by Zoe Sharp
‘It does give him one thing,’ Sean said, and we both turned in his direction. ‘An opportunity.’
Sagar only just made Parker’s deadline, scrambling into the back of the armoured Suburban right as Sean was reaching for the ignition, which would have operated the central locking system, shutting him out. Sitting directly behind him in the rear seat, I caught Sean’s assessing gaze in the rear-view mirror before he slipped on a pair of Wayfarers, masking his eyes, and cranked the engine.
We drove eastwards, through the Santa Monica hills towards the San Fernando Valley. Ahead of us, smog sat sullenly over LA like a nicotine ceiling. Sagar was silent for the first part of the journey, content to rubberneck at the southern California scenery. There was a slightly wide-eyed innocence about him. I hadn’t quite made up my mind if I found it appealing or not. It was certainly contrasted sharply with the wary cynicism of the man I shared my life with, and those I habitually worked alongside.
‘So…Charlie, isn’t it?’ Sagar said when we’d settled into traffic on Route 101. ‘How the heck did someone like you end up in this line of work?’
‘Someone like me?’ I echoed, pleasant.
‘Hey, I didn’t mean…’ he began hastily, stopped and took a breath. ‘Um, OK, my bad. All I meant was, you got the same look as these guys.’ He gestured, a little helplessly, towards Parker and Sean in the front seats. ‘Like you’re waiting for it to go wrong all the time. It’s not a look you see often in a woman.’
‘It’s called experience,’ Parker said without turning around. ‘Charlie’s got it. And if it all does go wrong, you’ll be grateful she does.’ He did turn then, just enough to glance back across at me. ‘He’s all yours. Stay on him.’
Sagar shifted in his seat. ‘Wow. Does this mean you’re, like, my personal bodyguard? How does that work?’
I passed him a long look that he had no trouble interpreting, even through dark glasses. ‘It works that if you do as you’re told, you won’t get hurt,’ I promised crisply. ‘Don’t do as you’re told, and I’ll hurt you myself.’
Sagar went quiet. I couldn’t quite work out if the prospect excited or frightened him.
As we drove inland from the Santa Monica Mountains and left the freeway, I was struck again by the duality of Los Angeles. Sunset Boulevard had a glamorous ring to it, but turned out to be a mashed-together mix of squat one-and two-storey commercial buildings and gleaming modern extravagances, with billboards and palm trees competing for silhouette room against a harsh blue sky.
The motel was on an intersection and boasted thirty rooms arranged around a central courtyard. The fat man in yesterday’s clothes who was slouched behind the front desk told us he had ten rooms shut down for ‘routine maintenance’, but to my eye there was no sign of any kind of maintenance going on, routine or otherwise.
The construction was cheap and insubstantial. There wasn’t anywhere I would have chosen as good cover in a firefight, and the whole place had the faded-out shabbiness you find in the tropics, where constant good weather proves just as hard to repel as bad.
As we drove round from Reception, there were two police black-and-whites parked to the right of the courtyard, bristling with antennas and intent. A sunglassed cop was leaning against one of the cruisers, heavily muscled arms folded across his chest as he watched us pull up on the tarwebbed asphalt.
We climbed down from the Suburban carefully, taking in the terrain. I moved in alongside Sagar. Behind the barrier of my own darkened lenses, my eyes roved constantly across the surrounding buildings, looking for gaps in the reflections from the glass. Open windows were always easier to spot in a country where air conditioning was the norm. According to the temperature read-out on the office building across the street, it was already sixty-eight degrees, providing an almost creamy warmth. It was hard to remember we were only weeks past Christmas.
The cop’s body language told me that whatever cooperation Epps’s influence had secured was being offered grudgingly at best. In the back of one of the cruisers, a German Shepherd had gone into a slavering barking frenzy at our approach, which the cop totally ignored.
‘You Armstrong?’ The question was aimed at none of us in particular, the delivery just a little too studiously disinterested to be wholly convincing.
When Parker nodded, the cop jerked his head towards an open doorway a little further along the row. ‘Detective Gardner is waiting on you,’ he said. He gave Chris Sagar and me a fast dismissive once-over. ‘You might wanna leave the civilians outside.’
