Well, Kemper goes in for his therapy and convinces the shrink that he’s a well-adjusted example of rehabilitation.
And you know what?”
Danny cocked forward. An eager audience.
Harold continued. “During this interview, Kemper’s got a victim’s severed head in the trunk of his car out in the parking lot.”
“Why?” asked Danny. Fascinated.
Harold shrugged. “He was taunting us. Part of the thrill, I guess.”
Danny laughed in Harold Wicks’s face.
They studied each other philosophically. Finally Harold pronounced, “You never fuckin’ know.”
“Ah,” Danny glanced at his wristwatch. “Could you excuse me, I gotta make a quick call.” He rose and picked up his empty beer bottle and eyed Harold’s almost dry glass. “You want another one?”
“If you are,” said Harold.
Danny took Harold’s glass and his bottle to the bar, ordered another round and got change. Then he walked to the side of the room, picked up the pay phone receiver and dropped in quarters, got long distance and asked for Ida’s number in Minnesota.
He watched smoke shift through the rays of balmy light splayed to the side of the partition while the phone rang on Sergeant Street in St. Paul.
“Hello?”
He gripped the receiver and experienced a pleasurable squirm of muscles low in his abdomen.
“Hello?” her voice was husky, busy, practical. Not concerned. Just inconvenienced.
Danny waited another beat and then hung the phone up. He went back to the bar, paid for the round of drinks and returned to the table.
“Do you think he wanted to be caught?” asked Danny.
Harold sipped his drink. “Guess so. Called up the city cops and confessed. At first the dispatcher didn’t take it seriously.
Their old drinking buddy Ed.”
“So he had a shred of conscience?”
Wicks shook his head dubiously. “Him? Nah, I think he was expecting to be famous or something.”
Danny felt no such urge. He just wanted to be left alone.
Right under their noses. He was cruising right under their fucking noses and they couldn’t see. Smooth as that shark off the beach.
Old Harold Wicks was on the job, just inches away, and he didn’t see anything. None of them did. Except Broker.
Still hanging on. Some hick resort owner playing cop.
Danny tore the wrapper from a Power Bar and wolfed it down. It started to rain again. He slowed down, hit his indicator and turned off on the Freedom Road exit. Waited at the light. Turned and picked up speed.
He had not planned on going back for a while. He tossed the wrapper out the window in an explosion of nerves, steadied, passed a slow station wagon in the right-hand lane.
There was the question of how to get it back here. He couldn’t just fly in a commercial jet with a big suitcase.
Money would show up as a suspicious blob on the X rays.
The kind they were trained to look for. Transporting the money was a problem. If he took a jet back to the Minneapolis-St. Paul International, he could rent a car. Drop in on Ida, zip up north, pick up the money and drive the rental back to San Jose and pick up his truck in the airport lot. Have to show ID to rent a car. Not good.
Be nice to visit Broker. Just up the road from where the 348 / CHUCK LOGAN
stuff was buried, but that would be too many coincidences.
He had to silence Ida Rain. Had to. Had to-
Had to be careful. She had that damn little gun in the dresser drawer right next to her bed, or in her purse. Knew how to shoot it.
A loopy shriek interrupted his thoughts. Behind him, the red flasher flooded across the wet pavement like a liquid sound wave. One turn of the siren. He checked the rearview.
Aw shit. The cop car was right on his bumper. Danny pulled over. He pulled out his license certificate and watched the side view mirror. The county deputy came forward from his green and white cruiser. Cautious, hand on his pistol, approaching from the blind side.
“What’s the problem, officer?”
The cop accepted the license form and placed it on the clipboard he held on one arm. Pen in the other.
“When you turned off the highway onto Freedom you sailed a candy wrapper out the window.”
“Aw Christ,” Danny sagged. It was an expression of guilt.
But also relief.
The cop went back to his cruiser to write the ticket. About five minutes later he returned. “You can mail it in or stop by the courthouse and pay it. Otherwise you’ve got a court date if you want to go that route.” He handed the license back.
Danny studied the ticket as the cop got back into his car and pulled into traffic.
Give me a fucking break. He groaned-$240 for littering?
60
Like a joke, the next morning, his new California driver’s license came in the mail.
Danny sat at his kitchen table studying a AAA Road Atlas of the United States. Rain sluiced down the windows.
The most secure way to sneak back into the “danger zone,”
without leaving a trail, was drive the truck; burn cross-country, sleep in the cab, no motels, nothing on record.
There and back. He turned to the map.
The United States was shaped like a clumsy dinosaur with a pea head in Maine and Texas and Florida for feet. Road net for arteries. Big cities the vital organs. And it looked like Interstate 80, depending on the weather, was his best route, through Salt Lake, Cheyenne, Omaha, and into Des Moines, then shoot up into Minnesota.
Okay. He got up, meaning to flip on his new TV and check the Weather Channel when he saw his front gate shimmer in the rain. Swing open. Joe Travis wore sunglasses even in the gloom and rain, also a long brown oilcloth raincoat. He climbed back in the black Ford and pulled it closer to the house.
Shit. He hadn’t expected Travis for five, six more days.
He met the inspector at the door.
“Hey. Travis, how you doing,” he said, smiling slowly, apprehensively, looking past Travis at the downpour.
“Yeah, it’s a bitch driving, but I had to come down. Mandatory security call when there’s a violation.”
Violation? Danny shifted nervously. “What?”
“Take it easy. Just a quick visit. Have to get back up to the city. This is strictly pro forma. You had a traffic stop last night by a Santa Cruz deputy sheriff.”
“How’d you know that?” Danny was really getting nervous.
“Anytime a protected witness has an encounter with law enforcement, he’s identified under his new name. You presented the new driver’s license, right?”
“Yes I did.”
“The copper ran it on NCIC. Protected witness names are flagged in the system. Washington notifies the on-site inspector that one of his people has had a run-in with the law. We have to come right over and investigate. Log it.”
“I tossed a candy wrapper,” said Danny glumly. “Two hundred forty bucks.”
“Yep. I saw the complaint. I warned you, huh.” Travis grinned.
“Now I know.”
“Good. It’s bullshit in this case, no problem; inside the county, could happen to anyone. But if you were a felon-type witness, say-and you got stopped in L.A., in a high-crime neighborhood, could be suspicious. But it’s a rule. So…”
Travis glanced around. “Hey, you got the computer up and cooking.”
Danny smiled. “Nice box.” He snapped his fingers. “Fast.”
“Cool. Hey, I’m going to use your john and be out of here.”
Travis walked down the hall toward the bathroom, went in and closed the door. The toilet seat clattered on the tiles.
Danny prayed a soggy piece of dead cat didn’t attach to Travis’s boots. The toilet flushed. The door opened. Travis emerged. “You need a new seat for the shitter, man.” even white teeth curved in a smile below the sunglasses. “See you in about a week.” He walked out and he was gone.