Chill Factor (44 page)

On the way here, she’d stopped to photocopy the pages in Edna’s journal. Marty would find some of the entries upsetting, but others might assuage his guilt over his mother’s death. His revelation had indeed angered her. After Bill’s death Edna’s world had narrowed to deciding which flowers needed watering each day, but an entry on January sixth spoke of the Fortyniners, where she met Vernice Urich and Terrence Jackson.

In a later installment, Edna and Lucy Ames had joined Mike Tesche’s aerobics class after seeing his flyer at Fit After Fifty. Mike invited Edna to a Sundown Ceremony, where, among others, she met Rose. Shortly after that ceremony, Edna’s bitterness toward her family seemed to mellow.
Marty is a fine son
, she’d written in February.
I’ve let go of all the hurt and anger. I wish Bill could’ve done the same before he died.

But later entries were more disturbing. Edna learned that Lucy was tutoring privately with Mike.
I don’t begrudge her; I only pray someday I’ll ascend to that level.
And of course, she had.
Mike and Lucy have something special planned. I’ve been chosen to be a part of it. The Church needs so much more funding, yet Congress wastes our tax dollars. I offered to transfer half my investments now—rather than in my will—but Mike wouldn’t hear of it. Lucy’s plan is better, he says.

Why would Mike turn down a donation? Unfortunately, Edna hadn’t spelled out Lucy’s plan specifically, and Rashly would balk at investigating a church on such vague ramblings from an old woman’s pen—but the journal contained more information than the task force had at present.

From his aerobics classes, Mike chose his subjects—lonely women, abandoned by their families, hungry for the love and attention they’d lost, wealthy enough to contribute heavily to the Church of The Light. Where did Angela fit in? Fifty-plus, but mentally still a child, had she been the only one who succeeded at robbery? Or the only one who failed … to die?

Dixie spied Rashly at the western edge of the park, near a stage where a band played Mexican music while Folklorico dancers twirled their multicolored skirts. Among the trees, a giant candy-striped Uncle Sam balloon waved from a tall cylindrical platform. The main platform, larger and noisier than all the others, billowed with red, white, and blue flags. According to the news report Dixie’d heard driving in, the Mayor’s commemoration speech was scheduled for nine-thirty. It was already nine twenty-five. Traffic had been a mess.

Making her way toward Rashly, Dixie jostled past a booth selling commemorative buttons. She dropped the journal. A young man scooped it up and handed it back to her.

“Thanks. My feet get tangled in crowds.” As Dixie started to move on, a triangular metal insignia on the boy’s lapel caught her eye. She gripped his arm. “What does your pin symbolize?”

He glanced down at the enameled emblem. “Preservation Society.”

“Preservation of what?”

“American traditions. Hot dogs, marching bands.” He smiled. “Memorial Day.”

“A school group?” He looked barely high school age. Polite kid. Neatly dressed—unusual in the age of wash, dry, and go.

“Just a local club. Excuse me, I need to meet someone.” He jogged toward the Uncle Sam booth.

“Preservation Society” didn’t sound like an organization that would paint graffiti on buildings, and the kid looked too preppy for a gang member. But the gold “P” in a red triangle on a blue field matched the symbol in Ted Tally’s sketches.

She considered mentioning the boy to Rashly …
nice kid, but he’s wearing this pin.
Then she’d have to explain Ted’s drawing, which would lead to explaining how she happened to
have
the drawings. Marty had been along during her B&E, which wouldn’t gain him any points. Besides, she needed Rashly’s full concentration when she told him about the Church of The Light.

She hated turning everything over to the task force, knowing they’d move like snails. Any investigation into a church would be frustratingly slow and cautious. Perhaps she could figure a way to stay involved. No reason her early departure this morning should tip off Mike that she was on to his odious scheme. Maybe Rashly could convince the task force that Dixie was their best bet at gaining enough evidence to hang Mike Tesche. While Edna’s notes hadn’t specifically incriminated him, they’d back up what Dixie’d seen in Mike’s files.

It was the final entry in Aunt Edna’s journal, penned the night before she held up the Richmond bank, that had chilled Dixie:
Lucy’s dead! Oh, I know she’s moved on to a happier place, but we planned so carefully. How could this happen? I’ll miss her. I’ll do well for us both tomorrow.

