Last shot tr-4

by Gregg Hurwitz

"Safety's on," he said.

  "Walker?" And again, angrily. "Walker!" Kaitlin squared her shoulders when he stood, as if to meet force with force. She'd slid on a pair of jeans, and the black box of a beeper showed at her hip. For a few moments, she was at a loss. He watched determination forming on her face, an act of will, and when she spoke again, her voice was steady. "You're bigger. New and improved." Her lips tensed. "You stopped drinking."

  He nodded.

  "Why?"

  "Lack of supply."

  She pointed at one of the crooked cabinets hanging beside the TV. "There it is. Go get it."

  "Other things on my mind right now."

  She ran a curious gaze across him, like a decade had passed, though it had been only three years. Prison must have altered him more than he thought. His sleeve was wrinkled back from his biceps, and he sensed her eyes catch on the fucking paisley tattoo and then, mercifully, move on.

  "You're out early." It was not quite a question; she was still sorting through the possibilities.

  He nodded again, slowly.

  "Oh, Jesus," she said. "Wonderful. Another rehabilitation success story." She shook her head and let a hand clap to her thigh, looking away like she didn't know where to start. The freeway noise had increased to a drone. "Well, while you were otherwise detained, I inherited a mess here."

  A quietly hurt voice from the hall behind her: "I never asked you."

  Walker was on his feet, hand at his lower back.

  Kaitlin turned, the anger smoothing out of her face. "Honey, I didn't mean-"

  A boy, about seven years old, peeked around Kaitlin's hip to see who she was talking to. He took note of her lowered gun with fear and natural excitement.

  Walker let go of the Redhawk handle protruding from his rear waistband and brought his hand back to his side. "The hell is this?"

  "Your nephew."

  "Oh. I thought he was…" He couldn't bring himself to say yours. He didn't want to admit his thoughts had gone to a new boyfriend, to possible stepchildren.

  "He is now."

  The boy eased out from behind Kaitlin's back, scared but defiant, a terrier holding ground against a rottweiler. Anorexic arms poked from the sleeve holes of a Dragon Ball Z shirt. Camo pants bagged around his legs. A pair of clumsy glasses magnified the yellow tint that had over-cast the whites of his eyes.

  Walker tried for a name. "Sam."

  "My uncle is in the marines, you know. He killed terrorists."

  Kaitlin leaned to whisper to the kid, her fine brown hair falling to block her face. Sam swallowed once, hard, like he was tamping something down. His stare fixed on Walker; he took a step back, then another, then he ran back down the hall. A door slammed.

  Kaitlin shoved her hair up on either side of her head and gave a sigh that said that this exchange was just a tiny glimpse of a grander downhill slide.

  "Why do you have him?"

  "We couldn't work out building a bunk bed in Terminal Island."

  "Every cell comes equipped."

  "If only we'd known." She shouldered against the wall, keeping the space of the room between them. "You knew she had a son. It never occurred to you what would happen to him, did it?"

  "Someone would take care of it."

  "Right. Me. I'm taking care of 'it.'"

  At thirty-six, Kaitlin was five years older than Walker, just two younger than Tess. During their marriage the relationship between his wife and his sister had been tepid. Two tough women with strong feelings for and about the same man and not enough geography or age separating them. It was hard to make his recollections fit with the current arrangement here under Tess's roof.

  "That's why you're living here," he said.

  "Consistency for Sammy. And more space. I just had a crappy one-room across Pearblossom. You might remember it."

  Walker tipped his head to indicate the hall. "What's wrong with him?"

  "His liver's shutting down. He needs a transplant. Yeah, it's nonstop fun here. We're in the biggest donor region, you see, which means the longest waiting list. And he's an O, the worst type. Someone dies with an O liver, it can go to an O, A, B, or an AB-pretty much anyone. But he can only take an O. So guess how many people that puts ahead of us on the list?"

  "Tess knew about this?"

  Kaitlin laughed, but her eyes stayed cold. "You are amazing. Of course she knew. What do you think she'd been dealing with these past two years?"

  He took a step back and sat on the arm of the sofa.

  "There was a shorter list for a while in Region One-Maine and all that-but she didn't have the money to relocate and establish residency," Kaitlin said. "By the time she scraped together three grand for the flights and an apartment there, the wait list had grown enough to make it pointless."

