At all costs

by John Gilstrap

  Travis eyed him warily. “Why?”

  Jake scooted in closer, until he was nearly nose-to-nose with his son, and grew suddenly very intense. “Travis, listen to me, okay? Things are pretty desperate right now. You can’t keep asking me to explain everything as it happens. Just do it for me. We need to stay invisible.”

  Travis’s sky-blue eyes grew wide and wet. Poor kid was scared to death and didn’t even know why. But he nodded and slipped the blanket over his head.

  “They’re pulling me over,” Carolyn announced from up front.

  Jake dropped to his hands and knees and crawled to the rear corner opposite the one occupied by Travis. With the Glock still out and ready, he covered himself up to his chin with the blanket, noting the sound of the tires crunching gravel as they pulled to a stop on the shoulder. “Remember, Travis,” he whispered, “not a sound.”

  The green blob nodded.

  “And you remember, Carolyn,” he whispered loudly, “you’re Carrie Durflinger now.” As an afterthought, Jake reached up and locked the back door.

  Carolyn inhaled deeply through her nose, held the air, then let it go silently through pursed lips. This newest strategy wasn’t part of the plan, but she supposed it made sense. After Jake’s visit to the school, the police would be looking primarily for him, right? And they’d be looking for him in a different car. This little exercise merely bet their lives on the assumption that the cops wouldn’t make the connection. She started shivering again. The stakes were way too high.

  Her first and most immediate problem, she realized, was the. 380 in her own hand. Certainly, she didn’t want it out in plain sight, but there wasn’t time to put it away. She compromised by slipping it under her right thigh, thoroughly unconvinced that she’d be able to use it even if she had to.

  As she pulled the van to a stop, the police cruiser stopped with her, pulling in close to her rear bumper. She could see the flash of two badges through the cops’ windshield. For the longest time, they just sat there, lights flashing their frenetic displays, but no one moving.

  “Nothing’s happening,” Carolyn said without moving her lips.

  “Did they stop?” Jake asked softly.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Okay, then, they’re just running the plates. They should check out, so relax.”

  “Yeah, right.” Her stomach was alive with butterflies-no, make that condors, a flock of them. The biggest birds on the planet.

  “You’ll know what they know by the way they get out of the car. If their guns are drawn, we’re screwed.”

  Travis yanked down his blanket. “Guns?” He hadn’t even considered the thought of a shoot-out. His eyes focused on the Glock in Jake’s hand. “Dad?” There was genuine terror in the boy’s eyes now.

  Jake held up a finger to silence him. “Shh. Remember what I told you. I promise I’ll explain it all to you. Later. For now, I need you to stay under that blanket.” He made a point to smile.

  Trembling now, and crying a little, Travis did as he was told.

  “They’re getting out now,” Carolyn said. “No guns, though. Suppose they want to search the inside?”

  “They won’t. No probable cause.” Unless they recognize you.

  “But what if they do?”

  Jake didn’t have a clue. “Then we’ll wing it.”

  The cops got out of their car together. The one from the passenger side stationed himself at the rear bumper of the van, not three feet away from Jake. But for a thin layer of sheet metal, they could have shaken hands. Meanwhile, the driver strolled cautiously toward Carolyn’s window. As he neared, she cranked it down a few inches.

  “Afternoon, ma’am,” the cop said.

  Carolyn had to crane her neck back and to the left to see him at all. “Hello, Officer. Did I do something wrong?”

  The cop was all business; not a trace of humor. “Can I see your driver’s license, please?” The silver name tag over his pocket read “Pernell.”

  It took a huge effort for Carolyn to keep her hands steady as she fumbled through her purse for her new ID. Carrie Durflinger, she told herself. As she handed the laminated card with her picture over to the cop, she quickly scanned the address block and jammed it into her short-term memory. 274 Oak Lane, High Point, North Carolina.

  Pernell looked at it for just a few seconds, then stuffed it casually into his belt. “Have you seen this man?” he asked, displaying a fuzzy photocopy of Jake’s ancient arrest picture, full-face and profile.

