by George Wier
I nodded.
Shawn Tannen—one of the top, on-the-street news reporters in Austin—slipped down beside Chuck, put her arm around him, then whispered in his ear. He turned to look at her, amazement in his eyes.
“Really?” he asked. She nodded. Then, to my utter amazement, she bent forward and kissed his lips. Just a little peck.
“Okay,” Chuck said. “Sol is probably breaking into the office of Pico Freightliners as we speak.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I was about to call Jessica when she walked in the front door. She took a look at Shawn and how close her face was to Chuck Holland’s with his swollen, purple nose, then another at me and the thirty-eight in my hand pointed at the floor, and said, “Situation normal here, I see.”
“There’s a burglary in progress,” I said.
“Is someone about to steal someone’s virginity?”
“Nothing like that,” I said, “or at least not in my house. No, I’m talking about Sol Gunderson. Chuck says he’s about to break into Pico Freightliners headquarters. I think we’d better get rolling over there.”
“I’ll call Patrick,” she said, and reached for her hand radio.
“Let’s not,” I said. “Let him get some sleep.”
“Fine. At least somebody’s getting some sleep. Why did I want to be a cop?”
“You wouldn’t let me talk you out of it,” I said.
“You should have tried harder, dad.”
“I know.”
“Okay, let’s roll, then.”
“Did you come home in a cruiser?”
“No. I was dropped off.”
“I suppose we can take just your cruiser,” I said.
“I’ve got my car parked down the street,” Chuck said.
“Nothing doing. Not that I don’t trust you, or anything, it’s just...”
“You don’t trust me,” he said.
“Right.”
“All right. What about Shawn?” Chuck asked.
“I’ve got my car out front. Bill, you can ride with Jessica. I’ll take Mr. Holland, if he promises not to try anything and to be on his best behavior.”
“What am I going to do? I think he broke my nose.”
“I already told you,” I said. “It’s not broken. Maybe next time, if I’m lucky.” To Shawn I said, “Ma’am, I don’t trust him with you as far I can throw him. We’ll all go in the cruiser, if that’s okay with you.” I turned to Jessica. “By the way, Holland was trying to break into our house and was fiddling around with the electrical box outside. Can you...?”
“Mr. Holland, you’re under temporary arrest. If you try to get away or screw anything up, I will personally stomp your ass into the ground. Got it?”
Chuck nodded.
“Good. Do I need to handcuff you, or will you be a good boy?”
“I’ll...I’ll be good. Promise.”
“You’d better be,” Jessica said. “All right. Come on, everybody. Let’s go.”
*****
Shawn and Chuck rode in the cage in back. I took a look back and saw how uncomfortable Chuck was and had to suppress a chuckle.
The town hadn’t yet begun to awaken. It had to be about 4:30 a.m. The streets were still dark and mostly vacant.
Pico Freightliners is east of Austin in the direction of the insular little berg known as Webberville. It’s a sprawling establishment encompassing a large block of real estate with main highway frontage—those big rigs have to have room to turn around, angle back into their docks, load or unload, then hightail it again. I’d been thinking about the place off and on over the last twenty-four hours—or however long it had been since someone had mentioned it. Time does that when you’re on the move. Clocks measure time, and time is nothing but objects moving in space. The two extremes of time are, therefore, those instances when everything is motion around you and those when nothing so much as creeps. The guy sitting in the train station or the doctor’s office is always looking at his watch. The guy running the race had better have a watch ticking in his head. And that’s all I’ll say on the subject.
Jessica did a little punching around on her car computer console and got the address and the GPS route to Pico.
“I could’ve told you where it is,” I said.
“I know. But I’m driving, dad.”
Jessica tried to punch the accelerator through the floor. I glanced over and saw we were going seventy along Lake Shore Drive. Jessica had her red and blues strobing overhead, but no siren as yet.
I turned my attention to the back seat. “Just why the hell would Sol want to break into the place? What’s he been told?”
“I don’t know what he’s been told,” Chuck said. “All I know is that Sol is mad as hell about Bebe.”
“Bebe, again. What about Bebe?” Jessica asked.
“Yeah!” Shawn agreed. “What about Bebe?”
“I have no fickin’ idea,” Chuck said. “My nose hurts.”
“Cry me a river,” I said. “Look, you’re the conspiracy nut. If you don’t know, haven’t you guessed yet?”
“Well thanks.” Chuck turned to the window as if his feelings were hurt. I couldn’t have cared less.
“You know what I mean,” I said. “Are we in any danger when we go running into this place? Are there guards? Is Sol armed?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know nothing.”
“Anything,” Jessica corrected him. “Don’t know anything.”
“I don’t know that either. I’m tired. I just want to go home.”
“You’re not going anywhere, Mr. Holland,” Jessica said, “until I say so. It’s either you’re with us, or there’s a nice comfortable jail cell downtown.”
“What charge?” he asked.
“Criminal mischief. Class B misdemeanor, at the very least. Bond is at least five thousand smackers.”
“Okay. Okay. Alright already. Look, I’ll go where you say, but I am not going to get my ass shot.”
