Welcome to Night Vale - 155 - The Heist, Part 3

Episode Date: October 1, 2019

More arrests are made in the bank robbery investigation. The voice of Carlos is Dylan Marron. The voice of Steve Carlsberg is Hal Lublin. Weather: “Good Luck with That” by Fathom All the Animals https://fathomalltheanimals.com New in the store: a t-shirt that says “Catch the flesh eating reading bacterium!” and leggings covered in spiders. https://topatoco.com/collections/wtnv Don’t miss the final performances of A SPY IN THE DESERT this November! Check out the full list of dates and get your tickets today: http://www.welcometonightvale.com/live/ The third Night Vale novel, The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home, is coming March 2020. Pre-order it now! welcometonightvale.com/books/ Music: Disparition http://disparition.info Logo: Rob Wilson http://robwilsonwork.com Written by Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor. Narrated by Cecil Baldwin.  http://welcometonightvale.com Follow us on Twitter @NightValeRadio or Facebook. Produced by Night Vale Presents.  http://nightvalepresents.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Howdy y'all. It is Jeffrey Craneer. I'm not sure which episode of Welcome to Nightville you're listening to, but I am speaking to you from April of 2026. And I'm here to tell you we're going to be in Europe. If you want to see Nightville live and you're going to be in Europe, come check us out at the end of May. We're going to be in Edinburgh on May the 27th. We will be in Manchester on the 28th, London on the 29th, and Amsterdam on May the 30th. Just go to Welcome to Nightville.com slash live to see the show dates and to get your tickets. This is. our newest Nightville live show Murder Night in Blood Forest. It is so much fun. Please come check it out. Also, coming up this month here in April, it is the return of Alice Isn't Dead, brand new episodes of our other crazy hit podcast. This is written by Joseph Fink, produced and with music by Dysperition and starring Jacique and Nicole. So make sure you are still subscribed to Alice Isn't Dead and go get those on April the 13th as new episodes come out. Finally, speaking of other shows, do you want to hear us talk about other things? things. We have three other really great chat shows. First of all, there's Good Morning Nightvale for all of your Nightvale needs. You can hear Hal, Meg, and Symphony talk about every single

episode in order of Welcome to Nightvale. Also, we have Random Horror Number 9. That is me and Nightville star Cecil Baldwin talking about horror movies one at a time in a random order. And then Joseph and Meg do best, worst, which is a really fun podcast where they look at hit TV shows and they review the best rated on IMDB, the worst rated on IMDB, and if you're a Patreon member, they will review the middleest rated on IMDB. So check out all of those at Nightvillepresents.com or just wherever you get your podcast. And hey, thanks. It's something else here now.

Something new. From exclusively on Paramount Plus, it's the series Stephen King calls Scarious Hell. Everything here is impossible, but it's also real. Sci-Fi Vision comes it the best show streaming right now. We're running out of time and we still don't know the rules. Don't miss what the movie blog calls something you need to watch. Saving those children is how we all go home.

From Binge All Episodes exclusively on Paramount Plus. Leave no stone unturned. Leave no rock unpivoted. Leave no pebble untwurled. Welcome to Night Vale. My brother-in-law, Steve Carlsberg, is still in jail, wrongly accused of the recent bank heist. But I am happy to have my husband, Carlos, back home. The Sheriff's Secret Police had only taken him in for some questions regarding the robbery of the last Bank of Night Vale.

Sheriff Sam had deemed Carlos a person of interest, which I've been saying for years, but Sheriff Sam meant it differently. Carlos said while he was being questioned at the police station, he saw the other bank employees who were there the day of the robbery. Genevieve Daly, the new bank teller, was being asked if she saw anyone other than Steve Carlsberg near the vault that day. Carla said she was stone-faced, unhappy with the interrogation. Susan Wilman was there crying as the police asked her who else other than Steve Carlsberg could have a key.

