Last Shot (2006)

by Gregg - Rackley 04 Hurwitz

  The CO stared down at the pink body, its mouth caught in a perfect O. He stepped slowly back to the single steel door that could make J-Unit airtight, his hand grabbing for the radio at his belt and catching it on the second try. A moment of breath-held anticipation as a hundred sets of eyes peered out from fifty cells. A giant roar came all at once, as if from a single throat, and then the convicts charged from their cells.

  Chapter 2

  Decked out in Spider-Man shoes, an empty belted scabbard, Evel Knievel helmet, and wearing a goatee of chocolate ice cream, Tyler rose from a crouch that dangled his pale butt to the carpet and sneezed a Spideyweb of snot into his spread fingers. He studied the result, impressed.

  "Bless you," his mother said.

  An encore.

  "Bless you."

  Yet again.

  "Enough already." Dray grabbed a flailing arm and tugged Tyler around Bear's legs toward a waiting Kleenex. Ty dropped his milk, kicking it across the floor, its airtight roll reinforcing Tim's perpetual regard for the inventor of the sippy cup. In an act of nearly unprecedented stupidity, Tim and Dray had recarpeted the house--in white--shortly after Tyler's second birthday. They still hadn't figured out just to let the rug get appropriately stained, their neurosis about spills an indication of how basic their lives had become.

  Over by the fireplace, Tim finished duct-taping carpet scraps onto the corners of the raised hearth. Tyler had scraped a shin on one yesterday, and tonight the offending stone was paying the price. Bear reclined on the couch, a dessert plate on each knee.

  Bear fingered his own plate and licked the frosting, then regarded Tim's untouched square longingly. Tim had doubted the wisdom of entrusting his piece of birthday cake, which amounted to the shaky th in Happy 38th, to his partner's custody. Though enormous, Bear had little flab. He was more like a shaped block. It was a lot of mass to support, and his stalwart reliability ended when food entered the picture.

  Since Tyler's screeching arrival, Tim and Dray had enjoyed staying home more. Slowing down and speeding up to a domestic pace. Eating dinner when it was still light out. Going to bed before Letterman. They'd had good practice for the seven years of Ginny's life, and with Tyler's birth they'd returned to the once-familiar lifestyle with renewed appreciation.

  Bear had filled in increasingly over the past year as Tim and Dray had started to spend some evenings out alone. Early on, Dray's mother had trooped over religiously, bringing with her onion-intensive casseroles and a vast collection of unwarranted fears--"You'd better child-safe that toilet lid." "There's no juice in this juice!" "Do you know the crap in the air on this side of the freeway?" Dray, realizing that her mother was augmenting Tim's own overprotectiveness, finally informally banned her from the house. They met once a week at a park or a mall, which was about fifty times a year more than they did before Tyler. Tim's father, an inveterate and accomplished con man, had sent a postcard on Tyler's first birthday saying he wanted to meet his grandson, but Tim had not replied. The card represented the sole correspondence between them since their latest falling-out three years before.

  Dray released Ty, who tottered around Boston, Bear's Rhodesian Ridgeback, and regarded the pajamas he'd kicked off--yet again--moments before. "Kaiyer hot," he declared.

  "So you've indicated," Bear said. "Several times."

  Dray, looking as if she had grave doubts about having extended her maternity leave from the Sheriff's Department, regarded Tim's work and shot a blond wisp out of her face with an expertly directed exhale. "Missed a corner or an edge somewhere." Her index finger roamed, sweeping across the carpeted backyard step, the rugs muffling the kitchen linoleum, the foam taped over the corners of the coffee table. "Huh. Guess not." Her smile tugged left--her smart-ass grin--and her hair fell across her light green eyes. Thirteen years of marriage, and still the impossibly pale shade of her irises could catch Tim off guard. She glanced over at the couch, and her eyebrows, two of her most expressive features, tilted sternly. "I said that's enough cake."

  Bear, Tyler, and Boston all reacted to her tone with hurt expressions.

  Tim rose from the hearth and dusted his hands. "Not you, Bear."

  "Oh." Bear glanced down and saw Tyler's hand, sneaked around his midsection and embedded in frosting. "You little rat. Get outta here."