Not suicide but a desperate attempt to champion a cause she earnestly believed in. Reading those pages, Dixie’d grasped
the depth of Edna’s need for validation of her own worth. That validation should have come from lifelong friends who knew and loved her, not from a faction of zealots. Dixie, caught up in her own life, had failed to see Aunt Edna’s downward spiral into desolation, just as she’d failed to see Kathleen’s advancing frailty as the cancer claimed her. But Rose Yenik—
somebody’s
friend and mother—could still damn well be saved.

On the main stage, the band signaled the start of the commemoration ceremony by playing louder and more vigorously. Other bands ended their numbers and people began to congregate near the big event. As Dixie called out to Rashly, dozens of moving bodies squeezed in front of her, cutting her off. Rashly vanished.

She spied Chief Wanamaker and his wife, Mira, near the main stage, surrounded by Secret Service types. Rashly might join them. Then she saw the Mayor talking with the young man from the “Preservation Society.” He must be part of the program.

Drawing nearer, Dixie realized her mistake. The kid with the Mayor was freckle-faced Philip Laskey. He wore similar clothes, crisp khaki pants and jacket, light blue shirt. Certainly not a uniform—the jacket was longer than the one the other boy wore, but the
impression
of a uniform, as if they both attended the same private school.

Nearer the main platform, the crowd thickened. Dixie squeezed through, murmuring apologies. The master of ceremonies finished his welcoming comments. The band started a Sousa strain. Mayor Banning approached the stage, his wife Kaylynn applauding nearby.

As Dixie eeled through the crowd, the Mayor praised Houstonians for their support over the past six months and voters who turned out at the polls during the recent bond election. Then he praised the HPD officers, two slain and one wounded, for valor in the line of duty. He commended Chief Wanamaker for squashing an insidious drug ring that had preyed specifically on elementary schools. The Chief joined the Mayor at the lectern—

Crack!

The sound came from behind her.

Banning fell.

Shrieks. Shouts.
A swell of movement toward the stage. Dixie muscled through for a better view.

Crack!
The Chief went down.

Screams and motion erupted as people realized what had happened. Paramedics scrambled into action. FBI agents swarmed the main stage, ordering everyone back.

More shots behind her.

“They got him!” A cheer among the clamor.

Dixie pushed through a dense wall of shrieking, shoving bodies headed toward the nearest exit, forcing her way in the direction of the gunshots. As she neared the Uncle Sam display, a female voice on a loudspeaker identified herself as FBI and commanded everyone away. Two men lay sprawled on the grass, khaki-clad legs splayed awkwardly.

A woman clutched Dixie’s arm and shook her, babbling. Dixie jerked free and the screaming woman grabbed a man ahead of her. At the edge of the crowd encircling the slain assassins, a small boy stood crying and pointing. A young girl tried to tug him away.

Dixie pushed closer. One slain man was black, the other Hispanic. Both wore light blue shirts, khaki jackets. No triangular pins, but both looked as all-American as the “Preservation Society” member. And Philip Laskey.

A strange notion popped into Dixie’s head. What if a gang didn’t look like a gang? What if the members dressed against type, adopted a wholesome, all-American facade, appeared as harmless as the proverbial boy next door? Like Poe’s purloined letter, such a gang could mingle in a crowd like this one with little notice, while a young man in baggies—shaved head, tattoos, skin piercings, gang colors—wouldn’t get two feet inside the park without a cavity search.

She scanned the mob. No way she could get to Rashly now. And the FBI would never listen to such a wacky tale. Not when they already had the shooters.

Dixie angled toward a park entrance and worked her sharp elbows, stretching to see over shoulders and heads as she wind-milled through the throng. If her hunch was right, other gang members would be making their escape.

Out on the sidewalk, the crowd divided around a news truck from a local TV station parked at the curb. A newscaster shouted into a microphone, a camera trained on her face.

“Two suspects have been shot and apprehended!”
The news-woman wore an earphone that probably connected her to another team inside.
“Officers are now securing the area around a kiosk where the snipers apparently concealed themselves to carry out the assassinations. Camouflaged with blue and white bunting, the tower-shaped …”

Dixie headed toward her Mustang, parked a block away. As she jogged, she scanned for khaki clothing—and finally saw them: two clean-cut young men striding toward a green Jeep Cherokee.

