedly used by the criminals to gain access to minicomputer and its program files.

He leaned back in his chair, reassured. With both James and himself having forsworn the possession and use of the stolen money, and with the mechanics of the break-in not unduly tailored to himself, he felt reasonably confident the authorities would be unlikely to prosecute, knowing a good lawyer could easily build a case for reasonable doubt. He picked up the booklet with the crossword puzzle, then smiled as he thought of the consternation and shock about to hit his boss and the others when they arrived for work Friday morning.

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