Capitol Offense (Texas Heroines in Peril) (11 page)

San Antonio was the closest city that was
large enough to get lost in. It was a little over an hour away.

She couldn't think beyond her immediate
danger. What she would do tomorrow was of no concern. She had to
remove herself from the heat of the fire. Perhaps its deadly fumes
would reach her still, but she could not worry about that now.

During that hour's drive, Lacy never stopped
looking into her rear view mirror. She conjured up visions of
highway patrolmen hunting her down. She drove at seventy miles an
hour in a seventy zone, so she was in no danger of attracting
attention for speeding.

By now Pete would know what car she was in
and would probably be giving the license number to area law
enforcement agencies. She wondered what sort of story he and Jim
would tell about her.

While gazing monotonously into the
rear view mirror, Lacy noticed a pick-up truck with two mean
wearing cowboy hats. The truck had pulled up behind her at a high
rate of speed, but on reaching to within twenty yards or her, it
had slowed down, keeping a steady seventy miles-per hour pace
behind her. She considered turning off onto one of the dirt roads
dissecting the highway, but decided she would be easy prey on a
remote road. It might even be days before her body was found. Her
best hope was in quickly reaching the metropolitan area of San
Antonio. She accelerated. The speedometer gauged seventy-five, then
eighty.

The pick up slackened off. After a few
minutes Lacy saw the truck turn off onto a dirt road.

A false alarm.

If only she had a good friend in San
Antonio. Her only acquaintance here, Senator Marshall, was much
closer to Jim than he was to her. And besides, he was not home. He
was chairing an interim committee in the capital, and his family
was staying with him at his Austin hotel. "That's it!" she said to
herself.

The senator's address was engraved in her
memory from all the times she had sent reports and letters to his
house. Thirty six twenty four Waverly Trail.

Fortunately, Becky's car had a GPS system.
Once she was approaching the metropolitan area of San Antonio, she
got off the freeway and programmed the senator's address into the
system.

She had no trouble finding the house. It was
in a fairly upscale neighborhood of oversized parcels of land. She
was more than grateful that the house sat back from the street on a
wooded lot. At least she would not have to worry about prying
neighbors who knew the senator's family was out of town.

The car stopped in the drive. She approached
the attached three car garage and tried the doors. They all
were locked. She peered in the horizontal silts of glass on the
garage doors. The garage sheltered only one car, the senator's
sports car. At the back of the garage she saw a door. She went to
the rear of the garage. The door was locked but had an odd type of
window, more a wood frame enclosing glass panels. The frame was
fastened to the door by four screws. The manicure scissors in her
purse served well in removing the screws. She easily lifted away
the glass. Next, Lacy pushed up a patio chair to use as a ladder
and hoisted herself in.

She pressed the garage door opener, then
drove her car into the garage and shut and locked the door.

From the garage, she entered the kitchen and
found a telephone. After getting the number of a cab company, she
called and asked for a cab to pick her up at the corner of Waverly
Trail and Dumont Streets, which she remembered passing three blocks
away.

She left the house and briskly walked back
to Dumont Street. She waited about ten minutes before the cab
arrived. She hopped in and told him she wanted to go to the
Alamo.

She had considered staying at Senator
Marshall's but discarded the idea. The family could return at any
time.

Perhaps she could stay in a busy hotel, but
how could she check in without using a credit card? It would be too
easy for Jim to trace either her cards or his American Express.

She'd rather sleep in a sewer than risk
having Jim learn her whereabouts.

That was her thinking when she left the
senator's house but by the time she had taken her stroll on the
Paseo del Rio, she knew she had to call Mike Talamino.

Chapter 13

Mike had listened to her story, rarely
interjecting any comments. He simply nodded, furrowed his brow at
places, smiled at others. When she finished, he prodded her with
questions. His memory was uncanny. He remembered every detail she
had uttered.

She had told him that Jim and his cohorts
might have found out about him by now from the letter, but she
hoped the false name had thrown them.

"That's a possibility since I live in an
apartment complex," he said. "They could think that Mike Q. Public
had moved or that you wrote down the wrong apartment number, but
I'm afraid it's only a matter of time before they and find out I
used to live in Austin, or learn of my former connection with
you."

He got up and stretched, then walked over to
the French windows. He looked at the river for a few minutes before
turning back to her. "Do you have any idea when Senator Marshall
plans to return to San Antonio?

Lacy shrugged.

Biting his lip, he strolled back to her bed
and sat on it. "You never had any suspicions until your trip to
Schneiderburg?"

She shook her head.

"I want you to think hard now, try to think
of anything before then which did not at the time seem questionable
but under the light of what you now know might be."

Lacy sat silent for several minutes. At last
her face alighted as if she had just recognized a
once cherished friend. "I know how we can get the...Well, I'm
not exactly sure, but I'm almost certain--"

"Get to the point."

"It's McNally's files. I always thought they
contained data on contributors, but from the way he guards those
things now I believe they might conceal details of their shady
transactions or maybe even blackmail information against senators.
He keeps them in his office under lock and key. No one else,
absolutely no one, ever gets near that filing cabinet.

"Where does he keep the key?"

"In the locked top drawer of his desk."

"You've got no evidence which would be
admissible in court," he said.

"The men in the blue car were the likely
murderers of Mr. Bryson, and I can establish a connection between
myself and him and say that the men followed me."

He smoothed her rich brown hair away from
her face. "We need evidence that doesn't hinge on your testimony.
On the evidence we've got right now it wouldn't be too wise to bust
this thing wide open. Somehow, without endangering you any more,
we've got to dig up more evidence.

"Why don't I just walk into Jim's office
with a concealed tape recorder?"

"I was thinking about those files in
McNally's office. I bet they're loaded with incriminating evidence,
probably enough to hang the whole lot of them. But how can we get
our hands on them?"

