His latest cell phone at his ear, the cool stainless steel of the Redhawk pressed to his bare thigh, he let the other end ring and ring. Finally Kaitlin picked up the cell he'd left her, a dreary, half-asleep mutter.
He gave her his location right away, rattling it off before she could hang up.
"And?" she said, deadpan.
So much like Tess. He heard her push herself up in bed, and he could picture her body position exactly, the slouch against the headboard, her hand holding her bangs at bay. "There's a dirt lot four blocks north, behind a Denny's."
"Sounds appealing."
"Bring the kid by. Around eight."
"He's not doing so hot right now, Walk, in case you haven't noticed. He doesn't need to stand around in a dirt lot at night."
"Please." He couldn't remember the last time he'd used the word, and he imagined that's what her stunned silence was about. "I won't ever try to see you again. Or him. Just gimme a shot to explain it to him better. About his mother."
A long silence, just the two of them breathing in the darkness. Again he could see her face, the sleep-softened cheeks, the way her hair got mussed by the pillows so it framed her eyes.
"You owe it to him," he said.
"You're not the best judge of who's owed what." Her anger lingered on the quiet line, and then she said, "Why's it gotta be so late?"
Walker snapped open the gun to eye the six bullets staring out from the chambers, each one containing a piece of Tess's titanium cross. "I got a very full day."
Chapter 62
Given the VIP handling, the carefully negotiated seating, and the dramatically timed arrivals, Tim would've thought he was attending the Academy Awards. The private security firm Beacon-Kagan had hired was surprisingly competent, constituted of former soldiers, a few of whom Tim knew in passing. They'd put up metal detectors just beyond the revolving doors in the building's lobby and a checkpoint at the entrance to the Vector labs. A sentinel at the auditorium door inspected the laminated IDs; he even politely stopped Tim his first time through to radio-check his creds. Every angle had been covered, down to car-bomb-deterrent trash cans hiding metal posts, positioned on the sidewalk outside the corresponding stretch of building.
Though the various hedge-fund honchos, I-bankers, Wall Street journalists, and mutual-fund managers had been told that the precautions were to discourage information leaks--a ruse bolstered by the guards' insistence that cell phones with built-in cameras be turned off--the current of whispered conversation showed that the attendees knew otherwise. The murders of Ted Sands and Chase Kagan were national news, and as much as the Kagan Machine continued to put out that they were by-products of a private, misguided vendetta, they held enough allure and promise of danger to add another layer of excitement to the afternoon's proceedings.
To augment the rising sun's glare through the two thin, tinted casement windows set high in the east wall, well-positioned recessed lights beamed down, lending a reading glow to the pitch books and prospectuses. On the raised dais behind the draped podium sat an enormous glass sculpture of the Vector logo, the ubiquitous V capped with an arrow. A fine backdrop for the sanctioned press photographs. Draping the east wall was a giant Xedral poster, the same version Tim had seen in Dean's office, and another captioned THE LIVES WE TOUCHED, with Sam ironically featured in the grid of multiracial children.
A partner at Goldman Sachs made the introductory remarks from the floor, walking among the aisles as he talked like a professor who'd seen too many movies about professors. After hemming and hawing about "the Kagans' recent family tragedy," he claimed that "having lost a beloved CEO, it was important for Vector to push forward for the sake of others whose lives can be saved." The strained attempt at emotion caused an awkward halt in the buzz of the audience. The few scripted asides and canned shtick that followed, rather than lightening the mood, struck a bad contrast with the earlier remarks, and to everyone's great relief, Jane Bernard, eleventh-hour appointee as Vector's temporary CEO, formally took the podium. As she launched into an explication of P/E ratios from comparable companies, Tim paced the back of the auditorium, eyes on the entrance, keeping in radio contact with the other task-force members arrayed through the building and outside. After drawing a few glares, Tim settled in a seat. Xedral's twenty-thousand-dollar annual treatment cost drew a gasp, until the CFO revealed that they'd pushed through Medicaid a patient-reimbursement agreement for half of the cost. While Tim got the play-by-play of Bear rousting a homeless guy by the parking garage's gate, she concluded by saying, "This monthly shot--literally a lifesaving shot--that has been in the pipeline for years, will roll out with human trials three days from now. A month and a half later, we go wide with Phase IIIs." Greedy applause.
