The Money Vault- excerpt from a short story by Austin Mitchell

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The Money Vault

by

Austin Mitchell

               

                During the hurricane, some of their associates had been busy digging down supermarkets and grocery stores. Dexter and five of his friends had stolen the vault from the local parish council bank. They had used the cover of darkness to do it and it took  the six of them to load it onto a hand cart and take it to Dexter’s house. They had used an electric torch to cut a hole into it and got the grand sum of thirty thousand dollars.

                “You said nearly a million would be there, Dex,” Roland said.

             “What the hell am I going to do with this little money?” Bertie Brown shouted and threw it on the floor and was gone.

            “Dex, you know what, it’s you alone in this. Don’t call my name. If Jabez dead I don’t know anything about it,” David Johnson  said and stomped out of the room.

            The others had followed suit. Dex  was left with a vault weighing in excess of five hundred pounds. The next week Jabez died. There was consternation in their village. Jabez had been the watchman at the bank. On the night of the hurricane somebody had knocked him out. He  never regained consciousness.

            Somebody was knocking on Dex’s gate and he went out. It was Reta, his girlfriend and Jabez’s daughter. He let her into the house.

            “You heard that my father was dead and you didn’t even come down to my house to see me.”

            “I was planning on doing that this evening.”

            They were in the living room now.

            “What happened to your friends? I hardly see them around anymore.”

            “They are around. Maybe they’re just busy, that’s all.”

            “Far as I know none of those guys work. How come all of a sudden they are so busy?”

            “Why you so interested in a me friends? What about us?”

            “I won’t be able to go back to evening school. With you not working, how am I going to manage?”

            “I’ll get you something to drink.”

            He got up and went into the kitchen.

            When he returned, he didn’t see Reta. He saw her coming towards him and she jumped on him and began to hit him.

            “You thief the bank vault and killed my father.”

            Dex threw her off him and grabbed her by the throat and began to squeeze. She fought him but he kept on squeezing until he felt her body go slack. He felt for her pulse, but there was none. He drank some of the lemonade he had made and tried to relax as he thought about his next move.

            Dex pushed Reta’s naked body in the water. The current would take it downstream. He tied her clothes together, he would bury them later. He was glad that nobody had come asking for her. He would say that he hadn’t seen

her. He felt foolish for having left the door open with  the vault for her to see it. It served her right for sneaking about in people’s house.           

            As he sat in the sofa that night Dex began to think. His mother was due in the island in two month’s time. He had to get rid of the vault. If he got it down to the river the current wasn’t strong to carry it downstream.

            That morning, Carline, Reta’s  sister came by looking for her.

            “Dex, you see Reta? She tell me that she was coming to look for you, yesterday.”

            Dex shook his head. Reta sometimes stayed with him, especially when her father was on night duty and like how his mother was away.

            “I was coming down there to look for her,” Dex told her.

            “But where she  could be? Is only your house I can think about. You sure you don’t have her in there hiding?”

            “Why I would  do that, Carline?”

            “Okay, if you see her tell her that mummy want her to go somewhere for her.”

            Dex told her that he would give Reta her message if he saw her.

            Two days later there was consternation in their village when Reta’s lifeless body was found several miles down the river.

            Dex was down by Reta’s home and he was crying too at the news.

            “They strangled her. The police said it no look as if they raped her,” Carline wailed.

            Dex looked at Bertie Brown. Saw the look of fear and hatred on the young man’s face.

            Bertie had helped him kill his uncle and now his cousin was dead. As Dex looked at Bertie he knew he had to kill him before he broke and talk. He knew that Bertie was suspicious that he was the one who had killed Reta.

            Dex went back home. He thought of ways of killing Bertie.  There was a bigger problem, he thought and that was getting rid of the vault. He would threaten all of them, to go to the police and turn state witness against them.

            It took a week for him to gather the whole crew together. It took a certain amount  of cajoling and threats. Finally that Saturday at midnight they were able to dig a hole and bury it in his gully.

            Dex then went about planning how to kill Bertie. After, Jabez’s and Reta’s funerals, he kept a close eye on the youth. All the other guys had returned to various parts of the country. He and Bertie were the only ones still around.

            He knew that Bertie’s family only had a pit latrine. All he had to do was            to hide out in his yard and when he came out to use the latrine, he would use a big stone to hit him in his head. He had to make sure that Bertie was dead. He would probably use a piece of iron.

            On Monday night he hid behind a tree, but nobody came out. He was there between ten o’clock and one o‘clock.  Tuesday night he overslept and didn’t know what happened Wednesday night.

            On Saturday night at last he got his chance.  At about one o’clock that morning Bertie came out. Dex gave one mighty swing of the steel club and heard when the bones in the man neck crack and he pitched forward without a sound. Dex three down the club and crept silently away.

            He was in his bed an hour later when he heard the shouts.

            “Murder, them kill Mass Luddy!”

            People were running up and down and shouting.

            Mass Luddy was Bertie’s father. Jesus Christ! It wasn’t Bertie he had killed!

            Dex put on some clothes and went down there.

            “What we do them, why them want kill off we family. First a Jabez, then Reta and now Luddy. How the people them a Nelson so wicked,” Miss Pearline, Mass Luddy’s wife, wailed.

            Police had yellow taped the area. He went over to Berie and asked him about what had happened.

            “A so we find him, the whole a him head bashed in,” Bertie said.

            “I must find out a who kill me father though,” the youth wailed.

            Dex stayed until the police had finished their investigations. They had found the steel club. He had used newspaper to hold the club and as he had found the club in Bertie’s yard.

             He was with the family the whole time, playing dominoes and other games. He was keeping a keen eye on Bertie. As far as he knew the police hadn’t questioned him. He knew that it would be foolish to try after Bertie again so soon. He had to think that maybe his chances had gone.

            At last Luddy’s body was released for burial. Dex was at the grave digging, helping to make the vault. He had been at both Reta’s and Jabez’s grave diggings and had helped make their vaults.  He was at the set-up and funeral after all through his association with Reta, he had been a member of the family.

            Dex was thinking of what to do. None of the other guys had resurfaced not even to attend Luddy’s funeral. That the police hadn’t spoken to him meant that Bertie hadn’t gone to them as yet. He thought he still had time to get Bertie before he went to the police.

            The best thing Dex thought was to engage Bertie in conversation to find out just where the man’s thoughts were. There was another complication and  that was his mother’s impending arrival in the island. She would get suspicious of his actions if she saw him leaving the house so late at nights. 

            She was still suspicious that he had something to do with Watson Chang’s murder.  Dex and two  men had held up the Chinese man one night. It was the other two guys who had shot Watson though. His mother had questioned him about his whereabouts that night. Things however eased up after the police killed Bally and Juby his two accomplicies.

            He had told her about all the deaths. Was she suspicious about his role in those deaths. What about those guys? Suppose one of them cracked and went to the police about Jabez’s death. Maybe the only reason why Bertie hadn’t cracked was because of his role in Jabez’s murder.

            “I just can’t understand a what  going on. How they  kill off so much people?” Bertie asked.

            “I hear that the police question lots of people, but nobody know  who  killed Luddy,” Dex relied.

            “It’s the same man who kill Reta, kill me father. I feel that a serial murderer is about the place.”

            A chill ran through Dex, but he showed no emotions.

            After that conversation, Dex  was convinced that Bertie knew that he was the killer.

            That night he thought of new ways to kill Bertie. If Bally and Juby were still alive, he would just have to tell them about it and they would do it for free. Why not go to Naddy? He was one of the gang members, although he hadn’t taken part in Watson’s murder.

  Read the full story in 'Going into the Hills to Teach'.