  The last time Carolyn had seen the picture, a similarly outdated picture of her former self had resided right next to Jake on the sheet of paper. Carolyn made a show of studying the picture carefully. He looked so young back then; no salt yet in his pepper-colored hair, freshly shaved cheeks.

  “No, I don’t think so,” Carolyn said at length, inwardly proud of her acting skills. “Who is it?”

  The cop took the picture back and stuffed it into the inside pocket of his jacket. “He goes by the name of Brighton. He’s wanted for murder.”

  Carolyn dropped her jaw. “Murder! Oh, my God! In our little town?”

  The cop gave a yeah-ain’t-it-awful smirk and shook his head. “You think you know people, right?” he said. “Ms. Durflinger, I’m gonna ask you to stay here for just a minute more, okay?”

  Carolyn’s heart dropped. What did he see? What did I say?

  “Well, I’m in a bit of a hurry,” she said, checking her watch.

  The cop nodded. Clearly, he didn’t give a hoot about her schedule. “It’ll just be a minute.”

  “Jesus, Carolyn,” Jake whispered from behind. “You’re from North Carolina. This isn’t your little town!”

  Oh, shit! How could she be so stupid? Her stomach cramped harder still. She tensed against the pain but maintained a perfect poker face. The other cop was staring straight at her reflection in the door-mounted mirror. If she so much as twitched, he’d see it.

  “Too late to worry now,” Jake grumbled.

  Carolyn ignored him. Let’s see you do this if you think you’re so damn good at it.

  Pernell walked back to his partner. Carolyn watched as they chatted calmly, in the manner of consulting physicians: Pernell with his back to Carolyn, the partner facing her. She didn’t like the other guy. His eyes were unfriendly, and as he listened, he appeared to stare straight through her. From body language alone, Carolyn surmised that Pernell was the subordinate. The boss cop asked a couple of questions, and Pernell answered each with a subtle shake of his head.

  “What’s happening?” Travis pleaded from beneath the blanket.

  Jake reached out and touched the boy’s shoulder. “Shhhh. We’ll be fine.”

  Finally, the meeting broke up. As Pernell strolled back to the van, the boss returned to the cruiser.

  “Sorry to have bothered you, Ms. Durflinger,” Pernell said, handing her driver’s license back through the window. After Carolyn took the card back, the officer smiled and tapped the door twice, a gesture of finality. “Have a good day.”

  The nerves kicked in as soon as Pernell started back to his car. Carolyn’s hands trembled out of control, making it difficult for her to crank her window shut. Then a wave of anxiety swept over her, left to right, top to bottom. Within seconds, she was trembling all over: hands, knees, legs, shoulders, jaws. A crippling wave of nausea followed, along with an overwhelming need to go to the bathroom. They’d come so close, and now she was going to wreck it all in a flood of tears and vomit.

  “I’m going to be sick,” she tried to say, but the words came out as a garbled croak.

  “No, you’re not!” Jake commanded. “You don’t have the luxury of getting sick. You’re going to swallow down whatever you have to and pull away just like there’s nothing wrong.” The sternness of Jake’s tone caused Travis’s head to pop out again from under the blanket. He looked more frightened than ever. Jake saw the look and softened. “You’ve got the reins now, honey,” he went on. “It’s you, me, and Travis. That’s all th
at matters. We can get away or we can get caught. Those are the only choices. And it’s all up to you. You did a great job a minute ago. Don’t blow it now.”

  Jake’s words wounded Carolyn, and he knew it. She hated to be scolded like a child; in front of Travis, it was even worse. No words of praise for the wonderful deception; just warnings of dire consequences if she caved in to the flood of emotions which had just swallowed her up.

  “… just get control, Carolyn.” Jake was still coaching her.

  “I’ve got it, okay?” she snapped. Like flipping a switch, the emotions evaporated. Her hands and knees stilled, and her heart slowed to a survivable pace. The nausea was gone.

