Capitol Offense (The Bill Travis Mysteries Book 2)

by George Wier

  When he dreams this Always, he awakens to a scream of his own, a subdued thing, no louder than the mewling of a kitten.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  I had to spend eight hours at Brackenridge Hospital while a young lady doctor ordered x-rays for my wrist, sent me upstairs to have them done, interpreted them for me when I was wheeled back down, and put my wrist and forearm in a cast. It was a sprain, as opposed to a fracture. It felt, however, like wasps stinging around inside there.

  “No more gymnastics,” the doctor told me.

  Julie looked at the doctor’s face, then up at the face of the state trooper there with us and asked the doctor, “You don’t know what he did, do you?”

  “No. And I don’t want to.”

  “Wise,” Julie said. “Very wise.”

  “Hey,” I said, wincing in pain. “Easy, Doc. Okay?”

  The doctor paused, looked at me, at Julie, then back at me again. “Mr. Travis. If you let me be a little rough on you now, it might go easier for you later.” She grinned. “Especially where your wife is concerned.”

  “I like her, Bill,” Julie said.

  “All right,” I said. “But leave some flesh for the Governor’s men. They’ll need something to grasp with their pliers.”

  The state trooper grinned.

  *****

  I’d thought that I was going to be grilled by the state trooper once my wrist was set. Instead he asked Julie to step away for a minute so that he could ask me a couple of questions.

  “Do you have any idea what happened to Milo Unger’s body?” the trooper asked.

  “You mean the one near Marfa, as opposed to the one from Lake Travis?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” the Trooper replied. I liked him. He was taciturn, but there was life behind his blue eyes. He’d be a Texas Ranger some day. “Just wondering if you had any idea about that.”

  “I don’t know. We — that’s me and Walt Cannon — left Milo there in the desert and high-tailed it back here. We had to stop the assassination.”

  “We know,” he said. “Just wondering. We found the spot where he was, blood and all, just no body to be found.”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “One other thing,” he said. “Don’t tell the Governor, at least not just yet. He wants to see you this evening. Just you, nobody else.”

  “Don’t tell him what?” I asked.

  “Who the girl was. The girl from the blimp.”

  “Milo’s wife? Sherry. Sherry Unger.”

  “That’s her. But that’s just part of her name. While we were trying to find you, we did some checking of our own, into the past, both yours and the Governor’s. We know who she really was.”

  “Who was she, besides Milo’s wife?”

  “If you don’t know, it’s best I not tell you. The Governor is expecting a friend to stop by after your appointment with him tonight. A certain Ranger Captain who has known him for a long time. He’ll tell the Governor everything he needs to know. It’ll be rough for the old man.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  A voice spoke up behind me: “People that stick their nose in where it don’t belong are called ‘meddlers.’ It can be a capital offense.”

  I turned.

  Walt Cannon was there. He had on a Stetson hat, and a small silver star inside of a circle was pinned to his jacket.

  “Walt,” I said.

  “Bill,” he said. “Sorry I couldn’t tell you who I was. Some of what I told you was true. I was in Viet Nam, I do have a rusting dinosaur in my front yard, and I have been trying to penetrate the Firsters for several years instead of the other way around. Tonight, I’d like to buy you a beer and tell you everything, that is, after the Governor has his say.”

  “Okay, Walt,” I said. “But Julie’s gonna want to join us. By the way, who was that with a search warrant looking for me at Nat’s place?”

  “Basically that was me,” he said. “I sent two troopers I could trust. I wanted to make sure your family was safe. Afterwards, we posted up some men around the perimeter of Mr. Bierstone’s ranch. At no time were your people in any danger.”

  “Thanks,” I said, although I was certain my face was turning red.

  “Bill,” he said, “somebody had to get you inside. Inside the Firsters’ compound. Inside The Kingdom. I knew Milo wanted you so that he could bring down the Governor, but I wanted you there so I could have someone there on the inside.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “How could you know everything everybody said. And if you tell me you had me completely bugged, you and I are about to have a very nasty fight.”

  “Naw. You weren’t bugged. Nobody knew anything. You fly by the seat of your pants, Bill. So do I. When you phoned Warden Spence, called him a son of a bitch and then hung up on him — which phone conversation was bugged, by the way — I knew you were my man, although I had pretty much decided on that back when you made sure Julie and Nathaniel and your secretary were out of town safely.”

  “Why all the subterfuge?”

  “Because there was at least one state trooper on the take, and where there was one, I thought there might be more. Also, the Lieutenant Governor was involved. That’s a great deal of power, Bill. Me? I’m just a guy with a tin star and a gun. I had to play it all just as I did so no one who shouldn’t would get themselves killed.”

  “What about the Governor?”

  “I’ll tell him, Bill,” he said.

  “Tell him what?”

  “About his daughter.”

  “Sherry,” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m sorry, Walt,” I said. “I wouldn’t have your job for anything in the world.”

  “I know. Come on, Bill. I’ll drive you. The Governor’s waiting. Julie and I’ll wait in the car.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The mansion of the Texas Governor and his family is a tourist attraction, situated as it is just southwest and across the street from the State Capitol in Austin. But when the last of the tours are concluded on any given day, the mansion becomes a home.

