Or She Dies

by Gregg Hurwitz

  I turned over the engine and pulled slowly out.

  ‘I trust this is useful?’ Julianne said with mock humility.

  ‘You’re amazing.’

  In the rearview I could see her standing in the bright light of the sandbox, phone to her ear, a hand shielding her eyes. I turned the corner, and she was gone, except for the voice in my ear.

  ‘Take care of yourself,’ it said. ‘You’re heading into uncharted waters.’

  Chapter 50

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, you can’t do that.’

  I was crouched in front of the copier, having swung open the panel and removed the hard drive. Even with my back turned, there was no way to insert the Ridgeline hard drive into the vacant slot without his noticing. I shoved the Kinko’s hard drive down the front of my jeans before turning around, holding the other in clear view. ‘Oh, sorry. It just jammed up. I was checking -’

  ‘The hard drive?’ The Kinko’s cashier, a high-school kid with a thatch of curly blond hair and gauged earrings, chewed listlessly on what smelled like Black Jack gum. ‘You can’t do that. Give it to me.’ He swiped the Ridgeline hard drive from my hand. I almost grabbed for it, but then he leaned over and plugged it into the copier. ‘Listen, if you mess with the equipment -’ He did a double take, and his expression changed.

  Sally and Valentine had been in here checking the computer-rental logs and probably flashing my picture. Or maybe he recognized me from the news. My bad bruises probably compounded his unease. I raised a hand awkwardly to my cheek.

  He backed to the counter. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Take your time.’ He pretended to bury himself in his reading, a dog-eared trade paperback of Y: The Last Man, but his eyes flicked at me over the tops of the pages.

  I quickly key-tapped my way into the copier’s memory and clicked the button to print out everything on it. My fingers drummed the counter as the machine spit out one piece of warm paper after another. Looking over my shoulder to make sure the kid wasn’t calling the cops, I was too distracted to read anything. It came to about thirty pages. I paid with a spill of crumpled bills and rushed out to the car.

  A cold sweat hit when I thought of Ariana at home, unprotected. I made it only a few blocks before I had to pull over and call her on the prepaid cell phone. My heart pounded until she picked up.

  ‘You still alive?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Oh, wait. Yeah, sorry. I am.’

  ‘Paparazzi still surrounding the house?’

  ‘Our inadvertent guardian angels? Yes, they’re here. Noses to the glass.’

  ‘You call me if they leave.’

  ‘They leave, we’re throwing a party.’

  I hung up and took a deep breath, the stack of copies heavy in my lap. Rain clouds threatened above, giving dusk a head start, and I had to click on the dome light to see the top sheet clearly.

  A surveillance photo of me standing at our front window looking out at the street, the pane blurring my face. The voyeuristic view and my smudged features gave the copied photo an otherworldly feel, which sent a chill burrowing beneath my scalp.

  Keith was tracked as well in a number of pictures, the time stamps indicating they were taken in the days before his death. A handwritten log, presumably derived from a wiretap, listed various numbers he’d called from home and cell phone. The next few surveillance photos followed an older gentleman in a suit, stepping out of a limo beneath a glass-and-steel building with a slick logo in the lobby window — the letter N on tilt within a circle. He wore a silver goatee, and his bearing suggested justified confidence. Beneath was a copy of a cell-phone bill under the name Gordon Kazakov, with various numbers underlined. Another enemy of the board? Other grainy photos followed, featuring various men and women. Someone at a base camp in the snow — the environmental activist who’d ‘fallen’ off a cliff? There were answers here to questions I hadn’t even known to ask.

  I kept flipping through. Airline tickets, hotel bills, more phone records, a bank ledger with transactions circled. Check stubs and wire confirmations. Matched to certain payments were names: Mikey Peralta, Deborah Vance, Keith Conner. And, sure enough, Patrick Davis. It read like a menu of prices — the cost to stalk, to frame, to kill.

  The next page held copies of four ATM withdrawal slips for $9,990 — each just below the $10,000 bank-reporting threshold. Scrawled at the top of each one was #1117.

  What the hell was that? Some kind of internal code? An account number? And why were these payments set apart and given prominence?

