John Gilstrap - At all costs

If Paul harbored any ill will toward his assignment to second chair, he never showed it. In fact, Irene’s willingness to let subordinates shine on the job had served him well. No doubt his next assignment would be as supervisory agent in charge of a field office somewhere.

Well, no doubt until today, anyway. Fact was, if this Donovan thing went bad, everyone associated with it would be painted with a very ugly brush. At headquarters, they called it high incentive to perform.

Presently, Paul, Irene, and a dozen other cops and FBI agents were dismantling Farm Meadows Mobile Home Park, looking for some clue as to where the Donovans might have gone. So far, they’d found nothing; but the Phoenix P.D. was enjoying remarkable success in collaring four fugitives wanted on felony warrants. Irene overheard a cop liken the scampering felons to roaches scattering in the light. Personally, she preferred her own analogy of lifting a rock. Either way, Chief Sherwood had dodged one hell of a bullet.

There had to be a way to track them down. She refused to believe that the earth could simply open up and digest three human beings. Everything people did left a trail of some sort. Everyone, it would seem, except the Donovans.

Paul sighed loudly and leaned against the makeshift porch attached to the Donovans’ trailer. “I know you don’t want to hear this,” he said sheepishly, “but it appears they plain just got away. The closets are still full of clothes, there’s dishes in the sink and wet clothes in the washing machine. When they left, they left. Poof.”

She helped herself to an Astro Turfed step. “And we missed them at the school,” she sighed.

“Two hours ago,” he confirmed. “We’re getting a pretty good handle on how they spent their day, too. The neighbor down the street-a Mary Barnett-says she saw Carolyn in the bank this morning, looking, as she said, ‘very suspicious. ’ ”

“What does that mean?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably means that Mrs. Barnett doesn’t have enough to do. I’ve got a guy at the bank just the same, talking to folks down there.”

She nodded. “Anything else?”

“Uh-huh. Let me show you.” He led the way inside the Donovans’ trailer, past the kitchen and the living room, and into the master bedroom. Not much for the trailer park scene herself, she had to admit that the place looked better than most. “Look here,” he said, pointing to the bed. “Three duffel bags, packed with clothes and toiletries.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Three bags? As in Mama Bear, Papa Bear, and Baby Bear?”

“Exactly,” he confirmed. “Three bags packed with essentials, yet the drawers and closets are all full.”

She scowled. “Now, you tell me how you can look at a closet and tell me it’s full. You have some special power, do you, that lets you look at someone’s closet and tell what’s not there?” She chuckled and shook her head.

He scowled. He didn’t like being the target of her derision, and he wasn’t at all sure why she’d suddenly decided to take up residence on his back. “Think about it,” he urged. “Wouldn’t you think that someone throwing stuff together at the last minute would leave a mess? You’d have shit hanging out of drawers and stuff half-pulled off hangers. But look at this place.” He made a wide, sweeping motion with his arm. “I mean, it’s not House and Garden, but the place is certainly organized.”

She turned her eyes back to the duffel bags. “Maybe they were going on a trip.”

“The bags were padlocked into a closet.”

“So?”

“So I think they’ve been planning for this. Look, this bag here even has pictures and baby memorabilia. No one takes stuff like that on vacation. The Donovans were ready to go at a moment’s notice, which means they’ve got a plan. They know what they’re going to do, where they’re going to go, and how they’re going to get there.”

“But we interrupted their plan,” she offered. “So maybe they’re off balance.”

He shrugged. “Well, okay. Maybe. But remember, these are just the essentials. Nothing here to make or break a getaway.”

She considered that for a long moment. “Which means they’ve got more essentials someplace else.”

He nodded. “I would if I were them.”

She regarded him with a long look. “You think maybe you’re giving them too much credit? Just because they’ve vanished once doesn’t necessarily mean they’re geared up to do it again.”

“In fact, they have done it again.” Paul seemed a little embarrassed to be stating the obvious.

She sighed and rubbed her temples. Frankel’s tirade hadn’t yet stopped echoing in her brain. “What else do you have?”

He looked down. “Well, you know, it’s still early in the investigation…”

“Don’t go into excuses mode on me,” she warned.

He paged through his notebook one more time, looking for a ray of hope, but ultimately flipped it closed. “Honestly? Beyond the interesting trivia, we don’t have anything useful yet. I mean, we’ve got all the physical evidence in the world that the Brightons are really the Donovans, but so what? We knew that before we got here. What we really want to know is where they’ve gone, and there we don’t have a clue. Not yet, anyway.” The words hung heavily in the air. His boss looked like she might start to growl. “I wish I could tell you something you want to hear,” he concluded, “but I can’t.”

She set her jaw. “Do you have any idea how tired I am of people telling me what they can’t do?” She found herself repeating Frankel’s words, nearly verbatim. “I can hire a sixth grader to tell me what we can’t do. Careers, on the other hand, are built on the ability to find answers.” She strode back toward the kitchen, with Paul close behind. They helped themselves to seats at the table.

Stung by her reprimand, Paul would wait till next week before he broke the silence. After all these years, he deserved better than this, and his expression showed it.

“One more time,” she prodded. “Tell me what we do know.”

He took a deep breath and swallowed his anger. “Okay. What we know: They’re very careful people. They were ready to run and presumably have been for quite some time. We’ve found all the trappings of family life. You know, books, magazines, toiletries, toys for the kid. At first glance, their reading tastes tend to run toward romances and thrillers, and there’s a collection of Goosebumps books in the kid’s room my son would kill for. The only thing of even marginal interest is some of the magazines we’ve found. Lots of outdoors stuff-sportsmen’s rags. To me, that’s significant, if only because outdoor survival skills make it easier for them to disappear.”

Irene scowled as she listened. “What about correspondence? Are there letters and such with return addresses we can trace?”

He opened the notebook again. Actually, he knew there were no notes relevant to the question, but it was a convenient way to stall for time. “We really haven’t found much of substance there, either,” he said. “Some unpaid bills and junk mail, mostly. We’ll have a better answer in a couple of hours, once we get everything logged and examined.” He sighed and raised his palms. “It’s just early, Irene. I don’t know what to tell you.”

A new shadow appeared in the doorway. “Excuse me…”

The timid voice belonged to Special Agent Mike Jamison, who stood at the front door, waiting to be recognized. If people truly looked like their pets, then Jamison should have owned a horse farm. God, what a face. In J. Edgar’s day, when FBI agents were required to look the part, Jamison’s overbite would never have made it as far as the academy. Even today, despite an allegedly more progressive Bureau, the young agent’s looks remained a threat to his livelihood. Timid and quiet, Jamison was widely accepted as a loser. Within five years, Irene figured, he’d be permanently consigned to Bureau Hell, raiding Indian stills somewhere in North Dakota.