Last Shot

by Gregg Hurwitz

  “Tight hamstrings,” the man at the desk said, in the voice Walker recognized as the aggressor’s. “They make your pelvis tilt, accentuating the arch of your back. It’s a common posture pitfall. You really ought to get to the gym, do some stretching. Or if you’re tied up here, I’ll send Harper—she’s a genius.”

  Dolan was darker, a few years older, and more thinly built—Chase’s charitable suggestions aside, Dolan did need to log some gym time.

  A woman exited her office across the hall, her office overheads back-lighting Walker against the blinds. He jerked back, but too late—Chase’s pale eyes had already pulled to the window.

  Chase strode across the office and threw open the door. He called after Walker. “Who are you? Excuse me?” As Walker slipped out into the main corridor, he heard Chase’s voice again. “Call security.”

  Walker pressed through the doors into the lobby. He moved briskly past the receptionist and several well-dressed lobby occupants. Outside, lunchtime foot traffic was flowing past the dark-tinted lobby windows in clogs and streams, massing at the intersections.

  As security was converging on the hall outside Chase Kagan’s office, Walker floated through the revolving door and disappeared into the midday Los Angeles blaze.

  Chapter 27

  I need to be clear on this matter: I’m going to have to destroy the evidence.” Aaronson’s rectangular glasses dangled from a ball-chain clasp, hung up in the collar of his ironed Izod.

  The L.A. County Sheriff’s CSI lab, divided into cubicles with distinct blacktop benches, smelled pervasively of bleach. Since the Marshals had no in-house forensics, they relied on Sheriff’s criminalists. Aaronson, Tim’s go-to guy, was a narrow, fussy man with methodical diction and a punctilious eye. He was brilliant, and he made it look hard.

  The fresh spread of butcher paper, which covered his bench to collect trace materials, threw Tess’s Littlerock Weekly obituary, taken from Walker’s cell, into relief. Aaronson had rested the torn strip of newsprint—folded along its original lines—atop a plain business envelope, positioned to show how it might have picked up impressions from a pen writing a return address.

  The three men stared at the faint indentations in the clipping’s upper left corner, ballooned into close-up through the boom-mounted eight-power lens. In the background, Sports Talk radio bemoaned Kobe Bryant’s continuing underperformance.

  “I dusted it, sprinkled graphite, but newsprint gives poor resolution,” Aaronson said. “I even put it under a fiber-optic, used oblique lighting, the stereo zoom, digital photos—to no avail. There’s just no high-tech way of doing this yielding.” Bear reached for the paper, and Aaronson put in his trademark line: “Don’t touch that, please.”

  “So you have to…what?” Tim asked.

  “I want your approval for the old-fashioned method. We’ll only get one shot at it, and if it doesn’t work, the specimen’s spoiled.” Aaronson withdrew a number-two pencil from the overloaded breast pocket of his lab coat and a narrow X-Acto knife from his top drawer. Pressing firmly, the tip of his tongue poking into view at the corner of his mouth, he halved the pencil lengthwise and held up one of the two resulting sticks, showing off the exposed run of graphite at the core. “We swipe it across the obit, hope it brings up the contrast.”

  Tim and Bear looked at each other for a moment, then shrugged in unison. Bear said, “What the hell.”

  Aaronson drew the split pencil evenly across the newsprint. Leaning over, he blew the graphite dust clear. Untouched by the charcoal swath, the faintly sunken numbers and letters of an address showed, fading where the pen pressure had lightened.

  3328 Sand

  Canyon C

  “Canyon Country?” Bear pointed at the mention of the community in the obituary proper—the dentist’s office where Tess had worked. “It’s up the 14, on the way to Littlerock, where Tess lived and Walker grew up.”

  Aaronson’s quiet-touch keyboard purred under the fluid motion of his fingers. He filled in the blank fields on the database screen, punched “return” with a satisfied flourish, and waited as the hourglass icon tinkled sand. It didn’t take long before two matching Canyon Country addresses popped up—3328 Sanders Avenue #5 and 3328 Sand Canyon Road. Annoyed with Bear’s and Tim’s craning around the monitor, Aaronson glared at them disapprovingly and angled the screen farther in his direction.

