by Rex Burns
“We had an accident,” said Shauna. “A big one!”
“This truck came right at us. I was scared. Shauna was too—she cried.”
“I’d have been scared too.” I knelt and wrapped my arms around both small bodies and held them close for a moment, their warmth like fragile birds against my ribs. “I was scared when I heard about it.”
“We were all scared,” said Margaret. “And I’m still angry. The more I think about it, the angrier I get!”
I glanced over the long form with its sections for vehicle ownership information, insurance coverage, diagrams, and narratives. “Did the officer give you a ticket?”
“A ticket? What for? That van pushed us across the road—it wasn’t my fault, Devlin!”
“I didn’t say it was. I only asked if he gave you a ticket.”
“No. He just made sure we were all right and brought us here.”
“Did you get his name?”
She shook her head. “I’ve been on the telephone—the insurance company, a tow truck, you. And then filling out this damned form!”
“Mama said another bad word!”
“Okay—finish it up. You guys want a soft drink?”
They glanced at their mother and she nodded. I tumbled some quarters into the machine at the other end of the long room, the lounge end that held a few nondescript and tired-looking seats and couches scattered around a low table. I brought one to Margaret, too, who thanked me and drank as deeply as the kids. They were thirsty from the fright and nervousness, and I could see them relax as they drank. While Margaret finished the narrative, I went to the desk officer, who looked up with an official smile.
“Can you tell me the officer’s name who brought in Mrs. Haas and her children?”
“Officer Dean.”
“Is he around?”
“He’s on patrol. He should be back at the end of the shift.” She glanced at the large clock. “About eleven tonight.”
“Do you know of any witnesses to the accident?”
“No, I don’t. I haven’t seen the report yet.”
“How about the black van? Did you put out a pickup on it?”
“We put out an alert.”
I gave her one of my cards. “If anything comes in on it, would you call me? Anytime.”
She glanced at it, the official pleasantness hardening slightly, and tucked it somewhere under the shelf that formed the top of the bench. “We’ll try to remember.” She turned back to the mound of paperwork that cluttered her desk. From the dispatcher’s office came the steady rattle of radio voices. I went back to Margaret, who was finishing the last section of the form.
By the time we left the police station, the streetlights were just coming on, their glow a part of the sky’s lingering twilight and almost invisible. Austin and Shauna, firmly anchored in the jump seat of the Healy, were telling me about their ride in the police car. Margaret sagged, drained now of the nervous energy that had buoyed her. With her head back against the seat, she watched the traffic flicker past.
I had a good idea who had been driving the black van, and between half-aware comments on Austin’s story of what he saw in the police cruiser—a radio, a nightstick, even a big gun—I had images of Susan sitting in her fleece-lined wheelchair trying, with the help of a therapist, to recall the names of her friends and family as they went once more through the photograph album that Mrs. Faulk had brought from Des Moines. Now it could as easily be Margaret. Or the children. And it might not be a hospital they were lying in.
It wasn’t until we had reached Margaret’s home, and Austin and Shauna had buried their recent fright and excitement under the warmth and familiarity of dinner and the evening routine, that Margaret and I had the privacy to talk.
“Can you tell me anything at all about the van?”
“I’ve told you all that I can remember. It happened so fast, and once he hit us, I was trying to steer the car and all I saw were those other cars coming past us.” She drew a shaky breath. “I don’t think I had time to be frightened. And then I was too angry to be afraid. Now I’m scared.”
“Too late now—it’s over with. You missed your chance.”
“Oh, Devlin! It’s not funny.”
“There’s no sense dwelling on it, Margaret. It’s like a bump in the road—you got past it and it’s behind you. There’s no sense hitting it over and over again.”
“Is that what you do? In your line of work?”
“When it happens. Which isn’t often.”
She sipped her wine and smiled wearily. “I understand. What I don’t understand is why. It was deliberate, Devlin, I know that. He had a clear road and he pulled up and swung over into my car. Not just once, but twice—hard. He was trying to kill us.”
