Catch Her If You Can (11 page)

When asked for the motive for the attack, I hesitated. Charlie was already in enough trouble. I hated to shovel more on him but saw no way out of sharing Brenda’s frantic disclosures.

 

AFTER the drama of the day and evening, I had to force myself to sit down at my laptop and draft an email to my boss. I knew the fire incident would appear in DARPA’s morning report. My only hope of salvation was to zing off a preliminary notification tonight, before he read the morning report.

I was stuck at “Hi, Dr. J” when my phone rang. Grabbing at the chance of even a temporary reprieve, I checked caller ID. I didn’t recognize the number so I let it go to voice mail.

“Lieutenant Spade, this is DeWayne Wilson, Channel Nine News.”

Oh, crap! I had a feeling I knew what was coming. Junior Reporter confirmed it with his next breathless disclosure.

“My producer just called. He picked up a report on the police scanner that an EPPD patrol officer responded to a nine-one-one call involving you tonight. He thought because of our, uh, past association you might fill me in on the details. Call me as soon as you can and . . .”

Sighing, I hit talk. “No comment.”

“Lieutenant Spade? Is that you?”

“No.”

I thoroughly enjoyed the ensuing five seconds of silence.

“It sounds like you,” he said hesitantly.

I took pity on the guy. “All right. You caught me, DeWayne. But I can’t comment on the incident tonight.”

“Why not? Are you saying it’s related to the Victor Duarte shooting?”

I started to dismiss the suggestion out of hand. Brenda had been so emphatic the attacker was after Charlie. When he’d ordered me to get in his car, I’d just assumed he’d mistaken me for Brenda and Richie the Mob Guy intended to force Charlie to pay up by kidnapping his wife.

Junior Reporter had now opened other, far more sinister, possibilities. Maybe someone had heard the story about the reward. Maybe they thought I’d already collected and decided to take a cut. What better way than to force me into a car and hold me for ransom? Or keep me incommunicado until the banks opened tomorrow morning and I could withdraw some cold, hard cash.

Or maybe, I thought as my stomach did a slow roll, whoever had hired Duarte was out for revenge.

“Gotta go,” I mumbled.

I disconnected, feeling shell-shocked. How the heck had my life become so complicated? Longing for the days before severed heads and ex-husbands on the lam from the Mob, I decided Dr. J would have to wait. Right now I needed Ben and Jerry’s Vanilla Caramel Fudge. And lots of it!

TWO heaping bowls of vanilla caramel fudge did the trick. Reenergized, I drafted a brief and shamelessly exculpatory email about the fire to Dr. J, fine-tuned it a couple of times, and zinged it off.

I hoped Mitch would call before I hit the sack, but I didn’t hear from him. I was happy he and Jenny had these few precious days together but I was anxious to talk to him and bring him up to speed on the Charlie situation. I also wanted his take on Junior Reporter’s suggestion there might be a connection between Pipe Guy and the Duarte shooting.

I figured that scary possibility would keep me tossing and turning all night, but I zonked right out. It did, however, make me exercise a bit more caution when I left for work the next morning.

My thumb hovered above the alarm button on my keypad and I surveyed the parked cars carefully before I approached my own. In the bright light of day, the vicious dents and shattered taillights looked a whole lot nastier than they had last night. Sighing, I added three items to my already extensive mental checklist.

Take car in for estimate.

Get copy of police report.

Call insurance company.

Thank heavens I’m insured with USAA. The giant corporation is run by former military personnel and caters exclusively to active duty troops, retirees, honorably discharged veterans, and their dependents. Their fees are also graduated to fit military pay scales. As you might surmise, second lieutenants rank darn close to the bottom of the scale.

If I timed everything just right, I could drop my car off at the Chrysler dealership, hitch a ride to the Ford dealership, get Charlie’s truck out of hock, and drive it until my car was repaired.

Or not.

If that
was
one of Richie Boy’s goons last night and he
had
mistaken me for Brenda, it might not be too smart to tool around town in Charlie’s pickup. For all Pipe Guy knew, his primary target was still in El Paso.