And security guard, Jesse McNeil was there, looking quite ill, almost seasick, according to Carlos, as the police tried to badger him into implicating Steve Carlsberg. Carlos has been home for a couple of weeks and in a terrible funk. He said Steve has a nearly impossible case. The police are convinced of Steve's guilt and all their evidence points directly to him. Carlos hardly has any energy or emotion to work or even leave the house. I feel awful for Steve, too, and we are doing our best to support him and our family. I tried cheering Carlos up by telling him my favorite science jokes, like two chemists walk into a bar,

and one tells the bartender, I'll have an H-2O, and the other says, I'll have an H-2O-2, and the bartender sighs sighs and says, The two chemists nod and say, yeah, oh, got it, yeah, sorry, just a couple of waters, thanks. And then later they make sure to tip very well. But Carlos didn't even crack a smile, let alone laugh. And I asked him how his doorless fridge experiment was going, and he's welcome to work on it here in his home laboratory. I don't even mind if he keeps staining everything green with that weird gel he's been using, Jell Cecil, he said, prone on the couch not opening his eyes.

I couldn't work on that, even if I wanted to, which I don't. I want to curl up on the couch too. Stay home from work, but I know that would be terrible for Carlos. There are many times I have felt flat or depressed, and Carlos has been there for me, keeping me company, taking in my sadness and reflecting back not a false smile, but a tentative. of eyes. A listening posture that makes me feel heard and understood, and that's what I want to be for him. Besides, I think Steve can beat these charges. Steve may have been the only one with the key to the vault, but they cannot prove he opened the vault as he was locked inside his own office

during the robbery. Besides, Steve keeps very detailed accounting so they wouldn't be able to find the stolen money, not even if he had taken it. Steve Carlsberg is the nicest man in Nightvale. He's a good boss breaking his foot to get free to try to protect his employees. He's a fine father, a loving husband, and a perfect brother-in-law. It's just not possible. You know, if someone on the inside did this, it was perfectly. Probably Susan.

Susan Wilman is the least trustworthy person in that bank. If not this whole town. So if you're going to... Station management... Just lit a memo under my door gently, reminding me about libel laws. The memo is written in fire on a sleek tablet, and there's a snake curled around it,

so I'm going to leave my Susan Wilman theory alone. But let's just say that there was an untrustworthy person in that bank. And their name was Sue Ann Wilson. Yes, Sue Ann Wilson. Yes. And this hypothetical jerk

was always complaining at PTA meetings about her own personal problems rather than focusing on the agenda. Let's just say. And this Sue Ann Wilson once accused Steve Carlsberg of censoring her

when Steve was just trying to finish the meeting in a timely manner so that the basketball team could use the gym for evening practice. This person might well hold a grudge against Steve Horsberg and want to not only steal from him, but frame him for the crime. Or, what if the sheriff's secret police was doing a really great job so great

that they didn't have a lot of arrests to make because the town was so safe? And of course, they would never need to frame someone for robbery, So they would look like they were solving one of the few major crimes in recent memory, or maybe it was space slugs. Some distant aliens from across the galaxy somehow found our solar system, spotted our Earth, and then randomly chose Night Vale. And for whatever reason, they really wanted our money. So they went down inside the bank vault while the building was on fire,

and without the safe key, they entered the locked room because these space slugs can crawl through walls and then they stole all the money. I don't know. I feel helpless. Reading the news and getting angrier and angrier, but you know there's little I can do about terrible things that keep happening. I'm sure you can't relate. Maybe a community calendar will cheer me up.

This Saturday, the Desert Flower Bowling Alley and Arcade Fun Complex opens its annual haunted Halloween hayride. There were complications this year because a ghost union local 31 went on strike for an increase in pensions in maternity leave. Teddy Williams, owner of the Desert Flower, argued that ghosts cannot retire nor get pregnant. But the union countered with vaguely human faces muttering in the shadows while Teddy screamed. And eventually, a deal was struck. Sunday morning is the pie-eating contest at the Nightville Fair. Contestants will be competing for the top prize of a 1991 Buick Lasaber,

