Phantom Instinct (9780698157132)

by Gardiner, Meg

  She shifted and accelerated along the road. The coastal mountains rose behind her. Sunlight striped through the trees.

  Four weapons at least. The truth, which the authorities refused to believe, was that there were three attackers.

  Two gunmen had been killed. The third had slipped out in the chaos. Maybe he ran out the back door. Maybe he yanked off his mask and mixed with the fleeing crowd. But the man with the silver pistol, the one who shot Drew, had escaped.

  And now she’d seen a figure in the trees who moved the way the firelit gunman had moved that night. Snapping, sliding, staring without a face.

  She had seen him. No doubt.

  The Westermans thought she was telling tales. Was she? She’d been raised by the world’s tale-telling champ. Her mother’s stories had reached Guinness Book territory. “This guy at the gas station was such an asshole. Yelling at other drivers to move so he could fill up.” Harper had listened, fearful and wide-eyed, as the story expanded, until Lila was waving her arms, going, “He fired at their feet and said, ‘Drive.’ When I told him to stop it, he made me dance a little, too.”

  Later, Harper retold that story at a friend’s house, her fingers twisting with worry. Her friend’s mom said, “Honey, are you sure? Because there were no police calls about gunfire at the Shell station.” Her friend’s mom was a police dispatcher.

  She had learned whose stories she could trust: nobody named Flynn.

  At the bottom of the hill, she stopped behind a truck that was waiting to turn onto the highway. When she saw the driver through the back window, she honked and flashed her lights. A second later, she got out of the MINI and jogged to his pickup.

  He lowered the driver’s window. Beard and a trilby. “Yeah?”

  “You were photographing the dedication ceremony,” she said. “I need to see your photos.”

  He took more convincing but eventually picked up his camera. A minute later, scanning his camera roll, Harper said, “Stop.”

  On the display was a shot of the Westermans and, behind them, the grove of trees. In the trees, a figure lurked in the shadows. Harper’s heartbeat kicked up.

  “Can you zoom?” she said.

  He tapped the screen. The figure came into crisp definition. Harper put a hand on the frame of the truck to steady herself. The man in the trees was lean and wiry. His face was too indistinct and shadowed to make out, but his hands were visible in the dappled sunlight. His right hand and arm bore a crawly black tattoo.

  “Can you send me that photo?” Harper said.

  The photographer looked at her askance. “The Westermans hired me.”

  “So can you?”

  “What’s this about?”

  She already had her wallet out. “It’s about twenty bucks. Forward me the photo.”

  A minute later, the photographer pulled away and Harper paced by the MINI, phone to her ear.

  “Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. How may I direct your call?”

  “Detective Erika Sorenstam,” Harper said.

  Sorenstam wasn’t in. Harper asked to be put through to another deputy. Two minutes later, she wished she’d simply hung up.

  “Can you describe the person you saw?” the deputy asked.

  “Vaguely.” As soon as she said it, she knew she was going down the wrong path. She’d had enough experience describing suspects to law enforcement agencies before. “He was in the shadows.”

  “It was a male?”

  “I couldn’t see the person’s face.”

  A pause. “Was this person behaving in a threatening manner?”

  “Lurking in the shadows. At a memorial event for one of the victims of the Xenon shoot-out and fire. And when I approached, he disappeared.”

  “Ms. Flynn, you were also at the club the night of the attack, I understand?”

  “Yes.” She waited, and there was a significant pause on the line. The deputy, she feared, was reading some note in the file about her. “Please, will you log this in the file and pass the information on to Detective Sorenstam?”

  “Of course, ma’am.”

  She ended the call. The sun felt hot. On the highway, two teenagers walked toward the beach, wearing board shorts, sucking on giant drinks.

  Dead end. That’s what everybody told her. That’s what everybody called her attempts to clarify the events of the night of the attack. They were close to locking the doors on her and calling her an obsessive who couldn’t accept the truth.

  Maybe they were right. She got back in the car and pulled onto the road. She got another mile toward a pale brown lens of smog when her phone rang.

  Piper. She pulled over and picked up.

  “You set Mom off but good,” Piper said.

  “I want you to be careful,” Harper said.

  “It’s the anniversary coming up. It’s making everybody insane. But I was kidding about seeing ghosts.”

  “It doesn’t have to be ghosts. There are people who get off on tragedy. They can get obsessed. Sometimes they believe they have a connection with people who are bereaved.”

  Piper quieted. “You think that guy we saw . . . ?”

  “Your mom thinks I’m hallucinating monsters. But I want you to be careful if people contact you about Drew.”

  “I don’t take candy from strangers.”

  “Seriously, Piper.” She hated to scare a kid who’d been through hell in the last year. But she was scared herself. “Not just gamers or flamers or trolls. In real life, too. Not everybody who expresses sympathy has your interests at heart.”

  Piper sighed. “You need to take a vacation.”

  Harper’s blood pressure had to be sky-high. Himalaya-high. “We all do, kid. But for now, I want you to be vigilant.”

  “You sound as determined as that sheriff’s detective,” Piper said. “His report reads like yours. Third shooter. Still out there. Watch out, everybody.”