  I sat in the spacious living room in the warm light cast by an ornate brass reading lamp, a Texas Monthly magazine open on my lap to an article about the Hunt brothers up in Fort Worth.

  I heard a creak on the stairs. I looked up to see Governor Richard “Dick” Sawyer coming down. He looked a bit older than I remembered him. Just a tad bit more gaunt. An old movie line came to me: “It’s not the years, it’s the mileage.” I’d say that Dick Sawyer had logged his fair share of miles in the last few years.

  “Mr. Travis?”

  “Yessir, Governor,” I said.

  He walked over to me. I stood and he extended his hand to mine. I took it. His grip was that of iron, but thankfully he didn’t try to crush my hand.

  “I understand that you tried to save my life, and came close to losing your own in the bargain.”

  “Well, sir,” I said. “That may be a bit of an exaggeration.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “I had already gotten the phone call from Ranger Walt Cannon and was not even going to do the coin toss. But he said you didn’t know that.”

  I sighed.

  “Oh, don’t think what you did wasn’t important. After all, there was a sniper in that blimp. But when I looked up and saw you dangling from that rope, I figured you for a goner.”

  “I don’t know how I did that. I couldn’t repeat it, that’s for sure.”

  “Yeah. Say, let’s have a seat for a minute. I’ve got something I want to ask you.”

  We both sat down, me right where I had been on the long sofa under the light, and the Governor across from me.

  “Bill, Texas is going to need a new Lieutenant Governor.”

  Oh hell, I thought, here it comes.

  “What about you?” he asked. “Are you interested in a career as a public servant?”

  I thought about it. All my life I had been one of those people who liked to think: ‘Boy, if they would just let me in there, giv
e me some power, I’d do the job right.’ But I also knew that life is rarely forgiving to the inexperienced. I had no illusions about it. We tend to think of such positions of power as being all glitz and glitter and lots of adventure, only to discover that you have to rub elbows with all kinds of people — many of whom you’d probably rather not — and that the job has quite a bit more to do with the completion of seemingly endless paperwork than with glitz and glamour.

  “You know, Governor,” I said. “I’ve always had the idea that anybody who wanted to politic and campaign for an office should be immediately disqualified on the grounds that they want the job, and therefore there must be something wrong with them. Present company excepted, of course.”

  Dick Sawyer laughed.

  “Yeah. I have to admit that’s pretty close to the truth. We’d have to throw away our form of government to make that work, though. How would you structure such a thing? Where would you get anybody to hold down an office?”

  “The way I’ve got it figured, you’d have cops roving around, and when they caught an honest citizen somewhere in an act of kindness, they’d arrest him, haul him before a judge and the judge would then sentence them to a term as State Representative, or Senator, or even Mayor.”

  “Hey, you might have something there. Probably we’d get a hell of a lot more accomplished,” Sawyer said. “So what do you say, Travis? Texas needs you.”

  “Governor, Texas always needs. Texas needs all of us. I can’t do the job, sir. But I know who would be better than me, and who would probably actually accept.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “My partner. Nat Bierstone. I’d heard he was on a short list for the job anyway.”

  The Governor grew quiet. Sat back in his chair. He was giving it serious thought.

  “Nat Bierstone did help me win this seat. How old is he, do you think?”

  “I’d say he’s about sixty, maybe a little older.”

  “You don’t say. You don’t say,” he mused and lapsed into silence.

  “I’m to marry his niece next week,” I said.

  “Really! Damn. That’s nice. Is she pretty?”

  “Governor. Pretty is such a mundane word for what she is. But yes, she’s pretty.”

  “That’s good. Life is too short to marry an ugly woman,” he said.

  We both chuckled for a moment.

  “Governor,” I began when all the humor had drained away. “I need to know something. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

  “Shoot, Bill.”

  “It’s about your father, and Emil Howell.”

  “The Posse?”

  “Yeah. The Posse. Why that nickname, and what did they do?”

  Sawyer let out a long, slow breath.

  “The Posse,” he said. “I can remember when I was about twelve or thirteen years old, my father wanted me to come with him and Emil Howell on a little raid. I had overheard them from the top of the stairwell the night before talking about how they were going to shut down the operation of a fellow named Lothario. Lothario was a Cajun whorehouse operator and rum-runner that kept a little dive going near Texas City. From all I heard, I knew there would be blood. When my father wanted me to go, I feigned sickness. When he came back, he had a hole through his shoulder and a piece of rag stuffed into it. I remember there was a lot of blood.”

  I waited. He stared out the window across the room, into the night.

  “I think my father styled himself as an enforcer of his own laws. Emil Howell and a couple of other guys did most of his dirty work. And all together they were The Posse.”

  He looked at me. His eyes staring, trying to bore holes into me, to weigh my soul.