  Tyler squealed and ran away, avoiding a tap on the naked rear end from Bear's size sixteen boot. It was good to see Bear smiling again. He'd had to put his other dog down three months ago and had been smothering his grief with Two-Dozen Tuesdays at Krispy Kreme all week long.

  As Dray had suggested on more than one occasion, Bear needed a woman.

  Tyler stalked around the back of the sofa, licking his blue-smeared hand, coming back for another pass at Bear's plate.

  "Don't even think about it." Tim claimed his cake, smashed by the hand imprint. To Bear he said, "Nice work."

  Bear shrugged. "Off duty."

  Tim checked his watch--9:05 P.M.--and set down his plate. "Come on, bub." He swung Tyler up onto a hip. "Say good night."

  Ty blew kisses, which involved knocking a sticky hand against his chin and then flinging it outward.

  "Night, Typhoon," Bear said.

  "Night, Bautin." More awkward gesticulation at the dog, who lifted his eyes solemnly in acknowledgment. Tim headed toward the back.

  Bear's cell phone revved up into a flat rendition of Zeppelin's "Kashmir." He stood, hefting his jeans, tugging the Nextel from his belt. From his reaction, the text message was something more pressing than a confidential informant trying to sell a tip.

  Predictably, Tim's phone vibrated next, startling Tyler. Tim handed him to Dray, tilted the screen, scowled.

  Bear said, "Happy birthday."

  Tim started back again. He returned to the living room a moment later, holstering his Smith & Wesson. He leaned over, kissed his son on the forehead. Bear pocketed an oatmeal cookie.

  Dray raised an eyebrow. Tim nodded in affirmation, kissed her as well, and followed Bear out.

  Chapter 3

  Bear accelerated down the Harbor Freeway, his overused Ram protesting with a whine of engine and shocks. For a prison break, as with a missing-persons, the first twenty-four hours are key. Since 1979, when the Justice Department shifted responsibility for fugitives from the FBI to the Marshals Service, federal prison escapees had fallen into the Service's domain. Tim and Bear had swung by the district office downtown to grab whatever files Guerrera had been able to pull together. Consigned to light duty in the squad room after a questionable use of force during a raid last spring, Guerrera had accompanied them down the hall on their way out, right up to the awkward moment when the elevator doors banged shut in his envious face.

  Bear, proud godfather, kept a photo rubber-banded to the cracked sun visor--himself holding Tyler upside down by the ankles before Legoland's pint-size Empire State Building. He laid on the horn, then passed a soccer mom in a Hummer with a NO WAR FOR OIL bumper sticker, the Dodge, hardly fuel-thrifty itself, shuddering its disapproval.

  Tim thumbed through a sheaf of printouts, stopping at Walker Jameson's presentencing report and squinting at the fax-squashed letters at the periphery. U.S. Marine Corps. Enlisted. MOS: Infantry Rifleman. If the brief, unofficial write-up of his nine years in the Corps was accurate, Jameson had seen action in Jordan, Kosovo, Somalia, Sudan, and Iraq. After 9/11 he'd requested to retrain on an Anti-Terrorist Task Force and attended Scout/Sniper School at Quantico, making corporal as a sniper with First Force Recon. A photocopy of a grainy picture showed a lean, powerful man, fist tensed around a combat knife. His camo-smeared face was turned to the shadows, a near-perfect seam of dark claiming the left side. His rifle was slung, stock to his right shoulder, barrel at his opposite knee.

  Having spent eleven years as a platoon sergeant with the Army Rangers, Tim was only too aware of the experience Jameson had amassed in his diverse deployments. Tim studied his fugitive's face. A Spec Ops warrior trained at taxpayer expense to think as Tim once t
hought, to stalk as he stalked, to shoot as he shot. Tim set the photo on the dash. His eyes pulled to the bottom line of the PSR. Dishonorable discharge. Reduced to E-1. Six months in Leavenworth. No further explanation.

  "Remind me to tell Guerrera to get ahold of Jameson's SRB."

  "His who?" Bear asked.

  "Service Record Book. His file." He and Bear had worked together for so long he sometimes forgot that their shared lexicon didn't extend to military jargon.