  She slipped the van’s transmission into drive and pulled away from the shoulder. She glanced back in the side-view mirror at Officer Pernell, who seemed busy with paperwork on his lap. As the image grew smaller with distance, Carolyn found herself hoping he’d never find out how badly he just screwed up.

  Behind her, Jake let out a war whoop that nearly made her wreck the van. “We made it, babe! You were brilliant!”

  CHAPTER TEN

  By four-thirty, the full authority and resources of the United States government were behind the search for the Donovans, and, much to her surprise, Irene still had full tactical command. As a practical matter, all that really meant was that she’d been named as the official scapegoat. If she truly had lost her prey, only one career would be trashed.

  Actually, two. Irene had known Paul Boersky since their days together in Minneapolis-her first assignment out of the academy, and his second. Together, they’d racked up quite an impressive list of arrests over the years, putting them both on faster tracks than their respective classmates. Irene had passed her old partner on the career ladder just fourteen months ago, thanks to the political realities of the nineties. These days, when it came time for promotions, all ties went to minority candidates-in this case, to a woman-and if you asked her, it was about damn time.

  If Paul harbored any ill will toward his assignment to second chair, he never showed it. In fact, Irene’s willingness to let subordinates shine on the job had served him well. No doubt his next assignment would be as supervisory agent in charge of a field office somewhere.

  Well, no doubt until today, anyway. Fact was, if this Donovan thing went bad, everyone associated with it would be painted with a very ugly brush. At headquarters, they called it high incentive to perform.

  Presently, Paul, Irene, and a dozen other cops and FBI agents were dismantling Farm Meadows Mobile Home Park, looking for some clue as to where the Donovans might have gone. So far, they’d found nothing; but the Phoenix P.D. was enjoying remarkable success in collaring four fugitives wanted on felony warrants. Irene overheard a cop liken the scampering felons to roaches scattering in the light. Personally, she preferred her own analogy of lifting a rock. Either way, Chief Sherwood had dodged one hell of a bullet.

  There had to be a way to track them down. She refused to believe that the earth could simply open up and digest three human beings. Everything people did left a trail of some sort. Everyone, it would seem, except the Donovans.

  Paul sighed loudly and leaned against the makeshift porch attached to the Donovans’ trailer. “I know you don’t want to hear this,” he said sheepishly, “but it appears they plain just got away. The closets are still full of clothes, there’s dishes in the sink and wet clothes in the washing machine. When they left, they left. Poof.”

  She helped herself to an Astro Turfed step. “And we missed them at the school,” she sighed.

  “Two hours ago,” he confirmed. “We’re getting a pretty good handle on how they spent their day, too. The neighbor down the street-a Mary Barnett-says she saw Carolyn in the bank this morning, looking, as she said, ‘very suspicious. ’ ”

  “What does that mean?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably means that Mrs. Barnett doesn’t have enough to do. I’ve got a guy at the bank just the same, talking to folks down there.”

  She nodded. “Anything else?”

  “Uh-huh. Let me show you.” He led the way inside the Donovans’ trailer, past the kitchen and the living room, and into the master bedroom. Not much for the trailer park scene herself, she had to admit that the place looked better than most. “Look here,” he said, pointing to the bed. “Three duffel bags, packed with clothes and toiletries.”

  She arched an eyebrow. “Three bags? As in Mama Bear, Papa Bear, and Baby Bear?”

  “Exactly,” he confirmed. “Three bags packed with essentials, yet the drawers and closets are all full.”

  She scowled. “Now, you tell me how you can look at a closet and tell me it’s full. You have some special power, do you, that lets you look at someone’s closet and tell what’s not there?” She chuckled and shook her head.

  He scowled. He didn’t like being the target of her derision, and he wasn’t at all sure why she’d suddenly decided to take up residence on his back. “Think about it,” he urged. “Wouldn’t you think that someone throwing stuff together at the last minute would leave a mess? You’d have shit hanging out of drawers and stuff half-pulled off hangers. But look at this place.” He made a wide, sweeping motion with his arm. “I mean, it’s not House and Garden, but the place is certainly organized.”

  She turned her eyes back to the duffel bags. “Maybe they were going on a trip.”

