Last Shot (2006)

by Gregg - Rackley 04 Hurwitz

  "You got nothing on the vehicle?" Freed asked.

  "It's a standard car--Toyota, Honda, something. It could have been that stolen Camry. Remember, he doesn't know we're eyeballing it."

  "The Camry just popped up in long-term parking at LAX. The driver's seat was soiled with ash. Word came in just before we left the post." Freed let the disappointment sink in. "Think he was faking that he went out of town?"

  "No, he just left the car where we wouldn't find it for a few days so we'd be chasing our tails on the lead. Which of course, we were." Tim bit his lip, tamping down his frustration and pondering his next move. "The parking-lot ticket should be in the car. Check when he pulled in to the lot and see if any other cars were stolen out of there in that time frame."

  "Guerrera already handled it. None were. It's a pretty secure lot."

  "Goddamn it." Tim hadn't realized how much he'd staked on getting a vehicle ID.

  The paramedic quietly urged him, "You need to let me take a look at that."

  "Okay." Tim handed Tannino Caden's Ruger and Walker's Redhawk.

  Tannino hefted the Redhawk. "Walker's?" He took a look at the wheel and said, "There's three bullets missing. You reported to Bear that he only fired once."

  "That leaves one unaccounted for. I fired the bullet that injured Wes Dieter."

  Tannino's dark brown eyes peered out beneath his bushy eyebrows. A few of the deputies bristled uncomfortably. "You used Walker's gun on Dieter?"

  Tim nodded and let the paramedic lead him over to the rescue vehicle. He sat on the tailgate.

  "You are a lucky son of a bitch," the paramedic said after a cursory examination. "You just got grazed. A few stitches, is all. About a centimeter to the right, you'd be geysering."

  Tim shouted at Bear to seize Wes's computer as evidence, and the paramedic said, "Can you hold still, please?"

  Thomas jogged over from Caden's ambulance, his concern fading once he saw the paramedic readying a needle. "You awright, Rack? Shit, you scared me a moment there."

  "You're making me nervous, Thomas."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Since you gunfaced me." Tim winced against the pinch of the needle. A few seconds' hitch and then numbness spread through the wound. "We don't like each other much, right?"

  Thomas's Adam's apple jerked, and he smoothed his mustache and looked away. "No, I guess not."

  "For a minute there at Walker's safe house, when you had the MP5 aimed at my head, you thought it would've felt nice. Maybe to pull the trigger."

  The paramedic kept stitching. After a moment Thomas nodded. His stare met Tim's in something short of hostility, something akin to intimacy.

  Tim said, "That's what you're freaked out about. You caught a glimpse. Don't try to bury it. We all have it. So keep an eye on it and go back to being an asshole."

  The crinkles around Thomas's eyes deepened, and for an instant Tim thought he might get angry, but then he laughed and smacked Tim on the shoulder. "You know you're doing your job well when your fugitive saves your life."

  "There you go."

  "Maybe you guys could be a team, get a hit TV show."

  "We're on too many already, but thanks."

  "You think maybe he missed on purpose? Close shot and all?" Thomas broke off his stare with a smile, offered his hand. "Enemies?"

  Tim shook. "Enemies." He watched Thomas disappear back into the mix, a faint grin tensing his mouth.

  The paramedic said, "I never understand you guys."

  Guerrera, in whispered consultation with Tannino, drew Tim's focus. Guerrera showed the marshal some papers, and Tannino blanched, his tired face drooping with worry. Whatever it was, it was significant enough to pull Guerrera out of the command post, overriding his light-duty sentence.

  Tannino pointed at Tim, and Guerrera started over.

  Tim felt a knot of barbed wire in his stomach. The paramedic said, "Relax. I'm almost done."

  When Guerrera got within range, Tim said, "Tell me."

  "I...uh, I wanted to come myself." Guerrera's voice sounded funny. "I was checking all of Pierce Jameson's holdings, contacts, everything, like you asked."

  Tim shrugged free of the paramedic, the needle dangling from his neck on a length of suture. "And?"

  "His past known associates came back. There's one who I think we might be able to leverage." Reluctantly, he offered the top page, what looked like a printout of a rap sheet complete with a booking photo.

