Double Jeopardy (23 page)

“I don’t like this, Travis,” she said. “It’s not right running off when you’re in trouble.”

“It is right, honey. It’s the most right thing you can possibly do.” He exhaled, much relieved. “I can’t stay on this line any longer. I’m going to hang up.”

“Travis?”

“Yes?”

She stalled, apparently unable to say what she wanted to say. “Be careful.”

“I will.”

“If you don’t come see me soon, I’ll punch your lights out!”

“Understood.” He hung up the phone and climbed back in the car with Cavanaugh. “Now. We need to talk to that Elcon corporate president, but I suppose we’ll have to wait until morning. In the meantime, let’s find a safe place to catch some shut-eye. I wouldn’t object to getting something to eat, either.”

“Any suggestions?”

“No. I don’t know what’s safe.” He gripped the steering wheel tightly. “I don’t understand how these people keep finding me wherever I go.”

“Well, we have to stay somewhere, so pick a place.”

Travis shrugged. “Cheap motel.”

“Fine. Just don’t make it the Million Dollar.”

“Deal.” Travis glanced uneasily into the rearview mirror.

Cavanaugh leaned closer to him. “You think someone’s following us?”

Travis thought a long time before answering. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “I just don’t know.”

“Did you get it?”

The technician pressed the headphones closer to his ears. “I think so. …”

Kramer slapped him brutally across the side of his face, knocking him out of his chair. “Don’t tell me what you
think,
goddamn it! I need results!”

The technician lay sprawled on the floor of the truck, stunned. “I’m—I’m sorry. I got it. Every word.”

“When is she leaving? Where is she going?”

Crawling back to his feet, the technician related everything he had heard.

“Then there’s still time.”

“Do you want me to arrange for some of the boys to meet her?”

“No,” Kramer replied. “I’ve depended on assistants far too much already. I’m going to take care of her myself.”

The technician tossed the headphones down beside the recorder. He felt nauseated—not from the blow, but from the thought of Kramer “taking care of” a teenage girl. “I don’t understand, sir. How will this help you find Byrne?”

“It won’t.” A wide, leering grin spread across his pocked face. “Byrne will come to me.”

T
RAVIS AND CAVANAUGH SAT
side by side on the ratty double bed in their fleabag motel room. They purposely chose low-end accommodations, both to stay out of sight, and because they knew their cash on hand couldn’t last forever and using credit cards and automated tellers would be suicide. Without discussion, they had agreed to share a room—safety in numbers. They’d stopped at a gas station, and while Cavanaugh gassed up, Travis grabbed an assortment of unnutritious snacks—beef jerky, potato chips, pork rinds, and every other high-fat fried food he hadn’t eaten in months.

“Kind of sliding off the cholesterol-free diet, aren’t you?” Cavanaugh observed.

“Right now I need stress reduction. And I don’t care if I gain a few pounds getting it.”

“Certainly that’s always been my approach to dieting.” She opened a jumbo bag of Cheetos. “Topic one. First thing tomorrow, we need to get a new car.”

“Fine. I’ve got forty-five bucks left.”

“I’m serious, Byrne. Whoever crashed my apartment knows my name, and if they know my name, all it takes is a phone call to get a description of my car and the license-plate number. Plus that goon at the library may have seen the car. We need new wheels.”

“But if we buy a new car, we’ll have to register it.”

“True. That’s why, much as it pains me, I conclude that we should acquire a new vehicle by less than legal means.”

“Am I hearing these words spoken by Little Miss I’m an Officer of the Court?”

Cavanaugh snatched his pork rinds. “Our lives are on the line here. Legal ethics are a swell concept, but I’m not prepared to die for them.”

“And how are we going to acquire this automobile by, uh, less than legal means?”

“Leave it to me.”

“You’re the expert.” He paused, then added, “Laverne.”

She slugged him on the arm. “Byrne, if you start calling me Laverne in the courtroom, so help me—”

“Relax, relax. I wouldn’t do that. Besides, surely you realize we’re both going to be disbarred.”

“That makes me feel much better.”

“It’s not such a bad name. Laverne, I mean. Has kind of a warm … grandmotherly feel.”

“Just what I was hoping for.” Cavanaugh sighed. “I always wanted a friendly name. The kind of name people have that other people … well,
like
.”