“Okay—one last time, and then I want you to forget about it. Just close your eyes and tell me what you see. Try to remember exactly what was there, exactly what happened. Anything and everything—just let your memory go.”
She did, and as I listened, I watched her profile with its symmetry, the dark of her lashes pressed toward the smoothness of her cheeks, the fullness of her lips as she spoke, the glimpse of white, even teeth. Her eyes blinked open, feeling my gaze, and the instant of puzzlement in them changed to warmth as she smiled slightly and turned her face to mine. We kissed with a hunger spurred by the knowledge of how close death had been, and fed by the comforting—and then exciting—familiarity of our bodies pressing together. When Margaret finally leaned away to search my eyes with her own, she said, “I’m really frightened, Devlin. Why should someone want to kill us? And what if he tries again?”
I had wondered about that, too. What she told me offered nothing new: a black van with tinted windows. She had seen it once or twice in the rearview mirror, hanging back among the cars behind her. But that wasn’t unusual and she hadn’t made any effort to notice the driver. He was just a blurry figure in the small glass. Then suddenly it was beside the car and lunging at them, hitting solidly to swerve them over the center line.
“I don’t think they were after you. I think they were trying to get me through you.”
“Like … like Susan?”
“Yes.”
“What are we going to do, Devlin? Shouldn’t we tell the police? Isn’t there something we can do to protect ourselves?”
“The police can’t do much. They can’t provide protection.” That was my business. “I know a good man. I want you to have him as a chauffeur and bodyguard.”
“A bodyguard? Living here?”
“Just for a little while. The house has a guestroom he can use, right?”
“Yes, but a stranger in my home … “
“He’s very competent. I’ve used him before. I’d like to do it myself, but I can’t do that and chase the bad guys too.”
“What’s that mean? Chase the bad guys?”
“Just that. Not to worry.” I stroked the long, smooth line of her cheek. “I want you to have protection, Margaret. You and the kids. For my sake, too.”
“Won’t that be expensive?”
“Special rate—won’t cost you a thing. I’m the one who brought you the trouble.”
“I’m willing to listen to a better idea, Bunch.”
Framed by the arch of the office window, he scratched at the short hair curling toward his nape and then turned to look at me. “I want those scumbags, too, Dev. Maybe even more than you do. But too many things could go wrong this way.”
“Too much has already gone wrong and we don’t have any more time to futz around. We know why Susan’s in the hospital. We know who tried to put Margaret and the children there. We don’t know who they might try for next if we give them any more time.”
“We’ve already rattled their chain. Through McAllister and Lewellen—the word got to them. Kaffey called us about it, remember?”
“I remember. And we’ve been sitting on our keesters waiting for something to come of it. What we got was a hit on Margaret. We shouldn’t have left the
initiative to them. Now we make them come to us only.”
“They’re not stupid, Dev. They’ll figure just like we’re figuring—that we’ve set them up. They’ll know what’s going on.”
“But they’ll have to do it anyway. They won’t know whether it’s true or not, and they can’t take the chance.” I added, “If we don’t do something, they might go after Mrs. Faulk next. It’s their style.”
Bunch sighed. “All right—so do it.”
I picked up the telephone and played the little wheedling tune for the Aegis offices, dialing the number that had been in Haas’s desk. A man answered on the first ring with a familiar, “Yeah?”
“Mr. Neeley?”
“Who’s this?”
“I have something that’ll interest you.”
“Like what?”
“Like evidence. Documents that link Austin Haas, the Aegis Corporation, and the Columbine project.”
“The hell you do. There’s no evidence because there’s no link.”
“I dialed you direct, Mr. Neeley—I didn’t go through the switchboard. You can check it out. I have your private, unlisted number and it came from Haas’s papers. I have some other things from those papers, too.”
“Who is this?”
“I also have some information on Spilotro. Down in Vegas.”
“Who the fuck is this?”
