Free Seven Silent Men by Noel; Behn Page B

of which sixty-eight-year-old Wilkie Jarrel was controlling stockholder, board chairman ano chief operating officer.
    Resident agent Rodney Willis, in his turn at the speaker box, told of checking at Brink’s Incorporated several hours earlier and obtaining verification that the money-moving company delivered twenty-one sacks of currency to the Mormon State National Bank at 4 P . M ., Friday, August 20, in armored truck number 12–311. If the delivered funds had come directly from the Federal Reserve Bank in Prairie Port, the currency would have constituted federal monies, the direct theft of which gave the FBI automatic jurisdiction to investigate. Willis’s preliminary findings showed, however, that the twenty-one sacks had been picked up at, and transferred from, Old City State Bank in Prairie Port, the parent company of the violated Mormon State National Bank. The twenty-one sacks; Willis had been told, represented the first of five consigned transfer shipments from Old City. The five shipments contained an aggregate of $1,100,000 in currency which had been packaged in sixty-eight sacks, locked trays and metal money crates. No specific record had been kept as to what each individual package was worth. How much money was in the twenty-one sacks missing from the Mormon State vault could not be determined until a recount was made of the four undelivered money shipments still at Old City State Bank. Since it was Sunday and Old City was having trouble getting cashiers in to count, Rodney Willis had been warned by Brink’s officials not to expect a final figure until mid-morning of the next day, Monday, August 23.
    Cub Hennessy was the final resident agent Strom had speak with Roland. Cub explained that over the last eight days Prairie Port had suffered a mysterious series of electrical dips and dimouts, the cause of which Missouri Power and Electric Company, better known as Little Mo, had not been able to trace. Cub, just prior to the conference call, had chatted with a senior vice-president and a supervising engineer for Little Mo, both of whom were now absolutely certain the bank robbers had somehow tapped into the utility’s main power lines, thereby creating the electrical failure. The two officials were also certain that these power dips would continue until Little Mo troubleshooters could get down under the bank and correct the chaos wrought by the missing thieves. The presumption of deliberate interference in electrical power, Hennessy guardedly proffered, might open up new avenues for claiming jurisdiction, such as those covering the sabotage of public services. Roland said he doubted that it would.
    The room was cleared and the speaker box shut down so Roland and Sunstrom could continue their conversation in private. Asked for his assessment of events, Strom confessed never having experienced a situation in which just about every avenue for gaining legal jurisdiction appeared, for the moment anyway, to be blocked. He quietly joked that perhaps God was trying to tell the FBI something, then went on to say he was certain these impasses were temporary, that, as more information became available, a way would be found for entering the case through either the bank theft or FDIC statutes, should the Bureau deem it worthwhile to do so. Strom was fairly certain the Prairie Port Police Department would soon have to put out an official all-states fugitive alarm, which would make “escaping across state lines” more defensible if the FBI chose this path to follow. Sunstrom counseled that when the statutes in question were finally violated, every propriety should be observed in the hope of minimizing the inevitable anti-Bureau criticism to come … that it was wise not to automatically enter the investigation, even when they could, but first to petition for such jurisdiction from the assistant United States attorney of the district, Jules Shapiro.
    A. R. Roland thanked Sunstrom for his candor but made