Last Shot

by Gregg Hurwitz

  “Photo from his days in the Corps shows his rifle slung right to left.” Tim tapped the screen. “Can we take another look at it?”

  They watched the segment through a few more times. The spurt from Boss’s punctured neck, when viewed frame by frame, was spectacular. They were just getting ready to leave when Newlin came out of his chair with excitement. “Hang on. Right there. Check it out.” As Walker moved to shove Boss, his shirt pulled up on the left side, revealing the hems of several undershirts for a split second. “I thought he looked bulky. He layered up.” Of Bear’s puzzled glance, Newlin added, “Wearing a bunch of shirts. It’s a defense against getting stuck. And it lets you pull a quick appearance change after you shiv someone.”

  “Why would he need to switch outfits?” Bear said. “He knows he’s on tape.”

  “Plus, it’s his ambush,” Tim said. “I doubt he was worried about getting stuck.”

  “Maybe he put the shirts on earlier,” Bear offered.

  “Pretty damn hot in here to hang out in quadruple layers,” Newlin said.

  Bear bobbed his head in agreement. “Weird.”

  Newlin rose and headed for the door. “Not half as weird as his cell.”

  Chapter 5

  Unlike Sasso, who pivoted corners on the ball of his foot to preclude a break in stride, Newlin slouched along, swinging the keys around an index finger. In the breezeway, cameras rotated to follow the three men’s progress. They reached J-Unit and were promptly halted at the door.

  “Creds and badges.” The officer glanced quickly at Tim’s and Bear’s IDs, his hand never leaving the stock of his M4. “You’re the marshals, huh? You figure this one out, you’re better men than me.” He handed Tim an electronic clipboard of the type carried by UPS drivers.

  Tim perused the category labels—Name, Position, Time In, Time Out—before punching in his information. “You’ve kept this crime-scene log since the stabbing, right?”

  “No one has crossed this threshold without signing here and walking past the barrel of my gun.”

  “Can we get a look at the records you’ve kept?”

  The officer said sharply, “I know all these guys. Each name. And I look everyone in the face. No way our boy threw on a uniform and slid past me. No way.”

  “All the more reason, then, to give us a hand.”

  The officer tugged the clipboard out of Tim’s grasp, entered a code, and returned it. The on-screen list had the names of everyone who had entered or left J-Unit after the Disturbance Control Team had secured the building and extinguished the small fires. McGraw was first, at 8:43 P.M. Then a host of COs. Maintenance men. Sanitation workers. The warden. More sanitation workers. Most names had been entered going in and out.

  Anticipating Tim’s next question, the officer said, “Yes, the eleven outstanding are all still inside, and I know every one of them.”

  Tim handed over the clipboard with a nod and pressed forward with Bear and Newlin. Stagnant air filled his lungs, thick with the bitter scent of burned debris. An ambitious tech had done his best to lay down a chalk outline on the range floor, but it had been blurred by swept ash. Elsewhere dark puddles remained. From the cells, inmates cheered the mini-frontloader’s progress as its bucket tray scooped up detritus like the distended mouth of a bass. Tim stared up the dreary rise of metal and concrete, wondering if Walker could in fact be hiding inside the walls.

  Their footsteps shuddered the metal staircase as they climbed. Newlin led the way along the third-tier catwalk, Bear fanning the front of his shirt against the humidity. The facility was on full lockdown, the cell doors secured. As they drew near, palm-size mirrors, held by dark arms, retracted back through the bars. A huge Samoan kid offered Tim the finger from his perch on the toilet, where he sat with one leg free, his loose pants puddled around a laceless sneaker. A few of the cells remained neat, their mattresses and spartan furnishings intact, but most were torn apart. Posters had been ripped from the walls, leaving behind taped corners of azure water or tanned flesh.

  The inmates peppered Newlin with questions: “CO, you guys all buy your ties at the same place?” “CO, who’re them Newjacks with you?” “CO, this clogged toilet’s killin’ me.”

  The correctional officers milling by Jameson’s open door stepped aside, one sweeping his arms melodramatically toward the cell as if indicating a just-unveiled statue.

  Perfectly centered on the floor stood the bottom halves of two plastic Coke bottles—makeshift cups that had been filled, one with green liquid, the other with yellow.