  “Can you get us names?” Tim asked.

  “Of course.” A few wiggles of the mouse and Aaronson said, “In the first we have a Chellee Meehleis.”

  “And in the second?” Bear asked impatiently.

  Front teeth pinching his thin lower lip, Aaronson right-clicked several times, and then his scalp shifted back, wrinkling his forehead. “Pierce Jameson,” he said.

  Chapter 28

  Walker stepped down quietly into the model home’s family room and aimed his Redhawk at the back of the man who was urinating into his fireplace. After spotting the blue Plymouth with a bent hood pulled into the neighboring—and doorless—garage, he’d entered the house silently through the master window, which he’d left open for precisely such contingencies. He waited patiently as the man hummed to himself and rocked on the heels of his Ropers. The man finished, bouncing at the knees to augment his shake, then turned around.

  Morgenstein. As Walker’s father had promised.

  He jokingly raised his hands, letting himself dangle. Walker tucked the revolver back into his waistband, tight against his right kidney.

  “Toilets don’t work, you know.” Morg zipped himself up.

  “Yeah,” Walker said. “They do.”

  “Oh. The problems must just be downpipe.” He grinned at the wet stain in the fireplace. “Sorry ’bout that.” He’d aged badly in the years since Walker had seen him—more jowly, burst capillaries in both cheeks, scalp glinting through thinning hair. His dress slacks were worn thin at the knees, and a dribble marked his button-up at intervals down the right side. He laughed. “It was the worst of times, it was the worst of times.” He tucked in his shirt self-consciously, his voice rife with bitterness. “Money’s tight now that your old man went straight. He wouldn’t use me as a foreman here, wouldn’t even let me run security.” His chin jerked in the direction of the front door, indicating the grounds beyond. “New truck and all. How’s it drive?”

  “Dunno.”

  “He gave you the key, right?” Morg realized Walker wasn’t going to answer and chuckled off the question like he didn’t care. “Now that he’s moved on, he can’t afford to deal much with the likes of me. Guess we’re in the same boat that way, you and me.”

  “You’ll get by.”

  “Yeah, well. Not all of us fit his hand-me-downs.”

  Walker sloughed Pierce’s jacket and tugged off the tie. The room darkened a few shades in a single lurch—the mountains had caught the setting sun. Surprisingly crisp air offered a preview of good sleeping weather; thirty-four eventful waking hours had left him tired. He hadn’t used a proper mattress in two and a half years, but he had a few more rocks to kick over before lying down. “Electricity’s off.”

  “I’ll get it turned on.”

  A breeze blew through the screen in the kitchen, wrinkling both of their noses. “The fuck went on here?” Walker asked.

  “Sewage issue, case you hadn’t figured that out. The construction manager cut corners—no Porta-Potties—had a twenty-five-man work crew taking dumps in the one functional toilet”—a nod down the hall—“shift after shift. The drain field backed up, but your old man still wasn’t about to spring for a proper system. Department of Health brought down the hammer. Your old man had the plumbing rerouted to the storm-drain channels—fucking genius—while he waits to slide a bribe through. The cool air’ll tamp down the odor in the winter. He’ll sell off the units, then reconnect to the old shitty system.” Morg tapped the cardboard box on the hearth with the tip of his cowboy boot. “Brought you some food.” He tossed something, and Walker caught it in front of his face. A can o
pener. “Not exactly Wolpgang Fuck, but as your old man says, ‘Guess what you win when you complain?’”

  Walker pried a hand between the overlapping flaps of the box and yanked out a can. Turkey chili. Crouching, he popped the lid with a few hurried twists of the opener and poured out a mouthful, swallowed without chewing. Then another. Morg was watching him like something on Animal Planet, but Walker didn’t care.

  “Your father wants it clear that he has no idea you’re staying here.”

  Walker set the empty can on the floor. “How ’bout you tell me something useful?”

  Morg said, conversationally, “Tessy caught the short end, that’s for sure. Your father, he was your age, he wouldn’t have stood for it.”

  “Useful, Morg.”