“Such as what?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Daisy, maybe.”

“Daisy? Like Blondie and Dagwood’s dog?”

She cast her eyes toward the ceiling. “One year when I was in college, during spring break, I decided to drive from Dallas to San Francisco to visit an old high-school friend. A brief adventure. I drove it nonstop—just me, the radio, and lots of No Doz. Anyway, along the way, somewhere in Arizona, I think, I picked up this hitchhiker.”

Travis’s eyes widened. “You? A hitchhiker?”

“I was younger then. I didn’t know any better. He was what my parents would’ve called a hippie, even then. Long stringy unwashed hair, a guitar, fringed jacket. He was a folksinger, or wanted to be. He played a few tunes for me in the car. He wasn’t bad.” She turned away suddenly. “I’m sorry. I’m boring you.”

“No, please continue. I’m fascinated. This is so unlike the Madame Prosecutor I’ve come to know and … know.”

“Yeah, well …” She waved her hand aimlessly. “The hitchhiker asked me what my name was. I went by my initials then—L.C.—but he wouldn’t settle for that. He wanted to know what the letters stood for, and I eventually told him.”

“And then what? He left in outrage?”

“No. He grew very quiet, then said, ‘Well, I’m going to call you Daisy.’ ”

A smile played upon her lips. “And he did, for the whole drive to California. Called me Daisy. I loved that name. It was so … soft. And romantic. It was everything I had never been but always secretly wanted to be.”

“What happened?”

Cavanaugh shrugged. “He got out in Monterey. I never saw him again. And no one has called me Daisy ever since.”

“Did you ever tell your parents you wanted a name change?”

“My parents are dead. Sailboat accident off the Gulf Coast. When I was fifteen.”

“Sorry. I didn’t know.”

She nodded slightly. “Doesn’t matter.”

“Must’ve been rough on a fifteen-year-old.”

“I always wanted to go to law school, but after my parents died, I lived with an aunt who didn’t want me and couldn’t afford me. Paying for a college education was out of the question. After about six months of just bumming around, one of my low-life high-school friends got me into the skip-tracing business. Hell, at the time, I thought he was a big shot. Wore expensive shoes, jewelry. At least he could pay his bills, which was more than I could manage. He showed me the ropes. Eventually took me in as a partner.”

“You mean … in the business sense?”

Cavanaugh looked into his eyes, as if evaluating how much she could trust to tell. “I mean in every sense.”

“I see.”

“It was fine for the first two years. Then, almost all at once, it fell apart. He started saying we should take separate vacations, see other people, crap like that. He thought that was the kind approach, the sensitive guy’s way out. I think he was a coward. It would’ve hurt less if he’d just disappeared one day.”

“That’s when you left the skip-tracing racket?”

“Yup. I had made some money; he was reasonable about letting me keep most of what I earned. I finished undergrad in three years, took the LSAT, applied to South Texas, and got in. After law school, I worked for the Attorney General’s Office, then the DA, and now the U.S. Attorney’s Office. And that pretty much brings us up to date. I thought I had a promising career. Everyone seemed to like me, I got good reviews—and then one day this crazed lawyer with a roll of duct tape broke into my apartment and taped me to a chair. Now half of Dallas is gunning for me.”

“Sorry about that.”

“What about you, Byrne? You probably hail from some small farm town and have a cute little gray-haired ma who bakes you apple pies on your birthday.”

“No. My parents are gone, too. Mom when I was young. Dad when I was at the police academy.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

She paused. “At least your father got to see you on the way to becoming something. He must’ve been very proud.”

Travis laughed bitterly. “Not hardly. He thought I was throwing my life away. To use his own words, ‘chasing a childish dream of playing cops and robbers.’ ”

“What did Dad want you to be?”

“Same as him. A trial lawyer.”

Cavanaugh placed her fingers against her lips. “So he never got to see you become one of the best courtroom attorneys in the state. That’s a pity.” She was quiet for a moment. “How did he die?”

“Heart attack. Stress-induced. And yes, to answer your next questions, he was overweight, he ate too much of the wrong foods, and we’d had a big argument about my future the night before.”

Cavanaugh waited a long time before breaking the silence. “Will you tell me why you quit the police force?”

Travis’s face became stony. “Why? That was a long time ago. Before Moroconi. Before the world turned upside down.”

“I heard … I heard something horrible happened.”

