Bitch Factor – Chapter 4
Feed a cop and you’ve got a friend for life, an attorney had told Dixie when she joined the DA’ s staff. At the time, the remark had rubbed her naïve sense of ethics the wrong way.
In fact, the value of networking — building a grid of people who knew other people who knew other, possibly very important, people — eluded her until the day a patrolman in Denver witnessed a situation that helped Dixie nail a husband-wife burglary team in Houston. Working off-duty at a Rockies game, the patrolman saw the couple talking to a local fence they claimed never to have met. Bingo! Dixie closed the case quick as a hiccup. Now she had law enforcement contacts in forty-two of the fifty states — and the night truly had a thousand eyes.
She’d need all of them if Parker Dann had fled to Canada.
Slim Jim McGrue of the Texas Highway Patrol had come through more than once over the years. McGrue could be a big help tonight, too, if Dixie could only talk him into it. Unfortunately, the fact that Dann had not yet officially jumped bail prevented her from being totally honest.
After checking around Dann’s neighborhood without luck, Dixie had jimmied the lock on his back door. She found the small house neat and clean. A few hangers swung empty in the closet, but that didn’t mean much. A couple of empty suitcases were stacked behind the suits. His shaving gear remained in the bathroom cabinet, but not his toothbrush or toothpaste. The most permanent personal item in the house was a well-stocked bookcase. Dixie thumbed through a volume of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Either Dann had bought it used or he had spent many hours reading it. Nothing told her specifically Dann had skipped, yet she knew he had. The house felt like its owner wouldn’t be returning.
Calling in a few favors, Dixie had set up watch posts at the nearest border towns, Brownsville and Laredo, and at the Louisiana state line. Then she’d phoned McGrue. When he agreed to meet, she’d had to fight off her usual case of the shivers. Watching him now through the diner window as he unfolded from his patrol car, Dixie was reminded of a praying mantis. How many lawbreakers had watched that sight in their rearview mirrors and soiled their car seats?
Six-foot-eight and thin as a shadow, the highway patrolman moved through the diner with a loose-jointed, sticklike grace. People stared. He didn’t seem to notice. Once, when apprehending a criminal, Dixie had seen McGrue stretch his long legs to cover the length of a football field in an eye blink, as if time itself had folded a stitch. Scary. With his deepset eyes, the iridescent green of pond algae, finely chiseled nose, and sensuous mouth, McGrue was admittedly handsome, but as spooky as a walking cadaver.
He nodded a greeting and slid into the booth. Dixie recalled Amy’s comment that the men Dixie worked around were all creeps — meaning the criminal element, of course. What would she think of McGrue?
When the waitress arrived, Dixie ordered an unwanted cup of coffee for herself. The patrolman ordered grapefruit juice.
“Tell me this, Counselor,” he said, after swallowing half the juice in one gulp. “With six major highways leaving Houston, not counting the Gulf Freeway to the coast, why would your friend choose to go through Oklahoma?” McGrue’s voice reminded Dixie of dead leaves scudding along the sidewalk.
“Habit, mostly. Dan travels all over the state on sales calls, but his favorite route is I-45 North. He’ll know the speed traps and the stretches where he can make the best time. He’ll know fifty-nine is currently rerouted for construction. Forty-five is flat, multilane, easy traveling.”
“Could head south.”
“Could.” While she told him about Dann’s former residences in Montana and Calgary, and her lookouts along the Mexico border, McGrue took some time over the menu, finally settling on steak, four eggs, hashbrown potatoes, biscuits with gravy, a side of ham, and double apple pie à la mode for dessert. Dixie regarded the skin stretched tight over his rangy frame. Maybe it was true that grapefruit juice burned fat.
“Dann was here in town as late as seven o’clock,” she said. “A neighbor saw him come home, stay a few minutes, then leave, carrying a couple of plastic grocery bags. I cruised his favorite hangouts. No sign of him or his car.” Dann’s Cadillac had been impounded after Betsy’s death. Now he drove a four-year-old Chevy sedan with a patched fender.
“Might ditch the car,” McGrue drawled in his raspy voice.
“Probably would, if he knew we were looking for him.”
“Now it’s we, is it?” McGrue took a handful of Jolly Rancher candies out of his pocket and laid them on the table, lemon, sour apple, and one peach. He slid the peach across to Dixie with a bony finger, the nail glossy and perfectly trimmed. Then he thumbed the cellophane off a lemon candy and crunched rather than sucked it. The sound made Dixie’s teeth hurt.
“I was hoping you’d put out a ‘suspicious vehicle’ watch,” she said, “along with a ‘do not attempt to apprehend,’ of course.” Asking the Highway Patrol to watch for Dann’s car was her best bet for picking the skip up fast, without an official contract. But it was also like issuing McGrue a Gold Card for paybacks.
“Hot plates, sugar!” The waitress covered the table with steaming dishes. “If the steak’s not done just right, now, I’ll take it back. Y’all hear?” She lingered, eyeing McGrue, her smile turned up to maximum wattage.