  Newlin followed Bear’s gaze and nodded, lips pinched. “Mouthwash and urine.”

  Bear peered around the cell, summing up Tim’s thoughts: “What the fuck?”

  Two of the grid window’s safety-glass panes had been broken. No jagged edges, just fist-size circles and a scattering of glass pebbles on the sill. A roll of green dental floss had been tied to a bar and dropped through one of the holes. Tim glanced through the glass, eyes tracing the thread’s path down to the quartz rocks forty feet below. A breeze picked up the floss, floating it over the razor wire. A bedsheet rope, complete with a cartoon-prisoner knot and secured in similar fashion to a bar, dangled through the second break, the end swaying no more than ten feet below the bottom of the window ledge. Any drop from the rope, even if Walker could have shrunk himself to Mighty Mouse proportions and squeezed through the bars and the tiny gap in the glass, would have resulted in a death plummet to the razor wire.

  Tim lingered on the view—two vast fences, coast guard headquarters, Dumpsters piled with charred refuse, a couple royal palms.

  He gestured for a pair of latex gloves, then picked through the trash can. Three balls of tissue unfurled to reveal snot. The other contents were equally enlightening: a few empty Styrofoam cups and lids, two plastic Coke-bottle caps, a shorter string of dental floss, a wad of red gum. He set the can back down and eased to all fours to look under the bed. It took him a moment to identify the delicate blue shavings: rubber gratings from where Walker had whittled the toothbrush against the edge of the metal leg.

  Tim stood, mused for a moment, then rapped his knuckles on the steel platform of the top bunk. “He threw his mattress over the rail?”

  “That’s right.”

  “He usually participate in stuff like that?”

  Newlin took a moment, reflecting on the question. “We don’t have Attica break out that often, but no. Walker’s not a joiner. He didn’t take part in the May riot.”

  “He left his cellie’s mattress.” Tim crossed the space and crouched, studying the frayed prayer rug of two-ply tissue. “This would’ve made for good burning, too.” He glanced up at the black velvet banner and the postcard of the Sultan Ahmet, its six minarets pushing into a rich blue sky. “And that.”

  “So he didn’t trash Imaad’s stuff,” Newlin said. “What’s your point?”

  “Seems like a pretty selective temper tantrum.”

  Bear beckoned Tim over to a color newsprint photo adhered to the wall by the sink. It was a studio shot of a woman in her thirties, awkwardly posed, fist to chin. Sears, perhaps. Amused, private eyes, angled to the side as if the photographer couldn’t hold her attention. Maybe she was self-conscious, but it looked more as if she would’ve rather been someplace else. A too-slender nose prevented her from being beautiful, but it also added a sharpness to her otherwise even features, conveying an impression of intelligence, of resolve. The lavender retro-eighties Swatch dangling loose from her right wrist matched a pattern repeat in her shirt. Noting that Dray had a similar, Target-bought button-up, Tim pegged the woman’s outfit as stylish but basically cheap. The dated hair-cut—short and excessively windswept—and the woman’s makeup suggested the photo was from the late nineties.

  “That his girl?” Bear asked.

  “Sister,” Newlin said. “She killed herself a few months back.”

  Bear jotted this down. “He take it hard?” Tim asked.

  “You wouldn’t know with Walker.
When the wheels are turning, when they’re stuck, you know?”

  “Were they close?”

  “I don’t know, really.”

  “Given the visitor log,” Bear said, “not that close.”

  Tim knelt before the footlockers. The top lid creaked back to reveal several kufis, shirts, and toiletries thrown together with a collection of postcards of pilgrimage-class mosques. By contrast, the bottom footlocker was meticulously ordered. Toothpaste, neatly rolled. Shirts and pants folded with military crispness. Some yellowed papers peeked out from beneath a row of socks. Tim withdrew them, finding an obituary and a handwritten letter. The obit’s torn top border aligned with the bottom edge of the photo stuck to the wall.

  Tim scanned the brief newspaper write-up. Theresa Sue Jameson (38), born April 1, 1966. Theresa, a Littlerock native, worked as office manager for Westin Dentistry in Canyon Country. Her friends remember her irrepressible spirit. She leaves behind a son, Samuel (7). Services will be held at St. Jude’s Church June 12 at 6pm.

