Capitol Offense (The Bill Travis Mysteries Book 2)

by George Wier

  After a while I didn’t see the headlights anymore. They must have turned off.

  Ten minutes later the headlights were there again, pacing me.

  *****

  I stopped at a small grocery store and gas station in a dark little town in the middle of nowhere, or rather, in that late night, other-worldly somewhere between Junction and Sonora. I waited for the car that had been following to pass, but instead it turned in and pulled up at the gas island.

  It was a little sporty Mazda. It looked vaguely reminiscent of Milo Unger’s Miata, but this one was extremely dirty, as if it had traveled every back road in Texas.

  A girl got out and went inside the store. She was blond, pretty, slim, muscular, I’d say about early thirties. I waited. She came back out and began filling her gas tank. I watched her. She never once turned her head my direction. I waited until she was finished and drove off into the night before climbing out of my jeep.

  Inside the store there was an entire wall covered with stapled-up spent Lotto scratch-off tickets, all losers. The half-dozen winning tickets hung from the back of the cash register from strands of dirty Scotch tape. Also, there was a hand-written note proclaiming: “Fishing licenses with I.D. ONLY. If we don’t know you, good luck.”

  I assembled my handful of items from the store: a small Maglite flashlight, some double-A batteries, a bottle of water, and a cold hot dog. I paid in cash, went outside to the jeep, assembled the flashlight and fished out Milo’s Sawyer box and began rifling it with the flashlight clamped between my teeth.

  There were articles on Sawyer written by Milo himself. I scanned them. There wasn’t much there of any help. I thrust my hands deeper beneath the papers, moved a stack onto the floorboard and fished in the deeper waters, hoping for something.

  I found a sheet of notebook paper on which a poem was written in a child’s hand.

  There is a place

  Inside my mind

  Where people are happy

  All of the time

  And gardens are blooming

  Even in Fall

  Family and friends come

  Whenever you call

  It’s too bad this place

  Is just in my mind

  I hope it’s not the only one

  I’ll ever find.

  Sherry Euban

  Age 9

  “Who the hell is Sherry Euban?” I said aloud to myself, which probably sounded funny with that flashlight in my teeth.

  No one answered.

  The paper was musty and old. What had once been dark pencil lead on a white page was now a faint gray on deepening yellow, the lines almost invisible.

  People put things in the oddest places, I thought.

  Sherry Euban. I wished, fervently, for internet access, a voice to talk to besides my own, a cigarette, maybe. Anything.

  I folded the paper and put it in my shirt pocket.

  I went fishing in the box again.

  There on the bottom, I found something. A list.

  1 pair of Walkie-Talkies

  2 12-volt batteries

  1 spool 12 gauge wire

  1 spark plug

  1 special package

  1 BOOM!

  “Somebody likes to go shopping,” I said. “Damn!”

  Milo knew. He knew all along about Sawyer’s connection to the fishing boats. He knew how it was assembled and done. He probably even knew by whom. I should have brought it right out into the open there and then that night on his boathouse.

  I folded the list and put it in my pocket right next to the poem. I dumped all of the papers back in the box, put the lid back on and dropped it behind the front seat again.

  If anything, the night was even blacker as I pulled onto the highway and continued west.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  By three a.m. tiredness overtook me and even the constant wind couldn’t keep me awake. It had been about thirty minutes since I’d seen another set of headlights.

  Not long after Sonora I pulled off the road at the next cattle guard, drove through low weeds and scrub brush until the highway was gone from sight, turned off the jeep, and slept.

  *****

  Strange dreams. A guy that’s on the lam probably couldn’t have any other kind. The last one I had — the only one, in fact, that I could recall — took me through all the way to morning and a rude awakening underneath swaying mesquite branches.