  Jameson's personal section was surprisingly spare. Thirty-one years old. Married once, long separated, though the divorce wasn't on paper yet. No kids. One sister, five years older. During his marriage he'd lived in Littlerock. The rural community of about ten thousand was located fifty miles northeast of L.A., smack in the middle of pretty much nothing. After his last deployment and vacation in Leavenworth, he hadn't returned. From what Tim knew of Littlerock, it was easy to see why.

  The Dodge veered onto one of the Long Beach exits and flew across the channel on a green suspension bridge. Bear finally eased off the gas as they arced down onto Terminal Island. Home of the prison that had accommodated inmates ranging from Al Capone to Charlie Manson, the island was also an integral part of the Port of Los Angeles. Semis lined the roads end to end like building fronts. Shadowy container ships crawled in and out of berths, some large enough to give the illusion that it was the land that was casting off, washing the Ram with it. The white, ribbed tube of a pipeline twisted overhead through the island like a monorail.

  Jameson had been handed a five-year sentence for stockpiling explosives. He'd gotten rolled up in a federal sting attempting to acquire two crates of frag grenades. Good-behavior credits had won him a one-year reduction.

  "Five years seems a bit steep for a first-time weapons beef," Tim said. "Did Guerrera give any background?" When Marshal Tannino, roused from sleep, had pulled Tim aside at the office to remind him in a rare facile lapse of the importance of a quick takedown, Tim had missed Guerrera's full rundown.

  Bear raised his voice to be heard over the loose dashboard and the garbage truck rattling by. "Jameson refused to cooperate--wouldn't name names, wear a wire, nothing--so they played up the aggravating factors and stuck it to him. Cost him years, probably."

  The watchtower loomed into view. The dark plain of the harbor, glittering to the east beyond an ornamental strip of well-tended grass, underlined the tower's beaconlike appearance. The prison rose above a cyclone fence, its concrete blocks pallid yellow. Coils of razor wire formed a dense and forbidding underbrush. Rust-red bars obscured dim windows and the thousand-man confraternity of the Terminal Island Federal Correctional Institute. To the west stood a cluster of coast guard administrative buildings. They looked ready to crowd the prison right off the land, its eastern wall hanging over the water. Officers jogged along the building's walls, hauling semiautomatics, their shouts faint in wind off the ocean. The tower spotlight glared off the fake quartz rocks in the narrow run between expanses of chain link, making Tim squint. The escape had to have been as spectacular as billed. Again Tim found himself musing on Jameson's considerable training.

  Bear flashed his creds at the guard in the station, who spit tobacco into a paper coffee cup and said, "Warden's expecting you. Guns stay in your vehicle."

  They pulled through the gate, parked, and slid their guns into the glove box. Tim removed the handcuff key from his key chain and taped it under his watch.

  He frowned at the file in his lap, and Bear plucked up the top page and studied it, as if to pin down the cause of Tim's taking offense. Tim chewed his cheek and conned the choppy harbor. The air smelled strongly of tar. The distant, sonorous call of a tanker vibrated the window.

  Tim said, "Why's a guy who's racking up good-behavior credits serve most of his sentence, then break out?"

  "Convicts move in mysterious ways." Bear jiggled the key to free it from the ignition. "But we work that out, we're in the game."

  Across the parking lot, the warden stepped from the building and raised a hand in greeting. Tim waved back, and he and Bear unsnapped their seat belts.

  Tim threw open his door, then paused. "Gimme his identifiers again. Jameson."

  Bear held up the sheet to the faint light. "Six feet. Hundred ninety pounds. White."

  "Great. He looks like everyone. He looks like no one."

  Bear glanced at the photo on the dash. "He looks like you."

  Chapter 4

  The guard at the console gave them a cordial nod on their way into the secure room, where they found five men arrayed around desks and tables of inmate manufacture. The conversation stopped abruptly.

  The warden, an exacting former Indian Affairs commissioner with a trimmed mustache and a limp, paused at the door. "John Sasso's our operations lieutenant, and this is Daniel McGraw, our intel specialist. They're here to assist you. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a media shitstorm to forge into."

  He withdrew, and the silence resumed. Neither Sasso nor McGraw--who remained standing in a clear display of annoyance at having been summoned from more pressing matters--offered a word of greeting, and the three COs who hadn't been introduced continued wearily at their sandwiches and files. The vibe, while uncomfortable, wasn't unexpected. Deputy U.S. marshals were outsiders, and they generally got called into prison business only when correctional officers or intel specialists--who were supposed to keep their fingers on the pulse of prison underlife--failed at their jobs.