  “Maybe that’s a good thing.”

  “I love how you want to fight for Drew. But maybe it’s time to take a break.”

  “Keep your eyes open.” Harper dropped the phone and put the MINI in gear.

  But instead of pulling out, she stared at traffic. That sheriff’s detective. She knew the one Piper meant. Sorenstam’s partner.

  Santa Barbara was sixty-five miles up the coast. She could be there in just over an hour. She pulled a U-turn and headed north along the highway.

  5

  The tide was with the Carolina Gail as she drove toward Santa Barbara Harbor. Two pelicans glided above the water’s surface. The sea was alive with rolling sunlight. Aiden Garrison stood at the bow and let the salt spray cool his face.

  In the wheelhouse, his brother, Kieran, steered the boat around the breakwater. At the stern, Kieran’s deckhand spoke on the phone to his girlfriend, telling her he’d be home soon. Their hold was full of bonito. Aiden was exhausted, and glad of it.

  The flags along the breakwater snapped in the breeze. Beyond them the mountains, crisp and green in the clear air, muscled up to the shore. Aiden inhaled. He ached, head to toe. His hands were sore and callused. This was good. All systems were working. He could walk, and talk, and haul line, and banter with Kieran. Behind the sun-splintered windows of the wheelhouse, his older brother looked weatherworn and wise-eyed and, as always, quietly competent.

  The thirty-five-foot Carolina Gail was Kieran’s boat, Kieran’s business, his mortgage payment and groceries and school clothes for the kids. It was Aiden’s life preserver. He had no illusions about that. He was an amateur at the commercial fishing business. Kieran always thanked him for busting his ass to haul the day’s catch. But Aiden knew: This was a stopgap. It was He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother.

  They rounded the breakwater. Nearby, Stearns Wharf stuck into the harbor like a long black finger, pilings tarred and swollen with barnacles.
Ahead, the ocean calmed to a gentle blue swell. Breakers shrugged onto the beach.

  Kieran guided the Carolina Gail past a thicket of masts, reversed the throttles, and eased alongside the dock, where cranes and hoists and refrigerated trucks waited for the commercial fleet to unload.

  She was standing on the sidewalk outside Brophy Brothers, watching.

  The boat’s bumpers nudged the wood. Aiden grabbed a mooring line. He checked his balance, as he always did now, and jumped onto the dock.

  She waited while he tied off on cleats, fore and aft. He didn’t need binocs, or a handshake, or to check her ID. Even two hundred feet away, he recognized her. Even a year away, even though he’d first seen her through gunfire and smoke and panic.

  She was slender, almost coltish, in skinny jeans and a white blouse, her near-black hair pulled back in a loose ponytail but fighting free in the breeze. Her hands hung at her sides. Her eyes, glinting in the sun, were patient and watchful.

  Kieran cut the engines and leaned out of the wheelhouse. “You know her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Really?”

  “Unquestionably.”

  Kieran raised an eyebrow. “So what are you waiting for?”

  “You sure?”

  “We’re good. Go on.”

  Aiden touched the brim of his baseball cap in thanks, knowing that this was another sign his brother didn’t really need him on the boat. When he finally reached the foot of the dock, she extended her hand.

  Her skin was cool, her grip solid. “Detective Garrison.”

  “Ms. Flynn. It’s Aiden.” The rest was on hold.

  “Can we talk?” she said.

  “How did you find me?”

  “Don’t you want to know why I’m here?”

  “I know. I just wanted to postpone the inevitable for at least thirty seconds.”

  He gestured at the path along the harbor and led her into the afternoon sunshine, trying not to limp.

  “I read the investigative report.” She sat at the sidewalk table and tapped her fingers on its surface. “I read your statement.”

  He eased into a chair, holding the table with both hands. “I read yours.”

  “As for how I found you, you’re in the phone book. Your next-door neighbor told me you’re working on the Carolina Gail. ‘Getting your legs back underneath you,’ she said.”

  “Bless her talkative self.”

  She seemed to pay no attention to his caution with movement, or to the care he took to line up every step like a target. She wasn’t eyeing him like a specimen. But she was eyeing him. He didn’t know what to make of her yet.

  Slow breaths. She was a fellow survivor, not a trigger. He smelled the whiff of smoke and burning plastic, but confronted it. It’s not real.

  “Why did you track me down?” he said.

  “Because you told the investigators there was a third shooter at Xenon and that he got away. You told them exactly what I did. That this guy had a silver semiautomatic. He threw the Molotov cocktail and the magnesium flare. He fired the shot that hit Drew.” She breathed. “You saw him. I read it. I read your statement a hundred times.”

  “I dictated that statement eleven months ago. Why are you here today?”

  She pushed her drink aside. Her skin was pale and her features fine, but she wasn’t delicate—a frame of taut cabling seemingly ran beneath the soft white blouse. Her gaze seemed a thousand years old.

  “Today, Drew’s parents dedicated a memorial at Clearview Park. I saw him there.”

  “Him.”

  “The man who doesn’t exist.”

  Flames reflected in a gas mask, hood pulled up like the Reaper. Aiden leaned forward. “Why do you think it was him?”