  I flew high, up aloft in a dark, purple-velvet sky just after sunset. Far below, the dark land was dotted with strange lights that gave no warmth. Some lights sat idle, just flickering, while others moved with unnatural speed across the black surface like so many neuron pulses, oblivious, moving in their own tracks, spending their lives to carry a simple command. This was Texas, perhaps as it might be a hundred years hence.

  There was one light, bluish silver, directly below. It rotated, as if turning toward me. It froze at first, the instant I spotted it, then it zinged in my direction. Fast!

  It stopped just past arm’s reach, which was kind of funny, seeing as how I had no arms with which to reach. I was just a little ball of light myself, unable though, to see my own glow.

  “You’re going the wrong way,” it thought at me, a masculine voice with no accent. Like Dan Rather.

  “Okay,” I thought back at it. “But this is the way my jeep is pointed, so this is the way I’m going.”

  It didn’t immediately reply. It just sat there in the ether with me, all of a mile above Texas. Down below the other lights flashed and moved, flashed and moved. Some stopped at little nexi, bright nodes of light. Small towns, maybe.

  “Turn around,” it said to me inside my mind.

  “You turn around.”

  It did. A swirl of light turning back, probing. Then the light swirled back.

  “Very funny,” it said. “This is your last warning. Don’t go into the desert.”

  I looked west. In that direction there were fewer lights the farther west I looked until there was only blackness. Somewhere out there the land met the sky, but from where I was, there was no telling where that might be.

  “There are no lights in the desert,” I whispered to myself. I turned back to the other light.

  “There are lights,” it said. “And then there are lights. Some lights you shouldn’t fiddle with. Read your Bible if you don’t believe me.”

  “Oh,” I said. “You’re being a little sarcastic, aren’t ya?”

  “A little.”

  “So,” I said, “where do you fit into all of this?”

  “Me? Oh. Just like everybody else. I’m on Life Row.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “I gotta go,” Dan’s voice said. He flashed orange for a moment. “It’s just about my time.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m your daughter.”

  “Oh. You’re about eight or nine months early if it’s about your time.”

  “Time?” it asked. “What’s that?”

  I thought on it. Yeah, what is that, anyway?

  Something nudged me. It hurt. There was a pain in my shoulder. Funny thing, since I didn’t have a shoulder. I was a ball of light.

  “Are you dead, Mister?”

  Except the voice wasn’t a dream voice, it was the voice from the man holding the shotgun that was pointed at me.

  “Oh,” I said as my eyes came open. And there was a warm wind and above me the mesquite branches danced in it.

  *****

  “Maybe I’d feel better if I was,” I said. “But don’t take that like a recommendation or anything.” The fellow had an old Remington twelve gauge.

  Nice looking firearm, I thought. But not a nice-looking fellow holding it. At least for the moment. Then again, I was the trespasser.

  “What’s your name,” he said. The shotgun hadn’t drifted any lower, yet.

  “Miles,” I said. “Miles Davis.”

  “All right, Miles. What’cha doon on ma land?”

  “Just sleepin’. Rather do tha
t than have a wreck.”

  “Oh,” he said. The shot gun eased lower. The fellow’s shoulders and face relaxed a little.

  “Had some trouble lately with people being on your property?” I asked him.

  “Yeah. You know it. Mostly kids. You ain’t no kid, though.”

  “You got that right.”

  We looked each over. I was a little stiff all over from sleeping sitting up in the jeep. I had no roof to speak of on the thing, so I’d been awfully lucky thus far with the weather. I moved and stretched a little, popping my spine, but not too quickly. The old-timer looked like he might be a little jumpy.

  I’d say he was about in his late sixties. Frosty white hair. Unshaven face. He was thin but tough-looking, as if his frame was held together by steel cables. He was wearing a pair of denim bib-overalls over a too-large white cotton shirt that hadn’t seen a washing machine in some while. His eyes were teal blue and steady.

  “I reckon I better be getting back on the road,” I said, and looked off toward the horizon.

  “Headed west, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Who you runnin’ from, Miles?”