  “Bill,” he said. “I’ll tell you. I’m not too proud of that heritage. My father was a mean son of a bitch. When I was seventeen I got a good look at who he was. He was a cutthroat and killer and he didn’t mind stomping on the little people to get what he wanted. Howell was just his chief lieutenant. My father’s little empire was the closest thing to a Texas mafia you’d ever care to see. I was seventeen when I left him behind me. The day I cut out, my father told me that he’d cut me off. I told him where to stick his money. We never said another word to each other. He died six years ago. Bill, I never inherited or wanted a cent from the old bastard. His money had blood all over it.”

  “You knew Emil Howell’s son? Milo?”

  “Yeah. He was there the night my father and I had our little row. He was just a kid, about thirteen years old at the time. I remember telling him I’d see him in hell. Whatever happened to him?”

  “He’s dead.”

  “How did he turn out?”

  “I think in the end that he proved good. He needed somebody to stop him. At least that’s what he told me.”

  The Governor’s eyes stared into mine.

  “There’s more than just that blimp fiasco and a lone sniper, isn’t there?” he asked.

  I thought about it. About Sherry Unger. About a bit of poetry penned by a little girl with all of life ahead of her. A sad, doomed life. I wanted to tell him all these things, my thoughts, feelings, impressions, those things that mean everything and less than nothing at the same time. But I simply sat there on the Governor’s sofa, a piece of furniture that was probably ancient when Ma Ferguson was Governor and Pa was edging toward senility, and looked into the Governor’s eyes. I felt it then. Something. A sense of rightness. And then I knew. Sawyer was not unlike another man that I had met once, had chatted with briefly almost a lifetime ago. A warden with pale blue eyes and a job heavier than any that Atticus Finch would have taken on. And eyes that held something worth searching for.

  “Governor,” I said. “Walt Cannon is waiting outside. He wants to talk to you.”

  He paused. Looked down at his hands on his knees.

  “Sir,” I added, “you don’t need to tell me any more. About your father. About Howell. I think I understand things well enough now.”

  He turned and looked out the front window and into the night.

  “My father,” he said.

  “I think,” I began, “that even before we’re born we decide we want to help our parents. Perhaps we feel sorry for them and want to give them a leg up. Give them something to love that will soften them and make their lives more livable. I think that’s why we’re born. I think we choose our parents more than they choose us.”

  “I never heard anything like that before,” he said. “But I like it.”

  “Governor, I’m sure when it’s all said and done that you’ll know you did just fine.”

  There was a long pause, a comfortable silence stretching itself out into the room. I noticed that he was studying something. It was the box on the floor close by me.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “Oh. I thought you might want to have this. It was Milo Unger’s box. It’s full of stuff, most of it about your father and about Emil. Mostly it’s newspaper clippings and old photographs.”

  “Okay. I’ll look at it after awhile. I guess it’s getting late. I’ve got a busy day tomorrow.”

  “I understand, sir,” I said.

  Dick Sawyer looked out the window at the night, or perhaps he was looking at his past — at the irretrievably lost. I saw a single tear cross his cheek. He quickly wiped his palm across it, sweeping it out of existence.

  I walked down the front steps and to the gate where a Ross Volunteer was waiting for me to leave so that he could lock up. Off to my left the State Capitol gleamed with light.

  Walt Cannon came up the walkway toward me. We both stopped, faced each other in the middle of the front walkway and shook hands.

  “Thanks, Bill,” he said.

  “No,” I said. “I want to thank you. I think I could do just about anything, but I don’t believe for a minute that I could do what you’re about to do.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Give me a few minutes.”

  “Sure.”

  I opened the car and got in beside Julie.<
br />
  “What’s he doing?” Julie asked me, gesturing toward Walt’s tall lean figure as it disappeared inside the mansion doorway.

  “Honey,” I said. “There’s been a death in the family.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Noah McPherson made it out of the ranch house that fateful night. He showed up in Fort Myers, Florida two weeks later and got tagged when a property owner ran his new prospective renter’s license plate, which didn’t match the name he’d been given. The local police picked up Noah while he was sitting in his car outside a run-down motel. He was transported back to Texas at the request of the Texas Rangers for questioning. You might say that charges were pending.

  I talked to James about his uncle the same day I got word that Noah was on his way back to Texas, in irons.

  James had known about his uncle’s pre-occupation with the Republic group. As far as politics went, James simply didn’t have any, and he managed to assure me that he had known nothing about any murders or plots to assassinate the Governor or reclaim the Republic of Texas from the United States.

  Before we hung up that night, a month after my first and last visit with Governor Sawyer, I could tell that James had been dancing around something: some question that he wanted to ask me.

  “Out with it, James,” I told him.

  “Well...” he said. “You wouldn’t consider talking to my Uncle Noah, would you? He’s not even defending himself. He’s throwing himself on the mercy of the Court, and all that crap. And those people have no mercy.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “You’re right on that score.”

  The State of Texas versus Noah McPherson. Who would have ever thought it? It sounded infinitely better to me, however, than having my own name on the tag-end of that styling.

  “James,” I said after a minute. “When you get the chance to talk to your uncle, suggest to him that he plea bargains. I’m sorry I can’t help you. Except for one thing. A friend of mine. Jasper Stevens. His number is in the book. He might take your uncle’s case.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Travis. I didn’t think you would want to talk to him. I’m sorry for how you got treated.”