  With growing astonishment I turned to the last page. A photo showed Keith sprawled dead on the floor of that hotel room. The forehead divot, the pool of ink in the eye socket, the perverted angle of the neck — it brought back the horrid epiphany of that moment with a force that made me forget to breathe. I examined the photo more closely. The wink of the flash was visible in the glass of a framed watercolor on the wall, and the time stamp showed 1:53.

  Five minutes before I’d been spotted by the room-service waiter on the ground floor.

  Not only could I not have been in the room at that time, but I couldn’t have shot the photograph; I’d had no camera, and certainly no film when I’d been taken into custody.

  My hands shook with excitement.

  My name — cleared. The dots — connected.

  Before DeWitt and Verrone had emptied out the office in preparation for my captivity, they’d copied these key incriminating documents, probably so all the members of Ridgeline’s team could keep a packet to inoculate themselves against future threats. They’d documented their transactions with Festman Gruber down to the bank-account numbers on either end of each wire. If they went down, they could take Festman down, too. Mutually assured destruction. But I wasn’t part of that equation. I was out of the circle, and now I had my thumb on the detonator.

  I reached Sally Richards on her cell phone. There were voices in the background, what sounded like a get-together, so I said, ‘Give me ten seconds to talk.’

  She said, ‘Go.’

  ‘I have definitive proof clearing me of Keith’s murder. I have hard evidence of the conspiracy. Like you said — justice, truth, and all that crap. Here’s our shot. I can serve it to you and Valentine on a silver platter. Meet me for five minutes.’

  I held my breath, listened to that background noise — a radio playing, someone’s joke going over big, the jangle of a dog collar. The last crescent of sun dipped behind a bank of clouds, and the sky downshifted three shades of gray. She hadn’t hung up, but she hadn’t replied either.

  ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Show me that motivating curiosity.’

  Silence. My hopes were dissipating along with the daylight.

  Finally she exhaled across the receiver. ‘I’ve got a place.’

  Mulholland Drive rides the ridge of the Santa Monicas, overlooking the world. To the north the Valley stretches out like a sequined tarp, flat and unforgiving, a hothouse of trapped air and bad associations — porn, meth, movie studios. The Los Angeles Basin, cooler in all regards and eager to point that out, dips south, pushing west until ever-pricier real estate terminates in a throw of sand and the polluted Pacific. A glamorous road befitting a glamorous city, temptation and danger at every turn. It lures you to take in the view but never stops twisting. You fix on the pretty lights until you plummet to your death — LA in a nutshell.

  Finally I turned off on a compacted dirt road, a cloud of red-brown dust rising to escort my car to the secured yellow gate. NO PARKING AFTER DUSK. Outside the gate I slotted the Beemer next to the familiar Crown Vic, grabbed the sheaf of copies, and hoofed it up to the old Nike missile control facility. A quarter mile up the dirt trail, the place waited, a Cold War relic as cracked and desiccated as Kissinger’s accent.

  The scattered buildings, trimmed in fallen barbed wire, had the feel of abandoned playground equipment. Rusted, forlorn, municipal. They didn’t look like much, perhaps because the power of the place was never here. It was buried in missile silos in t
he tranquil surrounding hills.

  My shoes crunched rock. The air was heavy and smelled of rain. A path wound around to the hexagonal observation tower. Following, I entered the overhang. Steep metal steps zigged and zagged with cold military precision. Educational signage sealed the structure’s fate — it was now a musty museum, a gutted time capsule, a temple to an obsolete paranoia.

  Khrushchev’s prediction shouted from a plaque bolted to the base of the tower: WE WILL BURY YOU. Breathing in metal and dirt, I could picture the clean-shaven soldiers who had manned this facility around the clock, smoking their Lucky Strikes, eyes on the horizon, waiting for a shift change or the world to end.

  The stairs — all treads, no risers — seemed to ascend into darkness. The view up filled me with dread. I didn’t want to be here. I wanted to be home with my wife, the door locked behind us. But I made my way up, the structure rigid against the night wind. Air whistled past the railings, through the mesh-steel steps, but the tower itself didn’t creak or groan. It was built in a time when they knew how to build things.