  “What makes you think I’m running from somebody?”

  He paused a moment, reached up one long, bony hand and scratched his head.

  “‘Cause. I weren’t born yesterday.” Only the way he said it, it sounded like yestiddy.

  “Well. Put it like that, I might not want to be located by some people just now. You’re not an easy man to fool, Mr. — ”

  “McCorkindale.”

  “You’re pretty quick on the uptake, Mr. McCorkindale.”

  “My friends call me Hap.”

  “Okay, Hap.”

  “You hungry?” he asked me.

  My stomach rumbled.

  “Hap. I was born hungry.”

  *****

  The house where we had breakfast was old and well-used. As I sat at Hap’s table, waiting for my food, I could hear and smell coffee perking and bacon frying. Also, ever present, was the scent of old polished wood.

  “About how far is it to Fort Stockton,” I called out, trying to reach the old-timer’s ears in the kitchen.

  “A hundred miles, give or take.”

  I had thought it was a lot closer.

  I heard a clang of porcelain on the kitchen counter and liquid being poured. The coffee was coming. It was what I needed more than anything.

  Hap came in with two cups of coffee in front of him, set them at the table, and took a seat.

  For such a house with such an occupant I was expecting a little taxidermy on the walls, say a stuffed and mounted buck deer or a bobcat. Instead the place was clean and well-kept, almost as if he had a woman who came by a few times a week to help with the chores. Except I knew it wasn’t the case. Missing was a woman’s feel, except for how the furniture had been arranged. There were no doilies under the lamps, no Serenity Prayers on the wall. But still, at one time a woman had lived there. As soon as I got the chance, I’d ask him, if he didn’t come right out and tell me.

  “Fort Stockton, huh?” he asked, those teal-blue eyes never leaving me as he drew on his coffee.

  I took a sip. Hap’s coffee was pretty powerful. About what I had expected.

  “Yeah. Looking for a friend of a friend.”

  “How you gonna get there?”

  I looked at him. His eyes never wavered.

  “Not that piece of crap jeep you got out there, surely,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You didn’t look underneath the thing, did ya?”

  I thought on it, tried to get a picture of the jeep. For the life of me, I couldn’t even remember what color it was.

  “Didn’t think so,” he said. “You’ve got a puddle of oil underneath that thing about five feet wide.”

  I started to get up, but he put out his hand.

  “Hold on there. It’ll be fine. In a minute I’ll turn off the bacon and we can have a bite. Meantime, maybe you could tell me what kind of pile you’ve fallen into. I might be able to help you out.”

  “You might. It’s a tall order to ask anything of anybody at this point,” I told him. “It’s just that there’s danger. Chance of loss of life and limb, and all that stuff.”

  “Yeah. That’s how danger usually works.”

  “Before I tell you anything, you might as well know. My name’s Bill. Bill Travis. Not Miles.”

  “Well, you didn’t look too much like the old jazz musician, so I sort of knew that. Also, you look like the fellow the cops are after on TV just now.”

  I laughed.

  “Sorry I lied,” I chuckled. “You were holding a shotgun.”

  “I know, which is why I ignored the lie. So go ahead and tell me what you have to.”

  *****

  I told him. Everything, except for the dreams and the Marfa Lights. I didn’t want the fellow to think I’d lost any head screws. I wasn’t sure if I believed there was any significance to be found there myself. He listened, his unblinking gaze steady and full of understanding, and little, if any, judgment.

  During my story we paused while he brought in breakfast, which consisted of crisp but greasy bacon and eggs fried so hard it was difficult to cut the edges of them with a fork. I practically wolfed down the food and continued my tale.

  “So that’s why Fort Stockton. If Hank Sterling says this fellow is legitimate, then it must be so. Anyway, it feels right.” There. I was done. I took a deep breath and drank the remainder of my coffee, which had begun to cool.

  He didn’t say anything at first. Just drank his coffee, mirroring my movements.

