The Robbery

Yesterday was one wild day in Pigeon Falls. A masked man robbed Wink’s Woods in the middle of the day. He made the clerk put all the money from the cash register into the bird house that looks like the White House. Then he took it and left through the back door. He ran into the woods where he had a four wheeler waiting.
Everybody is upset. This does not happen in Pigeon Falls. Giant spiders happen, big wooly elephants happen, dragons happen, bouncing heads happen but masked robbers do not happen. They just don’t. It has wrecked the image of Pigeon Falls as a little normal UP town. The next thing is somebody will rob the Credit Union and then Jack’s Sauna. Why even Last Lutheran isn’t safe.
Constable Ican Gettum showed up five minutes after they called him. First thing he did was ask for the tape from the security cameras only to be told the cameras were fake. They were just there to scare off shop lifters. From the people in the store he collected as much information as he could. The robber was anywhere from four feet to eight. He was either white or black but could be Latino. He was missing a tooth and his teeth were perfect. The only thing they all agreed on was that mask looked like the one worn by the Lone Ranger. They also couldn’t agree on the gun with some thinking it was really big and others thinking it was rather small. They gave him a stock picture of the birdhouse he stole.
Then Constable Ican bought some plaster powder that was part of a kit for making garden plaques. He charged it to the town. He used the plaster to make an impression of the tracks of the four wheeler. At the same time he found the end of a cigar that might have been left by the crook. He had worn gloves so there were no fingerprints.
Ican took what he had back to the office. The robber knew the store. He knew which room had the back door. He had parked his four wheeler in the right place and one could guess he knew the woods. Ican began to think it was a local person and not a passing through robber.