  “I nosed around the edges, got mostly, you know, vagaries, but I dug up one baton to hand off. I caught word that on June sixth a contract got paid through Game. Know it?” He palmed some sweat off his shiny forehead. “Of course you don’t. It’s a paintball course. With a twist.”

  “What kind of twist?”

  Morg worked a wad of keys from his pocket and headed out. “You’ll see.”

  He stepped up into the entry and turned. Walker still stood studying him, arms crossed.

  “What?”

  Walker said, “Can I trust you, Morg?”

  Hand resting on the ornamental banister, he looked old and frail. “Thirty-five years in with your old man,” he said, reaching for the door. “Yeah, you can trust me.”

  Chapter 29

  The denim couch seemed to sink around Pierce Jameson’s weight, the cushions tilting up on either side of him. His broad arms spread across the fabric, ensuring he occupied the entire piece of furniture. A man at leisure. The needlepoint pillow beside him, a wifely touch that inadvertently undercut his tough-guy posturing, stated, IF YOU CAN READ THIS, THANK A TEACHER. SINCE IT’S IN ENGLISH, THANK A SOLDIER.

  Pierce’s resemblance to his son was evident only in his sturdy frame and the shape of his head. His features were rougher, more craggy—he could have been a longshoreman.

  Not having been asked to sit, Tim and Bear remained on their feet at the edge of the living room rug. Pierce’s second wife—who seemed far too lovely to have married him—and their two children had retreated to the kitchen, heeding Pierce’s pointed glance.

  “Nope,” Pierce said, “haven’t seen hide nor hair for years.”

  Tim’s mouth twisted—con men got under his skin in a hurry.

  “Have you talked to him or had contact in any way?” Bear asked. It had been less than twenty-four hours since Walker’s escape, but given how quickly he’d gotten to his mother, Tim and Bear were rushing through their contact list.

  Pierce shook his head and—again—eyed his watch. The smell of baking biscuits floated through the closed kitchen door.

  Tim’s irritation flared, and Bear shot him a glance to gauge him. Pierce watched their noninteraction with suspicion.

  “Can we have a word with your kids?” Bear asked.

  “No.”

  Tim repeated, “No?”

  “They don’t need to know they have a jailbird half-brother. Maybe in your family, Deputy…uh, Rackley—right?—that’s no big deal. Around here it is.” Pierce hefted himself grandly from the couch and strode to the front door, which he jerked open. “Dinnertime with my family is important to me.”

  Tim stayed his tongue, and he and Bear exited, Pierce closing the door behind them. They sat in Bear’s rig out front, watching through a picture window as Pierce joined his family at the table. Pierce looked out at them and twisted the blinds shut.

  Guerrera had taken a run through Pierce’s rap sheet and relayed his findings—fraud counts all too familiar to Tim. The scams and rackets Pierce had been charged for showed a range as impressive as Tim’s father’s, though with greater returns, but evidently Pierce had gone straight in his old age. Not a single arrest in ten years.

  Tim caught himself wondering if his own father would pull it together before spending his golden years in an orange jumpsuit. Tim had been three when his mother decided she’d had her fill of his father’s schemes and infidelities. She’d fled, sacrificing Tim along with the dour house, and he’d spent his childhood being a supporting player in his father’s serial cons. The aid beneficiary, the tantrum-throwing diversion maker, the delivery boy—he’d played them all, but from the time he was school age he’d sought the straight and narrow the way other kids sought drugs and bad company. In retrospect his upbringing had been great on-the-job training for undercover and interrogation work. Despite his not speaking to his father since their latest falling-out more than three years ago, Tim couldn’t deny that he owed a number of his acuities to him.

  “Work on the poker face,” Bear said.

  “No shit, huh?” Tim ran his hands over his face. “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay. He’s lying. He knows we know he’s lying. That’s good. Let’s tell local PD to keep an eye on the house. If Sonny pops by for some quality family time, we nail him.”

  “Pierce is too smart for that.”

  “You never know.”

  “I do.” Tim’s phone chirped, and he checked caller ID—Shrff’s Plm-dale Station. Probably Dray having tracked down her former colleague and the crime report on Tess Jameson’s suicide. He flipped open the Nextel. “How’s it going with Elliott?”