‘Thanks,’ Parker said, moving past with just enough hint of a smile to have the cop’s brow creasing at the joke he’d missed.
I felt Sagar’s hesitation as we neared the doorway. ‘You don’t have to go in,’ I murmured, but he shook his head vigorously.
‘No,’ he said, swallowing, ‘I do.’
Inside, my overriding impression was of thinness. Thin fabric curtains; thin stained coverlet on the bed; thin stick furniture that had been cheap when it was new and was now being asked to hold together well beyond its time. The TV remote was bolted to the bedside table. By the splits in the unconvincing wood veneer surrounding the base, the fixing had withstood several attempts to forcibly remove it.
The cramped room was made more claustrophobic by the presence of another uniform, a crime scene tech with a camera and flashgun, and a compact dark-haired woman in cargo pants and a casual cotton jacket. I pegged her instantly as the cop in charge without needing to catch a glimpse of the shield hooked into her belt. Even in a crowd, there was a certain space around her. She looked up as we loomed in her field of view, bone-weary rather than actively hostile, jaw working gum.
Gardner gave the same jerk to her chin as the cop outside. ‘You Armstrong?’ she repeated, gaze lingering long enough that she’d know us again.
‘Thanks for holding for us, Detective Gardner,’ Parker said, stepping forwards with his hand extended. ‘We appreciate the heads-up on this one. I hope it’s been made clear to you that we have no intention of horning in on your investigation.’
Gardner flashed a brief smile. She had very dark eyes that were bright with unanswered questions, framed by impressive lashes, long and curving. ‘Pity,’ she said, laconic. ‘We topped four hundred homicides in LA last year. I was kinda hoping you spooks were gonna take this one off of our hands.’
‘No such luck,’ Parker said, sidestepping the detective’s misapprehension that we were part of Epps’s crew. ‘Can we take a look at the body?’
‘Sure. He bought it in the shower – neater that way, huh?’ Gardner said, leading the way into the en suite bathroom. If I’d thought the bedroom was small, the bathroom was minuscule by comparison, lined in small white stretcher bond tiles badly mildewed along the grout lines, the taps covered in a fur of limescale.
Thomas Witney was crumpled into the far corner of the low bath, stripped naked, his hands bound tight behind him with wire. The way it had sliced deep into his wrists told me he’d fought long and hard against the restraint. But if the marks on his body were any indication of what had been done to him, he’d had good reason to.
‘Ain’t pretty, is it?’ Gardner said with that lazy quality cops everywhere adopt as a means of self-protection. ‘They sure went to town on him.’
‘They didn’t have the time to be tidy,’ Sean said, crouching to scan the body with eyes that were as cool and flat as his tone. ‘He was only snatched yesterday. Whatever they wanted out of him, they wanted it fast.’
‘And I’d say they got it,’ Parker said, grim.
‘Yesterday?’ Gardner queried, her own gaze narrowing. ‘We found some older injuries on him – there, on the throat and around the left arm, see? The doc reckons those predate the others. Thought that was maybe how they grabbed him – some kind of chokehold. Know more once they get him on the slab.’
Sean got slowly to his feet, and I had a feeling there was trouble in the very deliberation of his movements. I glanced at Parker, but his face was pr
ofessionally blank.
‘How did he die?’ he asked.
The detective’s bright gaze flicked between us, curiosity bubbling. ‘Gunshot,’ she said after a moment. ‘You can’t see it with his head resting against the tiles like that, but right temple, close range. Small enough calibre not to splatter his brains all round the tub. Like I said, keeping it neat. We might get a match when they pull the round out of him, but I wouldn’t bet on it. These guys were pros.’
‘Taking a risk, though, weren’t they?’ Parker said. ‘Doing that to him here.’
Gardner grunted in what could have been amusement, waved an arm through the open doorway to the bedroom. In the wall above the bed I noticed several old bullet holes, cracks in the plaster radiating outwards from each of them.
