57
A sultry orange rain came down for days. And every day, Travis called to inquire how things were going. Then he came in person, driving through the gate in a late-model, black Ford Expedition.
“Nice wheels,” Danny said, going out to meet the inspector.
“Came from a bust in Menlo Park.” Travis walked into the house. The floors were clean, barren of carpet, glue, and staples. All the floor and window molding had been removed.
“You’ve been working. Looks great,” said Travis.
“I’m going to rent a floor sander, called in an order,” said Danny. He glanced at the dripping sky. “But I was hoping for a letup in the humidity.”
“You, ah, wanted a computer, right?”
“It was part of the deal,” said Danny.
“Just so happens we stumbled onto one.” He marched out to the shiny Ford and opened the rear hatch. In the cargo bay, piled haphazardly in mismatched boxes, in a tangle of cables, was a computer, monitor, keyboard, modem, fax and copier, a printer.
“Where’d you get this?” asked Danny.
Travis grinned. “Same place we got the Expedition. Repar-ations from the war on drugs. This is nothing. The guy had a stable of racehorses.” He tugged one of the boxes toward the hatch and raised his eyebrows. “Pentium 233, you like?”
“Definitely.”
“There’s an America Online kit in there, too, thought you might need it. And this.” Travis reached for his wallet, selected a piece of plastic and handed it to Danny.
A VISA card. “How’d you do this?”
Travis shrugged, like what the hell. “Consider it a little bonus. It’s drawn on the incidental fund at my office. We put you on as an authorized user until you get your credit rating up. I’d prefer you keep it under two hundred dollars a month. Any big-ticket items for the house, you clear it with me first. But, you know, there’s a lot of little shit”-he pointed to the computer-“like hooking up on-line, you can do over the phone with plastic. Otherwise it’s a hassle.”
“Thanks,” said Danny.
Travis adjusted, but did not remove, his sunglasses. “No.
I’m thanking you. Usually when I launch a witness, even if they don’t have a family, I have to hold their hand every day. Sometimes I have to stay with them, sleep on the couch, around the clock until they adjust to being inserted.”
They carried the boxes inside, and Danny decided to set up in the cleanest room in the place, on the screened porch.
The humidity wasn’t good for the machine, but the only way to escape humidity in the shadow of El Nino was to leave the state. The dust in the house would be worse.
“So, is there anything else you need offhand?” asked Travis.
An impulse leaped. Unplanned. “There is one thing, kind of a tangent,” said Danny. He thought of it as pulling the tiger’s whiskers. “I’ve been reading the books they gave me on Santa Cruz. One of them referred to the town being the murder capital of the world in the early 1970s.”
“
“He hung out with cops, didn’t he. I mean, when he was doing the killings.”
“Yep. The original cop wannabe. A theory the FBI fell a little too much in love with. Ask Richard Jewel in Atlanta.”
“I hear you,” Danny grinned. “I was wondering, have you ever relocated a killer?”
“Hell yes. What do you think we do? Handle nuns? That’s why you’re such a walk in the park.”
“What’s it like, being around a killer? I mean, are they different?” He wished he could see Travis’s eyes.
“Well…” Travis leaned back, again the furrows on the brow. He ran his square hand through his styled hair. “Depends. There’s the high-up ones and the soldiers.”
“I mean, do they feel different, being around them. You know, this close.”
“These guys, they only think of one thing. Getting their way. it’s like-‘I’d never do anything that wasn’t absolutely necessary, so obviously Louie had to get whacked.’ Like that.
Ego maniacs. Mob guys I mean. But most of them had been in the joint by the time they got around to me, so they had old-fashioned prison manners. Now, the new ones we get, the druggies, who the fuck knows about them.”
Danny pondered, then brightened. “I was wondering. Is there any way you could hook me up with a local cop who worked the Kemper case.”
Travis’s forehead furrowed above his shades. “Ah, hmmm.
What I could do…is talk to a guy I know who teaches criminal justice at UCSC. He’s been around for a while. Maybe he could find one for you. That way I don’t have to get involved.” Travis nodded, took out a slim pocket organizer, a pen and made a note to himself. “Anything else?”
Danny shook his head.
Travis slapped him on the arm. “Look. You’ve been busting your balls all week. Take a break. Set up your computer. Go see a movie. Buy some new clothes. I’ll check in a couple of times next week…”
“Uh-huh?”
“I mean, call you. And try to drop by in six, seven days.
You all right with that?”
“Sure.” Danny felt like a witness remembering his lawyer’s advice. Simple concise answers.
“Great. I have a new pile of people to process, so, if you’re doing all right, just get in touch with me if you need something. You got the number?”
Danny patted his hip pocket. “Right here.” He tapped his forehead. “And here.” He made a mental note to call Travis, thank him for the computer. Sound grateful.
Travis walked back through the living room. For a moment he paused and tipped down his shades. He was facing away and Danny couldn’t see his eyes. But he was looking at the tray, which sat in the corner of the barren living room on an upturned cardboard box. The faint astringent scent of ripe mold insinuated from the mossy green bread sitting next to the unopened bottle of wine and the saltshaker.
Three half-burned candles jutted from a formation of wax that had spilled over the side of the box and reached to the floor. Travis pushed his sunglasses back up on his nose and kept walking, out the door, across the overgrown front yard, got in his confiscated black Ford Expedition and drove away.
Danny spent the rest of the day hooking up the computer and situated it on a makeshift desk made out of an old door and two end tables he had found in the junk room. The software was Windows 95, which he’d never actually worked on. He played with it, ran the AOL disk and called in to start an account. That took another hour.
By the time he had it all hooked up and running smoothly it was getting late. He drove into Watsonville, ate Mexican, had a few beers and drove home in a steady rain.
The next morning was Saturday, so he slept in. Floating onto the day, opening his eyes to a damp fluffy cloud of fog, his head ached pleasantly from the beers.
He saw the silly shrine he’d erected in the corner and laughed. He padded over in his bare feet and picked it up.
“Tough shit, Casper,” he said as he dumped it all in the trash.
He yawned and scratched his stomach. Put water and grind in the Mr. Coffee and went to take a shower. Later, after he’d shaved, the phone rang about three sips into his first cup of coffee.
“Hello.”
“Dan Storey?”
There was that second when the name flew by. Then contact. “Speaking.”