  Tim took the sheet and stared down at the face of his father.

  Chapter 67

  Walker left the Accord two blocks away in an alley. Heat stabbed down his side with every step. The bulletproof vest absorbed most of the blood, but at the armhole a wet crescent rimmed his army-green T-shirt. He wouldn't know how bad it was until he got to his room and took a proper look.

  He was breathing so heavily he had to pause at the base of the stairs. Each jarring step caused the vest to scrape over the wound. Putting his head down, he almost collided with someone midway up. Kaitlin. She'd made herself up a bit with mascara and a touch of eyeliner. Sam stood at her side, looking bemused and slightly scared by her evident anger.

  She said, "The least you could do if you drag us to a dirt fucking lot is show up. I would've left, but Sam insisted we--"

  "You shouldn't be here." Walker sagged against the railing. Kaitlin saw the blood and scrambled to his side, purse slapping against her hip, her shoes clattering on the stairs. She fought the apartment key out of Walker's pocket and fumbled it toward Sam, who took it calmly. "Go get the door open. Go on."

  She helped Walker upstairs and in. Sam locked the door behind them, then gave a dramatic glance through the closed blinds of the front window. The bed bowed under Walker's weight when he sat. He used his right hand to dig his Spyderco knife out of a pocket. Flipping it open with a jerk, he ran the blade under the front of his T-shirt. Kaitlin helped peel it off.

  About four inches down from his armpit, a quarter-size entry hole marred the meat of his lat. The blood welling inside looked like black ink. The bullet had missed the protective ballistic composite by a thumb's width. There was no way, in the nighttime pivot-and-shoot, that Rackley could have seen he was wearing a vest. The bullet had sought flesh as lead often seemed to do.

  Kaitlin helped him unsnap the vest. He'd hoped the back fabric would have caught the slug, but no such luck. There was no exit wound.

  Kaitlin got a ratty towel from the bathroom, wiped off the blood, and applied pressure. Sam watched with wide eyes.

  She seemed light-headed. "This doesn't look good, Walk."

  "Seen worse."

  Walker took up the pressure so she could sit down. When he withdrew a tweezers from the medic kit in his duffel, she flattened herself over her knees. "I don't think I can."

  He inserted the tweezers into the hole but had a tough time getting an angle. The metal tips digging around the swollen flesh was unpleasant. He said, "Kaitlin, just gimme a sec here."

  Kaitlin started to stand up but fainted and fell back on the bed.

  Walker said, "Well, there you go."

  Sam said, "I'll do it."

  "I don't think so."

  "I hit level forty-four on Champions of Norrath. I think I can find a stupid bullet in a cut." His stomach looked more distended than before, bulging over his thin little-boy belt. He returned Walker's gaze, playing up the apathy.

  Walker said, "God, you've got your mother in you."

  "And you."

  "Nah, not me."

  The kid's face went slack with hurt--not an expression Walker had expected. He'd meant it as a compliment, but it was too thorny to explain, and he had a mushroom of lead grinding in his side. He offered Sam the blood-tipped tweezers, and Sam took them. He raised his arm, and the kid went to work with an impressive scientific detachment.

  Kaitlin stirred, propped herself on her elbows to take in the tableau, and said, nauseously, "There goes my spot on the PTA."

  She rose, keeping her eyes
averted, and disappeared into the bathroom. A moment later Walker heard the sink running. Inside him metal clinked against metal--he wasn't sure if he heard it or just felt the timbre of the vibration.

  Sam said, "Doesn't that hurt?"

  "This? Nah." Walker braced himself as the tweezers made another pass at the embedded slug. "Pain's got fear, too. You can scare it outta you."

  The bullet came slowly and not without friction. Sam dropped it in Walker's palm. A Troubleshooter special, served hot from a Smith & Wesson.

  Sam stared at him with those crazy yellow eyes. "I know about pain."

  "I figure. You're smart for an eight-year-old."

  "Seven."

  "Whatever."

  Walker rotated his arm once, testing it. He leaned against the pillows and blinked once, slowly. Sam watched him intently.

