Read At All Costs Online

Authors: John Gilstrap

At All Costs (8 page)

It was kind of weird. Travis had never thought of them being so poor that they couldn’t afford to protect him from brain injury. Terrified as he was of doctors and the needles they wielded, he decided not to feel insulted. Instead, he just slipped down the short hall to his room and left them to fight it out among themselves.
Now, as the bus swung around the circle in front of the school, he sighed. In three more years, he’d be done with this crap. One thing South Carolina had going for it was their emancipation laws. He’d actually done the research. In three more years, he’d be sixteen, and then he’d be able to quit school forever.
Jake kicked at the floor. “Shit.” He checked his watch without seeing the time. “When’s he due back?”
“Around two.”
This time he moved his watch around in the dim light until he could read the face. “That’s fifteen minutes. How are we doing here?”
“I think we’re about set.” Carolyn picked up the lantern and led him to the back of the storage bay.
Of the two adjacent storage areas, the one on the right housed a strictly forbidden plain white Chevy van. In the five months they’d been in Phoenix, the van hadn’t moved an inch. He hadn’t even cranked the starter. In the eight years they’d owned the vehicle, it had been moved fewer than two dozen times, and then only at night, accumulating just under eighteen thousand miles on the odometer. It’d start, he told himself. It
had
to start.
The first order of business after renting these spaces had been to cut a doorway between them, thus allowing materials stored in the left-hand bay to be loaded and unloaded from the van without having to go outside.
Clearly, Carolyn had worked like a dog to pack it all up. All the weapons were on board, along with assorted building materials—two-by-fours and plywood, mostly—and a couple of weeks’ worth of canned food, all stacked neatly on the shelves he’d installed and secured with bungees. On the other side of the makeshift doorway, Jake could see the back end of the Celica, all locked up and out of sight.
“You done good, honey,” he said in his teasing hillbilly accent.
She shrugged a little and shook her head. “I just don’t believe we’re doing this. How could it happen?”
He sighed. “Random bad luck,” he said. “It’s so amazing. You plan and plan, and in the end, it’s a bunch of dumb dopers who pull the rug out from under you.” As he spoke, he busied himself by lifting the big Glock-17 from the rubbermatted floor of the van, where Carolyn had left it for him, holster and all. Unzipping his jacket, he unthreaded his belt from the loops on the right-hand side of his Levi’s, then attached the holster high, so the muzzle was invisible below the waistband, the grip tucked securely under his arm. “Is the money already on board?”
Her silence drew Jake’s eyes around. She just stood there, her hands at her sides, staring off at a spot in the dark. “Honey?”
She blinked once, then only her eyes moved. “I don’t think I can do this again,” she whispered.
He flapped his jacket back over the gun and walked two steps closer, taking her shoulders in his hands. As she tried to break eye contact, he wouldn’t let her, moving his body to stay in her field of view. “Carolyn, honey, listen to me. We can’t weaken now. Do you hear? We’ve known all along that this moment might come—hell, that it probably
would
come—and now it has. I wish it was some other way, but it’s not. We’re out of options now.”
She closed her eyes tightly and sighed again. “Maybe we should just turn ourselves in this time. Let the courts handle it.”
The words from his wife frightened Jake at a level much deeper than anything he’d felt in the shop or in the police station or out along the road. For any of this to work, they needed to be a team—and a strong team at that. “Carolyn, look at me. Please.”
She opened her eyes. They were dry. She knew he was right.
All the same, he needed to make sure. “You know that if we’re caught, there won’t be any trial, right? This has gone too long and too far for whoever’s in charge to let that happen. If they catch us, we’re dead. It’s that simple.”
She nodded. She knew it, all right.
“Think of Travis,” he pushed, selling to the sold. “They won’t know what we told him. He won’t be safe, either.”
She thought about that one for a long time. “Maybe we should leave without him,” she said, measuring her words.
He cocked his head. “You’re not serious.”
“Maybe he’d be safer without us.”
He stared at her for a long time. “Do you really believe that?”
