Free Capitol Offense (Texas Heroines in Peril) by Cheryl Bolen Page B

marriage  shattered
because the husband was not what the wife thought he was.
    In the poem Lacy found the most
enlightening, Ruth Chambers had apparently found her husband guilty
of:
     
    Sins which would surely guarantee
    This man I had loved
    A horrendous eternity.
     
    She had concluded the poem with:
     
    Though I live in deepest strife,
    I'll keep His binds
    Until He concludes this life.
     
    This was the closest Lacy had come to
finding tangible evidence to use against Jim Chambers. The book
publisher was bound to have a record of who paid for the private
printing. Lacy could also seek out the poetry society that Ruth
Chambers had belonged to and find members who might be able to
identify her, if not by name, at least by the lake address or by
her photo.
    Lacy realized the pseudonym and the fact the
accusations (sins) against Jim were vague would pose a legal
problem, but it would be something to start with. She could
scarcely wait until she could give her newly found leads to Bryson
the next day.
    After she turned out her bedside lamp, she
went to her window and peeked out. The blue car had swapped with a
white one. A lone man sat in the white car, taking advantage of
full view of Lacy's house.
     

Chapter 11
     
    The headline on the bottom
of page one of her newspaper arrested Lacy's attention the
following morning. FBI agent found
dead . Her heart pounding furiously, she
read on, hoping against hope it was not Bryson.
     
    An agent for the Federal Bureau of
Investigation was shot dead early Tuesday in his parked car at 503
First St.
    Police seek two men who were seen fleeing
from the scene in a late model dark blue car.
    Joseph Bryson, an FBI agent assigned to
Austin, was pronounced dead on arrival at Breckinridge Hospital at
12:30 a.m. He suffered a bullet wound to the head.
    Police were summoned to the area by two
students who heard gunshots while walking to their cars after
seeing a band on Sixth Street.
    Also late Monday, Bryson's office in the
Federal Building was ransacked, leaving police no clues as to the
nature of the case Bryson was working on at the time of his death.
A local FBI spokesman said Bryson was "between cases."
     
    Numb all over, Lacy laid down the paper. She
regretted their decision to shoulder the dangerous suspicions
alone. What else could she have done? Intuition had told her from
the start that investigating the Hispanic girl's accusations could
be a deadly business.
    Not only was Bryson dead, but his office had
been broken into. Had he written anything about her? What was that
peculiar shorthand he had recorded the day of their first meeting?
Had they got that last night? If only she knew what Bryson's files
had held on her. She could very well be marked for the same fate
which had taken Bryson's life.
    Suddenly she remembered she had Bryson's
phone number in her billfold. She had meant to memorize and destroy
it from the very first, but it was one the things she never got
around to doing.
    She got the billfold from her purse, took
out the crisp card and flushed it down the toilet. Watching it
disappear into the sewage, Lacy felt her last hope was perishing
with that tiny slip of paper.
    Like a thunderclap had awakened her, Lacy
realized her own life was drastically threatened. It was as if Jim
had cut off her oxygen supply to force her to surface. She would be
followed every minute. Her every phone call would be monitored. And
if she attempted to get help, to jeopardize Jim Chambers' vast
political empire, her life would be snuffed out.
    What was she to do? She knew her phone wires
had to be tapped. If she placed a call now, she'd probably be dead
before help arrived. If she drove for help, the minute she stepped
out of the car, say at a police station, she would be gunned down
just as Bryson had been.
    Perhaps she could somehow manage to smuggle
out a letter. This last idea gave her encouragement.
    She went to her computer, and as quickly as
she could type, she wrote her entire story,