  Walker said, "I got nothing to offer you. I guess only the example I didn't set. But I can tell you this: Your mom didn't kill herself. Some men had her killed."

  All the lines seemed to smooth out of Sam's face, and then tears were on his cheeks, though he didn't seem to be crying. Anger, sure, and some fear, but mostly relief. He sat down, head bowed, scratching at the dry patches on his bruised arms. "So you're gonna what? Kill them all?"

  The toilet flushed, and then the sink water turned on again.

  "Yup," Walker said.

  Chapter 68

  Dolan had spent the last hour pacing laps around the pool table, his agitation sprouting more hydra heads than he could keep in sight. His momentum finally flung him off the table on a turn, propelling him through the double doors. A security man wordlessly stood his post outside. He shadowed Dolan down the hall like a bodyguard, his finger raised to his ear, seating the transmitter. His orders being updated? After a few paces, Dolan grew uncomfortable. When he glanced back, the guard dropped his gaze as if granting Dolan privacy. On the way down the stairs, it struck Dolan that the man now seemed more like a stalker than a bodyguard. He tried to convince himself that he was manufacturing the guard's tacit menace, transferring his anxiety onto something concrete.

  Dolan stopped short when he entered his father's office and found it blanketed with open manila folders, Dean shoving papers through a shredder with uncharacteristic haste. Edwin abided Dean's pointing finger, retrieving and filing with a stiff-backed posture that infused each menial task with elegant rectitude.

  Dean paused, then shot an accusatory glare at the guard, as if he were responsible for Dolan's appearance. Dolan made out the label on the report in his father's hands: X4-AAT SAFETY STUDY. Dean lowered it to the blades. A chuffing disintegrated it into snowflakes.

  Dolan moistened his lips, looking around in bewilderment.

  Dean said briskly, "Nothing untoward is going on here. There are confidential documents that I don't feel comfortable having at the house. Not with the fallout from this afternoon and the investigation that's grinding forward. Your company's been set back enough by recent events." Dean handed off an expurgated folder to Edwin, who promptly returned it to the file cabinet. "Don't ask questions you don't want the answers to."

  "Sir, I do want answers. I'm entitled to know what's going on with Xedral. I've given seven years of my life to this."

  "And I devoted thirty-five years to building the business that under-wrote the lab in which you were working. So why don't we leave entitlement out of this? Every test tube you've touched since you were six, I bought."

  Dolan felt his outrage transmogrify into adolescent defensiveness. "Not at school."

  "Right. A multiyear, seven-figure pledge to UCLA's biology department that commenced the day you matriculated. But the test tubes came out of the professor's pocket."

  "I got into UCLA on my grades, not your money." Dolan picked up an empty folder, turned it inside out, and dropped it on the floor. "What happened during the Xedral safety studies?"

  A disgusted exhale. "Nothing. Huang spoke to you. He told you himself nothing was out of the ordinary."

  "You own Huang."

  "I own everyone. Including you. Every lab station, every microfuge, every pencil."

  Dolan felt beaten down, diminished. "You don't. Not me."

  "Oh? Your corporation is behind on its rent, Dolan. Or do you recall that your lease specifies a dollar a year?" Dean scowled at him, a rosy flush rouging his pallid cheeks. "I can have Bernie retroaccount so hard and fast you'll be in debt to Beacon-Kagan until your children's children have children. I will ruin you."

  "You're actually thr--"

  "I'm saying there is an empire at stake, Dolan. This--" Dean gestured to the loose papers, though there were few left; while they'd been arguing, Edwin had tidied up, even spraying sanitizer on and wiping the wooden surfaces. "This is the mess and sweat of a corporation. You don't want this. You have a sinecure and unlimited funding. Few would complain in your situation. Tinker with your petri dishes and leave the business to us."

  "I've always been willing to leave the business to you. Just not the science."

  "It's the same thing," Dean said with slow exasperation.

  Dolan weaved a bit on his feet. The sanitizer's lemon scent coated his throat, soured his stomach. Dean indicated the guard with a flare of his hand, and the guard came off the wall and positioned himself a few feet behind Dolan.