  "She couldn't figure out enough money to move?"

  "Oh, right, like with all the cash you were sending from prison to help her out? I think we both know that gravy train wasn't running on schedule." She studied him, clearly spoiling for a reaction, but he was too tired to take the bait. "She had some money from the divorce, but I don't know where it went. You know Tess-not the world's best financial planner. Till this."

  "Meaning?"

  "I dunno, Walk, maybe finding out your kid's gonna die unless you get your shit together is a pretty good motivator. She worked two jobs, went back to school nights, got an accounting certificate. I started watching Sammy sometimes to help her out. An overtime here, maybe even a movie there. This was two years back, just after you went down for your repeat performance."

  "She never told me."

  "Were you interested?" She studied his blank face with enmity. "You didn't even recognize him, for Christ's sake."

  "I been gone for three years."

  "How about before that?"

  "I was fighting a war. A few of them."

  Hurwitz, Gregg — Rackley 04

  Last Shot (2006)

  "How about before that?"

  "You tell me. You were there. Tess was living with that asshole out in Simi Valley. I didn't see you blazing any trails to their door."

  Kaitlin's bearing stayed combative-sad and combative-but for once she wasn't ready with a quick response. He took her sudden silence to mean that she knew she was overloading her charges. When she spoke again, her voice was softer. "We had a shot with this biotech company. Gene therapy or something. They even used Sammy in one of their commercials."

  "The new refrigerator."

  "What? Oh-that's right. The commercial bought them that and took a bite out of Sammy's medical bills. Tess's paycheck barely kept them afloat. We're hardly in the money now, but at least we can eat. And if we time our checks right, we can keep the bills from going to collection."

  "Memories of my childhood."

  "Memories of our present tense." She rubbed her eyes. "Goddamned health companies bleed you dry. When Tess got Sammy on the trial list for this gene thing, it was like they'd hit the lottery. It was gonna be free, too. He should be in line still to get the treatment-it comes available in a week or two. But the study was oversubscribed, and they dropped him. Just like that." Her hand bobbed, and he heard the snap. "It might cost him his…" She made a sound like a hiccup, and Walker realized it was the start of a sob that had caught her off guard. She pressed her hand to her mouth, and he gave her the silence until her cheeks stopped quivering. "I guess Tess couldn't take it."

  "Tess could take a lot."

  Kaitlin shoved a wrist across her eyes. "I'm not sure I can." It was unclear whether she wanted comfort and unclearer yet if he remembered how to lend any.

  They waited out an awkward silence, and then she laughed like she'd remembered something amusing, thumbed her pager, and approximated a Pollyanna voice: "Back to the liver. We wait. And pray."

  "I never got much mileage outta prayer."

  "It's about all we have left. I just don't want him to get scared. Anything else, I think I can take. But not scared. All the doctors. Needles. I get him a present for after
each visit."

  Walker glanced at the gift on the coffee table. Used but repackaged. The bow was creased from where it had been removed from another gift and restuck. "You got the kid a label gun?"

  "It's what he wanted. I don't know. It was eight bucks on eBay."

  "Was Tess in some kind of trouble?"

  "I see the conversation I was having no longer interests you."

  "New guy, something like that?"

  "I don't know. We weren't real close."

  "Why are you raising her kid, then?"

  "You mean your nephew?" She waited, displeased with his silence, then said, "Because I have weak boundaries and a compulsion to take care of people so I can bitch a lot."

  "Was she in touch with her ex?"

  "You tell me. She was your sister."

  "She stopped talking to me. After I went in the second time."

  He saw in Kaitlin's face that Tess hadn't confided that to her, and he also saw that Kaitlin had a good handle on what that would've meant to him. The empathetic lines over her eyebrows lasted only a moment before merging in an angry dip. "Smart girl."

  "I'd say so."

  "Her ex is in Lompoc, where he's been the past four years. Smalltime embezzling or something. I don't think they've been in touch since Sam was a baby."

  "Is my mom dead?"

  "What? No, she's at the Valley Glen Retirement Home."

  "How 'bout my dad? Where's he?"

  "He's the one oughta be dead."

