Chapter 1: Highway Robbery
The boy and his grandma had done it again.
Another round of robberies in the wee hours between midnight and dawn. Three separate trucks from the fleet of Great American Superstore. All making their weekly supply runs to pharmacies.
Detective Rebecca Little was assigned to the strange case of Stella and Johnny Valentine. The fugitive grandma and her eleven-year-old grandson were on a roll, with a string of successful heists that embarrassed local police as well as the country’s largest retail empire.
“You understand this thing?” one of the responding officers asked as Detective Little walked by wrecked police cars at the scene of the latest crime. “What makes a boy and his grandma go wacko like this?”
It’s not that hard to believe, the detective thought. Plenty of people out there are one bad break away from going wacko.
“None of you were hurt?” the detective asked the officer, who’d been involved in the failed police chase.
“We’re all fine,” he said, and then explained how the grandmother had leaned out the passenger side of the stolen truck with a shotgun and taken out a tire of the front patrol car.
Detective Little walked farther up the freeway ramp, stepping through broken glass and mangled metal. She met the truck driver who’d been the victim of the ambush, a pudgy young man with a mane of messy hair tucked into a baseball cap.
“I ain’t paid to be a hero,” the driver explained. He was eating a chocolate chip cookie out of a ziplock bag. “Someone puts a shotgun in my face, I hand over the keys. Don’t matter if it’s an old lady. At least she gave me some cookies.”
Detective Little jotted notes on a reporter’s pad. “Tell me about the cargo. You were carrying pharmaceuticals, right?”
“Pills, drugs, all kinds of medicine. You name it. Diabetes kits, beta blockers, antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, inhalers, painkillers. Hundred grand worth of merchandise, easy.”
“What about Helixin? Was there any Helixin in the cargo?”
The driver seemed puzzled. “That don’t sound familiar. Then again, there ain’t no way I can check every product on there. What is it, anyway?”
Rebecca ignored the driver’s question and made a note. Great American started out as a bargain grocer, but the megachain was now pushing hard to become the largest one-stop-shop for medicine in the country, able to fill any prescription, even exotic cancer therapies.
Rebecca figured that Great American must only send Helixin out on special request from the pharmacist, so it wouldn’t go into the routine weekly shipments. Helixin was a new type of biotech drug, recently approved and incredibly expensive. LifeGen, the pharmaceutical company that manufactured the medicine, had exclusive rights to the patent. The charge for each monthly injection was as much as the cost of a compact car.
Most insurers claimed there was no proof that Helixin was more effective than cheaper generic medicines, which gave them a reason to deny coverage.
The pudgy driver handed a crumpled manifest to Rebecca that confirmed the shipment contained no Helixin. The detective knew that meant Stella and Johnny would strike again. They would keep going until she got her stash of the miracle cure.
Rebecca waited until the driver finished the last cookie in the bag and then started in again, questioning the man impatiently.
“Is there anything else you saw? Did she say anything to you?”
The driver licked his lips and smiled.
“Before the truck pulled away, she called me over to the passenger side. She said: ‘Kid, someday you’ll understand why I am doing this. Someday you’ll be in a situation where the things that you depend on aren’t there anymore. And then you’ll have to fight.’ Then she handed me this bag of cookies. Like a consolation prize or something. And the truck was gone. That’s it. Don’t get me wrong. I am not happy they ripped off the truck. But maybe what she and the kid’s doing ain’t so bad after all.”
The detective turned away from the driver. The fumes from the wreckage still wafted over the freeway like Indian smoke signals in an old Western movie. She hit her speed dial, reaching the voice mail of real estate agent Frank Valentine.
“Your mother and son have done it again. I know you’re holding out on me. I know you can help, and the longer you wait, the worse this is going to come out. Someone’s going to catch them. You better hope that I am the one. If it’s anyone else, then you may lose your family for good.”
The detective took one last look in every direction. Somewhere beyond the freeway smog, Johnny and Stella were planning their next move. With every crime, their notoriety grew. Notoriety would bring a rush to judgment. How would the public judge the boy and his fugitive grandma if the truth were discovered? How would the public judge the police and the company that tried to hunt them down and silence them? The detective truly believed she was the only one who cared about justice. That’s why she had to catch Johnny and Stella before anyone else.
The Fugitive Grandma and my other novels are on Amazon.
amazon.com/author/dmitriragano
Copyright 2013 Dmitri Ragano