“Like me?” she asked. “Like Driesel?” Then in an aside to me, she said, “I still think he’s cute, dad.”
I shook my head.
“Turn coming up,” I said.
“I see it.”
Jessica swerved and Chuck’s nose must have bumped into the window or something because he cursed and moaned in pain. Once she came out of the turn, I looked over at her and saw she was smiling.
“You’re a natural at this,” I said.
She nodded and the smile twisted into a grin.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Jessica killed the overhead lights as we turned into Pico Freightliners. There didn’t seem to be much going on at the front of the building, so we tooled around back. Sol Gunderson’s beat-up Chevy pickup was next to one of the loading docks. A door to the building flapped in the breeze.
“Oh my God,” Jessica said. “That crazy bastard has gone and done it. I’ve gotta call this in.”
“Go ahead,” I said.
Jessica called the burglary into dispatch, requested backup, then told them she was going inside. She did manage to mention that she was taking her old man in with her, but she left out Shawn and Chuck.
“What about them?” I asked her.
“They guard the door.” She turned to the back seat. “If anybody besides us come out that door, I want you to try and slow him down, engage him in conversation. Do...something so that he doesn’t get away. He’ll have a lot to answer for.”
“What if he’s armed?” Shawn asked.
“Yeah!” Chuck chimed in.
“Then maybe don’t tick him off.”
Jessica and I got out. We opened the rear doors of the cruiser and let Shawn and Chuck out to stretch their legs. The back seats of police cruisers are, as a rule, awfully cramped.
“Still got that pistola, dad?” Jessica asked me.
“Yep.”
“Then let’s roll.”
*****
As we went up the back steps of the loading dock at Pico Freightliners, I gestu
red to Jessica. The knob lay on the concrete dock close by. It appeared to have been removed with one well-placed swing of a forty-pound sledgehammer.
We stepped inside and found the sledge inside the door, resting against the loading dock overhead doorway in the dim interior lighting. Our guns out and at the ready, we listened. There was the sound, far off, of something banging and rattling around.
“The offices,” I whispered. “He must be rifling them, looking for something.”
Jessica nodded. “This isn’t about a damned goat.”
“Yeah. I think you’re right. I don’t know if he’s armed or not, but if he is, I give you my permission to shoot him, if you have to.”
“Thanks dad. Better him than one of us. By the way, you stay behind me. I’m the one wearing kevlar.”
“Remember, kevlar is of no use if you get shot in the head.”
She nodded, and gestured me to follow her.
We double-timed it across the shipping and receiving area of the warehouse and down a darkened side corridor. The banging and rattling from ahead continued unabated. As we ran, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t right. Where were the guards? Where was the alarm system? Why wasn’t there a blaring going right this minute? I had the sneaking suspicion that we’d soon find out.
The corridor ended where a pool of light illuminated where the smooth shop floor ended and the carpeted office area began. The light came from up a short stairway. We were close.
The rattling ceased and then we heard the rustle of papers.
A door was open at the top of the stairs. Jessica went first, both hands on her gun pointed at the floor.
And empty room awaited us, with yet another doorway opened beyond.
“Aha!” we heard.
More rattle of paper. We moved across the room past a couple of desks complete with blotters, computers, rubber stamps and stacks of paper, mostly bills of lading.
Jessica sneaked a look into the room beyond, then ducked back and gestured to me. I moved forward and looked.
Sol was in the process of reaching down into the drawer of a filing cabinet. I saw no gun in sight, but there was a crowbar on the table next to a stack of file folders crammed with multi-colored invoices or bills of lading or some such.
I turned to nod to Jessica, stuffed my pistol into my belt and stepped into the room.
“I just bailed you out of jail, Sol,” I said.
Before even looking up at me he spun around and grabbed for the crowbar on the table. Jessica chambered a round into her pistol loudly enough so that it stopped Sol in his tracks. She stepped up beside me.
“What are you doing here?” he asked me.
“I’m stopping a friend and client from making a huge mistake,” I said.
“I’d say the mistake has already been made,” Jessica said, and gestured with the gun at the dismantled filing cabinets around the room.
“Jiminy, Sol,” I said. “You do know how to make a mess of things. You’re out on bail and supposed to be on good behavior, then you do this.”
“But I’ve got it, Bill,” he said. “I’ve got the proof!”
“Of what?” Jessica asked. “The proof that you’re a frickin’ idiot?”
“Your girl’s got a sharp tongue, Bill.”
“You don’t know the half of it. She does, however, also have an uncanny streak for calling them as she sees them. And correctly, I might add.”
“Last time I saw you, little girl, you were wearing headphones and trying to strangle yourself with that wild hair of yours. Now you’re a cop?”
“I’m a deputy sheriff,” Jessica said. “I still like my music loud, though. Tell you what, Mr. Gunderson, why don’t you step back against those filing cabinets, put your hands on top of your head, and not move a muscle until I say so. How about that?”
Sol looked at me and raised one eyebrow.
“She’s serious, Sol,” I said. “I told her it was okay to shoot you if need be. Please make sure she doesn’t have to.”
There were footsteps coming up the stairs behind us.
“Looks like the cavalry is here,” I said. “In here, officers. Suspect caught.”