Bear came through again on the primary channel. "Eyes up, eyes up. White male loitering by the east exit. Baseball cap pulled low so I can't make an ID." The distinguished businessman in front of Tim turned to offer a censorious look at the interruption.
Thomas's reply sounded strained. "Exit is sealed."
Miller came on: "I got Denley and Maybeck in position. You want to move on him?"
Tim lowered his mouth to the radio. "Bear and Thomas can take it. Everyone else keep your posts. What kind of hat?"
"Hang on." Bear prompted, "Turn, motherfucker." And then: "USC."
The hat Walker had worn to Tim's house. "Roust him," Tim said. "Now."
Despite the thunderous applause that accompanied his introduction, Dolan looked terrible when he took the podium, almost sickly. At his side, playing the role of the proud father, Dean waved to the crowd like a vice presidential candidate on autopilot.
Tim turned up the volume, pressing the portable to his ear, but he couldn't hear anything except the applause. He rose, hovering over his seat and drawing an insistent shoulder tap from the reporter behind him.
"Come in. Come in. Someone tell me what happened."
Sounds of a scuffle. Thomas said, "Gimme a sec, Rack."
Up front Dolan cleared his throat. He glanced nervously at the door, then at the back of the room. Finally, off cue, the lights dimmed and a projector screen descended from the ceiling with a whir. Assisted by PowerPoint slides, Dolan began to walk the crowd through the science behind Xedral.
Stepping over people's knees, holding the portable to his ear, Tim tried to keep his voice down. "What's going on?"
"It's not him," Thomas barked. "Repeat: It is not Walker. Hang on. What? What's he saying?"
The radio crackled. "He says..."
Tim was out in the aisle now, heading for the front. "What?"
A number of sharp complaints peppered Tim from all sides.
Tim picked up a Frisbee-size circle of light, phasing into existence like a reverse eclipse on the carpet of the dais, just in front of the podium from which Dolan spoke. But the ceiling lights were uniformly dark for the slide show.
Tim jogged down the aisle to get a better look. Dolan broke midsentence, glancing at Tim, then resumed. Dean glared out from the darkness, his face tight with an implicit threat.
Bear's voice now, jockeying in on the primary channel: "Suspect says a guy gave him the hat and paid him to hang out by the--"
Tim traced the beam to the darkly tinted casement window. A circle had been excised from the pane with a glass cutter. It completed a pivot out of its flush position on a remote-operated hinge the size of a matchbook.
"He's on the line," Tim said into the radio. "Lock down your buildings."
An event coordinator strode across the front of the auditorium, meeting Tim before the dais. "Sir, I'm sorry, but I'm gonna have to ask you to--"
Tim straight-armed him to the side. He was sprinting now, finally getting a good look through the circle cut into the high pane. Outside, contrasted against the dark wood of the apartment building across the street, a strip of red cloth fluttered from an overhead phone line. A strategically placed, makeshift wind sock.
Tim leapt onstage, hurling aside the podium and tackling
Dolan. He felt a buffet of air across his back as a round sliced behind him.
Chapter 63
The glass sculpture behind the podium webbed instantly, thousands of cracks appearing as if thrown on at the instant of the bullet's impact. Dolan reeled back, falling from the dais into the arms of a waiting guard, who dragged him to the secured back exit. Attendees were on their feet, yelling and hastening for the main door, the contagious panic of the corralled. Dean stood frozen as the sculpture finally burst, fragments pattering on the thin carpet. Tim rolled from his stomach, sweeping Dean's legs and bringing him down as another bullet whined past, punching a hole through the projection screen behind the space Dean's head had occupied an instant prior. Tim raked Dean toward him by an ankle, gathering him in like a hockey goalie, and handed him off to three advancing guards. Dean disappeared in their midst, joining the current toward the back exit.
