by Robert Ellis
Matt looked at Casper, lying on the grass in his soiled clothing. The man seemed relieved. Deeply shaken and a night or two past being burned out, but relieved.
“It’s simple,” Casper went on. “Your father wants to know what it will take to keep your silence.”
“What it will take?”
“It’s all about money, Jones. It’s always about money. Your old man needs to know how much you want.”
“How much I want?”
“Look at it like this,” Casper said. “You’ve just won the lotto. It’s your lucky day, kid.”
Matt shook his head, thinking that he might vomit. That he needed a shower. That his father, dear old Dad, was every bit as vile as he had always thought he was. He looked back at Billy Casper, the man his father had chosen to deliver the message. Somehow it made him feel better—the idea that regardless of social standing, deadbeats work with deadbeats, because they share some sort of perverted attraction for each other. The idea that the doctor, no matter how irrational or insane, had been right when talking about the parents of his victims. It was never about how much they had. Instead, it was all about who they were.
Matt gathered up the five bullets in the grass, got to his feet with the .38 in his hand, popped open the cylinder, and tossed all six rounds into the woods. He was thinking things over, the words he wanted to use.
“Tell him,” he said finally. “Tell him that you made a mistake, and I turned out to be the wrong guy. He has no worries, Casper. I have no intention of ever trying to communicate with him again. As far as I’m concerned, my father died with my mother a long time ago.”
“Give me a break, Jones. You’ll be rich. All the man wants is your word that you’ll keep your mouth shut about where you came from. His reputation’s at stake. He wants your help, and he’s willing to pay for it.”
He wants your help, and he’s willing to pay for it.
Matt almost laughed. His father’s request seemed so absurd and tainted, so dark and mean. The man had given him nothing, and now he wanted everything. Did his father, the King of Wall Street, really think that he would succeed? Was he so out of touch and full of himself, so rich and powerful that he thought he could buy his own son’s soul?
It took Matt’s breath away. The various shades of evil that he’d been forced to witness and confront over such a short time. One monster after the next, until he’d reached three in a row.
Grace and Baylor, and now his own blood, M. Trevor Jones.
He shot Casper a hard look, then pitched the .38 into the brush ten to twenty feet away from the six bullets.
“Okay,” he said in a low voice. “Okay. If that’s not good enough, Casper, then tell him the truth. Tell him that nobody’s safe and all bets are off. Tell him that it’s a dangerous world out there. He should know all about it. He’s one of the shitheads who helped fuck everything up.”
CHAPTER 56
She was wearing that raspberry-colored bra he’d seen hanging on the chair a few weeks ago. Something about the color brought out the smoke in those dark blue eyes of hers.
He gave her another long look.
Even in the places where the candlelight couldn’t reach, her face seemed to radiate a certain warmth that he had never seen or experienced before. They were already so comfortable with each other—they had been through so much and managed to survive—that there were times when he didn’t feel the need to say anything to her. It worked like magic. Whatever might be on his mind, she already seemed to know.
He kissed her as he unhooked her bra and pulled it away from her breasts, swaying in the air. Then he gazed down at her hands, her long, elegant fingers, and watched as she unzipped his jeans, slid them over his legs and feet, and tossed them on the floor. After she pulled away his boxer shorts, she rolled over onto her back, her tangled blond hair cascading off the pillow. And then she smiled at him. It was a gentle smile. The kind of smile that felt like it was emanating from her entire being. When they embraced, when his chest met hers, when he filled his lungs with the scent of her body, when their stomachs and legs rubbed against each other—skin on skin—all wounds were healed and he reached that special place he’d been looking for but had never found.
Pure joy. Pure ecstasy.
The next half hour rushed by in a wondrous blur, the electricity playing with his senses and singeing them. And then there was a different kind of joy. A different kind of ecstasy—quiet and still, with everything in the world at rest.
Matt looked up and watched the light from the candle dancing across the ceiling. He wondered if what they had together wasn’t heaven-sent. He wondered about his own beliefs and whether or not there could be an afterlife. With all of the cruelty in this world, the senseless violence, the will to power and money, the sheer ignorance of the few and of the many, the existence of an afterlife didn’t seem very likely. Yet there were times when Matt couldn’t help thinking that Kevin was with them. That somehow his lost friend had found a way through the void to give them his blessing, particularly after they made love.
Matt concentrated on his breathing and exhaled slowly. In spite of the good feeling, his mind had already started going again. The things he’d seen over the course of his life, and that long list of certainties that still didn’t feel all that certain. He looked over at Laura and realized that she had been studying his face. She smiled at him, visibly curious.
“Something’s wrong,” she said.
Matt shook his head. “Everything’s good. Better than good.”
“No, it isn’t. I can tell it isn’t. I was watching you.”
He rolled over and looked up at the light on the ceiling again. The flickering shapes moving back and forth seemed to quiet his mind, almost as if he had begun a new meditation. But then Laura threw her leg over his thigh and brushed her fingers through his hair—face to face, eye to eye.
“You’re thinking about the girl you told me about,” she whispered. “The one who died in New Orleans.”
“Kim Bachman,” he said.