  The footer read June 11, Littlerock Weekly.

  As good a way as any to reduce someone’s life into one and a half column inches. Tim remembered how his father always worded those he placed, rarely, for old associates to come in under the six-line minimum.

  Bear, reading over Tim’s shoulder, remarked, “Regular hotbed of journalistic panache, the Littlerock Weekly.”

  It also was a publication of insufficiently wide circulation, Tim figured, to be taken by the Terminal Island library. He tilted the worn rectangle of newspaper and picked up faint indentations in the corner. Maybe a return address from the envelope it had been mailed in, written after the clipping had been enclosed. Bear opened his notepad, and Tim slipped the piece of paper in; they’d have it looked at later.

  Bear glanced at it a moment longer before shutting the pad. “Least we know he didn’t break out to attend her funeral like that jackass we bagged at his granny’s wake in Chino Hills.”

  The letter proved to be from Theresa, though it was dated a couple years prior, a few months after Walker’s term at TI began. Feminine handwriting crossed the page at a slight downward tilt. The cheap, lavender-tinted stationery, torn from a pad, hadn’t held the ink well; some of the letters’ upstrokes were smudged.

  Walk,

  So I started going to a free counseling center out here. The shrink’s younger than I am, so we’ll see how that goes. I’ve been doing a lot of work on myself in therapy for Sammy’s sake—shit, there I go again. For both our sakes, for Chrissake (I suck at this). And I figured out all these ways I can’t hold my boundaries to protect maybe what’s best for me and for Sammy. I don’t think I’m strong enough to say no to you, Walk, for much of anything, so the best thing I can do right now is to take some time off. Please, please, please don’t be upset with me. I know you just got in there and I know you’ve got no one, but please remember this is me. I love you and I think of you still and always as my baby boy. We went through some times, me and you, didn’t we? I know we haven’t been in touch much since you went to Iraq. I always thought it’s a shame you never got to know the little guy. He’s tough as nails, but he’s got heart. He reminds me of you when you were younger, before I lost you to the Marines. I bought you this cross, in place of me, I guess. I bought it in titanium, so even you can’t break it (kidding).

  Love you always,

  Tess

  Tim offered the note to Newlin, who read it before handing it off to Bear. After perusing it, Bear slid it also into his notepad. “Why would he leave this behind? I mean, obviously, it’s highly personal. He could have at least flushed it.”

  “Points to a rushed escape,” Tim said. “Just because it was smartly planned doesn’t mean he didn’t swing into action quickly when he got set off.”

  “So Walker finds out something awful about Señor Hahn at dinner, gouges him that night, knows he’s in deep shit unless he flies the coop?” Bear’s tone made clear he wanted more to tie down the theory. Like Tim, Bear had started thinking of the man they were pursuing by his given name. A good sign—they were starting to build a relationship with him.

  They stood in silence in the cramped space. It smelled of metal, virile and unforgiving. A familiar smell. Tim tasted it back by his molars, as if he were chewing a piece of foil. He crouched before the Coke-bottle cups, taking in the cell with a long, slow sweep of his eyes.

  One of the COs at the door said, “So what you got, Sherlock? What’s mouthwash and piss got to do with the breakout?”

  “Nothing,” Tim said.

  Newlin now: “Nothing?”

  “They don’t mean anything. They can’t. They’re a diversion. He wants to draw our attention away.”

  “Away from what?”

  Tim studied the twinning holes in the window. “From what he doesn’t want us to see.”

  Newlin sounded slightly exasperated. “What does he not want us to see?”

  “I haven’t figured that out yet.”

  Chapter 6

  Tim, Bear, and Newlin sat on frail rolling chairs in the control center, shoulder to shoulder before the TV, watching Walker Jameson work his way through a slab of meat loaf. On the way back, they’d stopped by the infirmary to speak to Jameson’s cellie and gotten little from him save a sullen indifference that Tim had found credible. From the tape they’d confirmed that Walker appeared to be wearing no other layers under his tan button-up at dinner. Now a hulking black prisoner whom Newlin identified as a BGF leader cruised up to Walker’s table. They spoke briefly, and then, judging by the man’s expression, he left displeased.