  “So what do you think?” I put my cup down.

  “Well, lessee here. You got the State of Texas after you, people you know keep either dying or disappearing, and you’ve got to get to Fort Stockton, except that you can’t use credit, can’t call for help, and your transportation is on its last legs and you’ve got a hundred or more miles to go.”

  “That about sums it up,” I said.

  “Why don’t I take you? We can be there by dinner.”

  I just looked at him.

  “I know,” he said. “All you saw out front was my old International pickup, and it don’t look like it could even start, much less make it to the highway. But what you don’t know is that I don’t drive anywhere anymore. Not since Maudelle, my wife, passed on. Used to be we’d go to town every Saturday and church every Sunday. After she died I used to drink myself plumb stupid. So they took away my license.”

  “So what do you do?”

  “Why, fly, of course.”

  *****

  I managed to get the Jeep started, drove it a quarter mile across the pasture and slipped it in behind Hap’s house. By the time I got it parked I could hear the cylinders clacking, metal on metal. The oil pressure gauge never even budged.

  I fished the Sawyer Box out of the back.

  “What’re you gonna do with that?” Hap asked me.

  “It’s evidence,” I said. “I gotta take it with me. Any place we can stash it in the plane?”

  He turned and stared at his old crop duster, scratched his head.

  “Just the beer box,” he said. “But that means no beer.” He looked as though I’d told him we had to shoot his dog.

  I just looked at him.

  *****

  There’s an old saying: there are old crop dusters and bold crop dusters, but there are no old, bold crop dusters. Whoever first said that didn’t know Hap McCorkindale.

  It had been a long while since I’d been in a private aircraft, but I had never been in a biplane before. I’d read every book Richard Bach ever wrote on the subject of flying (and most of his other stuff as well), and I’d once thought of getting a private pilot’s license, but never to fly a World War I-era biplane. I’d always had the notion that a biplane pilot would have too many bugs hitting his face.

  Hap got me strapped in to his old crop duster, got it started up and got us airbo
rne (which in itself seemed a bit of a miracle).

  The wind whipped at my scalp, setting up a steady tingle. Hap kept no less than a hundred feet off the ground, following the ribbon of I-10 just a half mile to the north of us.

  My goggles were tight against my face. I began to wonder if we might actually make it.

  I had a redundant yoke in front of me, just in case anything happened to Hap. Not that I knew how to land the thing; it was there just in case.

  Only the day before, I would’ve said there would be no way that I’d be heading west in a biplane; a flying dinosaur, a throwback to another age. But there was wind at our backs and stunted trees below us and not a cloud in the sky.

  The constant roar of the engine rattled in my ears and there was a vibration throughout my entire body. And for just a while, I was thrilled beyond anything I’d ever felt before.

  Until, that is, we crashed. Of course.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Well, maybe it was more of a controlled crash.

  I was once up in the air with an old friend of mine, a former Korean War pilot. We were in a little Cessna 152 Commuter craft, the kind with the wings mounted at the top of the fuselage. It was designed that way, Carl had told me, so that when you looked down, you saw down, not just the upper surface of the wing, and also because it was almost impossible to put a Cessna into a stall. He’d tried to talk me into getting my pilot’s license, and for awhile I had studied on it, weighing my entire financial career against that airborne feeling of absolute freedom.

  Me, I’ve always been one of those all-or-nothing kind of guys. It was a pretty tough decision. But at the time I had a client in deep financial trouble and I couldn’t spare a moment for even a hobby. I couldn’t Fly All, so I decided to Fly Nothing.

  Carl and I had done a few touch and goes at some small municipal airports, the kind that don’t have a tower and little air traffic to speak of. One Sunday he put me in the pilot’s seat as part of his I’m-gonna-get-Bill-a-pilot-license-if-it-kills-me program, hopped in the shotgun seat, and I jabbed the little two-seater up into the blue Texas sky.