He worked an hour longer than he should and never said a word. He hoped it would keep that madfuck supervisor off his back.
The rising sun was already steaming the back lot where the vans had been hosed down. There was no TV in the canteen anymore so he wasn’t sure whether the Fed’s death was already news or not. He suspected not. The place was so full of gossips someone would have mentioned it if it had been.
Shooter took a leak, then washed his hands in one of the cracked sinks. As his hands dangled beneath a dryer, he wondered whether the Fed had actually survived the shooting. It was unlikely but not impossible. He remembered how the big grunt had taken the first three shots as though they were slaps from a girl. It had been quite something to empty three rounds into another human being and see him barely flinch. But all that bravado had disappeared when he’d served up another three portions of lead.
He couldn’t wait to see the footage.
The art of life and death. That’s what he’d call it after he’d edited it and set it to music. Maybe he’d post it on YouTube and see how many hits his hit got. Hits. The wordplay made him laugh.
He stood back from the sinks and checked himself out in the restroom mirror.
He looked different.
Changed.
There was a glow to him. A halo. An aura that set him apart.
He opened the door and headed to the lockers.
Januk was leaning against them. Waiting for him. A half-moon smile illuminated his grubby full-moon face. He lifted his hand from his overalls and shook a thick bunch of keys.
Keys to every door in the works. Including a master key for the lockers.
As Shooter approached, the supervisor swung open a metal door and pulled out the sports bag. “I’m going to take this into my office and you’re going to follow me. Then you tell me again about that personal errand you had to go on.”
5
UCLA Medical Center, Santa Monica
Ruis kept them away for as long as he could. But now it had gotten serious. Two security men and a surgeon were crowding him. There was nothing more he could do. He walked to the center of the operating theater where Angie was still kneeling, holding Jake’s hand.
“We have to go.” He touched her shoulder reassuringly. “They need to clean up; there’s another case coming in.”
She heard him but it didn’t make sense. There was no way she could let Jake’s fingers slip from hers. If she kept hold, he’d come alive. The miracle she’d hoped for would happen. She just had to keep believing. “A little longer. Please.”
A senior nurse came to her side. “We’ll bring him to a room for you, honey. You can be there on your own with him for as long as you like.”
She looked at the unresponsive hand in hers. The hand that had put a ring on her finger. The hand she’d hoped to hold for another thirty or forty years.
She let go and stood up.
Blood had soaked into her track pants and the gray cotton stuck to the tiles and tried to pull her back down again. Someone in the corner indelicately fired up a spray hose and prepared to clean the floor.
“Switch it off!” shouted Ruis. His tone of voice would have made an armed robber drop a gun.
“It’s okay.” Angie turned to the group of waiting staff. “I’m sorry to have held you up. Thanks”—she almost choked—“for doing everything you could.”
Ruis walked her out into the corridor. She felt stiff and disoriented as he sat her on a molded plastic chair. The big guy stepped away, talked to a nurse, and then came back and took her hand before he spoke. “In a minute, they’re going to move Jake to a private room and they can leave him there with you for as long as you need before they take him to the morgue.”
Morgue.
The word hit her like a fist.
Ruis squeezed her fingers. “They’ll come and find us when they’re ready for you to be with him.”
“But I won’t, will I? I won’t ever be with him again.”
“I think you’ll always be with him, Angie. You only have to close your eyes—”
“Don’t!” She pulled her hand away. “Don’t you dare tell me how to remember him.”
“I’m sorry.”
She hung her head. “No, I’m the one who should apologize. I didn’t mean to snap.” She looked at the blood on her knees and rubbed a palm over it. The contact made her wince. Her heart thumped so hard her chest was sore. She took long, slow breaths. Never in her life had she felt so hurt and helpless.
Time slid like a truck on an icy road. The silence before the crash. The painful, slow-motion wait.
A nurse came and talked briefly to Ruis.
She drifted away and Ruis came back and crouched in front of Angie. “They’re ready for you.”
The words didn’t seem to make sense, but she let him guide her down a soulless corridor. Disinfectant filled her nostrils. Muffled voices bounced around her. The whole place was hot and stuffy. She felt weak and dizzy. Needed air. Needed to lie down before she fell down.
Angie stopped and put a hand to the floor. The world tilted. Her head smacked the hard tiles.
But it was Jake who picked her up, not Ruis.
They were together again. Their first Christmas filled her mind. Sliding on the ice at Rockefeller Center in New York. She was laughing her ass off. So was he, but even then there had been kindness and care in his eyes. They’d spent the night together in a little hotel off Broadway and had gotten giddy on champagne for breakfast. They’d shopped on Fifth Avenue like tourists. The Christmas tree at the Rock had been the biggest and most beautiful she’d ever seen.
Angie had been looking up at the lights, the twinkling angel pirouetting at the top, when a child fell in front of her and she went down in the pileup.
Jake broke up laughing. He put down his big hand and she put hers in it and he pulled her back up as though she weighed no more than a feather. This man made her feel safe. He could protect her from anything. Or anyone.
She’d never thought of who’d protect him.