autographed by former U.S. presidential hopeful and Illinois governor Adelae Stevenson. Tuesday afternoon is a tedious song. Wednesday night is the high school dance team statewide semifinals at the rec center. Our own Nightville High School is competing that night. Their top rival is Red Mesa High School, who will be performing a jazz routine called Tommy Tunes Broadway, an upbeat medley of classic show tunes. Nightvale's dance team will present Ohad Naharan's postmodern masterpiece Anifaze, a contemplative blend of sculpture, opera, and dance defined by its explosive physical bursts,

chanting, and contrapuntal movements born of a 22-member ensemble who express the human body as a multidimensional art in the world. installation. Good luck to all dancers. And finally, Thursday is sick, so Friday, we'll be covering Thursday's shift. Except for the part about the haunted hayride. That did not cheer me up. I'm getting word that the secret police have made a breakthrough in their bank heist investigation. Or maybe they found the real thief and can let Steve Carlsberg go. Sheriff Sam said the lab results came back. The fingerprints were inconclusive as their top suspect Steve worked at the bank so his fingerprints were everywhere.

But the lab reports did detail a strange goo police found on the vault walls. This goo, a light green gel, was also found on the walls of the cells that the other robbers had escaped from two weeks ago. So maybe my theory about space slugs is correct. The lab results showed that this unusual chemical can render certain metals intangible, allowing people to reach through walls without breaking them. Police believe whoever used this greenish goo used it to rob the bank's vault and to free the prisoners inside the abandoned mine shaft outside of town. The sheriff then said they discovered this exact same chemical on Steve Carlsberg's property.

They discovered it inside the shed behind the house, and that this is the final piece of evidence that links Steve Carlsberg to the robbery of the last bank of Night Vale. They believe that Steve did not act alone, that he had an accomplice, a scientific mastermind, who created this chemical for him, who generated a complex concoction that enabled them to walk through walls stealing whatever they wanted. They have a warrant out now for Carlos' arrest. It looks like he left a voicemail. Hey, sweetie, it's um me. So listen, I have, um, so I've just been arrested.

No biggie, no biggie, I'm fine. This is actually pretty good news because I wanted to talk to the sheriff anyway about all this. So that's great. And I do have some new thoughts about what happened at the bank and they're really interesting. So they're driving me downtown to meet with, ah, oh, ouch. Those cuffs are a bit tight there, officer. Officer Q Fortier. Oh, that is a beautiful name.

Is that Frenchian? If you don't mind, Officer Fortier, I'm going to just finish my voicemail to my husband. So, Cecil, when I get downtown, I'll explain everything to them. Steve and I clearly did not do this, and that's what I'll tell them, they're police. You know, they just want to know the truth. And, oh, Officer Fortier, I'm not done with my call yet.

Sir, what are you doing with my phone? I... I... Let's go to the weather. RBC Training Ground has discovered potential in over 20,000 Canadian athletes and counting. Your story could be next. If you've got the drive, they'll help you find your path to the Olympics.

Let's see what you've got. Sign up for free at rbc trainingground.ca. Listeners, we now go live to Steve Carlsberg's press conference at City Hall. This has been a difficult month for me. And for my family, I thank you all for hearing me out today. I'm glad to know that these criminal charges are behind me, and I thank Sheriff Sam and their secret police, as well as their overt police,

for listening to reason and overturning the charges against me. But of course, I'm sad to learn about their most recent arrest. Breaks my heart to know that such a dear friend of so many years, someone who has been in my home many, many times, Someone who I consider family could betray me, my bank, my town in this way. I don't even know how to talk about such a breach of trust by someone so close. Carlos. Thank you, Carlos.

For your brilliant and thorough evidence that put Jesse McNeil in jail today. Our security guard of nearly 50 years committed a heinous crime, and he nearly sent the two of us to prison for it. When Carlos arrived in my cell this morning, he was all smiles saying he had figured it out. He called the sheriff over and said, Check Jesse's skin for the same chemical they found on the doors. Carlos had been experimenting with a gel that allowed him to reach his hands into refrigerators without opening the door and thus lowering the temperature of the food inside.