  Walker ate hunched over his tray, shoulders rounded, a man used to guarding resources. Another inmate hustled over to him and whispered urgently in his ear. Walker’s body stiffened. The inmate patted his back almost regretfully and headed off. He was a wiry man who walked with a forward lean. Head down but eyes flashing—very alert.

  Walker sat for a long, stunned time, then rose slowly and strode to the exit.

  “Who’s the whisperer?” Tim asked.

  “Tommy LaRue. He’s the go-to guy for the prisoners. We turn him upside down now and then just to see what’ll fall out. Porn, dime bags, unlisted numbers of guys’ ex-girlfriends. You’d be amazed. I found him with a wedge of wrapped Brie once, I shit you not. He’s well respected. A nice, gentle guy.”

  “What’s he in for?” Bear asked.

  “Double homicide.”

  They inched the recording forward, frame by frame. LaRue had cupped his hand by Walker’s ear, so there’d be no lip-reading magic. He’d had time to deliver a few words, tops.

  “Let’s see where he’s coming from. LaRue.” Tim indicated the side door through which LaRue had entered.

  A painstaking twenty minutes passed as the other COs, with reluctance, helped Newlin sort through archived security tape to find the appropriate segments. Slowly, Tim and Bear pieced together LaRue’s backward journey. The hall camera caught him flashing by. A breezeway lens captured a stretch of his hurried stroll from the yard. A wide-angle mounted on the roof of C-Unit showed him moving, a dot among dots, to the B-Unit door. And, finally, the last bit of footage traced him to his origin: the phone mounted on the range wall.

  During the call, lasting less than ten seconds, LaRue faced away, blocking the numbers as he dialed. He’d strolled into the building casually but left with an intensity of purpose.

  Something he’d heard had lit a fire under him.

  Tim and Bear had to wait to get clearance to enter the Special Housing Unit, where LaRue would be spending the next few nights in solitary. During the post-escape cell checks, a CO had found a vial of heroin secreted in his pillow.

  Frank Zarotta, the North Yard officer, had the bearing and temperament of a bulldog, a resemblance strengthened in no small measure by his persistent gnawing on a greasy Slim Jim. He studied Tim with wide, dark eyes, as if he were privy to a dirty secret.

  Zarotta’s radio crackled, and he pressed it to an ear, and t
hen there was a buzz and the door clicked open. He beckoned Tim and Bear with a sturdy finger. They headed into the trap, an eight-by-twelve-foot chamber. Through a big window to their right, encased in a metal cage, two SHU officers looked up from their game of cards and returned Zarotta’s flick of the head. One of them reached under his desk, and the inner door popped open.

  Zarotta led Tim and Bear to the left, down a concrete corridor lined on either side with cell doors. “Now, remember,” he said, “no strikes to the head. Maybe he gets a tooth through the lip, some blood on the brain—it’s trouble. Aim low for the shin, or catch the floating rib.” He paused and leaned back, a broad comic gesture with both arms spread. “Hey, what am I telling you? You guys know what you’re doing.” His eyes lingered on Tim. “Ain’t that right, Troubleshooter?” He enjoyed a good laugh. “I’m just messin’. Shoulda seen you guys’ faces.”

  He unlocked the steel door and led them in. The concrete cell had the usual stainless steel furnishings, the bed bolted to the concrete. A tiny window on the rear wall, no more than six inches by two feet, peered out on the darkness like a bunker gun slit. The metal reflected the harsh blue overhead light. Despite the scaled-down space, LaRue looked small, sitting with his back to the far wall, knees drawn up. He had a fingernail between two molars, digging at something.

  “Deputy marshals are here,” Zarotta said. “It’s sharing time.”

  “Shit, I ain’t no cheese eater. Get these jokers outta here.”

  “No can do, pal. And watch your mouth or you’re gonna catch a case.”

  “I want to talk to some rank.”

  “Sure thing. I’ll get Condi Rice on MSN Messenger.” Zarotta closed the door and chuckled his way back down the hall.

  “Real cutup,” Bear said.

  “Oh, I get it,” LaRue said. “Here’s where we establish camaraderie.”

  “Nah,” Tim said, “let’s skip it. Are you a friend of Walker’s?”

  LaRue was really working the tooth now, his elbow rising level with his head. “Ain’t no one a friend of Walker’s. But yeah”—and now a flash of pride—“I’m the only one he’ll talk to in here.”