‘You think?’ Gardner said. ‘Nobody woulda heard a damn thing. I guarantee it.’
‘I gotta go,’ Sagar mumbled suddenly. I turned to find him pale and sweating, hands fluttering to his face.
‘Get him outta here,’ Gardner said quickly, more resigned than angry. ‘Don’t let him hurl on my crime scene.’
I scooped a hand under Sagar’s elbow and fast-walked him out into the bleached brightness of the courtyard. On the other side of the parking area was a set of vending machines and a bench. I headed him across to it and plonked him down in the shade, then slipped my sunglasses back on and stood a couple of feet away with my back slightly towards him, staring outwards.
The muscled cop and the K9 cruiser had gone. A dark-tinted van marked ‘Coroner’s Office’ had taken its place. Two men in disposable suits were wheeling a trolley towards the crime scene. Other than that, there was no activity. If any of the other rooms were taken, the occupants were too blasé, or too wary, to gawk in front of the police.
The current live information hit my retinas and was processed by one part of my brain, but another part replayed the image of Witney’s body, crumpled in the scuffed bathtub. The whole thing ran inside my head like a scene from a movie, disconnected from reality, from the life he’d once had. It seemed a shabby way to die, amid your own filth and fear and pain. I hoped, when it was my turn, I went out quick.
Of course, I’d already given death a trial run and been mildly disappointed not to recall anything about the experience. No long tunnels, no bright lights and harp music, no deep voices calling my name. Just a big black zero.
So the records show, I flatlined for almost two minutes after being shot twice on a job in New Hampshire, shortly before Sean and I started working for Parker. It had been almost exactly a year ago, I realised, and wondered if I ought to mark the occasion like some kind of macabre rebirthday.
Behind me, Sagar was sitting hunched over, gasping in the dry air. Without comment, I dug in the front pocket of my linen suit trousers, brought out a roll of cash and fed a single into the vending machine.
It was another of Parker’s rules that we always carried enough of a float to buy our way out of trouble if the need arose. Beyond anything else, it was amazing how much smoother egress from a busy restaurant could be achieved if you tipped the waiter thirty per cent upfront to make sure your food arrived at the same time as your principal’s, if not slightly before. Most of the people we were assigned to protect were not prepared to sit around while their bodyguards finished eating.
My selection thunked into the chute at the bottom of the machine. I dug it out and handed it over without taking my eyes off the surrounding area.
‘You blame yourself, don’t you, Charlie?’ he said quietly at last. I glanced back, found him taking a sip of his Mountain Dew. His colour was better and his eyes had turned shrewd behind those little round glasses. ‘If you want to blame anyone, blame Bane. He’s the one responsible for all this.’
‘He shouldn’t have had the chance. If I’d done my job better, Witney might still be alive.’
‘Hey,’ he said, chiding. ‘You didn’t… I thought Mr Epps was the one who…?’
‘It still feels like it’s on my watch,’ I said. ‘Like it’s on my head.’
Sagar rose, stood alongside me, his eyes fixed on the open doorway to the room where Thomas Witney died. ‘You liked him, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, I did,’ I said. ‘And you know what pisses me off the most?’
He shook his head. Across the courtyard, the two coroner’s men reappeared, manoeuvring the wheeled stretcher between them. It now contained a black body bag, loaded and strapped into position.
‘The waste,’ I said bitterly. ‘Witney never told us anything about what was happening inside Fourth Day, because it wasn’t our job to ask. And Epps never got the opportunity.’ I watched the body being loaded into the van with impersonal efficiency. The doors slammed. ‘Witney never wanted to leave that cult. If Bane was so bloody desperate to prevent a possible security breach, he didn’t have to torture and kill him. All he had to do was take him home.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
When we got back to Calabasas, it was to find Epps waiting for us. He was leaning casually over the table in the Great Room, picking his way through our intel with his back arrogantly towards the hallway.
Joe McGregor was standing awkwardly nearby, himself flanked by the two security men who habitually accompanied Epps. McGregor threw Parker a look of embarrassed apology as we came in, received a head shake by way of reply. There wasn’t much short of tear gas could prevent Epps coming in and doing as he pleased.