Tim looked up into the sudden warmth, realizing that his uptilted face perfectly captured the circle of light and--likely--Walker's crosshairs, too. As he threw himself off the dais, he registered the stab of a view he'd caught through the window's missing disk--a curtain flickering behind a slid-back door on a fourth-story balcony across the street.
He ran, cutting through the crowd, lips moving against the radio as he coordinated the task-force members to seal off the apartment building. Fleeing bankers had massed at the revolving doors, so Tim cut back up a side hall and kicked out an emergency exit, joining Thomas, Freed, Maybeck, and Bear. Haines and Zimmer, assigned the building from the start, had secured the main entrance from Tim's first lockdown command, swinging four LAPD units into perimeter position seconds later. The building, six stories of dilapidation, had somehow dodged the Westwood renovation. From the looks of the passing residents Miller had backed out of the lobby, the place provided shoddy housing to students and some elderly couples, likely hangers-on from when the building was new.
Zimmer waved Tim through, and the deputies fell instinctively into their ART entry stack up the stairwell. They wouldn't have time for bulletproof vests or MP5s--it would be an improvised raid. They hammered up to the fourth floor, the stairwell spitting them out onto a floating corridor on the east side.
Two units down, a door stood open. Tim barely slowed his momentum around the turn as they exploded into the cramped space, shouting, flooding the galley kitchen, living room, and bedroom, handguns trained at every corner. Bear's kicking into the bathroom took the door clean off its bottom hinge.
No one.
Slicing through the fluttering curtains, Tim caught himself against the balcony railing. He peered down across the street at the ground floor of the towering Beacon-Kagan Building. The excised circle of tinted window provided a narrow vantage into the Vector auditorium, exposing a spot of visible dais--podium, ring of carpet, scattered glass. A clean line of sight, the precise reverse of the one he'd had minutes before from his sprawl on the floor.
"Hey, Rack!" Filling the front jamb, Bear pointed to the triangular stop wedged into place, holding the door open. It had been nailed into the floor. His finger next indicated the pair of saloon doors at the mouth of the living room. Oddly, they'd been pressed flat to the walls and nailed into place.
Tim felt his insides go to ice.
He moved through the permanently open saloon doors and brushed past Bear onto the floating corridor. A sleek, modern high-rise crowded the east side of the apartment building. Two stories up was another balcony, another open slider, another fluttering curtain. Behind the thin cotton drapes stood the outline of a sniper rifle, abandoned on its tripod.
Walker had cleared a path for the bullet's trajectory and shot straight through the building in which the deputies were currently gathered. A trained sniper, he could easily hit his mark from two hundred yards--another building back--especially since he'd cleared all the glass between his muzzle and the target, removing the possibility of bullet deflection or fragmentation. He'd known that the deputies were waiting to storm the closer, more obvious location, buying him extra time for the getaway. He'd anticipated Tim's anticipating him and come out one move ahead.
Tim shouted at the deputies, and they sprinted out, legs aching as they attacked a set of stairs, a stretch of pavement, another set of stairs. Bear radioed in for the broadened perimeter, but Tim knew, even before he kicked through the next door and found himself two floors up and one building over, that Walker would be gone.
Breathing hard, Tim stood before the suspended .300 Remington Mag. Bear, Freed, and Thomas milled behind him. The others had hit the street, helping LAPD canvass the area. Good luck there. The mini-stampede caused by the shooting had created a broad diversion--town cars, rental-car-ensconced New Yorkers, and masses of pedestrians still blocked the nearby intersections. Without touching the rifle, Tim lowered his right eye to the Leopold variable power scope, the same one he kept mounted on his match-grade M14.
The podium remained centered in the crosshairs.
Walker had seen Tim's face through this very scope, had watched him looking up through the hole in the tinted window from his sprawl across the glass-strewn dais. The magnified view of the site where he could well have lost his life was chilling. Tim wondered if he'd rolled away before Walker could squeeze off another round or if Walker had chosen to spare him. Neither scenario made him feel less incompetent.
Tim's Nextel rang, and he pulled back from the tripod-mounted rifle. Caller ID flashed L V TSK FRC.