She didn’t know what she believed anymore. She felt adrift in a sea of emotion, and Travis was the root of all of it: fear, remorse, guilt, pity. The years since he’d been born had been their best. And now here they were, rewarding his innocence and his love with deadly lies and mortal danger. These were things he’d never understand; never forgive.
The day she brought his beautiful face into this world, she’d entered into a contract which she believed with all her heart was governed by the will of God. In return for Travis’s smile and his pranks and his love; in return for the sleepless nights of worry over unexplained fevers and colic and messy diapers; in return for unqualified, unquestioning love, the one thing she owed him more than anything else was simply to be there to hold him. In the best of times or in the worst, her job was to be always down the hall when he cried out in the night, or to be always the first on the scene with a Band-Aid for his knee, a tissue for his tears.
But he wasn’t little anymore. He put on his own Band-Aids and shrugged away from her hugs and her kisses. Maybe that made him strong enough to endure on his own.
As if to prove herself wrong, the specter of her own adolescence bloomed large in her memory. She remembered all too clearly the hurt and the doubt and the insecurity, and she remembered how sometimes a willing ear or a special dinner would have mattered every bit as much as a hug or a Band-Aid. No one had been there for her. How could she not be there for him?
The contract, she realized, went on forever—for better or for worse, until the last day of her life. In the end, then, the answer was simple.
“No,” she said at length, “I don’t believe that at all. Let’s go get him.”
Jake watched her for a moment more before he shared her smile. He brought her to him one more time and kissed her. “God, I love you.”
She slugged him lightly in the ribs. “Talk’s cheap. Just prove that you can get us out of here.”
He went to work. Even in the darkness, he seemed to know where everything was. Leaning halfway into the van, he pulled a blue gym bag out from under the left-hand row of shelves. “Here, let me see your wallet,” he said.
She took the lantern around to the front to retrieve her wallet from inside the little fashion purse and was back in no time. “Here.”
“Thanks.” He took the wallet in his right hand as he battled the bag’s zipper with his left. “Can you bring the light around a little?”
He shifted his butt to make room for her, then produced a fistful of identification and credit cards from the bag. He handed over a North Carolina driver’s license and warned, “Take everything out of your wallet and out of your pockets that has anything to do with Jake and Carolyn Brighton.”
“What do I do with them?”
“I don’t care. Leave it on the floor here. We are now Jerry and Carrie Durflinger.”
“
Durflinger?
You’re kidding, right?”
His eyebrow danced. “Sorry about that,” he said, smiling. “I couldn’t find any Smiths who fit the profile.” He cleaned out his own wallet, except for the money, and dumped the contents on the floor. “Got everything?”
She took a deep breath, then shrugged. “I guess. Do the license plates match these IDs?”
Jake responded with a look. Of course they did.
They closed up the back of the van, and while he climbed into the driver’s seat, she stood by the overhead door. Even in the yellow light of the lantern, he could see his wife’s hand on her chest, her fingers crossed. He closed his eyes and offered up a silent prayer, then cheered when the engine jumped to life.
“Yes!”
Flashing a thumbs-up, Carolyn lifted the overhead door. Jake pulled out far enough to clear the back bumper, then waited while she pulled the door back down and locked it. As she climbed into the cab, she struggled with the money bag to make room for her feet.
“I’m ready,” she said.
“Let’s go, then.”
As he edged the van out into traffic, he felt like he should be saying something—making some pithy remark that would somehow make all of this better. Try as he might, though, the words just weren’t there. In their place was a sense of dread. Of all the stupid decisions he’d made in his life, he sensed somehow that this was the worst; of all the adventures, this was the last.
As if to emphasize the hopelessness of their plight, he had to wait for two police cars to scream past him, sirens blaring, before he could pull out onto the road.
C
HAPTER
S
EVEN
Irene stared at the handset for a long time after resting it back on its cradle. Never in her forty-two years on the planet had anyone ever brutalized her like that on the telephone. Not even counting the two years in college when she’d moonlighted in telephone sales.
Frankel had called initially to praise her for bringing Jake Donovan to justice after so many years. He told her during the jovial first seconds of their conversation that he considered her diligence a personal favor, in light of his impending confirmation hearings.