“It’s not your fault, Matt. You’re not responsible for her murder.”
Matt glanced at her and nodded. “I know.”
“There’s nothing you could have done any differently. By the time you found out who Baylor was, you were bleeding to death, and he was feeding you an anesthetic.”
“You mean we, don’t you? We found out together.”
She lowered her head to the pillow, her eyes losing their focus. “There’s nothing more we could have done. We were lucky we survived. And now, after everything, we’re together and not alone. We have a chance to get through this. I don’t know how long it’ll take to forget what’s happened, but we have a chance to make something out of our lives and move on.”
He kissed her. “You’re right,” he said. “We have a chance to forget. A chance to move on. It’s just the idea that he was right beside me the whole time. That if I’d known I could have stopped him, and Kim Bachman would still be alive.”
“Maybe,” she whispered. “But think of who you’re talking about. It’s still only a maybe.”
She closed her eyes. Matt could feel her body beginning to let go and started smoothing his hand over her back and easing her into sleep. When her breathing slowed, he sat up and reached for what was left of a glass of bourbon on the bedside table. Laura had been through enough, and he didn’t want to worry her. He didn’t want her to see his face or read his mind. What was keeping him up tonight didn’t have much to do with Baylor, or even the girl the doctor had murdered in New Orleans.
It was his shadow, his follower. The man with the gun who kept showing up in his rearview mirror.
Billy Casper.
The man with the dull face who wore shabby clothing, needed a new wallet, and had the ability to melt into the crowd. A man with a gun who wasn’t a private investigator or a cop but understood how to become invisible and practiced the art, albeit with mixed results.
Matt took a sip from the glass, savori
ng the bourbon as it lit up his throat and warmed his stomach.
Something about what happened in the park tonight was off. Matt could feel it in his bones. Something about what happened tonight was way off.
A memory surfaced, an old one—words of advice from his sergeant on the last night he spent in the States before his flight to Germany, and then Afghanistan. His sergeant had always shown a special interest in him. That night he asked him into the office but didn’t give a reason. It turned out that he wanted to show Matt a scene from a movie directed by Stanley Kubrick called Full Metal Jacket. The clip his sergeant wanted him to see was a joyride in a chopper over Vietnam in which a soldier fires his machine gun at anything and everything he sees moving on the ground. At first glance, Matt took it as a typical Hollywood exaggeration. But when the scene ended, his sergeant switched off the movie and had other ideas. He said that most fatalities in Afghanistan were occurring in the first few months of a soldier’s tour of duty, because it takes that much time to figure out what he called the golden rule: when in combat with an enemy who isn’t wearing a uniform, no matter where you are in the world, shoot first and think later. Don’t use your fucking brain, Jones. Use your eyes and ears and pull the goddamn trigger.
His sergeant’s advice had saved his life many times, including the night he’d emptied two mags into Edward Plank here on the lawn by Laura’s garage. Still, he wondered why the memory surfaced and seemed so vivid tonight.
He found his boxer shorts and got out of bed, then walked over to the window and took another sip of bourbon as he gazed outside. That dry wind was still up, the trees bending and creaking, the night clear enough that he could see the Library Tower standing tall over downtown Los Angeles.
No doubt about it, his father’s messenger, his father’s hire, was a lowlife in need of money. So why had Casper waited so long to deliver the message? That was the catch, right? That was the warning beacon, the glitch that sent the train off the tracks. Why did the big man wait so long? Matt had been mulling it over ever since he left the park and still couldn’t come up with an answer that made any sense.
Why did Casper risk losing his life while Matt stuffed that .38 into his mouth and pulled the trigger? He took it twice. He took it hard. Why did Casper refuse to talk under that kind of pressure? Why would he have gone through any of what happened out there when just a few minutes later he was admitting that he worked for Matt’s father? That he was acting as his agent and trying to broker a deal to keep Matt quiet and out of the way?
The cadence was off. Everything about it was off.
As Matt thought it through, he realized that the ruse began the moment he pulled over to the side of the road. He may have wanted to lure Casper out of his car, but the fact that the man actually followed Matt into the park just as the sun was setting—
Matt took another sip of bourbon.
Casper wouldn’t have done it. If he had been trying to buy Matt’s silence, if his story had been genuine, he would have picked another time and place. He wouldn’t have followed him into the park at night.
No one would.
Matt had wanted to confront Casper and thought that he needed privacy to do it. He had picked North Hollywood Park because of the trees and brush, the sounds of the freeway, and a hunch that few people had the stones to wander off the sidewalks in a place where a girl’s murder was still on everybody’s mind.
A beat went by, and then another.
It dawned on Matt that Casper could have wanted the same things—the trees and brush and the din of freeway traffic to mask the sound. It dawned on him that the big man had a legitimate reason for getting out of his car. That following Matt into the woods at night wasn’t a mistake after all.
Matt could feel the hair on the back of his neck beginning to stand on end. He could see it now. He could see it.
Casper wasn’t there to cut a deal between dear old Dad and his long-lost son. The slob had taken the risk of eating his own gun because there had never been a deal, and M. Trevor Jones couldn’t afford to be connected with what was supposed to transpire tonight in any way.
