The Sky Sleuths

Written by Moe Zilla, Published on 1/29/2009, Re-published on 3/15/2010

He'd robbed a bank. But no one knew who he was.

The Channel 2 news van pulled up in front of the bank. Rita Sanchez raced to the sidewalk. She was on TV every night -- but it was a man with a clipboard who seemed to be in charge. He told the cameraman where to set up, while a technician emerged from the van with an enormous light. An audio man wearing black headphones came out of the van. He pulled out a long pole with a microphone on the end. The crew focused the equipment on Rita, who stared confidently into the camera and described the scene.

“At 1:00 p.m., two masked gunmen entered the building, and demanded all of the money in the cash register.”

Rita hadn't actually spoken to anyone at the bank. She was reading from a script given to her by the man with the clipboard, but he'd phoned the police department while they were driving to the bank. “Black ski masks, black gloves,” the police chief had said, “and some cheap black sweaters. That's all the witnesses saw, and it's probably all we'll get from the security cameras. One of the men had a British accent. Two of the bank's customers said he was quite charming. He asked everyone -- politely -- to cluster in the corner.”

“Witnesses are unable to provide a description,” Rita Sanchez said solemnly into the camera. “They reported that one robber jumped from the floor to the counter, where the tellers had been working. The robber grabbed money from an open cash register.”

* * *

At 1:00 p.m., I was 3,000 feet over the ground. I was halfway through my summer vacation with my Uncle Jerry, and he'd taken us up in his hot air balloon. The forest below us looked peaceful and quiet, but Jerry's job was to watch for forest fires. As the balloon sailed gracefully in a hot summer breeze, I thought Uncle Jerry had the coolest job in the world.

“I brought sandwiches,” Jerry said, nodding toward a backpack in the corner of the balloon's basket. Turkey sandwiches were my favorite, and Uncle Jerry knew it.

I was having the best vacation ever.

* * *

“In 30 seconds, they'd both run out the door,” the police chief grumbled. “That's all we've got. No one got a close look at them, because “Mr. Charming” had them clustered at the back of the bank, in a corner.”

Rita was broadcasting live to the entire city. Suddenly, someone in the studio switched to footage from a helicopter, and while Rita's voiceover described the lack of clues, the shaky footage suddenly zoomed in on four police cars.

Cruisers formed a blockade across State Route 17, while a black sports car sped towards its flashing red and blue lights. Its driver hit the brakes, and then raced in the opposite direction. The camera pulled back more. Boxing in the car was a second group of police cars crossing a bridge over the river. Pinned in, the black car careened off the road as the getaway car tried escaping across a muddy field. But it bobbed and slowed in the muddy field, as one of the police cars swerved in front of it. The driver's side door swung open.

* * *

“How's the turkey?” Uncle Jerry asked me. It seemed strange to be eating lunch this high up in the air. I tried to say something, but my mouth was full. I think he only asked me so he could laugh at my mumbling.

Jerry's shortwave radio crackled. It was his partner back at the ranger station. The voice on the shortwave said, “Come in, Eagle.”

“This is Eagle,” said Uncle Jerry. “Go ahead.”

“See anything?”

“Nope,” Jerry said. And then it was quiet again, in a blue sky that seemed to stretch forever. The clouds looked like cotton balls, and the only smoke we saw was a barbecue at the park below. And we were having a picnic in the sky.

“Is Eagle your code name?” I asked uncle Jerry.

He smiled, looked down bashfully and said “Nah. I just told them to call me Eagle today because I thought it'd sound more impressive.”

I laughed and looked off into the distance.

“I wonder where all those helicopters are going?”

* * *

Rita Sanchez's voice crackled with urgency. “The police have apprehended the getaway vehicle,” she said -- reading off of a cue card held by the man with the clipboard. “You're seeing live footage from the scene of the arrest. And an arrest was crucial, as we understand the police have no description of the robber's appearance.”

But it wasn't that simple. A static-filled voice called out over the police radio to the officers listening in. “We got him!”

“Unit two: repeat. Who has been apprehended?” demanded another voice. There was a long pause, before the voice replied, “The suspect is a Caucasian male with a British accent, who's been apprehended in his vehicle off of State Route 17.”

“Only one?”

“Only one.”

* * *

The river stretched for miles and glittered in the sun as Uncle Jerry's air balloon drifted slowly in the wind. We were watching birds fly by when his radio cackled again. “Come in Eagle,” the voice said.

“This is Jerry,” my uncle replied, giving me a wink. But the man at the ranger station didn't notice. He began quickly explaining the details about the two bank robbers that had fled the city. When the police found the getaway car, only one of the suspects was in it. “The other one is escaping on foot. Watch for him.”

Uncle Jerry looked at me, “This should be exciting.” Then he reached into his backpack and pulled out a pair of binoculars.

* * *

“Lucky the fields were muddy,” said the static-filled voice.

The man with the clipboard listened while Rita Sanchez broadcast from the steps of the bank. “Witnesses say two men were still in the car when it turned onto State Route 17, and within less than a minute, the police cars had come through the same intersection. Police vehicles maintained a constant visual watch on the getaway car -- once they'd caught up to it. Investigators now believe the second robber must've escaped within the two-mile area. Fortunately, the region along the highway is surrounded by empty fields -- except for a small park.”

In the news van, the monitors switched to footage of six police cars all converging on the park by State Route 17.

* * *

“Look, mommy. A balloon!”

As our balloon descended, we saw a man and his little boy waving to us from the park below. The ranger station was a half-mile beyond the park -- just over the empty field -- but Uncle Jerry suddenly stopped us over the park. Over a dozen police officers were below us, clustered into four groups. “I think they've caught their suspects,” Uncle Jerry said, “and now they just have to figure out which one did it!”

We were less than 40 feet over the ground, and we could hear some of their conversations. There was a group of police officers questioning a motorcyclist who seemed very suspicious. There was a flaming skull on the back of his ratty leather jacket, which seemed to match his worn bandana and his torn blue jeans. “I ain't done nothing,” he said to the police. “And I ain't bothering nobody.”

The little boy who had seen us with in the park with his mother and father. I heard the police officer say “But was he with you at 1:00 p.m.,” and the woman protesting that her husband had gone off to try to light the park's barbecue grill. “But did you see him at the grill?” the officer insisted. Apparently he didn't have an alibi for about 30 minutes -- at the exact time of the bank robbery.

There was a third group of police officers talking to a local teenager. He looked too skinny to be a bank robber, and insisted to the police that he was collecting bugs for a high school science project. “All this grass in the park is where the bugs like to hide,” he said proudly.

The fourth group of police officers clustered around an elderly man who was claiming he'd been trying to exercise. He'd walked all the way to the park, he said, and just happened to be there at the wrong time. “Maybe he'd found the ultimate retirement plan,” I joked to Uncle Jerry.

One of the police officers looked up at our balloon, and shouted, “Do you have any idea who robbed the bank?”

And Uncle Jerry shouted back, “Yep! I've already figured out.”