  “I’m with him now, making headway. I’ll meet you at the office in an hour, fill you in then. Listen, have Guerrera track down Tess’s autopsy report.”

  “It was a suicide by gunshot. Why would they do an autopsy?”

  Dray’s sigh, through the phone, sounded like static. “Because she was pregnant.”

  Chapter 30

  A ’72 Olds Cutlass Supreme held down the VIP space beside the entrance canopy’s awning, the license plate asking, RUGAME? The muscle car’s powder blue coat had been recently sprayed, the white soft top restored, the chrome hubcaps and bumpers buffed to a mirror shine. The stand-alone building fronted an enormous mesh-enclosed preserve, like a butterfly pavilion, a bite of maybe fifteen acres from Playa Vista’s Ballona Wetlands. A gravel road carved through the marshy ground, widening into a parking lot. Frogs and crickets shrilled. To the west the concrete-clad Ballona Creek moved slow and steady, pulled along like a strip of black fabric. The wetlands between were a surprising sprawl of nature within eyeshot of Lincoln Boulevard.

  The last few customers trickled out, paintball guns holstered or dangling from slings, their store-crisp camo getups looking like Halloween costumes. Monday nights, Walker guessed, were slow when it came to war games.

  He caught the solid oak door on its backswing and entered the spacious front room. With its wall-mounted weapons, framed Soldier of Fortune covers, and wooden bar complete with thatch canopy, tiki torches, elk heads, and twining plants, the lounge was part tropical-themed frat house, part movie-villain lair. The lights had been turned off, though a desk lamp remained on in the connecting room, illuminating brackets of guns and video equipment, clipboards hanging from pegs, and a row of lockers. To the side of a service counter, a wide ass barely accommodated by board shorts jutted into view, its owner rustling in the cabinets below.

  Walker moved silently through the lounge toward the office, passing a curtained entrance to the enclosed preserve. Humid air breathed through the olive drab gauze, smelling of greenhouse. A camo tarpaulin banner secured by twine arced across the threshold between the two rooms, red letters offering what Walker assumed was the corporate tagline: GAME: SEXUALITY DISTILLED. Catching the drift, his eyes pulled to a routed-wood sign nailed to a door: GIRLS’ CHANGING-OUT-OF ROOM—NO ENTRY!!!

  An obese tabby hopped up on the counter, sending a paintball gun into a rasping rotation. A high-pitched man’s voice issued from below. “Be careful, Elektra.”

  The cat took note of Walker’s shadowy presence, hissing with alarming ferocity. A moment later a pink-faced man hoisted himself into view. A line of perspirat
ion twinkled across a baby-smooth upper lip. Breast mounds bulged out a Hawaiian shirt. Around his neck hung a badge: PAINTBALL COMMANDER. FOUR-TIME COURSE CHAMPION. Walker remembered similar custom-made badges marketed in law-enforcement catalogs, advertised as “real nickel.”

  The man spoke with unexpected confidence. “Sorry, pal. Closed for the night.”

  Walker stayed a few steps back in the shadows. The man grew wary of his silence. “Listen, pal. I’m the owner, and I’m tired of the bullshit. Write an angry letter to the editor or something, but get the hell out. Now.”

  Still Walker didn’t respond. The man’s hand rustled under the counter, but then his arm froze. “That’s not a paintball gun.”

  The wall-cut light of the desk lamp went no farther than Walker’s wrist, illuminating the Redhawk and little more. “No.”

  The tabby judiciously retreated from the countertop, taking up residence on a row of binders lining a rear shelf. The window looked out over the parking lot, empty save for the beloved Olds.

  The Mickey Mouse voice lost some of its confidence. “I’m the four-time course champion. You don’t want to tangle with me, pal. All right?”

  Walker stepped forward, letting the light fall across his face. He nodded at the man’s hidden hand. “Pick it up. Go on.”

  “Umm…”

  “Pick it up.”

  “I don’t really want to.”

  Walker cocked the hammer, and the man cringed and slowly withdrew his hand from beneath the counter, careful to keep the SIG Sauer aimed away.