Escaping
Neal jumped into one of the old maintainer's trucks by the prison he just escaped from. They were not the most discrete vehicles but they were easy to hotwire. He got it started without a problem. With a grin, he pushed his old music cassette in the player and pocketed the three dollar bills he found in the unused ashtray.
So far so good. Now he was on the road. They would probably find out he had escaped within an hour, but then he would be long gone.
One hour later he reached the outskirts of JFK Airport. He pulled off his uniform jacket and abandoned the truck. In T-shirt and black pants he walked along the sidewalk with people having flea markets. He saw what he hoped to find: a yellow windbreaker jacket.
The seller saw his interest.
"Hi, how are you doing, man?" Neal sent him one of his best smiles.
"Good, how're you doing?"
"I'm fine."
Neal puts the jacket on in front of a mirror.
"Only five bucks, man."
"I'll give you three" Neal beamed back.
"Okay."
Peter paced back and forth in the bank, surrounded by FBI-agents. They were waiting, just as he.
"Drop three" was heard from within the vault where an agent was working to crack the code to a safe.
"Drop two… Drop four. All pins down, preparing to open."
Three, two, four? Peter frowned.
"Three, two, four?" In an instant, he knew. "Wait!" he yelled. But it was too late. There was a bang and from the vault burst a cloud of smoke and dust. Peter ran inside, grabbed the agent and pulled him out.
"Are you okay!?"
"What happened?" the man coughed.
"I said wait, you didn't wait!" In his heart, he knew he yelled too late. The agent had no reason to wait. "Ah! Ten thousand man hours to get this close to the Dutchman and you blow up my evidence." Frustration took the better of him.
"Agent Burke, how did you know it was going to do that?" Jones asked. Peter brushed the dust off his suit.
"Three-two-four. Look at your phones. What's it spell?" Jones was not the only one pulling out his phone. Every keypad also had letters.
"Oh, FBI."
"Yeah, FBI."
"Apparently knew we were coming…"
"You think so, Copernicus?" Peter noticed red, glimmering fibers on his suit. They were not that willing to leave when he brushed with his hand. "Somebody wanna- wanna tell me what this is?" He pulled one off with his fingers, holding it "Huh? Anybody? Nobody knows what it is? Great! Where is Diana? Nobody knows that either?"
"She's got a call," Jones said.
"Then go get her!" Burke waved and Jones left. "Look at you. How many of you went to Harvard?"
It was a rhetorical question, but most of the agents raised their hands. Peter felt he was surrounded by idiots.
"Don't- don't raise your hands. Don't." He saw Diana walking towards him. Someone with a brain at last. "Ah, Diana. Look at this. Apparently, our boy has a sense of humor." Diana did not smile. "What?"
"Neal Caffrey escaped." Peter stared at her. Neal? Now? He made a quick calculation in his head. The kid had only four months left. Had he fled a super-max with four months to go? It did not make any sense.
Diana pulled him down the hallway, away from the crowd and the mess.
"Are they sure?" Peter asked though it was a stupid question.
"He walked out through the front door, dressed as a guard," Diana told him. Peter grinned. She dusted off his suit too and handed him a file.
"What's this?"
"U.S. Marshalls are requesting your help" Diana replied with a proud smile.
"My help?"
"Director Thompson asked for you personally."
"Me? Why would he want me?"
"Probably because you're the only one who ever caught him." Peter was not in his best mood and thought of them all as lazy bastards. "They sent you a chopper," Diana added. Oh, great. They sent a chopper. Hard to say no then.
Peter had not liked the idea of Neal in a high-security prison. It was not a place for any white collar first-time offender. Now it turned out that it had not been enough to keep him inside. What Peter could not understand was why. Why now? If he had been able to get out all the time, why stay for so long? And why not wait four months and be free?
They got to the chopper and Peter stepped inside. The pilot handed him some more papers with updates. They had found an old truck missing and Neal's prison uniform tucked into the water tank of a toilet.
At the airport, Neal monitored the car parking service and the valets in yellow windbreakers. He jogged over when a fancy cabriolet approached.
"Sir!" He called upon the driver's attention.
"Take good care of her, I'll be back in a month" the rich man instructed as he handed Neal a hundred dollar bill.
"Thank you, sir." Neal jumped into the car and drove away. So easy he did it just for fun. The truck could have taken him all the way but this way he could hopefully get a few more hours. Now he drove into New York City with style.
Neal felt as if he could conquer the World. This was freedom. Illusion as it may be but gee, this was living. Wind in his hair, a fancy car, and New York City.
When Peter walked in through the same door Neal walked out four hours earlier he was met by a man who was quick to greet him.
"Agent Burke. I'm Thompson, U.S. Marshalls. Appreciate the help. You were the case agent?"
"Yes, I was."
"And you had the change to look over the surveillance footage of Caffrey's escape on the way over?"
"Yes, I did."
"So you'll agree this is an unusual situation." Peter nodded. It was.
"Why would Neal run with four months left on a four-year sentence?" he asked.
"Well, that's what we're wondering." Peter had not expected them to know.
"It's not because he is stupid," Peter pointed out. Thompson and Peter turned when the next door in line used for Neal's escape opened.