He held the woman’s gaze impassively a moment, then sliced into the steak, which promptly bled into the eggs. Turning back to the waitress, his gaze slid downward to an inch of cleavage above an open button.
“Looks good.”
She smiled even brighter. “Let me know if y’all want anything else.”
Dixie studied McGrue as he watched the waitress swivel down the aisle. Even in December, his skin was leathery and nut brown from the sun. His hair, almost the same shade, was expensively styled to fall magically into place after the weight of his uniform cowboy hat was lifted. McGrue was a man women noticed, no denying that. Dixie had seen others come on to him as blatantly as their waitress had just now. Maybe they didn’t notice the danger.
Or maybe that’s what attracted them.
“Tell me, Counselor,” he said, after he’d put away a dozen bites. “Just why are you looking for this guy?”
Dixie mulled that over. McGrue could be trusted not to get in her way, even if he ran Dann’s plates and recognized the name. But the people McGrue would be spreading the word to might not be as cooperative.
“A friend of his is worried about him. Thinks he’s … unstable.”
The patrolman looked up sharply. “Psycho?” Coming unexpectedly upon a raging lunatic was every officer’s nightmare.
“Let’s just say he needs careful handling.” This story was getting complicated. Dixie didn’t like fibbing, but she’d promised Belle to keep Dann’s whereabouts quiet, if he’d indeed fled the state. An overexuberant patrolman might throw Dann in jail. The paperwork would certainly find its way back to the DA’ s office. The DA would leak the information to the press. The jury, despite the judge’s reminder not to read or listen to news about the case, would discover Dann had tried to escape justice, and the fact would undoubtedly sway the verdict. Dixie was bitterly regretting she’d ever agreed to look for Dann.
But how could she disappoint Ryan? The kid trusted his Aunt Dixie to make things right in the world. They’re going to fry this guy…
McGrue’s narrow gaze inched over Dixie’s face with the glacial precision of an insect testing the air with its feelers. He knew she wasn’t being completely candid. She resisted the urge to look away.
“All you need is a sighting, then. That right?”
She nodded, reluctantly. “I’ll pick him up myself.”
In normal bail jumps, it worked the other way around. She located the skip, then alerted the law enforcement agency to bring him in. Safe. Smart. Uncomplicated.
McGrue sliced a ribbon of steak, cut it in half, and speared it with his fork.
“Last time I noticed, Counselor, I didn’t owe you any recompense.” He chewed the steak, slow and thorough.
“I’ll owe you a payback if we find Dann before he crosses a state line.”
“One?”
Dixie shrugged. “Whatever’s fair.” She was in no position to haggle.
A radio crackled on the seat beside him. He slipped the control switch. “McGrue.”
“Chevy sedan, Texas plates, 266ZPM,” the radio crackled. “Sighted seventy-two miles south of Dallas.”
“Got it.” McGrue switched off and speared another bloody chunk of meat. “I put out the bolo right after you called me,” he said, without looking up from his meal.
Just like McGrue to act quickly, yet keep her flapping like a butterfly on a collector’ s pin until he decided how much the favor was worth. Dixie looked at her watch.
“A two-hour lead. I’d better start making time.” Dann would stick close to the speed limit, knowing the highway would likely be thick with cops during the holidays. Her own 5.0-liter Mustang could tap out 110 miles an hour without breathing heavy. Even at that, and even with the state police looking the other way, it would take five hours to catch up with Dann, another five to bring him back to Houston. She picked up the dinner tab.
“Counselor?” McGrue stacked a thick slice of ham atop his biscuits and gravy. “If your friend crosses the Canadian border, best let him go about his business. Our northern neighbors don’t take bounty hunters to their bosoms like we do.”
Dixie nodded. A pair of skip tracers had been convicted of kidnapping recently when they tried to bring a bail jumper back from Canada. Technically, she might very well run into the same trouble here in the States, since Belle had insisted on leaving the bondsman out of the loop. But if all went as planned, Parker Dann would stop soon after midnight to bed down. That’d put him still in Texas or, at the outside, Oklahoma. One of McGrue’s lookouts would radio Dixie with his motel location, and Dann would get a surprise wake-up call. Easy.
“If he gets as far as Kansas, give me a buzz,” McGrue said. “I know a few people up there.” He speared the last triangle of ham. “Got plans for Christmas?”
The change of subject caught her by surprise.
“Usual family stuff. Lots of eggnog and fruitcake.” After the briefest pause, she added, “You?”
“My son … maybe. Lately, we haven’t been too close.”
Dixie hesitated. Even spooky Slim Jim McGrue shouldn’t spend Christmas alone. Divorced, he had hinted around more than once about catching a beer together. Dixie wondered how he’d stack up against Delbert Snelling.
Meet me here next week for Chapter 5, or Click Here to check out another Dixie Flannigan book, Slice of Life, because it’s a great weekend read.
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