Casper had botched it. He’d taken all that he could take, two pulls of the trigger, then spilled out who he was working for to save his own skin. He’d taken all that he could take, then made the mistake of letting Matt know who was really signing his paycheck.
Matt took a heavier swig from the glass as another uncertainty finally became certain. He could remember Casper saying that his father wanted Matt to take a job with a lower profile or, even better, no profile at all.
No profile at all.
It had been a hit, and Casper had blown it. Matt had taken him from behind at gunpoint, ordering Casper to drop his .38 before he could use it.
Moments passed. Matt shook his head as he thought it through a second time and realized that this was the only explanation that filled in all the blanks. His father had paid Billy Casper to kill him in order to preserve his reputation on Wall Street. His father wanted him dead in order to prevent anyone from finding out that he had abandoned his wife and son.
His father wanted him dead.
It hung there, all of it, in the candlelight and in the shadows, and on a night in late October when the dry wind howled. His father wanted him dead. His father wanted him—
Matt finally noticed his cell phone vibrating in the background. He found his jeans on the floor and fished the phone out of his pocket. It was McKensie, calling after midnight. His father wanted him—
“Bob Grace is dead,” McKensie said in a raspy voice.
Matt checked on Laura. In spite of the phone knocking against the floor, she was still sleeping. He moved back to the window, unable to slow down his mind.
“How?” he said.
“The same way Ron Harris died, Jones. He tied a sheet around his neck and pushed himself off the bed. I always thought he was a coward.”
Matt didn’t say anything for a long time. He was thinking about his father, his father wanting him dead.
“Are you there, Jones? Are you there?”
“Yeah,” Matt said. “Did he leave a note?”
“We didn’t find one.”
“Are you sure he did it himself?”
“You know, I thought the same thing. For what he ended up doing to the department, I’d guess plenty of guys on our side would have offered to tie the knot for him.”
“But we’ll never know, will we, Lieutenant? We’ll never know, because there’s no note.”
McKensie paused, as if taking a hit on a cigarette. When he finally spoke, Matt could hear the sarcasm in his voice.
“That’s right, Jones. We never will. I’m just glad that the motherfucker’s dead. I figured you would be, too.”
McKensie hung up. Matt listened to the digital hum for several moments before switching off his cell. He could see the irony in the way Grace had followed his first victim, an innocent Ron Harris, dying in the same place, perhaps even the same cell, by his own hand. If he let the thought continue, he could see the possibility that Grace was murdered and had nothing to do with his own death at all. Still, nothing about the news of Grace’s passing was strong enough to wipe out what had happened in the park tonight with Billy Casper.
Matt sat down on the bed, glanced over at Laura, and knocked back the last of his bourbon. He wondered if he should go downstairs and pour another. It was just a guess, but he didn’t think he’d sleep much tonight. His father wanted him dead.
CHAPTER 57
He stood up and looked out the window from Kevin’s study on the second floor of the house. He could see Laura in the backyard by the pool cleaning up the fallen branches and leaves from last night’s windstorm. He was checking on her. It probably wasn’t necessary. Still, he needed some assurance that everything was okay.
After a long, sleepless night, Matt had come to a single conclusion: in spite of the risks, in spite of the fact that Casper had mentioned Matt’s father by name and revealed his motive, in spite of
everything, Casper’s obvious need for cash would override his ability to reason, and he would make another attempt on Matt’s life.
Matt was certain of it. That’s why that memory had surfaced last night, the lesson his sergeant had passed on to him, the golden rule. That’s why the memory had seemed so vivid.
He’d made a mistake and broken the rule.
The context and setting might have provided a certain degree of cover, but Casper’s purpose had been palpable enough that Matt should have caught on from the very beginning. He’d realized about twelve hours too late that he should have reloaded the .38 and pulled the trigger one more time. He should have sent his father a message. One crude enough that he might understand, especially if it came directly to his office in an overnight FedEx box.
He should have sent him Casper’s head.
But now the water was muddy. Because of the way he’d shot Plank he couldn’t tell McKensie what had happened—he couldn’t tell anyone, even Laura—without raising more doubts about his own frame of mind. Who would believe his story? Who would believe that his father, a man he hadn’t spoken to since childhood, a man of wealth, power, and prestige, had hired a lowlife like Billy Casper and was trying to kill him? Would anyone even believe that M. Trevor Jones was his father at all? They shared the same name, and no one could deny the obvious likeness—sure, it could be proven with a blood test—but how many lawyers and PR firms and doctors on the take would be standing in the way? How many years and how much money had his father already spent in deleting their history and writing a new one?
Even more important, what would the LAPD psychiatrists in Chinatown think? What would be their first impression of him? Their first take? That he was a head case? That what went down over the past few weeks triggered delusions and a serious bout with post-traumatic stress disorder? If he became tagged with PTSD, wouldn’t that follow him around for the rest of his career? Wouldn’t his work, his being, always be shrouded in doubt and riddled with asterisks? Wouldn’t his return to the homicide table be delayed? Couldn’t his story and the rumors that would go with it snowball into something where he never worked another homicide case again?
