Part 18 (1/2)

SHARON.

Notes on client Oliver Vale, continued... Sunday, February 5, 1989. 10:20 A.M.

I should never have tried to do this thing with Bruce. He isn't the only lawyer in the world.

Once we made it through Oklahoma City (after hours of struggling through crowds and traffic jams), I told Bruce, who was driving, to take a state highway that I hoped would not be well patrolled. I was afraid that the authorities might be looking for us by now and that someone in the city might have spotted us.

Bruce refused. The mess in Oklahoma City had been the last straw, he said. If I wanted to go to Lubbock, Texas, fine, but we wouldn't skulk about like fugitives. ”That,” he said, ”is a method I'll leave to your friend Oliver the Geek.”

Despite my protests, he turned the car around and drove north to I-40, here he turned west. We would do the sensible thing, he said, and drive directly to Amarillo, then south on I-27 to Lubbock.

I tried to explain. The KBI agents had told me to stay in Topeka. If we were caught- Bruce scoffed. The KBI had neither placed me under arrest nor delivered a court order requiring me to stay put, so they didn't have a legal leg to stand on.

We reached the Texas border about 7:00 A.M., and a mile after we crossed it, we encountered a Texas Highway Patrol roadblock. The patrolman who looked in at us said, in a West Texas drawl, that he was sorry for the inconvenience, but that it was the opinion of the Texas Highway Patrol that the Federal fugitive known as Oliver Vale might be headed for Lubbock, and as of this morning the patrol was stopping traffic on all major highways coming into the state. Could he please see our identification, and had either of us seen anyone riding an old motorcycle or fitting Vale's description?

We had no choice. Bruce and I both had to show him our Kansas driver's licenses. He took them and asked us to wait a moment.

While traffic began to pile up behind us, the patrolman went to one of the four cruisers sitting on the highway and spoke into a microphone, reading from the licenses. I rolled down my window to hear the reply, but all I could make out were static-filled squawks.

When the patrolman returned, three of his colleagues came with him. ”Would y'all step out of the vehicle, please?” the patrolman said.

Bruce scowled his best don't-hara.s.s-me-you-fool-I'm-an-attorney scowl. ”What is this?” he demanded.

”Are we under arrest?”

”No, sir.”

”Then we're not stepping out,” Bruce told him. ”I'm a lawyer, and I know my-”

”Sir,” the patrolman said, interrupting, ”you aren't under arrestnow. However, if you refuse to cooperate with the Texas Department of Public Safety in our efforts to apprehend a possible felon, we'll have just cause to suspect you of aiding that felon.Then we'll arrest you.”

”This is coercion!” Bruce thundered. The patrolman smiled. ”No, sir,” he said. ”This is Texas.”

They put us in a cruiser and took us to a Texas DPS building in the town of Shamrock (a.s.suring us that Bruce's car would follow via tow truck), and that's where we've been for almost three hours now.

Every fifteen minutes, two suit-and-tie Texas Rangers come into the room and ask the same questions.

Do you know Oliver Vale?

Is Oliver Vale responsible for the takeover of television communications?

Did you help him do it?

What are Vale's intentions?

Why Buddy Holly?

Are you going to Lubbock? Is that where Vale is heading? Why?

Each time, I answer their questions as honestly as I can. Yes, I know Oliver. I don't know whether he's responsible. I didn't help him. I don't know his intentions. He identifies with Buddy Holly, but that doesn't mean that he did it. Yes, we're heading to Lubbock. Maybe. I don't know.

The Rangers can only hear me part of the time. The rest of the time, Bruce is bellowing about deprivation of civil liberties and ma.s.sive legal retaliation.

The way I feel now, I myself may retaliate by depriving myself of Bruce.

RICHTER.

After the slug was removed and the st.i.tches and bandage were in place, Richter got down from the table and pulled on his pants despite the doctor's advice.

”You should rest for a few hours,” the doctor said. ”You had quite an ordeal, waiting all that time out there. Lucky for you that you had a car phone.”

”Yes,” Richter said, sitting on the table again to put on his shoes.

The doctor coughed. ”Um, you should also stay because, um, I have to report a bullet wound to the police. They'll want to ask you how it happened.”

”No,” Richter said, and limped out of the cubicle past the wide-eyed nurse. He had too much to do to waste more time here, and he didn't think that the doctor would have much of a chance to call the police.

He had to push his way through the packed Emergency waiting room toward the exit. Lawton was not a large city, but it was currently experiencing an epidemic of physical injuries ranging from sc.r.a.pes and broken bones to almost-severed limbs. The Bill w.i.l.l.yite/Couch Potato Riots were in full swing here. Oneof the ambulance attendants had told him that a large number of soldiers from Fort Sill had been given weekend pa.s.ses and that they had become enthusiastic contributors to the violence of the demonstrations.

”Hey, is your name Richter?” a voice boomed over the noise in the waiting room.

Richter saw a beefy policeman pointing at him from a doorway. He kept moving toward the exit, but his leg slowed him down too much, and he didn't make it. The policeman's hand clamped on his shoulder.

In this crowd, it would be difficult to break free and stay free without killing his opponent. It was unfortunate, but...

”You've got a phone call,” the policeman said, pulling Richter toward the doorway from which he had come.

Richter shook himself from the officer's grip, then followed him down a hall to a bank of pay telephones where another officer was holding a receiver. Richter took it, and both officers walked away.

He leaned against the wall to take the weight off his right leg, and he spoke into the receiver, ”Yes?”

”Richter.” It was his superior. ”I thought I would call and save you the bother. Youwere going to call when you were out of surgery, weren't you?”

”Yes,” Richter lied.

”Mmmm. I wondered, because the credit card you gave the towing company and the hospital receptionist is one that you obtained using an alias that we did not a.s.sign to you. If I didn't know better, I would suspect that you didn't want us to know you were in a hospital in Lawton, Oklahoma. Nor that you had been shot. Nor, by extension, that you were having difficulty with your a.s.signment. That wasn't the case, was it?”

”No,” Richter said. He was weary. The amphetamines had long since worn off, and he ached in more places than his leg.

After the Doberman had run off, Richter had crawled to the Jaguar and had been about to get inside when a flatbed truck had pulled into the rest area. Richter had belly-slid under the car and had drawn his pistol, waiting there while the truck's occupants had honked their horn and shouted, ”Is anyone here?,” a hundred times. Richter had nearly pa.s.sed out, but even so he had been certain that he had heard someone yell, ”Is Oliver Vale here?” He hadn't had a chance to investigate that, though, because the truck had left.

He had crawled out from under the car, gotten inside, and called for an ambulance and a tow truck.

Both had taken over an hour to arrive, with the tow truck showing up ten minutes before the ambulance, but he was fortunate in that his wound had bled only a little. He had known that he wouldn't die. It was a small comfort.

”I'm glad to hear that you haven't forgotten me, Richter,” his superior said, ”for I certainly haven't forgotten you. You are my best operative and have been for a number of years-”

”Yes,” Richter said. ”-which is why I regret to inform you that you are removed from your a.s.signment. Other arrangements will be made about the matter. As soon as your vehicle is repaired, you will proceed to the Will Rogers World Airport in Oklahoma City and fly home.”