Uncertain Justice

Chapter 15

Arson experts are still picking over the charred remains of District Attorney Carl Brady's two-story home and have refused to comment on the progress of their investigation. Brady is still recovering in St Mark's Hospital from gunshot wounds to the throat and arm. A statement issued by the doctor in charge of Mr. Brady's care says Mr. Brady is doing well and is expected to completely recover from his injuries.

" The Bexar County Sheriff's office is looking for retired Army veteran Miles Underwood in connection with the fire and shooting but are refusing to label him a suspect at this point. Calling him 'a person of interest' in the investigation, the hunt for Underwood has expanded with reported sightings as far away as Wisconsin.

"Underwood, you may recall, is the man accused in the r**e and manslaughter of a local teenager last summer. Underwood's trial ended with a hung jury just last month and he was scheduled to be retried next month."

KSAA Channel Nine

San Antonio Texas

"Evening News at Six"

March 11

§

The derelict old house and barn stood a hundred yards off the deserted county road, silhouetted by the setting Colorado sun. Miles had stopped only to stretch muscles cramped by hours of driving but it was getting time to find a place to spend the night. He couldn't go much further today; it was getting late and he was about to drop. Besides, he needed to check the map and plan the final leg of his trip.

Sunlight shining through a dirty window refracted the beam into a makeshift rainbow and flashed in Miles' eyes. He wondered if someone might be behind the window watching him. Sidling back to the pickup, he pulled out his binoculars to get a close look at the structures.

The house had an empty, abandoned air to it; he quickly convinced himself there was no one inside. The more he looked, the more he liked what he saw. The roof looked to be intact, and the windows were covered--boarded up. This might be a good place to spend the night.

Looking down the long highway in both directions without seeing or hearing the whine of tires on pavement, he made a decision. Jumping in the pickup, he turned the wheel sharply and drove up the overgrown access road to the house.

He parked behind the old structure, well out of sight from the road. Shutting off the engine, he waited for a long moment, wondering if he'd been seen. The only thing he could hear was a lonesome wind sighing through the spring's growth of thick grass.

Returning cautiously to the front of the house, he looked both ways down the deserted road. There was still nothing in sight to trouble him.

He walked down to the road with a branch twisted from a young cottonwood and brushed out the shallow tire tracks he'd left in the soft dirt of the shoulder. Working his way backwards up the hill, he swept the branch across thick bunches of flattened prairie grass to rearrange them and disguise the fact that someone had recently driven a truck up here.

At first, he was uneasy inside the house. He felt trapped by the walls. The lack of traffic on the road, though, convinced him he could hide here for a while. He slept soundly on the old floor that night, under a solid roof for the first time in many days.

§

The badly overweight man opened the top two buttons of his sweat-stained shirt to massage the area over his heart. The pains were coming more often, stayed longer, and hurt worse these days. The doctor had warned him months ago he had to find a way to reduce the tension and ... oh, by the way ... if he didn't lose some weight, he'd be dead in a year. There were times he thought the doc was overly optimistic.

There was no way to cut down on the hours he worked, though, and no way to exercise either. He couldn't afford anymore to hire someone to work the night shift so he had to cover both. It wasn't worth locking the door to the converted store front office and go home--the precious little sleep he got there didn't refresh him at all.

Bail bondsmen worked on a slender margin and the edge Steve Gonzales had was desperately thin these days. He'd expected the bail on that Army guy Underwood to be back in his accounts long ago.

Hell, the trial should been over and done with by now ... but the damn jury had deadlocked and now that son of a b***h Underwood had taken off. There was no way the State of Texas was going to forgive the bond. He was out the full three hundred thousand. He'd try and recoup some of it by getting the house into his name, but that meant lawyers, courts, and time ... lots and lots of time.

Giving in to frustration and rage, Gonzales slammed his fist on the top of the desk. The agony in his chest lanced deeper and shot down his left arm. Suddenly it was hard to breathe. Deliberately, he throttled back the anger while shaking fingers opened the bottle of nitro tablets. Slipping one under his tongue, he leaned back and waited for the pain to subside or mount higher. At the moment, he didn't really care which.

