Last Shot (2006)

by Gregg - Rackley 04 Hurwitz

  Resting on the poolside towel, a cell phone put out a classical-music ring--Bach's haunted-castle organ riff shrilling off the hard tile. Dolan tensed. Tim looked down at the hot-orange caller ID screen. DadStudy.

  "I program rings for certain people." Dolan's face said the rest.

  Eager to get him back on track, Tim said, "And 'fuck trophy' would be slang for...?"

  "A kid."

  Bear gave Dolan the stare he'd perfected from years of playing bad cop in interrogation rooms.

  "Look, Chase was Chase. He was a dick. But he was charming when he wanted to be. He was my brother, but I didn't...No one could..." Dolan trailed off, staring at the rippling water. When he spoke again, his words were pressured, almost eager. "I didn't see much at the shoot. He'd followed Tess out to the garage. I went to get him because he was supposed to be overseeing the producer. I could...I could hear some banging from the limo, but I thought...I don't know what I thought. Percy was there, outside, like he was standing guard. I started for the limo. I wasn't sure what I was going to do. When I got close, Percy squared himself toward me, said, 'Let's give a man his space.'" Dolan made a faint sound of disgust. His face was wet from the pool water; Tim couldn't distinguish tears on it. "I heard her...kicking on the window, you know, then her hand, fingers spread. I could see it even through the tint, the shadow of her hand. Banging." Dolan raised a dripping arm and imitated the gesture, perhaps unknowingly. "You know when you freeze?"

  Tim wanted to say no but opted for silence.

  "I'm not like them. I never know what to do." Dolan looked shrunken and feeble in the pool. "So I left." His gaze dropped again to the water. "I left. I waited around the corner by the elevator. A few minutes later, I heard the door open. I peeked around the corner. I saw her bloody mouth in the crack of the door before it closed. Chase straightened his shirt. The front pocket, the monogrammed one, was ripped. The driver rolled down the window and said, 'She okay?' and Chase said, 'She's fine. I'll get her son as soon as we wrap. Then you can take her home.' And he thumped the roof like a pit-crew guy sending off a race car. I went upstairs before he reached me and pretended like nothing had happened."

  "And Tess threatened to prosecute?"

  "I can't--how did you...?--I can't discuss that. I can't discuss anything involving the trials."

  "Trials?" Bear was mystified. "What trials? The drug trials?"

  A boom startled Tim upright and jerked Bear 180 degrees. The door vibrated on its hinges, stunned, where it had struck the tile wall. Backlit by the light of the corridor and centered in the doorway was Dean's silhouette, somehow conveying the strength of a man with enormous power at his disposal, a man assured of his place on the planet.

  "Gentlemen, it's already been a very long night, and I need to ask you to continue your questioning in the morning," Dean said. "My surviving son has a great deal of work ahead of him."

  "What did you talk to them about?"

  Dolan turned toward his open locker, searching for privacy but finding none. Now that he'd actually dredged up the memory and cast it in words, he realized that what he hadn't told the deputies seemed almost as vivid. Chase's air of exuberance when he'd returned to the commercial shoot, as if he'd just stepped off a harrowing roller coaster. Chase's sullen face days later when the chickens had come home to roost. How Chase had gone directly into Dean's study and seemed to disappear, swallowed up by the high-backed leather chair. Though Dolan had walked with him to their father's door, he'd held in the hall, knowing himself to be an outsider in matters such as these. As Percy swung the door shut, Dolan heard his brother's disembodied voice, finally confessing to the old man--We've got a problem here.

  "Nothing, really," Dolan said. "Just the same details we covered earlier."

  "Did you talk about the business?"

  "Of course not." Dolan cast a glance over his shoulder. Dean's eyes were still boring through him. Dolan hooked his towel loosely around his waist before shucking his trunks, and he held it in place until he'd managed to pull on his boxers. From what he knew, Dean had never changed him, bathed him, or dressed him. Aside from a few vague recollections of his mother (scented powder, dangling ringlets, stern vertical lines etching the lips), Dolan mostly remembered nannies. Being naked in front of his father now was more uncomfortable than the prospect of stripping in public.