I decided to hold off on switching vehicles until I’d talked to my insurance company. So of course my defunct taillights got me stopped twice on my way to work. Once by an EPPD traffic cop and once by a Fort Bliss gate guard. Luckily, both bought my explanation of the recent nature of the damage and my promise to have it repaired as soon as possible.

I parked across the street again, but let myself in through the side door this time. Once inside, I recorded two immediate impressions. One, electrical power had been restored to our end of the hallway. The lights were on and the air-conditioning hummed quietly.

Two, my quivering nostrils picked up a powerful scent. Not the odor of damp or mold, although I fully expected both to set in after yesterday’s fiasco. That was coffee I smelled, dark and rich and fresh.

I dumped my hat and purse on my desk and followed my nose to the break room. Before she’d left last night Pen had lined her tea canisters up like a row of Prussian soldiers. But one of the other team members had beat her in this morning, thank God, and brought a coffeemaker, microwave, and emergency supplies with him.

I had a good idea who. The industrial-size carton of PowerBars sitting beside the microwave pretty well IDed Noel. I filled a mug, snitched a peanut butter caramel crisp bar, and strolled down to his work area.

Here’s the thing about noncoms. The good ones operate an intelligence network that makes the CIA look like an amateur enterprise. They’re also world-class foragers. Especially Special Ops types like Noel. They get dropped behind enemy lines and can live off tree roots and grubs for months. In more civilized settings, nothing is safe around them unless it’s nailed, soldered, or sutured. Even then I wouldn’t turn my back on it.

Noel was on the phone. He waved a hand in greeting and finished his call while I polished off the PowerBar.

“Right. I’ll be here. Thanks, Chief.” He hung up with a satisfied grunt. “That was Sergeant Major Callahan at the Supply Depot. He’s sending over temporary replacements for our computers. Should be here in a half hour.”

“Great.” I held up my mug. “Who donated the coffeemaker and microwave?”

“Sergeant Hawkins over at A Company. One of his artillery batteries just shipped out for a six-month rotation to Iraq. He let me, ah, borrow a few items.”

Uh-oh. I’d met some of A Company’s artillerymen. They didn’t hear very well—the big guns do that to you—but you don’t want to be on the receiving end of their multiple rocket launchers.

“We’re not going to have those guys come looking for their stuff, are we?”

“Not to worry, Lieutenant. I’ll make sure everything’s back where it should be before they return.”

“Who furnished the PowerBars?”

“Buddy Thompson at the gym. He ordered a dozen case lots for the Military Marathon a few months back. Some doofus in central purchasing screwed up and bought two dozen by mistake. Bud’s been trying to get rid of ’em ever since.”

His chair squeaking, Noel leaned back and looked around me.

“Charlie didn’t come in with you? I told him I would take him to get his truck.”

“You’ll have to take me, instead. Charlie made an emergency exit last night.”

“Huh?”

I heard arrival sounds and delayed an explanation. “I’ll tell you about it at confab. We’d better grab a refill before Pen dumps the coffee and boils up some milk-weed and chrysanthemums or something.”

Noel was already on his feet. We managed to snag fresh cups before a
tch-tch
ing Pen did her thing with the canisters and coffeemaker. When everyone had squeezed into my office for our morning session, I informed them that the perpetrator of yesterday’s electrical blowout had flown the coop.

“Charlie had a couple of visitors last night. One came after us with a lead pipe. The other arrived a few moments later and . . .”

“Whoa! Back up a sec, Geardo Goddess!”

Dennis thumbed his glasses higher on the bridge of his nose. He was wearing all black today. Black high-tops, black jeans, black T-shirt displaying an ornate, medieval-style chess piece tipped on its side. Abstruse metaphors and symbols usually go right over my head but even I grasped that he was in mourning for his ruined Garry Kasparov poster.

“Someone attacked you and Charlie?” he echoed, bug-eyed. “With a pipe?”

When I nodded, Pen clucked her tongue in dismay. “You weren’t hurt, were you?”

“I wasn’t, but Charlie took a nasty hit. So did my Sebring,” I added glumly.

I gave my team the details as I knew them. No one seemed particularly surprised to hear Charlie owed big bucks to the Mob. Or that he’d hoped that I would bail him out with a cut of the reward money.