"This is Warden Haskley" Thompson introduced the newcomer. "Agent Burke, FBI."
"You're the guy who dropped the ball," Peter remarked. Of what he read in the folder the prison could be compared to a pet zoo.
"You of all people should know what Caffrey's capable of," the Warden pointed out as if it was a valid excuse to let Neal escape.
"I know. I spent three years of my life chasing him and you let him walk out the front door." Peter had had a bad start of the day and this little charade did not make it better.
"Gentlemen" Thompson broke in "Might I remind you that Caffrey has a four-hour head start?" He gestured for them to continue inside and Peter followed Thompson's example.
They walked along the cell block toward Neal's cell.
"Caffrey came out of the E-block staff bathroom dressed as a guard" Peter remembered from the file. "Where did he get the uniform?"
"Uniform Supply Company on the Internet," Thompson replied.
"He used a credit card?" Peter's question was followed by silence until the warden cleared his throat.
"He, uh, used my wife's American Express." Peter had to keep himself from grinning all over his face.
"We're tracking the number in case he uses it again," Thompson informed him.
"He won't."
They stopped outside Neal's open cell door. Peter stepped inside. Drawings and paintings on the walls. Books. It was a neat place. Neal's private space, though nothing in a prison was ever private. On the left wall was tally marks. One for each day in prison, Peter concluded with a quick calculation in his head.
"How'd he get the key card for the gate?"
"Well, we think he restriped a utility card using the record head on that." The cassette player on the table. Peter ejected the cassette, amazed that those things still existed.
"Should've given him a CD player."
On his bed, they had collected the contraband they had found. Peter browsed a book about truck maintenance.
"He walked out the front door, hotwired a maintenance truck in the parking lot," Thompson said as to explain the book. Neal sure learned how from this book Peter thought. "We found it abandoned near the airport. We beefed up security just in case he tries to get out that way."
Among the pages was a flyer.
"Well, we're not going to catch Caffrey using roadblocks and wanted posters," Peter mumbled and watched the photo of men in yellow windbreakers on the airport. Parking service. He handed Thompson the folder.
"Check with them if they got a car stolen today." Thompson nodded and left. Peter picked up the razor and mirror.
"What's this?"
"We found them in the toilet tank with the jumpsuit," the Warden informed him. "He shaved his beard just before he escaped." Beard?
"Neal doesn't have a beard…"
"Well, you can see for yourself that he had," Haskley offered as if Peter had not believed him.
They walked to the surveillance office where Thompson met up. The warden talked to one of the guards who opened a photo of Neal with a beard at his cell door.
"The inmates are photographed each morning as they exit their cells."
Peter stared at the image of Neal in a scraggly beard.
"I hardly recognize him."
"Yeah, I think that's the point," Thompson sighed.
"This morning?" Peter asked the guard.
"Yes."
"Run the series back."
Like a flipbook, Neal's beard disappeared day by day.
"Stop." This was the clean-shaved Neal he knew. "That's it, when he stopped shaving. I want to know everything that happened that day." A month and a half back in time.
"I'll get interviews with the inmates started." Warden Haskley left.
"Get me that day's mail to Caffrey" Peter ordered one of the guards.
"I'll talk to the guards if something happened." Thompson left too.
Peter watched the image of Neal on the screen. At this specific image, he looked in the camera's direction. The kid had kept sending him birthday cards. Apart from those, he had not heard anything from him. If things had been too bad for him, Peter guessed he would have called, as he had after his sentence.
Was he still the positive, charming guy or had prison time taken that away from him? If it had, Peter was the first to grieve.
Peter got a small pile of mail from a guard. A magazine about art. Three letters. He read the letters first. To his surprise, they were fan-letters from two women and one man who appeared to be complete strangers, but in love with Neal. He asked the guard if Neal used to get this kind of mail and the guard returned with a box full. Peter read a few of them. They all seemed about the same, nothing upsetting or special about the three he got that particular day.
"I think he answered every single one of them," the guard told him with a smile. "Always a very polite rejection, telling he already has a girlfriend." Girlfriend? That reminded Peter of something.
"Get me the visitor's log."
Thompson and the warden returned about the same time.
"I've interviewed at least twenty guards," Thompson said. "He didn't cause them much trouble, was nice. They liked him."
"So say the inmates" informed the warden. "One of few who got friends on both sides. There were no threats or bullying. No reason to run."
"He had a visitor," Peter told them and pointed in the log.
"'Kate Moreau'" Thompson read. "You know her?"
"Yeah" Peter sighed. "I do." Why was he not surprised she was involved in this? What else would make Neal act so goddamn stupid?
The warden got the footage from the visit running. A silent movie in black and white.
"No audio?"
"No," the warden confirmed. They saw Kate clearly on the other side of the glass and the back of Neal and his reflection in the glass.
"She comes back every week like clockwork." Thompson had been browsing the log.
"She's not thrilled about this visit" Peter noted.
"How soon can we get a lip-reader here?" Thompson asked the warden. Kate rose and Neal placed his hand against the glass as if he wanted to stop her.
"I'll save you the trouble," Peter said. "'Adios, Neal. It's been real.' She came back next week?" Peter thought that she already knew.
"She never came back" Thompson confirmed.
"Okay. Let's find Kate."