  "For security purposes, we're ending all outside access to the office and lab," Dean said. "No tours, no visitors. You'll be transported with armed guards to and from work. After Friday's presentation we're de-camping to the London office until this blows over. We are the family now. I won't have you at risk."

  "Did you say after the presentation? Chase just--" Dolan buckled his belt with an unnecessarily hard pull. "How can we do the presentation without him?"

  "It's taken nearly five years to maneuver your company into position. If we show weakness now, in this marketplace, it'll be a death sentence. Plus, it'll be giving Jameson what he seems to be after. Vector is strong, but there are worthy competitors. If we pull back now, we'll miss our window of competitive advantage. You want to let this son of a bitch take that away from you? From your shareholders?"

  "From the patients who could benefit?"

  Dean ignored the sardonic edge in his son's rejoinder voice. "Of course. Them most of all. We have responsibilities bigger than ourselves, Dolan."

  "Sir, I think we should consider working more closely with the deputies."

  "You let me deal with the police."

  The humidity of the room was starting to get to Dolan, making him light-headed. "The guy ate Percy for lunch."

  "You're taking your brother's death hard. You're in shock, which is understandable." Dean rose from the bench. "Don't worry about this bullshit. Go back to your lab. Leave this in my hands."

  Dean padded through the doorless arch that led to the pool, the underwater light's refractions playing across the back of his charcoal suit, making the fabric swim. Dolan smoothed his wet hair and watched his father make his way across the tiles.

  As Dean reached the exit, Dolan called out, "Dad? Sir?"

  His father turned, the flickers having a dizzying camouflage effect. He was a specter, there and not there at the same time.

  "Who's the Piper? Walker Jameson mentioned the Piper."

  His father's voice came back reverb-enhanced by the hard walls, each word trailed by the edge of an echo. "I don't know." He mounted the three concrete steps, the door closing heavily behind him.

  Chapter 53

  A lingering party remained at a back table inside the long-closed restaurant, bathed in golden light. Tim and Bear stood shoulder to shoulder on the Beverly Hills patio, waiting for a worker to come to the locked door.

  "We'll never beat him," Bear said.

  "Walker?"

  "Dean Kagan. Guys like that, they don't get beat."

  The Ivy's point man arrived. "Sorry, gentlemen, we closed hours ago."

  Bear's gaze shifted to the VIPs drinking red wine in the rear corner. "Uh-huh."

  "Deputy Rackley." Tim showed his badge and creds. "I spoke with a manager on the phone earlier, asked for some security footage for a federal investigation?"

  The manager wore an expression of mild irritation that Tim would've bet occupied his face with some frequency. "That was me. Your guy already came and picked up the footage."

  "When was...?" It hit Tim, and he lowered his head and laughed with stunned respect.

  A moment later Bear shook his head. "That's a ruse worthy of..."

  "What?"

  "Worthy of you, Rack."

  The basics they pried from the bemused manager fit Walker perfectly. Eager to help, The Ivy had surrendered the original security footage, and there was no backup copy.

  They climbed back into Bear's double-parked Ram. Bear had left the Marshals placard on the dash to fend off the tow-truck drivers who circled L.A.'s affluent communities, clanking scavengers with sharp night vision.

  Of course it would be Thoma
s who fielded Tim's call to the command post. When he didn't bother to gloat, Tim knew that something was wrong.

  "Esteban Martinez just called here and chewed on my ass," Thomas said. "There was a break-in tonight at the warehouse that stores his legal files, and the box containing his case information on Tess Jameson was the only thing taken. He said one of the guards claimed you were by earlier, casing out the joint. Anything you want to come clean on?"

  Tim tried to open the glove box, but like everything else on Bear's truck, it was broken. "Walker stole the files."

  "How do you know?"

  Tim gestured excitedly, and Bear finally clued in. "We thought he might," Tim said.

  "And you didn't post men?"

  Bear banged the dash in a particular spot, and the glove box fell open.

  "Not on site. He would've seen them." Tim rooted around among Burger King wrappers and retrieved the GPS handheld he'd put in there this morning.

  "Why are you protecting this guy, Rack? Whose side are you on? Walker Jameson's playing you. And you're letting him."

