Phantom Instinct (9780698157132)

by Gardiner, Meg

  Finally, Sorenstam said, “I am truly sorry that you have been swept up in all of this. This year must have been difficult for you.”

  “Kind of you.”

  Sorenstam heard the chill tone that slipped between Harper’s teeth.

  “And I will make sure your report of an unidentified man at the memorial is noted in the investigative file. But you need to ease down. Getting Aiden mixed up in this will not help either of you.”

  Investigative file? The case was closed. They had no intention of moving forward, not even if she drove into them from behind with a battering ram.

  Sorenstam was waiting for her to leave. Instead, from her bag Harper took the Altoids tin containing the cigarette butts she’d collected at the park.

  “He dropped them. They’ll have his DNA. If Eddie Azerov is on file . . .”

  Sorenstam’s face said she wasn’t about to spend lab time and departmental funds testing the cigarettes. Harper paused and dug deeper in her purse. She took out an artifact. It was dirty, as was the lanyard on which it hung. She held it out to Sorenstam.

  “What’s this?” Sorenstam said.

  “My employee swipe card from Xenon.”

  Sorenstam took it. “Why?”

  “After the fire, I went back to work. For one day. To prove I could do it,” she said. “They gave everybody new swipe cards but never collected our old ones. So many were lost or damaged in the fire, they never bothered.”

  “And?”

  She breathed. This was a risk. Once Sorenstam started looking, she might peel back the layers.

  “I know you suspect that the shooters accessed Xenon through a back entrance. If they did, how? Did they have a key, or a confederate, or dumb luck? So check my card out.”

  Sorenstam held the lanyard carefully, as if it might contain a virus. “You think it was used to open the door for the shooters?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “How can that be? Was the card out of your possession?”

  “Just check it out. If there’s any evidence that my card was used to access the building . . .”

  “Why have you waited until now to come forward with this?”

  “Because the final report was only recently issued. It concludes that the investigation could not determine how the shooters got in. But today, Aiden told me you saw a car drop people by the back alley, just before the shooting started.”

  “No evidence suggests that the shooters accessed the building with an employee’s swipe card.” Sorenstam looked severe. “You’re telling me different.”

  “I’m saying my card is damaged, but maybe you can pull data off of it.”

  “Why are you doing this? Did you let the shooters into Xenon?”

  “No.”

  “Then why would your card have data showing that they used it to access the club?”

  Drew’s face appeared before her. For a second, she considered telling the truth. She balked.

  “I’m offering it to you for whatever you can get from it. Even one byte of data,” she said. “Because the shooter is back.”

  She turned and walked out.

  Her cheeks were burning. She had no idea whether she’d just saved herself or cut the strings on her parachute.

  Did she want to believe there was a connection to her? Did she want to believe it was Azerov?

  She didn’t look over her shoulder. She feared that if she did, she’d see Sorenstam throwing the swipe card in the trash.

  She opened the door, stepped into the sunshine, and looked around for Aiden. His truck was gone. So were her hopes.

  Sorenstam watched the door close behind Harper Flynn. She had a bitter taste in her mouth. The swipe card the young woman had given her was scratched and worn. The lanyard was grayed with soot.

  What did Flynn expect her to find? Fingerprints? Electronic evidence? Of what? She dropped the card on her desk.

  On her computer screen, the image of Aiden’s attack on Perez remained. She yanked the thumb drive from her computer, not caring when it said she hadn’t shut down the device safely. Nothing about this last year had been shut down safely.

  She sat, and forced herself not to put her head in her hands, or to think of the partner Aiden Garrison had been and should have remained, had the universe been just.

  Personality changes. Depression, psychiatric issues. She’d studied the secondary symptoms of closed head injuries. Delusional misidentification syndromes.

  She looked at the door as it slowly closed, wondering if she really wanted to see him outside, receding into the distance, ever farther. She turned away.

  She picked up the lanyard. The swipe card swung back and forth. It was a plain white card with the name FLYNN, H. and an employee ID number printed on the front. On the back, below the magnetic strip, was printed SPARTAN SECURITY SYSTEMS INC. She looked up their phone number. Then she opened a search.

  Harper Flynn.

  Across the street from the Lost Hills Sheriff’s Station, a man sat at the bus stop. A dog lay at his feet, panting. The woman from the architectural firm in the business park clicked up the sidewalk, sun in her eyes, holding the Chihuahua’s leash. Traffic was light. The dog at the bus stop was a red brindle, big, all muscle aside from its huge head. Its leash lay loose on the sidewalk beside it. Its master had his arms spread across the back of the bench.

  She was twenty yards from the bench when the brindled dog sat up, eyeing her and little Gigi. What was that thing? A pit-bull-brown-bear mix? It had half an ear torn off and a crescent bite scar across its face. It wore a studded black collar. Its hackles bristled and ears flattened. The woman eyed it and sped up, her dog ticking along on tiny paws, like a speck of grease jumping in a skillet.

  The man lounged, arms stretched along the back of the bench, legs wide. He was facing away from her, gazing across the street. His dog growled. The man let him. What did they call this—a status dog?

  He checked the time.

  The red brindle growled again, a low, rattling sound.