“Not over the phone, Mr. Neeley. Let’s meet at Bear Creek Park. At the tennis courts out there.” That was the site Bunch and I had discussed, one that offered a lot of visibility in all directions except one—the creek and the bike path—and that’s where Bunch would be. I told Neeley what side of the courts and the day and time.
“Why should I meet you? What the hell do you want?”
“Money, Mr. Neeley. A lot of it.”
That was a motive Neeley not only understood but didn’t argue with. Bunch, listening at the telephone speaker, looked up when the line clicked into a steady buzz. “When you said ‘Spilotro,’ I thought that sucker was going to crawl through the phone.”
“He’ll be there.”
“Or they will be—those two bastards.”
“I don’t expect them. Not this time.”
“Why not?”
“What would you do in his place?”
Bunch nodded. “Find out what cards you were holding first. Then hit you.”
“So let’s stack the deck.” I shuffled through one of the drawers of the desk and pulled out a small packet of stationery with the McAllister Corporation logo. “What kind of evidence do you think Haas might put away as insurance?”
We spent a few hours thinking up the kind of documentation that an industrial thief might pocket to give himself some protection in case the payoff was held back. Then we checked names and dates and a few topical references, aged and foxed the papers a bit, and ran off Xerox copies of the originals. All together they made a handsome dossier that was close enough to the truth to pass a single reading. Bunch also thought of having a roll of used recording tape labeled “Aegis.” With the help of Harry Goodman and his laboratory full of electronic wizardry, we dubbed in fragments of the tapes we had on file, including the last call to Neeley. With the tape of Haas’s voice from our earlier taps on his phones, and the bits and pieces of Kaffey and Neeley, we came up with some coherent conversations: “‘It’s me, Austin Haas.’ ‘Yeah?’ ‘When do we play?’ ‘I got a tee-off for four on Thursday.’” All together, the conversations weren’t much—ninety, at most a hundred and twenty seconds. But we hoped it would be enough. Goodman just hoped it was legal.
“Are you certain you’re not going to use this in any evidentiary way?”
“Hey, Prof, no sweat. We just want the guy to think we are. It won’t get out of our hands, I swear.”
By the time we finished, it was visiting hours at the hospital and we spent time with Susan who, despite her pallor, was regaining some weight. She was starting to remember more and more, too, but there were still those agonizing moments when her memory refused to fish up the word or name and she thumped the arm of her wheelchair in angry frustration. But she was walking some now, making carefully balanced steps along the carpet past the nurses’ station where the bright faces smiled with friendly efficiency. The solarium was a favorite place and we spent a lot of time in that luminous room with its glass wall and scattering of green plants that rested the eye from the sterility of the remainder of the wing. Susan, as always, made friends; and among her fellow patients was an elderly woman who smiled through continual pain, and a youngster in his teens who had fallen in love with Susan and whose door was open an anxious crack whenever we walked her down the corridor. It was a separate, insular existence with its own relationships and intensities and special worries and topics. But it was removed from the life that took place outside in the sun, and it was a world into which Margaret and the children could so easily have been pushed. That thought nagged as Bunch and I periodically entered Susan’s new world.
That evening, I led Dutch Peterson over to Margaret’s. He was a stocky man with a round and slightly pudgy-looking build, not the kind of image that the term “bodyguard” brought to mind. But I had worked with him before and knew how that softness could harden into muscle when it was needed. More important, he was intelligent and quick and reliable—characteristics better than bulk alone. Most important, I trusted him.
Margaret tried to be matter-of-fact when she met us at the door, but she was still nervous and even a little embarrassed at the idea of having a bodyguard. Behind her, Austin and Shauna stared with curiosity at the stranger with the ruddy face and blond mustache who stood with a scuffed cloth suitcase and a garment bag over his shoulder. Margaret had told them they would have a visitor for awhile, but she didn’t explain why. “I don’t think it would be wise for Austin to tell the other children at preschool that we had a bodyguard.” So she said only that Mr. Peterson would be staying for a few days.