That initial praise hurt more than any of the curses that followed. That Frankel had been the original case agent was common knowledge throughout the Bureau; that he’d progressed beyond it was nothing short of miraculous. And here, on the eve of his appointment as director, Irene had blown a once-in-a-lifetime chance to encase her career in gold. If only she’d listened to her instincts.
God
damn
Sherwood and his cronies!
Okay, that wasn’t fair. Despite his smugness and annoying condescension, all Sherwood had done was state his opinion. She could forgive that. Somehow, though, that sense of charity wouldn’t stretch as far as Lucas Banks. At least Sherwood was a cop. Banks, on the other hand, would do well to steer clear of Irene for the next few lifetimes. She made a mental note to speak to the US. Attorney about filing obstruction of justice charges against him just for the hell of it.
Of all the invectives launched by Frankel over the telephone, the one that stung the most was “incompetent.” She’d been around for way too many years to make mistakes like this. Certainly, her career was dead in the water, and with it, her dreams to scale the lofty heights of the pyramid. Dishonor was dealt with slowly and painfully in the Bureau, earning errant agents either a lifetime assignment crashing doors in the world’s worst ghettos or watching grass grow at some distant Indian reservation.
She could always quit, she supposed—but in the longer view, that wasn’t really an option. She had her daughters to think about. Until Pam and Paula were out of college and married, hers was the only paycheck to pay the bills.
When Sherwood failed to return with news of an arrest, she’d figured Donovan was gone. So now the chase was on. As she reached for the door handle leading from Sherwood’s office to the squad room, she paused for a moment, straightening her shoulders and pulling herself together. At least for the time being, she was still in charge of this case, and she was intent on looking the part.
The squad room was deserted. Half-f cups of coffee sat in the middle of incomplete paperwork. Chairs were skewed, and somehow the place looked even rattier than it had before. Obviously, Sherwood had scrambled the whole department to chase Donovan down, and God bless him for the effort.
For the time being, the Phoenix P.D. would be the only eyes and ears she had. The DEA boys from this morning were already on their way back home, and they had no jurisdiction, anyway. That pretty much left her with her thumb up her ass waiting for reinforcements from the Charleston field office, at which point the chase would take on a whole new dimension. Meanwhile, she needed to find Sherwood and his senior staff. She was, after all, their leader.
She found the chief and his three lieutenants holed up in the command center—really little more than a conference room with a dozen phone lines and maps covering three walls. A giant green chalkboard dominated the fourth wall, extending from corner to corner, floor to ceiling. Currently, the board was empty.
That will change soon enough,
she thought.
“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” she said, striding up to the front of the room. Southern born and bred, the four men stood without thinking, but she waved them back into their seats. “You’ve all heard about my little adventure this morning,” she opened, “and I’m sure you’ll have ample opportunity to bust my chops over the next few hours or—God forbid—days.” She figured the best way to regain some semblance of authority was to admit responsibility up front and to move on. “For the time being, though, somebody catch me up with what we know.”
Sherwood took the lead, but not before draining his coffee and adding the cup to the boneyard of dead Styrofoam scattered across the Formica-topped conference table. “I’m afraid you already know what we know, Irene,” he said with a shrug. “He bamboozled us. The officer who was supposed to be ferrying him back to his house got sidetracked by a story about his mother having surgery at the hospital. We’ve got officers there, of course, but I don’t expect to find anything. He’s a clever guy.”
“You’ve got people at his house, I presume,” she offered, drawing a patronizing glare from the chief.
“Of course,” he said, his tolerance a bit frayed. “And at his office, too, though I can’t imagine he’d be stupid enough to go back there.”
She nodded. They were long shots, but criminals were known to make incredibly foolish mistakes. “What about roadblocks?” As she spoke, she leafed through the Wanted posters for the Donovans, trying to reconcile the printed details with the ones she’d memorized.
One of the lieutenants answered for Sherwood. “Unfortunately, we don’t have the manpower to be offensive and defensive at the same time. The state police are willing to help, but they’re just as flat-footed as we are right now. Give me two hours, and I can make this city vaporproof. Until then, we’ve got to hope for mistakes.”