  She stopped ten yards from him. “Your dog’s off the leash.”

  The man ignored her. He seemed more fascinated by the woman across the street, a brunette who stormed to a MINI Cooper and got in like some kind of typhoon, before racing past, engine revving, hair blowing in the open window. At his knee, the brindled dog continued to snarl. Drool leaked from its jowls.

  “Excuse me,” she said. “Please curb that thing. He’s frightening Gigi.”

  The MINI raced away around a long curve. The man watched it go.

  “I said your animal is behaving aggressively.”

  The man half turned his head, with the speed of a spring snapping. “So get yourself a dog instead of a piece of Kleenex on a leash.”

  He stood up. The brindle did, too. It lowered its head and padded forward. One step, two. She scooped the Chihuahua into her arms and backed up.

  The man simply stood with his back to her. His T-shirt had a grotesque drawing on the back: a man with half a face, half a bloody skull. Beneath the image, it said, GUS FRING: CLASSY TO THE END. She backed up some more. The Chihuahua squirmed and began to yap at the red dog.

  The bus pulled up, wheezing to a stop. The door sighed open. The man picked up the leash. “Heel.” He and the dog climbed aboard.

  11

  The next afternoon, Aiden pulled into the carport and turned off the truck. He listened to the F-150’s engine tick, listened to himself breathe, listened to nothing. Sunshine glared off the hood, white against black.

  Another flash of glass reflected in the mirror: Sorenstam’s Accord pulling into the driveway behind him.

  Twenty-four hours, he thought. She’d waited a full day to come calling.

  She wore sunglasses, a vision of Swedish Californian cool, watching him. The perfect cop, waiting for the guy in her sights to make
a move.

  He pulled the keys from the ignition and got out. The wood-frame house was crammed under heavy oaks and bottlebrush trees on Foothill Road, near Mission Canyon. He rented it from his uncle. A gnarl of bougainvillea climbed the wall by the carport and spilled across its roof, papery red leaves shaking in the afternoon wind with the force of a rattler’s tail.

  Sorenstam climbed out. Aiden reached back into the cab of the F-150 for the SIG Sauer and the Heckler & Koch.

  She walked up the drive. “Firing range?”

  “You really are a detective.”

  He flicked the remote to lock the truck and headed for the house. He was limping and couldn’t hide it. After fishing with Kieran, he had gone running, two miles up Foothill and the brutal rises along Mountain Drive. And back down. That’s what had killed his leg, the downhills.

  Downhill, that’s what was killing his life.

  After the run, he still felt wired and useless, like a spinning top that was beginning to wobble. He had needed something to straighten him out, something he could aim at in a direct line. The firing range, in the mountains up San Marcos Pass, was where he’d spent many Saturday mornings with his dad and Kieran in high school, and where he’d practiced after college, when he was getting it into his head that the Army and a career in law enforcement were the things that would set his heart pounding and swelling with righteousness.

  He unlocked the kitchen door. “Keeping my skills up. An hour running the roads, an hour at the range.”

  The burglar alarm beeped. He silenced it. Checked the house for strange shadows, papers out of place, the sound of intruders breathing from their hiding places.

  Sorenstam followed him in. The house was warm. The main windows faced west, and all the red energy of the day gathered itself and permeated the kitchen and living room. He took a lockbox from a cupboard shelf and let Sorenstam watch him safe both handguns, ejecting the clips and checking the chamber before setting them inside.

  She worried, he knew. She wondered what would happen to him if his brain glitched while he was at the range and tricked him into thinking that the Xenon gunman was standing next to him disguised as another sports shooter.

  “Beer’s in the fridge.”

  He walked to the living room, opened the patio door, and whistled. The dog came bounding from the trees and leaped up the steps, a black blur. Cobey was a Labrador/flat-coat mix. Aiden scratched him behind the ears. Back in the kitchen, he poured the dog fresh water. Sorenstam hadn’t moved from the door.

  “Is this surveillance?” he said.

  He walked to the sofa. It was covered with a red-and-black Navajo rug. He sat heavily and propped his leg up, hoping she wouldn’t notice, wondering why he cared. They weren’t partners any longer. They wouldn’t be again.

  “We’ve been through this already, Erika,” he said.

  She bypassed the beer and walked around in front of the sofa. “I’m not here to put the same old song on repeat.”

  “Then what?” He draped an arm across the back of the sofa. His shoulder ached. His arm and ribs ached. It started deep and seemed to moan from within the bones that had been broken. He didn’t tell her that his hour on the roads had covered only four miles.

  He stared at her. “You played Flynn my greatest-hits reel, didn’t you?”

  She crossed her arms. “I drove an hour out of my way to come here, and my workday is only half over. How about you grant me the courtesy of listening to what I have to tell you?”

  Right then, he wanted quiet. Instead, he had Erika, planted three feet away. If not a lecture or a warning, what was it?

  “Please,” he said.

  “What do you know about Harper Flynn?”

  He shrugged. “Bartender at Xenon. Before that, she was Navy enlisted. She’s finishing college on the G.I. Bill.”

  She took a second. She always took a second. She liked the suspense. It was a good cop trick. After a while, on a personal level, it became less amusing.