  The GPS unit whirred to life, throwing a blue glow across Tim's face. "That might be true if I hadn't--" Tim's call-waiting beeped, and he checked the screen: Electronic Surveillance Unit.

  "If you hadn't what?"

  Bear screeched across the corner of someone's lawn, winging the mailbox with his remaining sideview mirror and revving down the residential street as Tim said, "No, left. Your other left."

  His head knocked the window as Bear screeched into a U-turn, and it took him a moment to relocate the RF pulse of the digital transmitter on the network of streets rendered schematically on the GPS readout. Along with four other task-force cars, they'd been chasing Walker--more specifically, the transmitter Tim had dropped into the legal file box Walker had stolen--around the neighborhood. His evasive maneuvers were so keen it seemed he was invisible. Bear kept circling the same route, Richco Storage flying by on their right like scenery in a Saturday-morning cartoon. Frisk droned on the primary channel of the dashboard Motorola, along with the other ESU units that had been in the area for hours, waiting for the file box to leave the warehouse.

  Tim watched the dots of the Marshal vehicles converge on the blinking red light.

  "We got him boxed in." Frisk's voice was just shy of a shout. "Thomas and Freed, take your hard left. Denley--slant-park and throw up a roadblock. Bear, where the hell are you?"

  "Look up." Bear squealed to the four-way intersection, meeting the other vehicles penning in the stretch of asphalt. The GPS unit showed Walker right in their midst, moving slowly.

  Shouts came through from the various cars on a slight radio delay; Tim could see the speakers arrayed around the four stop signs, mouths moving behind windshields.

  "The fuck is he?"

  "You got your left?"

  The ring of headlights caught wisps of vapor and little else. Thomas was out of his car in the fork of the open door, Glock drawn and aimed at nothing. Tim and Bear shoved free of the Ram, Bear gripping his Remington shotgun.

  A pattering approach, something clicking across the asphalt. A faint jingling--coins in a pocket? About ten firearms swung to aim at the darkness behind Denley's car.

  A Doberman padded into view, looking humorously intimidated.

  The guard dog from the storage facility.

  He sat in the middle of the ring and licked his chops self-consciously, then scratched behind the red band of his collar. The bouncing ID tags jingled again.

  Too humiliated to lose his temper, Tim closed his eyes and cursed softly. The guns lowered, but the men behind them remained frozen. The dog, suddenly wary, bared his teeth.

  Bear approached, hand held low, and the dog lay down and nuzzled his palm. Twisting the collar, Bear plucked free the digital transmitter from where Walker had taped it by the tags.

  Thomas seated his gun in his shoulder holster. "Great work, Rack. You buy Jameson a one-way ticket to the Caymans, too?"

  Chapter 54

  What were you thinking?" Dray set a plate down on the open file in front of Tim. "What if Walker had gone after the lawyer?"

  "He wouldn't. Esteban Martinez was trying to help Tess, not hurt her."

  "And you were willing to gamble his life on your intuition? How about if Walker went to Martinez and he wasn't cooperative?" She pointed at the reheated chicken and mashed potatoes. "You need to start thinking straight. So eat something."

  It was past midnight, and Tim hadn't had a bite since breakfast, but his stomach was churning, and putting food into it seemed like a bad idea. He pushed the plate over next to a mound of field files and continued reviewing the break-in report from Richco warehouse security. "It was a ploy to catch him."

  "And you wanted your hands on those legal files. When you made the arrest. So you could take it from there against the Kagans. A ploy. So was swallowing the spider to catch the fly." She waited, arms crossed. Tim knew she would take his silence as an affirmation, and she'd be right. She said, "You're too clever by half. Walker is not a colleague."

  Tim stayed his quickest reaction--defensiveness--as he tried to do when his wife was right, which was most of the time. "I know that," he said evenly.

  "Do you?" Dray wiped her hands on a dish towel and threw it on the counter. She nudged the plate back before him. "Eat. Or I'm gonna throw it at you."