Sol took a slow step backwards. He slowly started to raise his hand, but then pointed with his left hand at the stack of files on the table.
One Sheriff’s deputy came up behind us, followed by two Austin policemen.
“Fellahs,” Jessica said. “One of you want to do the honors?”
“I will,” the other deputy said. I recognized him from the creekside and from Chuck Holland’s home. Deputy Echarria.
“Hello, Mr. Travis,” he said.
“Hey. I figured you’d be home by now.”
“Nothing doing,” he said, removed his handcuffs from the back of his belt and stepped around us toward Sol. “Seven to seven shift. The dark one, that is.”
“You’re just gonna stand there and let these people take me to jail?” Sol asked.
“Hmph,” I said. “Well, not exactly. Deputy Echarria?”
“Yeah?”
“Those files there. I’m sure they have the subject’s fingerprints all over them.”
“Ah. Evidence, then.” He talked over his shoulder to the city cops, “can one of you fellows fetch me some plastic evidence bags? Looks like we’ll need two or three.”
“Right,” one of the cops said and disappeared.
I stepped over beside Sol, where Deputy Echarria busily bound the man with metal bracelets. “Say, Sol. Just what the hell are we going to find when we start reading those invoices and bills of lading.”
“The name of the chemical plant where the shit that killed Bebe came from.”
“Bebe,” I said. “You just can’t let it go, can you? What has Eloise been telling you?”
The shock on Sol’s face was sudden.
“Have you washed your hands today, Sol?” I asked.
“Wh—why?”
To Deputy Echarria I said, “Don’t let his hands get wet until you run a chemical analysis. I want to know if he was the one who took a shot at Jessica today.”
Echarria smiled. “I thought this guy was a friend of yours.”
“Worse,” I said. “He’s a client.”
“Just what is it you do, Mr. Travis?”
“You don’t want to know.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Deputy Echarria had already taken Sol away. When Jessica and I walked out of the Pico Frieghtliners building, we expected to see both Chuck and Shawn waiting for us. Only Chuck was there, sitting on the hood of Jessica’s cruiser.
“Where’s Shawn?” I asked.
“She got a ride with one of the local cops. I don’t know where she went but she told me I had better stay here and wait for you two.”
“She was right,” Jessica said. She turned to me, “Do we really want to take him down and book him? I’m dog tired, dad, and all I want to do is go home and sleep.”
“My first thought was to make him walk home. It’s about five miles. It might do him some good.”
She looked at me sidelong.
“But no,” I said. “Let’s drop him off at home and go put ourselves to bed. I’m thinking of calling mom and telling her to come home.”
“You think the danger is over?”
“I’m not sure there ever was any real danger.”
At that moment a half-ton pickup—one of those big twin-cab, can’t-see-around-them-in-traffic monster-sized trucks—came around the corner and pulled up beside the cruiser. A youngish fellow stepped out. He walked to the dock, looked up at us, then at the door with the missing knob.
“What the hell?”
“Break-in,” Jessica said. “The guy who did it is in custody. I’ll say his name and we’ll see if it rings a bell. Sol Gunderson.”
The fellow looked down for a second, bit half of his lip, then brightened. “Not the idiot who was picking out in front of this place yesterday morning!”
“The same,” I said.
“What is his big beef?”
“More like his big cabrito,” Jessica said. “Something about his pet goat, Bebe.”
“That’s right!” the fellow exclaimed. “Bebe! So you’re telling me Bebe is a goat, not a person.”
“Yeah,” Jessica replied.
The man nodded. He came up the steps and extended his hand and I shook it.
“Newton Frisley,” he said. “I’m Chief Operations Manager here. I got the call about twenty minutes ago and high-tailed it down here. That Gunderson fellow sure has it in for this place. Looks like he did a number on my door.”
“The real mess is inside. He took a crowbar to your locked filing cabinets. Some of those files, bearing his fingerprints, were taken downtown as evidence. You’ll have to decide whether or not you want to press charges.”
Newton Frisley scratched his head. “Well, sure. I guess. I’d like to know, first, what he thinks we’ve done to him. Then, if we can sort that out, maybe he can pay for the damages. If he’ll do that, I don’t see why we should throw him in the slammer.”
“You’re a good fellow, Mr. Frisley,” I said. “I’m Bill Travis. I’m in the unfortunate position that Mr. Gunderson is one of my clients. I handle his investments. This is my daughter, Jessica.”
The two shook hands.
“Jessica and I were tipped off that he was going to be breaking into the place, so we got over here as fast as we could. I was hoping that we would catch him before he actually broke in. Looks like we were late.”
“I’m sorry you were,” Frisley said, “but since the deed is done, maybe we’ll be able to figure it all out.”
“Tell you what,” Jessica said. “My dad and I have been dealing with all these shenanigans since day before yesterday. We need a few hours of sleep. If you can secure your door here somehow, we need to go. Mr. Gunderson will be down in the county jail pending any charges. Wait until some time after noon today and we’ll meet you down at the jail, haul Sol into an interview room and try to, as you say, get this sorted out.”
“You both look tired as hell. Let’s make it two o’clock. That good enough?”