  By the time I reached the top, I was slightly winded. Sally was standing near the edge, leaning on a sturdy pay telescope, looking out at the panoramic darkness. Her flat eyes took note of me. ‘They say on a clear day you can see Catalina.’

  Pacing tight circles, his dark face shiny with sweat, Valentine could have been on bomber lookout himself. ‘I told you, Richards, I don’t like this Deep Throat shit.’

  I asked, ‘Did Robbery-Homicide seize a CD from my house yesterday?’

  ‘No,’ Sally said. ‘At least not officially.’ She grew uneasy under Valentine’s outraged glare. ‘I’ve been keeping tabs on the case,’ she told him. ‘Word in the halls, that’s it.’

  ‘You’re flirting with dismissal here, Richards.’ He threw up his hands and started for the stairs. ‘I’m not going down this path with you.’

  ‘We’re here,’ she said. ‘We see what he has. That’s all.’

  I said, ‘I have a copied photograph of Keith Conner’s corpse taken five minutes before I entered the room.’

  Sally’s mouth tensed, but Valentine continued as if I weren’t there. ‘This is way too hot a potato for us. The captain was clear as fuck what would happen to our asses if we went sniffing. I got four boys to take care of, so yes, thank you, keeping my job and pension would be a nice way to go into next week.’

  I held out the picture of Keith’s body, and Sally shoved herself skeptically off the telescope and walked over. After taking a defiant moment to eye my bruised face, she squinted down at the page. For a moment her expression was unchanged, but then she swallowed sharply and color crept into her cheeks. ‘Even if the time stamp is doctored,’ she said, ‘you didn’t have a camera.’ She couldn’t lift her eyes from the picture. Her hand reached for the railing, groping the air, and then she caught it and leaned a sturdy hip into the structure, as if grounding herself. ‘What else?’

  I fanned through a few surveillance shots of Keith. ‘These were taken by a company named Ridgeline. Two of their men kidnapped me.’

  Sally’s eyebrows lifted a few centimeters.

  I held up a hand. ‘I know. I’ll explain. But first let me lay out motive. Keith was making a documentary that condemned naval sonar for killing whales.’

  ‘The Deep End,’ Sally said. ‘Dolphins, too, I’ve heard.’

  ‘There’s a vote coming up in the Senate to lower the decibel levels of naval sonar. Keith’s documentary was timed to influence that decision. A company named Festman Gruber is a huge contractor specializing in sonar equipment. I’m guessing they’ve got a lot to lose if that Senate vote doesn’t swing their way.’

  Valentine pleaded with Sally, ‘Can we please call this before we catch crazy?’

  ‘So they knocked off Keith and framed you?’ Sally’s lips were pursed in a faint, worried smile. ‘What do you have to back up that elaborate theory?’

  ‘I have banking, wire, and phone records tying Ridgeline to Festman Gruber. I have the names of murder victims written next to specific payments.’

  I flipped through the documents to show them off, Sally frowning down at them, biting her lip. Despite himself, Valentine crowded in, peering over her shoulder.

  ‘And,’ I said, ‘I have these weird withdrawals they made.’

  ‘Weird how?’ Valentine said.

  ‘There’s some code attached to them. Right here.’ I turned the page, pointed at the ATM slips with #1117 written across the top.

  Valentine looked down and almost absentmindedly snapped open the thumb break on his holster. His hand jittered once above the pistol grip, a seesaw of indecision. Then, with a single fluid motion, he lifted the Glock from the leather and shot Sally in the chest.

  Chapter 51

  A plume of blood erupted from Sally’s shirt. She took a thundering step back, her weight cocked above a bent leg, and then collapsed. Valentine and I stared on in horror as she shuddered and gasped, and then he lifted the barrel weakly and aimed it at me.

  The muzzle sparked again, and I felt the air move by my head, but I was already leaping for the stairs, the documents crumpling around my fist. I landed halfway down the top flight, my shoulder ringing off a rail, my momentum carrying my body up over my head. I hit the landing on a roll and half scrambled, half fell down the switchback, putting all that metal between me and Valentine. Skidding to a painful halt, mesh steel digging into my back, I could hear Valentine up there.