  “The bags were padlocked into a closet.”

  “So?”

  “So I think they’ve been planning for this. Look, this bag here even has pictures and baby memorabilia. No one takes stuff like that on vacation. The Donovans were ready to go at a moment’s notice, which means they’ve got a plan. They know what they’re going to do, where they’re going to go, and how they’re going to get there.”

  “But we interrupted their plan,” she offered. “So maybe they’re off balance.”

  He shrugged. “Well, okay. Maybe. But remember, these are just the essentials. Nothing here to make or break a getaway.”

  She considered that for a long moment. “Which means they’ve got more essentials someplace else.”

  He nodded. “I would if I were them.”

  She regarded him with a long look. “You think maybe you’re giving them too much credit? Just because they’ve vanished once doesn’t necessarily mean they’re geared up to do it again.”

  “In fact, they have done it again.” Paul seemed a little embarrassed to be stating the obvious.

  She sighed and rubbed her temples. Frankel’s tirade hadn’t yet stopped echoing in her brain. “What else do you have?”

  He looked down. “Well, you know, it’s still early in the investigation…”

  “Don’t go into excuses mode on me,” she warned.

  He paged through his notebook one more time, looking for a ray of hope, but ultimately flipped it closed. “Honestly? Beyond the interesting trivia, we don’t have anything useful yet. I mean, we’ve got all the physical evidence in the world that the Brightons are really the Donovans, but so what? We knew that before we got here. What we really want to know is where they’ve gone, and there we don’t have a clue. Not yet, anyway.” The words hung heavily in the air. His boss looked like she might start to growl. “I wish I could tell you something you want to hear,” he concluded, “but I can’t.”

  She set her jaw. “Do you have any idea how tired I am of people telling me what they can’t do?” She found herself repeating Frankel’s words, nearly verbatim. “I can hire a sixth grader to tell me what we can’t do. Careers, on the other hand, are built on the ability to find answers.” She strode back toward the kitchen, with Paul close behind. They helped themselves to seats at the table.

  Stung by her reprimand, Paul would wait till next week before he broke the silence. After all these years, he deserved better than this, and his expression showed it.

  “One more time,” she prodded. “Tell me what we do know.”

  He took a deep breath and swallowed his anger. “Okay. Wh
at we know: They’re very careful people. They were ready to run and presumably have been for quite some time. We’ve found all the trappings of family life. You know, books, magazines, toiletries, toys for the kid. At first glance, their reading tastes tend to run toward romances and thrillers, and there’s a collection of Goosebumps books in the kid’s room my son would kill for. The only thing of even marginal interest is some of the magazines we’ve found. Lots of outdoors stuff-sportsmen’s rags. To me, that’s significant, if only because outdoor survival skills make it easier for them to disappear.”

  Irene scowled as she listened. “What about correspondence? Are there letters and such with return addresses we can trace?”

  He opened the notebook again. Actually, he knew there were no notes relevant to the question, but it was a convenient way to stall for time. “We really haven’t found much of substance there, either,” he said. “Some unpaid bills and junk mail, mostly. We’ll have a better answer in a couple of hours, once we get everything logged and examined.” He sighed and raised his palms. “It’s just early, Irene. I don’t know what to tell you.”

  A new shadow appeared in the doorway. “Excuse me…”

  The timid voice belonged to Special Agent Mike Jamison, who stood at the front door, waiting to be recognized. If people truly looked like their pets, then Jamison should have owned a horse farm. God, what a face. In J. Edgar’s day, when FBI agents were required to look the part, Jamison’s overbite would never have made it as far as the academy. Even today, despite an allegedly more progressive Bureau, the young agent’s looks remained a threat to his livelihood. Timid and quiet, Jamison was widely accepted as a loser. Within five years, Irene figured, he’d be permanently consigned to Bureau Hell, raiding Indian stills somewhere in North Dakota.

  Paul was first to acknowledge the newcomer. “Yeah, Mike, what’s up?” As Jamison’s immediate supervisor, Paul always looked embarrassed in his presence.