He had developed this chemical in his temporary lab in a shed behind our house. The problem with the chemical wasn't its effectiveness and intangible, ability. He'd been able to make that work. No, the problem with the chemical is that it stained everything it touched a dull green, including skin. Carlos showed me his own hands, which were green from the fingertips to about halfway up his forearms. He said the last few times he had seen Jesse, Jesse looked ill, not like a flu or cold, more like seasick, queasy, green in the face. Carlos didn't put it together right away because we all felt sick about not only the robbery, but the false charges against me. The police reports also showed that none of the cash tills on the teller

wall were affected by the fire that broke out during the robbery last month, which means the fire had to have started on the opposite wall, which is by the front door, Jesse's usual station. The smoke from the fire and the three robbers waving guns provided a distraction for Jesse to cover himself with Carlos' intangibility gel, sneak downstairs past my office where he had locked me in earlier that day, and then unload the cash from the safe and carry it into the alleyway behind the bank where his car was parked. When the fire trucks arrived, Jesse ran deliberately in front of their hoses so that the gel would all be removed from his body before the police began questioning those of us who had been inside during the robbery. But as Carlos pointed,

out, the gel stains the skin for a long time. Water alone won't remove it. Sheriff Sam brought Jesse back in for questioning based on Carlos's statements and found Jesse's skin was the same dull green as Carlos's hands. But unlike Carlos, the green stain covered Jesse's whole body, not only his hands, indicating he had used it to walk through walls rather than merely reach through a door. Carlos explained that he had Jesse in his lab many times. Jesse and all my employees come to my house regularly for dinners. Like I said, they're family to me. Jesse had taken an interest in Carlos's science projects.

So Carlos showed Jesse his doorless fridge experiment. Not long after that, Carlos noticed that the rest of his intangibility gel was gone. He thought he had just run out, even though he had made plenty of it. It never occurred to Carlos until he saw Jesse's green frie. face a few days ago that Jesse had stolen it to remove the money from the vault and his criminal colleagues from their jail cell. While I was the only person with the key to the vault, Jesse, as a security guard, was the only person with master keys for the rest of the building. My office door is never locked so I don't carry a key for it. Jesse knew this and locked me

into my own office. Then his three collaborators, Richard, William and Emma, created It did a fake robbery of the cash tills to distract from his heist of the vault. Sheriff Sam was impressed with Carlos' explanation and arrested Jesse McNeil on the spot. Jesse turned to Carlos and Sam and said, I guess I'm going to jail now. And Sam said, don't flatter yourself. Anyway, I finally get to return home. Thanks to my brother-in-law, Carlos.

Thank you, Susan Wilman, for managing the bank in my absence. Abby, Janice, I'll be home in a few. Can't wait to see you both again. Oh, maybe I'll bake some scones tonight. Carlos showed me a way to do it without letting the butter get too warm. Oh, yeah! I'm so relieved and so glad they put the right person behind bars. And I have never been so excited to try one of Steve scones.

That's really is neat. Say to next for someone playing on a saw. Nope, I just read that. With the saw. It's just someone playing around with the saw. Enjoy. Good night, Nightvale. Good night.

Welcome to Nightvale as a production of Nightvale Presents. It is written by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Craneer and produced by Disparition. The voice of Carlos is Dylan Marin. The voice of Steve Carlsberg is Hal Lublin. The voice of Night Vale is Cecil Baldwin. Original music by Disparition. All of it can be found at Disparation. info or at disparition.bandcamp.com.

This episode's weather was good luck with that by Fathom All the Animals. Find out more at fathom all the animals.com. Comments, questions, email us at info at welcome to nightvale.com. Or follow us on Twitter at Nightville Radio. Or smile at the stars and wait for them to smile back. Check out Welcome to Nightvell.com for more information about, hey, remember, we have a new novel coming out. We have a new novel.

and you can pre-order it now. Today's proverb, wisdom ages like fine wine, knowledge ages like Boston lettuce. Hi, I'm here to tell you about good morning night veil. Welcome to Nightvale's official recap show and unofficial best friend food podcast. Join me, Meg Bashwinner and fellow try hosts,

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