He would have to tell his wife that braces for Stacie had to be put off again. That wasn't the worst of it either. Truth was, he'd be lucky to make the mortgage payment on the first of the month. He sure as hell didn't know right now where the money was going to come from. Waiting in the dim light, he almost hoped the nitro wouldn't work this time. It would almost be a blessing ... and he had made sure the insurance was paid for this month.

The pain eased slightly and he indulged himself with another smash at the desktop. Not sure he was pleased or not when the sudden activity didn't cause any pain, he sat up straighter and began to paw through the mass of paperwork again. There had to be some way to juggle things around and free up a little cash.

He paused, listening as the siren's scream strengthened and died away, announcing a new arrival at the city jail two blocks away. One more crook--a potential customer--was about to enter the system. Gonzales struggled to his feet, making sure he had the cheap flyers delivered to his office in the early afternoon. Locking the door and dropping the steel mesh down to cover the front of the office, he checked the pistol in his jacket pocket and started for the jail. He kept a careful watch. The jail--and his business--wasn't in one of the better parts of town.

§

Miles eased the slender branch through the eighteen-inch barrel of the disassembled shotgun, pushing the small wad of cloth through its length to clean it as best he could. Bringing the weapon had been a last minute decision and he hadn't thought to grab a cleaning kit too.

Pulling the makeshift rod out the muzzle, he held the breech to the vague light coming in from the mud-spattered kitchen window behind him. It was about as dirt free as he could manage without better tools. He lowered the barrel gently to the floor and chose a larger piece of material to wipe off the receiver assembly. The work didn't require his complete attention. Working by touch, he faced the front of the house and looked around in the dimness of the eastern Colorado late afternoon.

The place was in pretty good shape for an abandoned house but even in its prime, it could not have been much more than the most basic of shelters. This was what would have been the parlor--maybe the living room. It had a door leading outside that had boards nailed haphazardly across it.

A smaller room to his right probably had been a bedroom. Behind him, in the rear of the house, was a kitchen with an old-fashioned hand-pump still standing guard over a rusty, corroded sink.

Another room, accessible only from the kitchen, was guarded by a door that was jammed an inch or two ajar. Miles hadn't been interested enough to break it open to see what was inside.

All the window frames in the building had been boarded up, but one in front was actually intact behind the boards. Two planks had been pulled off that window some time ago to expose mud-caked glass. Another window, over the sink in the kitchen, was also unbroken, and at least as grimy. The outside doors were still whole and both closed sufficiently tight to keep out stray critters. The backdoor--it hadn't been boarded over--had a hole in it that had been repaired at some time in the past with plywood.

The place was dusty, but not unbearably so. In fact, it had been a pleasant enough place to sleep overnight and then rest, well hidden from prying eyes, all day today. Despite the comforting concealment, he would leave before dawn tomorrow. The mountains waited just to the west and he'd been many days en route.

Once free of the big city, he lost his sense of purpose. Cut off from family, friends, and the home he'd worked hard to make, he was lost spiritually. He didn't know what he wanted to do.

So, over the next few weeks, he wandered to the Canadian border, east to the Atlantic coast in Maine, and then drove south as far as South Carolina.

It had only been there that he recovered a vestige of decisiveness. It had been hard, but he'd turned westward again, making for the mountains of southern Colorado.

In his travels, he drove at night, hoping to find a place before the sun came up--a campground where he could set up his tent, or maybe a seedy motel whose proprietor wasn't likely to hassle a cash customer who paid.

That hadn't worked in northern New Mexico yesterday. There just hadn't been anywhere that looked safe to him. He'd driven on through the day and passed into southeast Colorado, sweating, nervous, and afraid the next car he saw would be a police cruiser. Exhausted, he'd found the abandoned house just before his strength gave out.

At daylight, he'd hoped to hide the truck in the barn forty yards back behind the house, but it was, literally, falling to pieces. Beyond the barn, though, was a hollow Miles thought might once have been a pond used to water livestock.

It served admirably as a concealed parking place now. After driving down the shallow slope, Miles had been pleased to find the pickup couldn't even be seen from the house, much less from the road out front.