  "Ah. A boundary."

  Her mouth tensed at the edges, but instead of smiling she said, "You got a place?"

  "No."

  "Money?"

  "No."

  "Anything?" She met his uncomfortable gaze, then strode into the kitchen and returned, prying the lid off a coffee tin. She teased out a wad of singles, but he held up his hand. "Come on," she said brusquely. "It's the emergency fund. I think this qualifies."

  "Keep it for you and the kid."

  "We've survived without your looking out for us this far, thanks. Besides, I get paid in a few hours. What's your plan?" She kept the cash extended toward his unmoving hand until the scene felt childish. "Take it, goddamn it! It's forty bucks. Get a meal and a shower."

  Reluctantly, he reached up and took the money.

  She studied him with her hard, gray eyes. "What's your deal, Walk? What are you doing here?"

  "Unfinished business."

  "Whose?"

  "Tess's."

  "Tess finished her own business."

  He looked down, worked the inside of his lip between his teeth.

  She seemed to grasp what he wasn't saying. "So you're what? Honoring her memory by breaking out of prison and rolling some heads?"

  "Something like that."

  "Whose?"

  He didn't answer.

  "Why don't you honor your sister in a way that would mean something to her?"

  A spark of indignation charged his voice. "You don't know Tess. You weren't there. You weren't there in the B-"

  "The Buick. Right. The winter you guys lived in a car by Griffith Park. Get over it. She did. She pulled it together. And for what? To give you opportunities?"

  "I took them. That worked out well. Fighting Dick Cheney's war for him."

  "So you didn't get a fair shake. Guess what? You're not entitled to one. People like us don't get a fair fucking shake. Not you, not Tess, not me, sure as shit not Sammy. And there's nothing you can do about it."

  "Oh," Walker said, "there's something."

  "As I figured, it's not about Tess aft-" The telephone rang, and Kaitlin broke off her pronouncement and her stare, hurried into the kitchen, and leaned over the caller ID screen. "Damn it. It's Sammy's insurance. They call at ungodly hours so they can leave messages. I need to grab this."

  Walker pointed down the dark hall to the closed door opposite the converted den where Kaitlin slept. "That where she died?"

  Kaitlin nodded. "Don't go anywhere." Ring. "I haven't decided if I'm gonna shoot you yet." She picked up, her nervously polite tone following him into the hall. He passed a door through which emanated the exaggerated sounds of video-game bloodshed, and paused outside Tess's room. Squares of bare wood marked either side of the jamb where the crime-scene tape had pulled up the paint. He turned the handle and paused, collecting himself.

  The smells hit him first and strongest. The curtains remained drawn, and day after day of sunlight had baked the air of the closed room to a choking staleness. Bleach. Cleanser. And barely lingering beneath the chemicals, an express lane back to his childhood, the comforting scent of Jean Nate. There it was on the bureau, the yellow bottle with its curious cursive scrawl. He popped the cap and inhaled. The scent covering the sun-faded smell of the Buick's maroon crushed velour bench seat that had served as his bed for two months when he was eight. Sleeping cuddled into Tess for warmth. Her veil at her all-wrong wedding dinner in the back room of the Olive Garden as he'd leaned to kiss her cheek, struggling and failing to come up with something meaningful to say. What was there to say? After what Tess had risked for him? With their mother furloughed to another dry-out of questionable sincerity and their estranged father in the clink, Tess, at fifteen, had packed the trunk of the Buick with saltines, peanut butter, off-brand canned soup, six-packs of Tab, clothes, and a flashlight and taken Walker on the lam to keep them clear of the social workers. And she'd succeeded, right up until fifty-seven nights later, when they'd passed their mother's house on their weekly drive-by and seen-with relief so great Tess had sobbed for the first and only time he knew of-the light back on in the kitchen. What could he have said to his sister, years later, over bad table red and a warbly nuptial rendition of "That's Amore"? Thank you?