They shook hands solemnly and then Margaret led the troop of us to the guestroom.
“This is very nice, Mrs. Haas. Very comfortable.”
“Dutch will want to see the rest of the house, too, Margaret.”
“Is he going to buy our house, Mama?”
Margaret laughed. “No, Austin. Mr. Peterson’s just visiting for awhile.” Her glance caught mine. “And we haven’t decided whether or not we’ll be moving, remember?”
“I want to see Grandpa and Grandma,” said Shauna.
“We can see them without selling the house. Where would you like to start, Mr. Peterson?”
Touring the ground floor first, Peterson noted the doors and those windows that could serve as entry. He checked the locks and shook his head at a flimsy pair of french doors that opened from the dining area to the bricked patio outside. “Do you have a dog, Mrs. Haas?”
“Can we get one, Mama?”
“No!”
A dog wasn’t a bad idea, and not just for security—kids and dogs went together. If things worked out the way I wanted, maybe Margaret could be talked into a puppy for the kids. A golden lab. One of those big, happy outdoor dogs that Austin could run and wrestle with.
“Could I see the upstairs?” asked Peterson.
“This way.”
When the inside tour was over, Dutch and I walked around the house’s perimeter.
“It’s a big place. A lot of windows and doors.”
“There’s a residential alarm system that came with the house. It’s not worth a damn.”
“Right. Cut the phone line and it’s dead.”
“Suggestions?” I asked.
He ran a knuckle along one wing of his mustache and eyed the shrubbery that provided picturesque support to the artistic swoop of the roofline, and a well-concealed approach to the living-room windows. “We don’t want to make them prisoners in their own home. But I’d feel better with a first-rate alarm system. It’s not much, but it’s something.”
“I can get that done.”
“Does s
he have a radio backup for the telephone?”
“You can use my mobile. I’ll bring a unit over tomorrow.”
“That’s good—better than a CB. Do you know the neighbors?” He nodded toward the houses scattered discretely across the large and generally open lots.
“I don’t; Margaret does. But I understand everyone stays pretty much to themselves.”
“That’s good, too. The less traffic to the house, the better.” He took a deep breath like a man about to plunge into cold water. “Okay, Dev. Leave it to me.”
“She’s important to me, Dutch.”
“I haven’t lost a client yet. I don’t aim to start now.”
Bunch had a couple items to share when I made it to the office next morning. “That rental car—the one on the gatekeeper’s list of license numbers—was leased to a Nora Challis, address: 14820 Alamo Road, Houston, Texas.”
“Anything else on her?” I made a note to ask if the name meant anything to Margaret.
“Not yet. I put in a few phone calls and maybe something’ll turn up.” He glanced at his small notebook. “She rented it on the sixth and turned it in on the fifteenth. Milage, seven-two-eight.”
“What time on the fifteenth?”
“Nine ten P.M.”
“Busey was killed on the fifteenth. Around seven P.M.”
“Yeah. I thought of that. Challis went through the Belcaro Estates gate on the eleventh, she left on the night Busey was killed. It’s possible.” He added, “I called that Mr. Svenson—the one who saw another woman. He told me the same thing he told Vinny.”
“Did you think Vinny might have lied about it?”
Bunch’s shirt wrinkled as he lifted his shoulders. “We got any reason to trust him? It checked out, anyway.”
“Who’d you talk with in Houston?”
“Nelson.”
Nelson Hunt, who retired from DPD five years ago and went to Texas to find a warm climate for his new skip-trace business. He wasn’t a member of the oily Hunts, but it was a big family and he let people think what they would about his name. Sometimes they came to the wrong conclusion and it had paid off more than once. “Did you ask him to find out what he could about Challis?”
Bunch nodded. “He said he’d call back when he had something. I also got a call from a buddy down at the impound lot. The traffic division brought in a black van that had been reported stolen a couple weeks ago. It has heavy damage along the left side.” He poured himself another cup of coffee from the glass pot and raised his eyebrows to ask me if I wanted some.