Last Shot

by Gregg Hurwitz

  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, e
asy.”

  Chapter 64

  The Nextel felt hot against 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.

  “You’re on Walker Jameson’s trail?” Tim said.

  The guy scratched his bald pate, fingers flickering as if over piano keys. “Dunno.”

  Bear looked from the abandoned sneakers—huge and floppy, size thirteens at least—to the lanky guy in the chair. Normal-size feet.

  “Wait a minute,” Bear said, “this ain’t Caden.”

  The phone shuddered in Tim’s pocket, and he opened it to watch a booking photo download on the small screen. Caden Burke was a hulking man, six-three by the markers behind him. His thick chest dwarfed the neckboard. He had a mouth like a seam, no lips, and a pronounced chin that gave the effect that his face was folded around the black slit.

  “Hell, no, I ain’t Caden. My name’s Phil Xavier. I’m just the fucking driver.”

  “So where’s Caden?” Bear stood over Xavier. “Where is he?”

  Tim said, “You’d better tell us everything you know, right now, or we’ll nail your ass for conspiracy to commit murder.” Xavier bunched his mouth, biting the insides of his lips. Tim leaned over him. “Right now, this moment, this is one of those decisions you don’t want to spend twenty years rethinking at Lompoc.”

  Sweat streaked down the sides of Xavier’s head just behind the ears, lending a sheen to the inked shamrock low on his skull. The tattoo was still scabby—Xavier was a newbie, which meant he wasn’t so far in he couldn’t see a way out. “And if I tell you?”

  Tim made an on-the-spot call for expediency’s sake. “Hey, you’re just the driver, right?”

  Xavier cleared his throat nervously. “Caden’s the guy, like I said. I just drive. But I heard him making calls on the way out, pieced together a thing or two.”

  Bear: “Like?”

  “After the escape, Jameson made some underground calls checking out a hitter named the Piper. It trickled back to us—we’d put it on the street we wanted any word on Walker Jameson. Turns out the Piper’s dead. Jameson found out someone snaked his commission.”

  “Does Jameson know who? Maybe someone gave him a name?”

  Xavier’s eyes shifted. “He might have gotten a name, sure, but not us.”

  “What did you get?”

  “A time and place.”

  “For what?”

  “Where Jameson could find the guy.”

  “The time?”

  Xavier pulsed his hands into fists, working out tension. “Right now.”

  “Where?”

  “You guys gonna hurt Caden?”

  “If he’s going after Jameson, we’re probably going to save his life.”

  “You don’t know Caden.” Xavier had one of those nervous smiles where the lips touched at the middle but gapped at the sides.

  Bear palmed Xavier’s head, his massive hands enclosing either side, and forced eye contact. “Where?”

  “I swear I don’t know. Caden looked something up and took off outta here.”

  “Looked something up? In what?”

  But Tim was already across the room at the laptop. The odious screen saver vanished when he hit the space bar. Explorer was open to Yahoo!’s TV page, the schedule highlighting the Dodgers-Marlins game. Tim clicked the browser’s back button, passing a baseball stats page and a news story before a Mapquest page started to load, slowed by the phone-line connection. As the driving directions popped on-screen, one line at a time, Tim tracked them impatiently with his finger.

  Caden’s route ended at Game.

  Chapter 65

  Tim had called for backup, but there was no way he and Bear were going to wait. A few minutes past seven, and already the wetlands had come alive with night noise, all order of chirping and scratching insects lending their sounds to the ashy air. A flurry of dusty moths beat against themselves and the lamp by the awning.

  The Game lounge was in full swing, its well-heeled clientele drinking and groping happily at the bar. The mood chilled at the sight of Bear prodding Xavier in cuffs through the door. No sign of Walker or Caden. Bear stormed to the back office. The counter was being run by a man with ruddy cheeks and a Scarface T-shirt, the S faded off, probably when his mom did his laundry.

  “Hey, Carface,” Bear said, slapping his badge across the laid-open Paintball 2 Xtremes magazine. “Who’s in the preserve? Right now.” Bear snapped his fingers in front of the guy’s face to jerk his focus from their handcuffed sidekick.

  “A…uh, handful of guys. And Afternoon D-Lite.”

  “How many guys?”

  “I think three.”

  “You think?” Tim pointed to equipment hanging from pegs near the lockers. “Can you count the missing vests?”

  “They brought their own.” The worker flipped a binder out from the row and showed Tim three names, none of which meant anything to him.

  Xavier spit on the floor. “How ’bout I sit down?”

  Bear said, “Believe me, your presence at this moment is no fucking treat for us either.”

  A movement caught Tim’s eye through the side window—Wes Dieter pulling up to his marked space by the entrance. Dressed in pseudo-combat gear, he climbed out of his Cutlass Supreme.

  Tim turned back to the worker. “Have you seen this guy?” A head shake at Walker’s picture. “How about him?” Tim snapped open his phone and showed the photograph of Caden.

  “Yeah, that guy was here a minute ago. At the bar, maybe?”

  Tim scanned the lounge again, and then his eyes pulled to the gauze curtain. He said to Bear, “He’s in the preserve. Hunting.”

  Bear unsnapped his holster strap. “Or waiting.”

  Tim said, “Could he have snuck in without your seeing?”

  “Shit, I don’t know,” the worker said. “I guess someone could cut the net anywhere at the perimeter and slip through, they really wanted to.”

  Which Walker may well have d
one earlier to set up for Tess’s killer. Tim said, “Let me see the schedule for the rest of the night. Now.”

  The worker fumbled at the computer. Wes entered to a stir, exchanging high fives with a few zealous clients. He cued to the tense vibe, spotted Tim, Bear, and Xavier, and approached. “Hey guys, what’s the 411 here?”

  Tim said, “We think whoever killed Tess Jameson is on the premises. We were told he had an appointment here, right now.” He didn’t add that Tess’s murderer might have drawn Walker Jameson on site for the kill, or that an Aryan Brotherhood hit man, in turn, was pursuing Walker.

  “I see.” Wes rocked on his heels, then said, “Hey, Kenny, I need you to unload the paintball units from my backseat.” He aimed his key chain at the window, and, outside, the soft top on his convertible retracted, a custom feature that must have cost thousands. “I’ll help these gents.”

  Kenny offered an annoyed look, then headed out.

  Wes said in a fierce whisper. “I thought we had a deal. You can’t be hauling perps through here.”

  Tim said, “We need tonight’s schedule.”

  Wes fought a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed sweat from his forehead but made no move toward the computer. “Come on, guys. Come back after hours, I’ll get you whatever you need. But you’re freaking my clients. Again.”

  Outside, Kenny waited for the sluggish soft top to accordion out of his way, then hefted a crate from Wes’s car. Wes crossed his arms, ready to cause a scene. Bear shoved past him, stepping around the counter. The tabby stuck her head up from the Cutlass’s passenger seat, then jumped up onto the hood, her orange coat rippling.

  Wes shook his head at Bear’s rudeness, then said, “The schedule’s on the clipboard by the preserve entrance.” He went to get it, mumbling.

  The cat padded across the front of the Cutlass, her breath wisping, then curled at the end of the hood above the warmth of the engine.

  The oversize hood ornament.

  Bear looked up from the monitor, brow twisted with consternation. “This says the next appointment’s a hunt-off. Metal Jacket and—”