  Tim offered a hand. "Tim Rackley. My partner, George Jowalski."

  Whereas Sasso was dressed to code--gray slacks, white collared shirt, maroon tie with a blue blazer--McGraw had gone SWAT casual, his short sleeves cuffed over his biceps and his camo pants stuffed into the tops of unlaced boots. Sasso's belt was laden with gear: radio, two key-ring clips, a baton slotted through a metal circle. From his blazer pocket protruded an inmate rule book and a blue pad Tim guessed contained union guidelines.

  "I'll walk you over to Jameson's cell," Sasso said. "You'll have to see it to believe it."

  "Actually, we'd like to watch the tape of the assault first," Tim said. "Would you mind taking a look at it with us?"

  "Seen it about fifty times, thanks," McGraw said.

  "We were hoping to get your perspective."

  "Pretty cut and dried. Guy got shanked in the neck."

  Bear rose to his tiptoes and made a shape with his mouth as if to whistle--gonna be a long night.

  Tim said, "Maybe we could ask you a few questions before we head over."

  McGraw snapped a cell phone from his belt, tapped a button to quiet it. "If we can make this quick. Full plate, as you can imagine."

  "We'll do our best," Tim said. "You catch any whispers from the snitches this week?"

  "None at all."

  "I saw Jameson kept perfect behavior."

  A glimmer of a smirk. "Until now."

  "How was he today?"

  "How are any of them any day?" Sasso said.

  "Anything different?" Tim asked.

  McGraw again: "Another day, same shit."

  "We don't keep track of every mood shift in every prisoner," Sasso added.

  Bear cleared his throat. "All that sensitivity training gone to waste."

  Tim forged ahead. "Can we get his medical files?"

  "Nothing in 'em," McGraw said. "He's a healthy guy."

  "I'd like to look at them anyway."

  "Maybe we should get a sample of his toilet water, too."

  "You volunteering?"

  McGraw's radio squawked, and he muttered into it, "I told you--be there in a sec," then glanced up at Tim and Bear. "Look, I'm sure all this background shit helps when you're running down a serial rapist in the world, but it's different in here. Not like the street. We've got cages and captives. It's the jungle, and it's got different rules."

  "It would seem he's no longer in here," Bear noted evenly.

  Tim tried another tack. "I've spent some time inside."

  "Unless you're full-time, you don'
t understand."

  "Twenty-four/seven."

  McGraw looked perplexed, so Bear clarified. "He means as an inmate."

  This shut McGraw up. He studied Tim. Then his eyes glinted with recognition and he sat down. Spun by the media, Tim's vigilante rampage after Ginny's murder was remembered by some--particularly in law enforcement--as Charles Bronson-style legend.

  "Listen," Tim said, "we're not here to bust your balls. Our job is to find your inmate and deliver him back to you, and to do that, we're pretty much dependent on your expertise."

  McGraw matched Tim's stare, then thumbed down the volume on his radio.

  Tim said, "Any tracks or sightings outside the facility?"

  "Would we all be standing here?"

  "Any security irregularities?"

  "A family of raccoons wreaked havoc a few weeks back with two of eight motion sensors along the beach, so we turned 'em off. Just those two. You can't do anything from that point anyways except swim straight out--if Jameson tried a hook-around, the tower would have him in seconds."

  "Any chance of a water escape?"

  "Unlikely, but possible. We have coast guard out in the harbor."

  "What was the murder weapon?"

  "We still aren't sure. You know there was a building mood in here, right? The slashing last week? I briefed your guy--Guerrera?--over the phone." McGraw waited for Tim's nod. "After the incident, we tossed the cells. Took everything--razors, pens, even spoons. So I've got no clue what Jameson used for the stabbing, and you can't make it out on the tape."

  "Did Jameson seem caught up in the tension this week?" Bear asked. When McGraw didn't answer right away, he added, "On edge?"

  McGraw's first hesitation. "Not that I noticed, no."

  Bear said, "Tell us about the victim."

  "Boss Hahn. Shotcaller for the AB, good for three murders. Armed heist that went south. He was serving his second--life on the installment plan."