He answered, and Ian Summer said, "Rack, we flipped a little fish in the Aryan Brotherhood. We nailed him for trafficking, but guess what, he's staring down a career-criminal enhancement, so he's cooperating. You want the good news or the bad news?"
"Whatever."
"The good news is AB did dispatch a hit man to track down Walker Jameson, and we have a line on him. Caden Burke."
"The bad?"
"He's already in L.A. We've been monitoring his credit cards, and a charge just dinged at the RestWell Motel in Culver City."
Tim covered the phone. "Bear, we gotta go. Freed, hold down the fort till CSI takes over the scene?" He swung the Nextel back to his mouth and jogged out to the elevator, Bear at his heels. "Can you get me a photograph?"
"I'll have someone dig through our surveillance files, see if they can find a clean shot. I'll have them scan it and send it to your phone."
"Please. Soon."
Tim had almost hung up when Ian said, "Hey, Rack. Someone in your office was looking for intel on the Piper, right?"
"That's right. Same case--high priority. You got something?"
"You might want to call DeSquire in the Albuquerque office."
"Why?"
"Just give him a call. Confidential shit, but I went through FLETC with him."
"Got it. Thanks."
The phone cut out on the elevator, Tim watching the reception bars as he summarized for Bear. The doors dinged open, the lowest bar held, and Tim hit "dial." He had the CSO from comm center dig up a cell number on DeSquire and patch him through. Cars screeched as they ran across Wilshire to Bear's Ram, parked in the outdoor lot off Gayley.
DeSquire picked up on a half ring. Sirens and rattling wheels in the background--the song of the crime scene. He paused when Tim introduced himself, placing the name. "Sure," he said. "The Troubleshooter."
"I'm working the Walker Jameson case, and I caught word you've got something on the Piper."
"I might."
"I understand what you've got might be sensitive till you take it public. I can keep my mouth shut. I just need information."
"How's this involve Walker Jameson?"
"We believe the Piper executed Jameson's sister in June."
"That would be pretty tough."
Tim barely got the door closed before Bear roared off toward Culver City. "Why's that?"
"Because I just found him in the back of an auto-parts garage, pickled in poured concrete. Been dead six months, easy."
Chapter 64
The Nextel felt hot a
gainst Tim's cheek; he realized he was pressing it harder than necessary. "How firm," he asked, still reeling from the news, "is the ID?"
"DNA firm," DeSquire said. "The concrete bath? We been seeing it lately from the Colombians. The Piper did a hit on one of their launderers in January."
"I remember." Tim braced himself as Bear veered over the edge of an island to U-turn onto the freeway. If the Piper was dead, then who'd crushed a paintball on the curb outside Tess's house? And if the low-rider with the unusually large hood ornament existed outside the senile haze of the neighbor's mind, who'd driven it? Someone had picked up the money Ted Sands had dropped at Game, and the contract for Tess's life that went along with it. "Listen," Tim said, "would you consider keeping this from the press?"
"No way, pal. This is a big find." DeSquire lowered his voice. "Someone's looking to make chief, get his mug in front of the flashing bulbs. I wouldn't mind bumping up to supervisory deputy myself. Why you want a lid on it anyways?"
"If Walker Jameson doesn't know, I'd prefer to keep him chasing after a ghost."
One-handing the wheel at high noon, Bear shot Tim an unamused glance across the meat of his shoulder. "Kinda like us?"
When Bear's boot hit the lock assembly, the entire motel shuddered. The door flew open, knob punching through the drywall. A thin, bald guy leapt off the bed like a goosed cat and crashed to the base of the wall, clutching his wife-beater undershirt at his chest. Bear hauled him up and threw him onto the bed, but the mattress was so bouncy he soared off the other side. Tim frisked him on the floor and sat him on a chair as Bear cleared the closet and bathroom. A Dodgers game blared on in the background until Bear, die-hard Giants fan, smacked the power button, zapping Gagne and the pitcher's mound into blackness. Aside from a pair of sneakers by the door and the open laptop on the opposite twin, the room was empty. Tim stared at the floating aphorism on the screen saver--If we'd have known it would be this much trouble, we would've picked our own damn cotton--and resisted an urge to ping-pong the shitheel off the bed a second time.
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