  She laid her phone on the table and showed him a photo. He was staring at it, nearly hypnotized, when she opened an Altoids tin. Inside were three cigarette butts.

  “Found them where he’d been standing. Maybe they contain DNA,” she said.

  He set that idea aside for the moment. “This photo.”

  “The tattoo on his right hand.”

  He looked up. “I didn’t see that tattoo.”

  “I know. You saw him from the back. I saw him from the front.” She tapped the photo. “That’s him.”

  “And nobody will listen to you.”

  “I hope you will.”

  “I will. But it won’t do any good.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m the guy nobody listens to anymore. Aiden Garrison, head case.”

  6

  Harper’s expression remained searching. “If you’re a head case, so am I.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “You were there. You saw him,” she said. “You’re here now, and you still agree that you saw him.”

  Her eyes were blue, bright, piercing. Gulls wheeled overhead. The salt air was so sharp, Aiden could taste it on his tongue.

  “I know you were injured. Bad,” she said. “I know it didn’t affect your eyesight.”

  His heart beat heavily in his chest.

  “Did it?” she said.

  “You’re blunt.”

  “The internal limiter on my mouth blew out after the sheriff’s department told me I was imagining things. On this topic, I have no inside voice.”

  She was deadpan. He set down his mug.

  “I saw him. I had him in my sights. But the crowd was running between us, and I had no shot,” he said. “Then the floor opened up. Drew and I and those two men . . .”

  “I know.”

  Along with Drew Westerman, two other civilians had been killed when the floor collapsed.

  “Sheer luck that I was ten feet away from them,” he said. “The heaviest debris missed me.”

  He kept his voice flat and mentally repeated the mantra he had learned during recovery: Remember it without reliving it.

  The collapsing floor had pitched him into a void. He had tried to roll, calling on his combat jump experience. But training was useless against walls and beams and splintering floorboards. He hit and broke his shoulder and elbow and collarbone and four ribs and his left leg. One rib shattered and punctured his right lung. The building’s CO2 fire suppression system had kept the flames from reaching him. But smoke inhalation and internal bleeding did a crapload of additional damage. And there was the head injury.

  “I got bunged up pretty solidly,” he said. “I didn’t see the shooter escape.”

  “I understand. I’m glad you’re on the mend.”

  “Getting there.”

  Two weeks in ICU. Six more in the hospital. A season. A life, a sloughing off of one skin, leaving him raw and shiny, unready for the outside world. He didn’t tell her that the finish line forever seemed to recede, always out of reach.

  “How about you?” he said.

  She attempted a smile. “I was ten inches luckier than you. Minor injuries.”

  He had seen what she was made of and knew she didn’t need his problems on her shoulders. That night, as gunfire tore through Xenon, she had forsaken her chance to escape. She could have dropped behind the bar and shielded herself before running out the staff exit. Instead, she went over the top and risked herself to try and rescue one of the wounded.

  She was a hero. He couldn’t bitch to a hero.

  “Why do you think the person you saw in the trees today was the third shooter? Besides having a right-hand tattoo.”

  She breathed and spoke dispassionately. “I know he was just a shadow, but . . . the way he moved. The—”

  “You know the gunman was male?”

  “Heavy shoulders, slim hips with boxers exposed above sagging blue jeans. Plus, he had a thick line of hair running up his stomach.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “And that night, the strut. The black hoo
die—I think one of the other men wore green. That hand with the tattoo, holding a silver handgun. It caught the light.” She looked at him. “Then I saw you behind him, coming toward me through the crowd. I saw you. I . . .” A breath. “I thought—please let him get the guy.”

  She put her hands between her knees.

  Aiden said, “That’s the guy I saw. But we won’t convince the sheriff’s department. I told the department all of this. They took my statement in the hospital, as soon as I was able to talk.”

  “You’re a detective. A sworn deputy. An experienced investigator.”

  He exhaled as though the air was being pushed from his lungs by a heavy hand.

  “What do you think he was doing at the memorial?” he said.

  “You believe me?”

  “What do you think he was doing there?” he said again, gently.

  She took a second. “Watching.” Another pause. “Stalking.”

  “For what reason?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Her voice remained strong, her eyes clear.

  “What do you want me to do?” he said.

  “Back me up. Help me get reinforcements. Because that guy’s out there.”

  “And he killed your boyfriend.”

  “He killed my boyfriend.” She colored. “And he’s back. He’s sniffing around people who lost loved ones in the attack, and . . .” She pressed her fingers to her eyes. “What the hell was he doing there? What if he wants to target survivors? What if he’s some psycho who’s been biding his time before picking off people who made it out alive? Jesus, does he want to hurt Drew’s family?”

  “The Xenon attack wasn’t random. They sprayed gunfire, but they had targets.”

  She said, “You have to have an idea of who it is.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t. And the LASD doesn’t either. And there’s no way to tie the bullet that hit your boyfriend to . . .”

  She flinched.

  “Sorry.” He reminded himself that she was a victim, not a cop. “There’s no way to match rounds fired to the weapons recovered at the crime scene. The barrels were heat damaged. They couldn’t be test-fired.”