She dropped the posters on the table and looked up. “Well, the Donovans aren’t known for making too many of those,” she said. “Do you people realize who we’re dealing with? These two killed sixteen people back in 1983. People they knew.
Friends
of theirs. Just mowed them down like so many bowling pins. As I recall, they were environmental lunatics, trying to prove a point about the evils of chemical warfare, so naturally, they blew up a chemical weapons plant and contaminated a couple hundred square miles of Arkansas.”
“They left a note, didn’t they?” Sherwood asked, trying to dislodge the details from his own memory.
She nodded. It was all coming back to her. This had been a case study at the academy for years. “Yes. They called it their manifesto, typed up neatly and left in the hotel room of a coworker who was too sick to go to work that day. In fact, they went all the way back to the motel just to blow his ass away, too. These are some sick, sick puppies, gentlemen.”
With an amazing knack for vaporizing before our eyes.
“We don’t even have a decent photo of the guy,” Irene growled. The picture in the Wanted poster bore only a vague, family resemblance to Jake Brighton, and it’d be another half hour before his new mug shot was on the street.
“Look at the bright side,” one of the lieutenants offered. “At least he’s as off balance as we are. I don’t care how careful a planner this asshole is, there’s no way he could have been prepared for what went down this morning.”
“Good point,” she agreed. “So, if we’re gonna get him the easy way, we’re going to have to do it soon. We can’t possibly guess what his escape plan is, but let’s not lose sight of the fact that he left here naked, for all intents and purposes. No car, no money—at least none to speak of. Where is he going to go to get those things?”
“We know he called his wife,” a lieutenant said. “Probably told her to bring them.”
“Do we
know
it was his wife, or are we
assuming
it’s his wife?” Sherwood asked.
The lieutenant blushed. “Well, he
said
it was his wife.”
Everyone laughed, but Irene spoke the words: “And he
said
his name was Brighton. I don’t suppose you recorded the conversation, did you?”
“What?” Sherwood gasped playfully, bringing both hands to his face. “And violate the Fifth Amendment rights of our visiting felons?”
Shit.
“I didn’t think so.”
“Too many lawyers are consulted on that phone,” Sherwood explained, serious once again. “Judge told us ‘no way’ on the recordings.”
“Okay,” Irene said, mentally checking off one more possibility. “What do we know about the lovely Mrs. Donovan?”
“We know she killed a shitload of people,” one of the lieutenants grumbled as a third one—Roper, according to his name tag—answered a ringing phone.
“Why, thank you, Lieutenant. How helpful. Do we know if she stuck with our boy long enough to become Mrs. Brighton?”
“Well, you know what they say,” Sherwood offered with a big grin. “Nothing cements a relationship like a good killing spree.”
“Got something!” Roper announced, dropping the telephone receiver onto its cradle. “We ran the name Brighton through the computer, filtering out everything outside of Phoenix—start small, right? And get bigger. Anyway, we got a single hit. A Travis Brighton is registered in the eighth grade at J. E. B. Stuart Junior High. Same home address as Jake’s—Farm Meadows Mobile Home Park.”
Irene smacked the table with both palms. “That’s it!” she proclaimed. “That’s our best shot. Stake out the kid, capture the parents.”
Sherwood started issuing orders, even as his staff was carrying them out on their own. “Get all units out to the school,” he commanded. “Everybody but the people already committed to Brighton’s house and the body shop. Call the school. Have them put the kid under wraps somehow.” As everyone sprung into action, Sherwood brought it all to a stop with a wolf whistle, freezing people in their tracks. “Remember, everyone! This one requires a bit of diplomacy. We’ve got a known murderer snatching his kid from a school. This one has ‘bloodbath’ written all over it, okay? Tell everybody to be very goddamn careful.”
The image of automatic-weapons fire and bleeding children raced through Irene’s head and gave her a chill. “How long till you have units on the scene, Chief?”
He placed his hands on his hips and took a deep breath as he glanced at the map and ran calculations. “Ten minutes, I’d guess. Maybe twelve. Kinda far off the beaten path.”
She checked her watch and sighed. Somehow it seemed like forever.

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