‘It would seem that locating Thomas Witney did not prove as difficult as I envisaged, Mr Armstrong,’ Epps said when he heard our footsteps, waiting until we were almost upon him before he straightened, turning to add with a mirthless smile, ‘although, naturally, I would have preferred him returning in a more…viable condition.’
Sean’s stride never faltered, he just kept moving, crowding in on Epps until they were bumping toes. Two pig-headed people, equally refusing to give ground to the other. Sean paid no regard to the reaction of Epps’s security detail, totally ignoring the Glocks that suddenly appeared in their hands and pointed unwaveringly in his direction, trigger fingers inside the guard.
Sometimes, Sean’s utter lack of fear was what frightened me most about him. Would he still take those risks, if he was a father? Would that condition make him more than he was? Or less?
‘If you had given us even half the story on this, from the beginning, Thomas Witney might still be alive. As it is, we’ve just come from the scene and you can take my word on it that he didn’t die pleasantly,’ Sean said through his teeth. ‘Now, I don’t expect someone like you to give a shit about that, but two of your own are also dead because of the mistakes that were made here and, if nothing else, the payout to their families ought to make a significant hole in your budget, so don’t you think it’s time you told us what the fuck is going on?’ He ended on a bark, cast a contemptuous glance at the nearest gun barrel, three inches from his left eye, and added an almost jeering, ‘Sir.’
For a long suspended moment, Epps didn’t speak. In many ways, he and Sean shared the same underlying phenotype. The same genetic predisposition to violence, present at birth, developed by military training and honed by experience. But where Sean’s behaviour was tempered by a basic honour code, Epps’s personality was so balanced on a knife-edge that I had no idea how he would react to such blatant insubordination. Anything from amusement to execution – it could have gone either way.
Instinctively, I eased a few inches sideways so I was fractionally in front of Chris Sagar, keeping my knees soft and my weight evenly spread. Sagar didn’t react. He was watching the scene unfold with a frozen stillness, like a spotlit rabbit.
In my heart, I yelled silent warnings to Sean, but in my head I knew I’d do more harm than good by interfering. Sean had always walked his own path, finely judged his own risks.
As he’d done, it seemed, in this case.
Epps’s eyes flickered, enough for his men to lower their weapons. He raked Sean with a final disparaging stare before dismissively turning tow
ards Parker. ‘You might like to consider putting your boy here on a very short leash,’ he said. ‘Before he gets you into more trouble than you can handle.’
‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ Parker said easily. ‘Sean does his best work when he’s off his chain.’ He gave what had every indication of an open smile, taking years off those severe features. ‘And besides, he has a valid point, and we already asked you nicely once. Time you levelled with us, Epps.’
Epps sighed. ‘There’s nothing left to say that you need to know. Thomas Witney was our original lead into this investigation. He approached us after his son died. Without him, we hit a dead end.’ He stepped around Sean and headed for the hallway, pausing briefly to add, ‘Take your team and go home, Mr Armstrong. You’re all done here.’
By my shoulder, Chris Sagar stiffened. ‘So, that’s it?’ he demanded faintly, and I heard a tremble in his voice. ‘After everything I’ve done on this, the bastard walks, is that it?’ He shook his head almost savagely, like a wet dog, voice rising in pitch and volume. ‘I’ve spent months collecting information for you. You know what Bane’s doing. I’ve told you – about the way he selects people, trains people. As sleepers – as terrorists, for God’s sake!’
He tried to dart past me, to get to Epps, but I grabbed his upper arms and parried when he tried to paddle away. He never even looked at me. His eyes were locked on Epps, pleading now. I heard the bud of tears in his voice, the desperation. ‘He had Witney picked out for something special – something big. You’ve got to stop him. I…’
Whatever else, telling a man like Epps that he’d got to do anything was never going to be a winning strategy. Sagar saw Epps’s face darken, realised his mistake, and stammered to a halt.
‘The evidence, whatever that might be, died with Witney,’ Epps said at last, voice glacial. ‘Until we have something else – something fresh – the investigation will remain open.’