  ‘Oh, Jesus. You’re hurt. Why’d you have to go and do this, Richards? You had to push it. I tried to talk you off it, but there you went. Wouldn’t let it go. You’re hurt, Christ, you’re hurt. You left me no choice. You left me no choice.’

  A moist gurgling. Liquid tapping metal.

  A low moan, which I realized wasn’t Sally but Valentine. It rose to an almost feminine scream, accompanied by a violent series of blows — him banging his fist against the deck?

  He was sobbing. ‘I couldn’t go down for this. I go away, who’s gonna take care of my boys?’

  But she wasn’t saying anything back.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he wept. ‘I’m sorry. C’mon, open your eyes, Richards. Open your eyes. Gimme a pulse now. Oh, Jesus, I’m sorry.’

  I folded the documents and shoved them into my pocket, wincing at the crinkling. The wind kicked up a bit more, drowning out the shrill serenade of the crickets.

  As I edged down another flight, Valentine seemed to perceive my movement and return to his senses. I heard the chirp of his radio, and then he bellowed, ‘Officer down! I have an officer down on the observation tower of the Nike facility off dirt Mulholland. Send backup and medical now!’ His voice wavered, and I realized that even my own mind-numbing shock didn’t compare to his. He panted for a moment, catching his breath, then continued, ‘The perpetrator, Patrick Davis, wrestled away my gun and shot her. I have my partner’s weapon and am in pursuit. Over.’

  Dispatch came back in a burst of concerned static, and the volume eased down, and then it was him and me, breathing in the silence.

  Valentine’s shoes moved slowly across the platform, then onto the stairs. Two flights below, enveloped in a kind of calm terror, I shadowed his steps, quiet and steady. The thought of that picture on Sally’s desk, her holding her toddler, threw me into a moment of denial. It didn’t seem possible for me to have witnessed what I’d just witnessed.

  He was coming a little faster, the shadows from his legs flickering through the gaps between steps. I sped up. Another flight and I would run out of room. Then it would be a dash in the dark with a loaded gun behind me.

  I reached the bottom, and he was still coming strong, shoes clanging. For a suspended moment, I looked ahead at the path that would leave me vulnerable to a bullet in the back.

  The options were clear: run and get shot or turn and counterattack.

  On heavy legs I ducked back under the stairs. The dirt sloped up hard beneath the first flight. I pressed myself into the darkness beneath the lan
ding, my body starting to register the pain from my tumble. My breath was firing, and I fought to tamp it quietly back into my chest.

  My sneaker lost purchase on the angle, and I nearly went down, broadcasting my position, but my hand flew up through the gap where a riser would be and hooked a stair tread, stabilizing me.

  Valentine’s footsteps quickened, then slowed as soon as his shoes drew into view on the next flight up. He was bracing for an ambush. The toe of his loafer gleamed with blood, so dark it looked black, and the cuff of his slacks was smeared. As he descended, I let go of the step, withdrawing my hand carefully. The treads carved him into horizontal slivers — shoe and ankle, thigh and waist, chest and neck — but when he eased his weight down onto the landing above me, I caught a clear view of the Glock he held braced before him with both hands on the grip.

  He slowed some more. The wind was up and would have covered the sound of my doubling back. But had he spotted me? Or guessed?

  His next step carried him out of view, directly overhead, the landing blocking him from sight. I realized I was holding my breath, and I couldn’t now exhale. My lungs burned. His shoe padded down onto metal. And then again. Through the gap I saw the gun come into view first, and I nearly gave in to panic and bolted. But it wasn’t pointed down at me; it was floating five feet above the stairs. His hands slid into view, his wrists, his forearms. He was aiming up the path, breathing hard. His loafer set down on the top step, no more than six inches from my eyes. I could smell the bitter tint of blood on the soles. His other foot touched down on the second tread, seemingly in slow motion.

  My hands floated in front of my face, half raised, quaking in the darkness. I watched his heel drop flat, a millimeter at a time. For an awful instant, I froze up. But then everything inside me broke free in a burst of terrified fury. Reaching through the steps, I seized his ankles and ripped them toward me as hard as I could.