Now Jake was gone and it was Ruis’s hand that was in hers as he sat her up against the wall. “Are you okay?”
She stared glassy-eyed at him.
“Angie, are you okay? You fainted.”
She nodded. He was there because Jake was dead. It came back to her. She was on her way to see his bullet-riddled corpse. In a private room before they took him to the morgue.
“Yeah, I’m okay.”
Ruis brought her a plastic cup of water. She smiled and took it. It went down in a single swallow. Her body was on fire.
The baby.
Their child.
She thought of the trauma, the shock, her racing heart. She worried that all of this nightmare might affect the baby.
Her inner voice told her she had to be strong for the child. She couldn’t fold. Couldn’t collapse and cry her heart out like she wanted to.
Angie took Ruis’s hand and let him haul her to her feet.
“Take it slow,” he urged.
She had no option. Her body had only one speed now. Everything was numb. She couldn’t feel the floor beneath her feet. Signs flashed over her head. People streamed by. They were aliens from another world, babbling incoherently and inconsequentially. Nothing mattered anymore.
Ruis tightened his grip on her.
She felt like a prisoner being led to a cell. A terrible punishment awaited.
A life sentence. One without remission.
6
“Office” was the wrong word to describe the unventilated hole that Januk sank into. It was occupied by a tiny desk with room for only one chair, a lockable metal cabinet and a square filing cabinet that was topped with old newspapers and a soccer ball signed by some obscure Polish team.
The supervisor dropped the bag on the table and unzipped it.
Shooter stared into the gap. He could see the contents had already been taken out and put back in a different way.
Januk tipped them onto the table.<
br />
Shooter stepped back and pressed his heel against the door to click it all the way shut.
Januk laughed. “You think people come in here without me asking them to?” He picked up the MAC-10, pointed it and shouted, “RAT-A-TAT-TAT!” Then he laughed so hard he looked like he might wet himself.
He put the weapon down and picked up the digital recorder and the compact HD video camera with mounted light. “So what did you do? Use the gun to rob this equipment from a store?”
Shooter let out a long sigh. Long enough to give the impression that he was ready to come clean and tell the dumb fuck the truth. “You were right in the first place.”
Januk frowned. Then he remembered what he’d said. “Pussy?”
Shooter picked up the recording equipment and put it back in the bag. “Porn. I was shooting porn.” He lifted the MAC. “Pussy with Pistols.” He checked the mag and slammed it back. “Gangsta gals. Baaaaad-ass girls. Shooty-booty.”
“Show me.” Januk grabbed the bag again. He turned to the cabinet behind him and pulled open a drawer. “I have vodka and I have finished my shift, too. We can watch together.”
Shooter cradled the MAC. He was fairly sure no one else was in this part of the building. One spray with the baby in his hands and jabbering Januk would shut the fuck up.
The super produced the vodka and another of his moonbeam smiles.
Shooter raised the gun and aimed it at his head.
“RAT-A-TAT-TAT!” shouted Januk again, then fell about laughing as though it were the funniest joke ever.
It took Shooter all his self-control not to squeeze the trigger. He slipped the weapon into the bag and smiled. “I can do better than show you porn. I have three girls coming round to where I live, to film the last scenes of my movie. Give me a lift home and I’ll let you watch—maybe even join in. I’ll make sure it’s the biggest blast you’ve ever had.”
7
UCLA Medical Center, Santa Monica
The world became muted.
The moment Angie’s eyes fell on Jake’s lifeless face, the soundtrack to their lives stopped.
With the silence and Jake’s permeating stillness came a terrible pain.
Every second of looking at the corpse of the man she loved was unbearable torture. To never touch him after today. To never kiss and stroke and love him. To never hear his laughter or be moved by his kindness—it was pain more brutal than any knife or hammer could inflict.
Angie tried not to weep. Told herself she had to become calm and strong for the sake of the life growing inside her—and because that’s how the extinguished life in front of her would have wanted it. Jake had made her stronger. Every second she’d spent with him had fortified her, seen her grow and blossom.
Now he was gone.
Officially gone.
The sheet was tucked neatly around him to hide the bullet wounds. The wiped-clean face. The drawn curtains in the room. The box of tissues left close, in case she broke. All signs that told her it was over.
She swallowed the baseball-sized lump in her throat and looked to Ruis. “Who could have done this?” She almost broke. “The mall killer?”
He was struggling, too. With his own grief and with the pain he could see in Angie’s eyes. “Maybe. Whoever it was, we’ll find him, I promise you that.”
“Make sure you do.”
A tear dripped off her face as she bent over the cold body. “I love you, baby. Love you so much more than you ever knew. I’m so sorry that we fought—so sorry that I didn’t tell you to come home last night.”
Ruis used a knuckle to wipe away his own tears. Watching Angie was ripping him apart.
She pulled herself upright. Bit down on the agony and wiped her eyes with trembling fingers.
“I’m done, Ruis.” She struggled to speak. “There’s nothing here for me now but hurt. Take me home?”
“Of course.” He put out an arm.
Angie saw the wetness on his cheeks. “You okay?”