  “Erika. What?”

  She brushed her pale hair over her shoulder. “I know you believe in the escaped shooter theory with all your heart. But you’re wrong.”

  “You didn’t drive all this way to reiterate that.”

  “And worse, you’re being played. Harper Flynn is not who she claims to be.”

  “What?”

  Sorenstam looked implacable under the sharp sunlight. “Bartender, veteran, student—yeah. Add convicted felon.”

  Something seemed to fray deep inside him. Some wire that kept him moored. He didn’t move, but he felt as though he had begun to slide across the room.

  “Prove it,” he said.

  “She’s only walking free because she committed her crimes as a juvenile.”

  “Who told you this?”

  “Flynn admitted she went to high school with Eddie Azerov. She left out that when she was fifteen, she and Azerov were part of a crew of thieves.”

  Aiden lowered his sore leg to the floor and hung his hands off his knees.

  “They had a modern Fagin’s gang up in China Lake. Tenth graders working for an adult boss. Shoplifting. Pickpocketing. Home burglary. They worked eastern Kern County and the Antelope Valley.”

  She crossed her arms. “It didn’t stop there. She wrecked a car, driving underage without a license. With two bricks of marijuana in the trunk. She’s also suspected of being a money mule—a heist where hackers stole credit card data and sent out a cash crew to withdraw as much as they could from ATMs. The guys running the operation didn’t even have to launder that cash. It came out clean.”

  He looked at the floor.

  She paused, until he looked up. “Eventually, she drove the getaway car for an armed robbery.”

  He stood and walked to the window. Sorenstam followed.

  “They robbed a jewelry store in China Lake. Eddie Azerov and another youth from their after-school crime club went in with sledgehammers. Harper waited at the curb. Somebody called 9-1-1. Harper and the boys fled, but she managed to drive directly into an oncoming police car and get them all captured.”

  Aiden stared at the square of sunlight angling across the floor near the window. “Sure you don’t want that beer?”

  “Aiden?”

  “Because it’s your last chance. Otherwise, I’ll drink for both of us.”

  He walked to the kitchen, his leg throbbing. He took out two beer bottles, wedged the edge of one cap under the other, and popped it open.

  He turned back to Sorenstam. “How’d you uncover information that should have been sealed?”

  “Small-town cops have excellent memories. The China Lake PD really hated the people involved in this racket. They took pride in busting it. And in reliving the bust.” She walked into the kitchen. “I’m sorry, Aiden.”

  He spoke quietly. “Why did you tell me this?”

  I don’t want you to save me, he meant.

  “You deserve to know. Letting Flynn run over you would be a piss-poor thing for a former partner to do.”

  “That’s it?”

  She ran her gaze up and down him. “She wasn’t just playing you. She’s still working an angle.”

  “You think she came to me in an effort to get to you? That she wanted to use me as a front, so the department would believe what she was saying?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Then she’s hardly the criminal genius you’re making her out to be. Only an idiot would think Aiden Garrison is her ticket to believability.”

  She blinked as though he’d spit at her. “I assume she figured she could use you, and thereby use me. She needed an introduction, and you provided it.”

  “Why does she want to use you?” he said.

  “Did she tell you what she did in the Navy?”

  He shook his head.

  “She was a translator.”r />
  “So?”

  “Russian,” Sorenstam said. “They sent her to the Defense Language Institute at Monterey. You know why the Navy does that, right? It’s not so they can train swabbies to interpret chit-chat at diplomatic dinners.”

  “Intelligence?” he said.

  “Cryptologic technician. She worked with the spooks,” Sorenstam said. “And now she’s finishing a college degree in linguistics. She’s going to apply for jobs in security. She has clearance, for God’s sake.”

  He leaned his hands on the counter, trying to slot the information into comprehensible compartments. “So what? Why would she draw attention to herself now?”

  “Did she tell you about her employee swipe card from Xenon?”

  “What about it?”

  She took that as a no, which it was. “She gave it to me. Asked me to check it out. She suggested I try to pull evidence off of it. She didn’t mean fingerprints.”

  “Do you know whether it’s actually her card?”

  Her eyes glinted. He’d exposed himself, revealed his still-living sense of himself as a detective, and shown that he doubted Harper’s truthfulness.

  Sorenstam said, “I have no idea whether it’s actually her card. She asked me to find out whether it was used as a key.”

  “Key to Xenon?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “She certainly wasn’t implicating herself. I took her to mean that somebody else used it to grant the shooters access. She left it to me to figure out who she was pointing at.”

  “What do you make of it?” he said.

  “If you decipher it, tell me.” Her gaze lingered for a moment. “You take care.” She headed to the door. Hand on the knob, she paused. “Ask her what happened to Susannah.”

  She left. When he heard her car back out of the driveway, he tilted the beer bottle to his lips. It was cold, but not as cold as he felt.

  Harper Flynn. For the last twelve months, he had seen her as a hero. Hell, he had watched her leap over the bar into withering gunfire, in a manic bid to pull Drew Westerman to safety. Harper hadn’t just seemed heroic during the attack. She had been heroic. Unquestionably.