“You were told not to wear the pin, Cronin.” Philip barely contained his rage as they left Tranquility Park.

“Never mind the damn pin. What happened?” the rookie demanded. “How did they screw up?”

“Order and consistency guarantee predictable outcomes.” Philip clicked the doors open to his Cherokee and they climbed in. “One neglected detail undermines predictability. You were
told
not to wear the pin.”

“C’mon, Laskey, forget the fuck—”

Philip’s fist shot out, a hard right jab at Cronin’s mouth. Teeth scraped his knuckles. Thin drops of blood sprayed the dash.

Cronin yelped.

“You don’t have what it takes to be one with The People, Wynn Cronin.”

The rookie lashed back with a fist. Philip clamped a hand over his wrist and twisted, stopping just short of breaking it.

“Hey! All right!” Cronin squealed.

“One weak strut topples the tower. If you can’t follow simple orders, how can you be trusted to follow important ones?”

“You’re nuts, yammering about a pin when men are dead back there.”

Philip applied more thumb pressure on the wrist, compressing the nerves. The rookie gasped, tears sliding from his eyes.

“Soldiers die in battle,” Philip whispered roughly. “Did you think this was playtime?”
But Martinez, dead? Dodge, dead? Nothing right about that. They should’ve had time to blend with the crowd.
“One neglected detail can get men killed.” He released Cronin’s wrist. “Now, go home.”

“Home? My parents will know something’s wrong. I’m too jumpy.”

He did look ready to crawl out of his skin. Philip reached across the rookie and pushed open the passenger door. “The People don’t allow nerves to rule their actions.
Walk
home.”

“Walk? It’s six god—” Cronin bit off the blasphemy. “Walk six miles? It’ll take an hour.”

“By then you’ll no longer be jumpy.”

“Why can’t I hang around the park, see what happens next?”

“Colonel Jay issued an order: When Chief Wanamaker is dead, everyone goes home. We meet at the training center at noon.”

“You always do exactly what the Colonel says?”

Philip itched to wipe the petulant smirk off the rookie’s face, but not here. Not now.

“The Colonel doesn’t issue orders lightly. Everything’s been thought out, discussed, and decided upon. Colonel Jay commands the will of The People. Each of us took a vow to honor that will. Are you already backing down on your vow?”

“I didn’t say—”

“Go home, Cronin.”

The boy hesitated. “The Colonel didn’t say anything about walking six miles.”

“Then do what your heart tells you.” Philip made his face as expressionless as he’d seen the Colonel’s on such occasions. Then he placed his foot against Cronin’s side and pushed him out of the Jeep.

The rookie grappled for balance and managed to land on his feet, then glared for a count of five.

“You’re nuts, Laskey.” But he started walking.

Satisfied at providing a lesson in patience and obedience, Philip maneuvered the Cherokee into impossible traffic. He, too, had been included in the order to return home after the mission was finished … only the Colonel hadn’t expected Dodge and Martinez to go down. Certainly, he would require a report. He would need Philip’s help now more than ever. Philip entered the freeway toward The People’s training center.

Avoiding pedestrians Dixie inched the Mustang forward as she searched for the green Jeep. She spotted it in a snarl of traffic entering the freeway ramp.

But headed wrong in the tightly packed muddle, she could not make a U-turn. Recalling a little-known road that dead-ended into a vacant lot, she whipped the wheel right, drove across the lot, picked up another road, and joined the freeway at the next ramp.

Dixie had a theory about Texas drivers. If all the cars in the state were lined up bumper to bumper, some damn fool would try to pass them—and it would probably be her. Bullying her way into the traffic stream, she found an open lane and stepped on the gas.

A mile and a half later, she spotted the Jeep again. She memorized the license number, noticing there was only one person in the vehicle. Changing lanes, she eased alongside, recognized the Mayor’s junior assistant, then slowed, leaving a double car length between them.

The Cherokee remained in the center lane, driving precisely to the speed limit. Finally, it eased over to exit and turned east into a wooded area.

As the county road wound among Texas pines and thick underbrush, Dixie’s Mustang and the green Jeep were the
only cars on it. Impossible to keep the other vehicle constantly in sight without being spotted. She dropped far enough behind to avoid alerting the driver. The road wound northeast, then a sharp curve opened into a long, straight stretch of road. The Jeep should be right ahead. It was gone.