He gave a reflex smile, in the hope it’d dam his own tears. “No, not really. Jake and I were tight, you know.”
“Yeah, I know you were.” She took his hand and held it all the way to the Jeep he’d taken from the motor pool.
In the passenger seat, she pressed her boiling head against the cold glass of the passenger window and let the early morning light smear against her face.
She pictured Jake with his eyes open. His full-of-life, bright-as-the-sky, sexy-as-fuck eyes. Those pools of blue had developed a thousand ways of looking at her. Ways that said he had something funny to say, that he was excited because he had a present for her, that he wanted to share something small, something childish and wonderfully silly. Ways that said he needed her help to decide something big and brave, or that he wanted to shut out the whole mad screaming world and undress her.
And most recently, ways that said he loved her. Wanted to spend eternity with her. Was ready to help her raise their child.
Angie knew all of those ways. And already she missed them.
In the cruel world outside her muted grief, Ruis talked in a sad, hushed tone, traffic honked rudely and the radio played inanely, a distraction from silence that weighed more than a battleship.
The car stopped, the brake went on, the engine died and doors opened. Angie’s feet and body moved, air shifted and her aching heart thundered again. Ruis guided her through the communal entrance, up the stairs and into her apartment.
She stood looking at him in the doorway. He hadn’t moved from where he’d been just a few hours ago when he’d brought the news that wrecked her life. She couldn’t believe it had happened. One knock on the door. One word. It had changed everything.
“Angie?”
She looked at him. His face said he was waiting for an answer to a question she’d missed. “Sorry?”
“It’s all right. I just asked, would you like me to come in and stay with you awhile?”
She thought about it. “No, thanks. I think I just need to be on my own and fall apart a bit. You know—let it all out.”
“I understand.” He hugged her and then held out a brown bag.
She hadn’t noticed it until now. “What’s this?”
“Jake’s wallet, some cash, keys and stuff.”
She took the bag and unwrapped the top.
His smell hit her and she let out a small cry, as if she’d been stung by a wasp.
It was on the wallet. On his keys. His wristwatch. It was as powerful as if he was next to her.
She rolled the top of the bag closed, tried to put the memory genie back in its bottle.
Ruis saw fresh tears in her eyes. “I can come in, Angie.”
“No.” She sniffed. “I’ve got to face this. I might as well start now.” She deflected the attention. “What’s being done to find who killed him?”
“Don’t worry about that. They’re doing everything and more.”
The answer didn’t satisfy her. “Tell me everything. Who’s heading the inquiry? Who’s in charge? When will they want to speak to me?”
“Angie—”
“What can I do to help, Ruis?”
He guided her deep into the apartment and toward a sofa. “It’s all in hand. You don’t need to think about that kinda shit. Just rest and…” He stopped himself saying “take it easy.”
“Shit? It’s not shit. For now it’s the most important thing there is. Maybe helping catch this motherfucker is the only thing I can do at the moment.” She put the bag down, grabbed a tissue from a box and blew hard. She had to think straight. Get her act together. “Thanks, Ruis—for coming over, for being there and helping me at the hospital. It was good of you to go through that with me.” She pushed him toward the door. “I need to shower now and get outta this crappy tracksuit.”
He could see a change in her, a sudden resolve, like a knee-jerk reaction, and it worried him. “I’m not very happy about leaving you.”
“Don’t stress. I’m all right.” She backed him into the cor
ridor. “I need space. I just have to get myself together in my own particular way.”
“Okay, but you call me when you want.” He took a step away. “I’ll look after the other stuff.”
Other stuff.
The words almost knocked her over. She was a long way from even being able to think about “the other stuff.”
8
Januk’s vehicle was an old station wagon that was rusted from roof to wheel rims. Keyed down one side, it was badly dented on the other and the windshield was peppered with stone cracks.
Shooter sat uncomfortably on the torn front passenger seat and plucked biscuit-colored foam from busted seams. The all-incriminating sports bag was between his feet. He’d made the mistake of glancing into the back. Fast-food trays glistened with fat and stank of cheap spices. The floor mats were covered in hand-crushed beer and soda cans. Balled tissues lay everywhere and looked gray and hard from wiping God knows what.
“You fuck hookers sometime?” Januk asked casually in disjointed English as he drove one-handed. “I know where there’s cheap European pussy. Maybe they do your movie for free?” His moon shone. “I take you to see them. Introduce my new friend, the movie director.” He laughed. “Maybe they blow me for free just to be in your film. What you think?”
“I think for now, we have all the girls we need.”
The Pole wasn’t giving up that easily. “I like you to meet them anyway. They work an apartment block together not far from here. We drive by just for you to say hello.”
Shooter knew he had to take control. “Afterward, not now!” He twisted in the seat so Januk could see how determined he was. “Filming porn takes a lot of setting up, man. I haven’t got the time to screw around meeting your wannabes. Now we do this my way, or you drop me right here and forget being involved.”
The supervisor didn’t look fazed. “Okay, Mr. Director, we fuck your pussy first. This is no problem.” He turned his radio up and picked his nose with a thumb and forefinger. Anything he got he either rubbed on his overalls or put in his mouth.
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