“You heard right. I don’t think you want to know.”

She placed her hand carefully over his. “I do,” she said quietly. “I really do.”

It was the middle of April, over four years before, on a beautiful, sunshine-filled Dallas day. Travis was off duty, and he and Angela were enjoying a leisurely afternoon on the town, heading nowhere in particular, reveling in the luxury of one another’s company.

“I feel guilty, Angel,” Travis said, clasping her hand tightly. “In a few minutes we’ll be at Adamson Park. They have a great merry-go-round. We should have brought Staci.”

Angela tossed back her luxurious, waist-length red hair. “Staci will be fine.” She touched the ring on the fourth finger of her left hand. “Besides, after June, she’ll be seeing you every day.”

He squeezed her hand. “I guess that’s right. Any clues yet how she feels about me?”

“She adores you, Travis. Isn’t that obvious? You two are buddies.”

“Yeah, she adores me as a buddy. But what’s she going to think of me as a daddy?”

Angela poked him in the ribs. “You’ll do fine, you insecure twerp. You couldn’t be any worse than the creep who fathered her.”

“Staci may feel differently.”

“She won’t. She barely knows Alan. Neither of us have heard from him in years. You’ve been much more of a father to her than he ever was.”

Travis thought about that for a while. “Think Alan will come back?”

“No chance. Well, not unless I come into a large inheritance or win the Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes.” She threw her arm around his shoulders. “We both love you madly. So just relax, okay?”

He grinned. “Okay. You’re the boss.”

They rounded the corner and saw a crowd of people huddled in the middle of the street. Travis slowed, holding Angela back with one hand. What was the big attraction?

As they came closer he realized it was some kind of disturbance. A man in his late thirties or early forties with a gray-flecked beard was standing in the street, shouting obscenities, grabbing at people as they passed. He was big, broad-shouldered, frightening. His tone was hostile; he seemed to be on the verge of exploding.

Angela tugged on Travis’s arm. “Let’s go back the way we came.”

Before she could steer him away, the owner of the corner pawnshop approached Travis. They recognized each other; Travis regularly patrolled this neighborhood.

“Travis!” he shouted. “Can you help?”

“What’s going on?”

“It’s that crazy bastard in the middle of the street. I don’t know if he’s drunk or high or what, but he’s driving all our customers away.”

“Probably just a vagrant who wandered over from the park,” Travis said. “He’ll likely move on in a few minutes.”

“Are you kidding? He’s been here for almost half an hour. And he gets more violent every minute. We need some help here. This part of town is dangerous enough without this kind of crap scaring everyone away.”

“Why don’t you call Morrison? He’s supposed to be cruising this beat today.”

“I called. Nobody came.”

Travis groaned. That was Morrison. He probably found a jaywalker to occupy his time so he could ignore his radio for an hour or so. “I’m really not prepared—”

“You are now.” The pawnshop owner slapped a .38 into Travis’s hand. “I took it off the top shelf. It’s loaded.”

“Great. Well, let me see what I can do.”

Angela held tight to his arm. “Travis—this is your day off.”

“I know, honey. It’ll just take a minute.”

“You promised we would spend the day together. Just you and me.”

“I know, Angel. And we will.” He removed her hand and plunged into the thick of the crowd.

The gray-bearded man was becoming increasingly abusive. “Goddamn satanistic sons of bitches!” he cried at the top of his lungs, his face upturned toward heaven. “It’s a plague. A plague on us and our children.” He pointed into the crowd. “There’s a fornicating whore. I can tell by the way she stands! And there’s another!” He rushed into the crowd, sending a teenage girl running. “Repent, sinner! Jee-sus God Almighty!”

Travis reluctantly approached the man. “Okay, padre. Show’s over. Why don’t you come with me?”

The man’s eyes opened wider than Travis would’ve thought possible. He flung himself at a young woman, ignoring Travis completely. “God is coming for you, whore of Babylon! He’s coming for all of you!”

Travis steeled himself. Of all the loonies he came into contact with on a regular basis, he hated the religious loonies worst of all. “It’s time for you to go to confessional, your holiness. At the county drunk tank, most likely. Come along.”

Suddenly the man reared up, raising his hands clawlike above his head, like some kind of wild beast. He glared at Travis, literally snarling. “Get thee behind me, Satan!”