  A spiral-bound weekly planner, sized to fit in a woman's wallet, sat beneath the cologne like a coaster. A picture of Tess in a paper Benihana frame was wedged in the mirror nailed above the bureau. He slid the photo and the datebook into his pocket. Covering the rest of the Formica walnut veneer and stuffed into the neighboring bookshelves were stacks of files containing Xeroxed articles from medical journals, printed reports, and pamphlets on what he assumed was Sam's condition. A few videos with professionally printed VECTOR stickers on the spines caught his attention. The same name and logo appeared on various brochures and reports. He figured Vector Biogenics for the gene-therapy outfit Kaitlin had mentioned. One of the Vector tapes was labeled in kid's handwriting: My News Segmint. A laminated visitor's pass to the "Vector Campus" dangled from a lanyard Tess had hung on her closet doorknob.

  Bracing himself, Walker turned to face the bed, which he'd half seen upon entering. At the foot a bleached blob stood out from the rust carpet, the loop threads poking up like maggots. The missing comforter had probably been disposed of, leaving a yellow top sheet folded back neatly over a worn blanket. The crime-scene cleaners had scrubbed the wall above the headboard, leaving an uneven patch of discoloration.

  Kaitlin's voice carried down the hall: "I know, sir, but I thought the ER copays also applied against the urgent-care deductible."

  Walker trudged over and sat where his sister must have in her final moment, his back to the headboard, his feet centered in the white spot of carpet. He tried to reconstruct her position; her head must've been turned. He curled a bit, shoulders rising, stomach jerking-the convulsions of crying, though his eyes stayed dry. His palms sweated. Then he clenched his jaw and straightened back up.

  The door shushed across the carpet a few more inches. Sam's terrified gaze moved about the room-he couldn't help himself-and then the wireless joystick fell from his hand and he retreated silently from the doorway.

  Walker found him just outside the room, back to the wall, breathing hard.

  "She visited Nona," Sam said once he'd caught his breath. "I heard you asking."

  "Her mother? Your grandmother?"

  "Yup."

  "How often?"

  "Once a week. I went, too, usually."

  Walker continued toward the fam
ily room. Kaitlin's voice reached an exasperated pitch as she paced the tiny kitchen. She didn't notice Walker flash past the doorway. He got halfway to the glass slider, stopped, and returned. Sam had closed Tess's door and was standing before it, fingers still clenching the knob.

  "Can you keep your mouth shut?"

  "Course I can."

  "Good. You'll get me killed if you don't. I'm not fucking around. You don't know me. You never saw me. Got it?"

  Sam's lips trembled, and then he stormed into his room and shut the door, hard. Kaitlin glared at Walker this time as he passed. He stepped through the rear slider, hooked around the side of the house, and, after scanning the street from the cover of the neighbor's misshapen juniper, made his way to his Accord. He drove a few blocks before he pulled over. The air smelled of tar and fried breakfast meat-something sugary, packaged sausage. He opened Tess's calendar to the date of her death. Blank. The last entry, on June 1 in the 7:00 P.M. slot, read Vector Party, The Ivy-Bev Hills. Exactly one week before her death.

  Walker scanned back over the preceding months. Vector was listed in March and April, often several times in a given week. Staring at the company name rendered again and again in Tess's neat hand, he felt his curiosity sharpen.

  Chapter 15

  Dolan cracked his knuckles for the third time that morning, psyching himself up for the confrontation he'd been rehearsing in his head since he woke up. A glance around the lab and his anxiety gave way momentarily to pride at all his work had given rise to.

  He'd stumbled into the field, awed by the progress made by those scientist-pioneers who'd come before him. They'd made a brilliant leap. An imaginative leap. Brilliant and imaginative the way that Darwin's mechanism for evolution had been-simple and sound. Once you got it, it was all but obvious. All the pieces had been there; it was just a matter of assembling them to form the right picture. And unlike natural selection, viral vectors could be tested over weeks, not eons.

  Gene therapy arose to correct genetic disorders that were deemed incurable. The bench work, while complex, was straightforward. Take a virus, designed through natural selection to penetrate human tissue, and excise the DNA sequences that make it virulent. Once it's been defanged and declawed, what remains is a biological vehicle with plenty of cargo room-a microscopic Trojan horse. Insert a therapeutic gene and the formerly threatening virus acts as benign transport. Once the viral vector is introduced into a subject, it finds its way to the target DNA sequence on the appropriate chromosome and the transgene insinuates itself, replacing the faulty gene.