  Dean folded his hands at his stomach, the picture of reason. "Here are your choices: You let me handle what needs to be handled, and you return to a top post at your own company poised to make one of the most significant advances medicine has seen in decades. Or you can be stubborn and obtuse and wind up teaching photosynthesis to snotty seventh-graders at Harvard-Westlake."

  Dolan's throat clicked drily when he swallowed.

  "Now, if you wouldn't mind going upstairs"--Dean nodded at the guard--"I'd like a bit of privacy in my own office."

  Chapter 69

  The lawn was overgrown. Not a noteworthy observation elsewhere, but Tim had never seen the grass without mow strips aligned as though they'd been measured off. The mailbox--stuffed. Four still-rolled newspapers on the doorstep. An unswept porch. He paused midway up the walk, his first hesitation about choosing to come alone. It wasn't until he rang the doorbell and heard the approaching footsteps that his brain gave voice to the concern that had been lurking beneath his thoughts--that he'd find his father dead in the house.

  The doorknob turned, and then his father, a handsome man approaching sixty, peered out from the gap. Behind him the lights were off, the interior projecting gloom. His usually impeccable hair was disheveled, and he was unshaven. His stubble had grown in more white than black, a detail that Tim found inexplicably disconcerting. In his thirty-eight years, Tim had known him only to be immaculately composed. Never a stray hair, a stain on his pants, an unironed shirt.

  In a rare show of restraint, Tim's father offered no wisecrack about the half-stitched gash in the side of Tim's neck. Instead he stepped back from the door, letting Tim enter--another break in protocol. He didn't even ask him to remove his shoes. The living room air was stale from thrown-out coffee grounds. The kitchen, normally museum meticulous, was strewn with dirty dishes. His father scooted two sealed VCR boxes over on the couch so Tim could sit, then took his favored La-Z-Boy opposite. All these years later, the picture frames on the mantel still displayed the stock photos they'd come packaged with.

  Tim's palms were slick and his stomach roiled. He'd done zero-visibility oxygen jumps from thirty-three thousand feet without breaking a sweat, but his father's proximity still set him on edge. He reminded himself to offer up nothing--if given an inch, his father could unload oceanfront time shares in Wyoming. Tim wiped his hands on his jeans, taking in the boxes and papers piled around the living room. "What's going on here?"

  "You've got no right to ask me that." Tim hadn't heard his father's voice in three years; it had picked up some hoarseness around the edges. "What do you want, Timmy?"

  "One of our fugitive's fathers, Pierce Jameson, has become a name of interest in ou
r investigation."

  "Ah, Pierce. Yes, I've seen Walker's making a run to knock you off the tabloid covers. Is the Troubleshooter feeling neglected by his public? Upstaged as vigilante darling of the masses?"

  The old chess match. Playing his part, the stoic straight arrow, Tim maintained an expression of impassivity. "I know you've dealt with Pierce. I need to find some leverage on him. We're having a hard time untangling his finances. If I know you, you did your research before getting into bed with him. I thought you might know enough to give us a way in."

  "What about honor among thieves?" Tim's father's lips tensed--they both knew he'd snitched, double-crossed, and back-doored his way out of more jail time and soured deals than either of them could remember. "And what do I get?"

  "Nothing."

  "A characteristically vain proposition." His father picked a speck of lint from his trousers, crumpled it into a handkerchief, then settled back and crossed his legs. The same regal bearing. A man with more grace than character. To Tim's great surprise, he said, "I'll help you. If there is something to get on Pierce, I know how you can get it." A moment to let his magnanimity sink in. Tim waited for the other shoe to drop, and of course it did. "But. You'll owe me a favor later. I won't disclose what it is now, but I'll tell you it's not illegal."

  Tim said, "No."

  "It won't have anything to do with using your law enforcement connections improperly to help me."

  "No."

  His father, who Tim had once seen bluff a table of professional poker players out of a twenty-thousand-dollar pot with a seven deuce in the dark, maintained even eye contact. He looked unconcerned, but Tim sensed--from the state of the house and from the quickness with which he'd offered to help--that he was verging on desperate. Tim made a move to rise, and his father said, "Okay, look, just...just sit a minute."