The reason he’d gone into debt earned another tongue cluck from Pen and raised brows among the men. Particularly when I told them Brenda Baby had descended on the scene all hyper and scared and carried Charlie off with her even before the cops arrived.

“They left you holding the bag?” Noel said.

“The bag and his truck.”

“Huh. I kinda liked Charlie, but they shouldn’t have skipped on you like that.”

I chose not to remind him this wasn’t the first time my ex and Brenda had done wrong by me. I was more interested in getting my team’s opinion of Junior Reporter’s post-incident speculation.

I was hoping they would collectively pooh-pooh the idea that I might have been the target of the attack, not Charlie. To my chagrin, the possibility produced an assortment of worried frowns and pursed lips.

“There could be a connection,” Rocky said slowly. “Did the man who attacked you say anything?”

“Just ‘get in the car.’ I figured he mistook me for Brenda and planned to hold me as surety until Charlie came up with cash. It didn’t occur to me to wonder if Pipe Guy could be connected to the Duarte mess until Cub Reporter DeWayne suggested it.”

“Have you discussed this possibility with Mitch?”

“Not yet. He’s out of town and we didn’t connect last night.”

“How about your friend at the FBI?”

“I guess I could call him,” I said with a distinct lack of enthusiasm.

“Do it,” Rocky urged with a nervous twitch. His thin shoulders hunched under his short-sleeved shirt. “You don’t want to take unnecessary—”

He was interrupted by the jangle of my cell phone. I eyed the number on caller ID and groaned.

“Oh, Lord. It’s Dr. J.”

My team cleared out with the same speed they’d displayed the day a spotted skunk meandered through the open door of our D-FAC. Bracing my shoulders, I flipped up the phone.

 

I did my best to assure my boss that I had matters fully under control at this end. He almost choked on that one but eventually agreed the preliminary damage estimates weren’t too heart-stopping. Still, he hung up with promises of dire retribution if I didn’t submit the official reports on time and in proper format.

After that inauspicious start, my day went from crappy to god-awful. I made the requisite calls to EPPD to request a copy of the police report and to my insurance agent to alert her of a pending claim. She and I have come to know each other well in recent months. Not by choice on either side.

I then called the Chrysler service department to set up an appointment for a damage estimate. The service manager and I are on a first-name basis, too.

While I was talking to Hal, the deputy post commander’s secretary beeped in with word that Colonel Roberts would like to see me in his office at fourteen hundred, if that was convenient. It was—mostly because I couldn’t think of any way out of what I knew would be an uncomfortable session.

Rescheduling my missed JAG appointment was next on my to-do list. The receptionist was a bit snippy about my no-show yesterday afternoon until I explained the reason for it. She then grudgingly agreed to slip me in.

“Can you come right now? Major Burke is with a client but should finish within the next ten or fifteen minutes.”

“I’m on my way!”

 

THE Office of the Staff Judge Advocate occupies one of Fort Bliss’s most historic buildings. Every time I drive past the 1890s-era two-story cavalry barracks, I can almost hear a bugler sounding assembly and the thunder of booted feet answering the call.

All I heard today was the sound of my own boots as I went up the front steps. Once inside, I consulted a directory with a bewildering array of information. For those of you who’ve never had to use the services of a JAG, they provide advice to both commanders and individual troops on civil and criminal matters. Their areas of expertise range from executing wills to paternity suits to claims for damages by civilians whose property was accidentally damaged by artillery fire to murder and mayhem.

When I’d called for the original appointment I wasn’t sure where collecting a reward from a non-DOD agency might fall. Neither was the receptionist. After some consultation, she’d steered me to the Civil and Administrative Law Division. I’d subsequently checked the CALD out on the Fort Bliss website and knew it consisted of the chief, an NCOIC, two military attorneys, and three civilian attorneys.

My appointment was with a big, bluff, ruddy-faced major who looked like he might have played defensive tackle for West Point or Notre Dame. He was ushering out his previous client when I arrived, so I got ushered right in. Waving me to a seat in front of his desk, the major folded his impressive frame into a high-backed leather chair.