“I just got a strange call on the main office line,” his chief nurse said softly. “A man. He gave me a private message for you, but he wouldn’t say who he was.”
Melba’s view of the videotape was blocked by the weekend bag on the desk. Closing his hand over the tape, Tom picked it up and dropped it into the bag, then zipped the bag shut. “What did he say?”
“He said, ‘I was at the Frozen Chosin.’ Then he said to tell you he was parked on the south side of the office.”
It took a few moments for Tom to orient himself. In all the years he’d practiced medicine here, he’d never had occasion to think about how the building lay in relation to the cardinal directions. Thinking about the sunlight in the late afternoons, he realized that the rear of the office faced east.
“Dr. Cage,” Melba said, stepping fully inside and closing the door. “You’re free on bail, right?”
“You know I am.”
“And there are conditions to the bail, you said.”
“That’s right.” He glanced down at the zipped bag. “And I’ve already broken at least one of them.”
Melba sighed, her eyes clouded with sorrow and anxiety. “Where are you going?”
Tom avoided her gaze. “I’m going home to lie down. I’m having some angina. Just as you told Penn I was.”
She shook her head with regret. “You mean that’s what I’m supposed to tell the police.”
Tom finally looked into her eyes. “That’s all you know, Mel. I went home to lie down, and I never came back. And you never got that phone call.”
The nurse waved her hand dismissively. “I just want to know you know what you’re doing. You’re not about to try anything crazy, are you?”
He gave her the most confident smile he could manage. “Have you ever thought I was crazy?”
“All the time, thank goodness.” The nurse smiled, but the worry lines remained around her eyes.
Tom went to the window and pulled back the curtain. The police car was still there. And still empty, or so it appeared.
“Who you going to meet out there?” Melba asked.
Tom let the curtain fall, then turned and picked up his bag. As he moved to the door, he reached out and squeezed his nurse’s warm hand. “A friend, Mel. A very old friend. You take care of yourself.”
She reached after him as he departed. “You call me if you need help. I mean it. I’ll do anything you need, Doc. You know that.”
Tom felt wetness in his eyes. If only I were the man everyone seems to believe I am.
TOM FOUND THE SILVER conversion van exactly where Walt had told Melba it would be, on the south side of his office building. Framed in the open driver’s window was a face tanned so deeply that even in December it looked like varnished wood. Walt Garrity had spent thirty years as a Texas Ranger, and every hour in the sun showed on his face. But Walt’s eyes still smoldered with the fire that had driven him to hunt men across trackless wastes in the days when Sputnik was still on the drawing board and the only computers in America were in the Pentagon. In more recent years, the retired ranger had worked as an investigator for the Houston DA’s office, where Penn had first met him.
“Itty-wa deska, Private!” Walt snapped.
Tom found himself grinning. Itty-wa deska was phonetic Korean for “Get the hell over here!”
“Police car scare you?” Tom asked, walking up and slapping his hand against the van’s side.
“It didn’t reassure me.”
“City cop,” Tom said. “Probably here as a patient.”
Walt shrugged. “Will that nurse I talked to be any problem?”
“No. Mel’s good people.”
“Get in, then. There’s a full-size door on the other side. Good for crips like you.”
Tom scanned the parking lot, wondering if Sheriff Byrd had anyone watching his office. This side of his office bordered an apartment complex, and he saw no one between the buildings. Cars were passing on the boulevard to the east, but too fast for their drivers to notice anything back here. He walked around the Roadtrek and found the door Walt had described. Tom had to stoop to get through it. As he pulled the door shut behind him, he found himself in a spotlessly clean RV, small but laid out with supreme efficiency.
“We’ll stow your bag later,” Walt said. “Sit behind me till we get out of here.”
Garrity was sitting in a captain’s chair, but another seat lay directly behind him. Tom collapsed onto cushy leather and felt the van lurch as Walt put it in gear. A police radio turned down low chattered in the background.
“I’ve run down a lot of bail jumpers in my time,” Walt said. “This is the first time I ever helped one skip.”
“Thanks for getting here so fast.”
“Hell, I’m just glad for the chance to make up for last time.”
Two months earlier, the old Ranger had tried to help Penn with some dangerous business, and he’d failed in a way that left Walt thinking that age had finally robbed him of the ability to do what he’d done so well for so long.
“Glad to accommodate you,” Tom said. “Get this kimchee cab moving.”
He expected a belly laugh, but instead, Walt rotated his captain’s chair and looked intently at him. “You know they can try you in absentia if you skip bail, right?”
Tom’s stomach rolled. “I didn’t know that.”
Walt nodded. “I only mention it because they indicted you so fast. The DA obviously has a burr up his ass about you.”
“We’ll be done with our work long before this ever gets to trial. Hopefully before they even know I’m gone. Let’s go.”
Walt slapped him on the knee, and Tom winced as the Ranger turned back toward the steering wheel. Fifteen seconds later, Walt drove past the empty police car, turned onto Jefferson Davis Boulevard, and joined the traffic moving toward Highway 61.
“Did you bring the things I asked for?” Tom asked.
“That and a lot more. We could track a whole terror cell with this van, and wipe ’em out anytime you say.”
Tom nodded with relief. “Good.”
“You gonna tell me who we’re after?”
“All in good time, compadre. Let’s get the hell out of town.”
CHAPTER 38