"You're either crazy or you don't know the
security system at the Capitol."

"Do you know much about it?"

"Not really. I know they have
closed circuit television cameras all over the place, but I
don't know where. There's one guard at the monitoring station
around the clock. That station is in the open on the ground
floor."

"Have you ever been at the Capitol around
midnight?"

"Many times."

"Tell me everything you know about the
security system at that hour."

"Well, I've never really thought about it
before. Let's see... There's one guy who stays at the TV screens.
There's usually three or four guards standing around near there.
They have walkie talkies. The whole lot of them generally
appear to be engaged in conversation. I've never seen them in any
other part of the Capitol at that hour. I've seen maybe one or two
guards circling the exterior of the building in a small mobile
unit, too." She paused for several seconds, then added, "That's
really about all I know."

He sat silently, deeply intent on his own
thoughts. Finally, with a grave look, he spoke. "Do you think you
could sneak in there tomorrow night?"

At first she thought he had been kidding,
but then she realized he was serious. She had just begun to relax
all over. She had thought now that Mike was here she could wake up
from her bad dream just as she had done when she was a child. As
soon as she was by her mother's side, everything was all right.
That's how she had felt all evening. Mike was here. He'd take care
of everything.

But now she realized her part in the
nightmare was not over. With or without Mike she would have to
finish. "I suppose I can't be in much more danger than I've already
faced, and it might furnish the lucky break we need." Deep concern
crossed her face. "But, Mike, are you sure you want to risk your
life for it?"

"Don't forget I'm a champion of justice." He
winked. "Actually, much of my work lately has been of the
investigative nature. Of course in this case we don't just go into
the Capitol, flash our ID and get all the answers. I'm afraid all
we'd get would be a bullet in the back."

"That seems a certainty."

"I'm not going to put all of our eggs into
the same basket, though. I'm going to try to get a lead on those
guys in the blue car. We do know one of them is named Pete, and you
can give a good description of him. I know quite a few FBI
investigators. Surely I'll know one of the ones on the case."

He looked at his watch, then jumped up and
turned on the television, in time to be greeted by the local news
commentator.

"I want to see if they have anything about
you on the news." They watched until the first commercial. The only
news about Lacy was the wedding announcement. A still photo of Lacy
flashed across the screen.

"My, but you're quite a celebrity."

"Oh, shut up," she said, flashing a
white-toothed smile.

"At least Chambers is running too scared to
throw around his power in his search for you. I would have thought
he'd have an APB out for you by now. I'm sure, though, that he'll
have his private network of thugs out in full force. Luckily for
us, until they find the car they'll probably think you're still in
Austin." They watched the remainder of the newscast, relieved to
find out that she was not being hunted publicly. She would not have
been surprised to learn that every policeman in the state was
hunting her. Jim had said he was in the process of framing her for
some loathsome crime.

"One of the FBI agents here in San Antonio
is a friend of mine  we went to school together. I'm
going to call him from a pay phone and find out who's on the case
in Austin. I should be back within an hour." He paused. "If I'm
not, get in touch with Eddie Wickland, the one I'm calling
now."

After he left she took a steaming shower,
then put on her Alamo T-shirt and crawled into bed, leaving the
bedside light on.

A compulsive reader, she picked up the phone
book and read the columns on places of interest in San Antonia,
studied the sketchy map and was thumbing through the yellow pages
when she heard someone put the key card into the door. She put her
hand on the phone, thinking she might have time to call for help if
the intruder were not Mike.

It was Mike. She sank back to a reclining
position.

"I got a hold of Eddie's wife." He came and
sat on the side of her bed. "She said he'd been assigned to the
Austin case and was staying at the Hilton there, so I called
him  told him I might have some information on his case,
but that I couldn't tell him yet because my informant's life was in
danger. I asked what leads he had, and he said he still had nothing
on the guys in the blue car. Their only lead is that Bryson had
asked the local police for information on the cop who was killed by
a sniper, the one who investigated Ruth Chambers' fatal
accident."

Lacy sat up and ran a finger across the
stubble on his cheek. "You look tired."

He got to his feet. "I am." He hadn't met
her gaze. "Think I'll shut off the light, take off my clothes, and
get some shut eye."

As she lay in the darkness, she heard his
pants unzip and fall to the floor, then he was picking them up. He
must be flattening them out so he won't lose his creases, she
thought. He took a few steps. She knew he was hanging them over the
back of the chair. Then she heard him get into the room's other
full-size bed.

After a few minutes, he called her name into
the darkness.

"Huh?" she answered.

"Why did you turn to me after these two
years without a word?"

"I've been thinking about you a lot lately.
I sort of unconsciously realized recently that I was pretty foolish
two years ago." She had to change the subject or she'd spill out
her guts. And she couldn't throw herself at him. She had her
pride.

Maybe she could handle the situation more
lightly. "I met a friend of yours at a party a couple of weeks
ago," she said. "I don't remember his name, but he worked with you
in Houston. I took care to ask him if you were married." She had
gone as far as she dared. The next move had to be his. She almost
held her breath.

The ensuing silence provoked her. If only he
would speak. After a while he said, "I haven't found the girl who
could knock you off the pedestal I placed you on." He said it
without assurance, a funny little catch in his normally strident
voice.

But the words were more tender than any
proclamation of love could ever have been. What could she ever have
done to merit such ecstasy? "Oh, Mike, that's the nicest thing
anyone ever said to me."

Though they were separated by four or five
feet, she had never felt so close to him before.

After a minute of thoughtful silence, she
continued. "I don't understand myself. Never before or since have I
cared for anyone the way I cared for you. Why didn't I ever tell
you? And, why didn't you ever tell me? Never did I know for sure
that you..."