  Coverage of the second assault on the Kagan compound was playing on every news channel, blown tabloid-wide with speculation. Dean had wasted no time retaining a crisis-management PR firm, the just-flown-in spokeswoman for Vector and Beacon-Kagan insisting, on a slate of station-hopping spot interviews, that the threat was limited and it would be business as usual come morning.

  The phone banks at the command post had lit up like Christmas, the media requests so heavy that Tannino had to designate a second public information officer to share the load. A former B-list director had called in hysterically when a corpse, illuminated by the running lights of his motor yacht in the waters of the Marina, had disrupted a late-night cruise with a Penthouse Pet. While Tim and Bear, along with half the task force, had been chasing a Doberman in circles, Haines had responded to the Marina, bringing back copies of the crime-scene photos. Chuck Hannigan, Chase's limo driver, had been suspended underwater, his bloated arms bobbing overhead, knuckles nearly breaching the surface. Melissa Yueh had gotten ahold of the murder and run with it. KCOM's panicky coverage left the impression that Walker was littering the city with bodies, which Tim conceded was accurate. No question as to how Walker was getting his information. His methods certainly lent credence to Dray's concerns.

  Tim picked at a drumstick with a tine of his fork. "Chase Kagan raped Walker's sister, then his rich daddy probably had her whacked when she turned up pregnant. So yes, that possibility grinds at me, and if I'm working Tess's case also, that's my prerogative."

  "Since when? You're a federal deputy, and your jurisdiction doesn't get anywhere near Tess Jameson's murder. Your attention--your professional attention--is in the wrong place. Dean Kagan did not kill an inmate and break out of Terminal Island. Tess's murder doesn't concern you."

  "It concerns me to the extent it drives this case. And it's getting clearer every hour that it is driving this case. The evidence trail from that murder has been the only way to track Walker."

  "Fine. But you're turning it upside down. Again. Chase Kagan is a victim in your investigation."

  "And probably a rapist."

  "Right, Timothy, but we don't have the death penalty for rape, not before a trial and certainly not before charges are brought. Don't use what happened to that woman as a pretext for snapping into loose-cannon mode."

  "For Christ's sake, Andrea. Back off. I didn't kill Chase. I did everything to warn them. But dealing with the Kagans is like punching sand."

  "Look. These guys are assholes, sure, and they're up to shady, rich-white-man bullshit. I get it. And Walker's had some crappy breaks and a dick lieutenant who screwed him over, and his dad's a s
mug asshole who reminds you of your own father."

  "Where the hell did that come from?"

  Dray's look answered that, and she continued unimpeded, "You got a sick kid with Disney orphan eyes and an attractive ex, and no one on that side of the fence has caught a break in their lives, but that's all exactly irrelevant to the job. Walker Jameson has killed a prisoner and four civilians, and he's gonna keep on killing unless your task force stops him."

  "I know!" Tim knocked his plate with his hand. It flipped over, bouncing on the floor, mashed potatoes splattering against the refrigerator.

  Unfazed, Dray continued wiping the counter, her bare feet dodging the blotches of potato stuck to the linoleum.

  He watched her back for a few minutes. Then he said, "The thing is..."

  Dray paused, half turned. "What?"

  "I like him."

  Dray came over, bearing a fresh plate of food and a mop. She placed the plate before Tim, leaning the mop against the table to his side. "Of course you do." She ruffled his hair, kissed him on the forehead, and headed back to the bedroom.

  He sat a moment before rising and scooping up the chicken and clumps of mashed potato. Smirking at himself, he wiped off the fridge door and mopped the floor.

  Sitting back before his collection of reports and vivid photos, Tim clicked open the wheel of his Smith & Wesson, thumbed it hard, and watched the brass spin. With a jerk of his wrist, he snapped it shut.

  His Nextel vibrated, dancing across a photo of Chuck Hannigan's suspended corpse.

  Over the din of the command post, Freed's weary voice said, "I've been running down info on Pierce Jameson since nine 'o clock."

  Reading Freed's tone, Tim leaned forward, on point. "And?"

  "One of his holding companies owns a portfolio company that owns a housing development called Sunnyslope Family Homes. It's tied up in litigation, shut down by the Department of Health. But this morning? Someone had the power turned back on. In just one unit."