The plastic underwear drawers, spread-out toiletries, and photos shoved into the mirror frame reminded Tim of a dorm room. The folding closet doors were permanently laid open, broken in the tracks. Clothes seemed to bulge out of the shoulder-wide space. A rack held a collection of exhausted footwear, and Tim could see where Tess had used Magic Marker to touch up her shoes. Atop a world-weary Converse sat the empty holster the cops had left behind.
Tim zeroed in on the rickety bookcase right away, looking for materials from the company that had dropped Walker’s nephew. Medical books crowded the shelves, journal articles cramming the gaps. Beneath a well-thumbed dictionary of medical terminology were some stray letters, including one in which Tess requested information from Vector’s study director. She’d sought out the company, it seemed, as a last-ditch treatment option for her son.
One shelf down Tim found a report, its cover featuring the familiar Vector logo, a V with an arrow capping the second vertical like a directive to scale the evolutionary ladder. Onward and upward. Tim showed off the fancy print job.
Bear said, “We connect Walker to Vector, we’ve got some traction.”
Inside, Tim found a report on something called Xedral, a “viral vector,” Tess’s notes painstakingly written in the narrow margins. X4-AAT unknown side effects? Why Lentidra fall off map? Outliers included in stats? Clearly she’d poured her energy into researching the treatment. She must’ve been devastated when Vector eliminated Sam from the trial—another possible suicide motive. Among the stray papers stuffed into the report, Tim found no notification of Sam’s termination.
Pulling books, Tim checked the scraps of paper she’d used as bookmarks. After coming across a few magazine subscription cards and a torn grocery list, Tim hit upon a business card, used to mark a page in a primer on liver disease. CHAISSON KAGAN. CEO. VECTOR BIOGENICS. A Westwood address and a 310 area code. Another number handwritten on the back.
The videotape beside the primer had a KCOM spine sticker. Sam’s sloppy hand labeled the tape, My News Segmint. Tim slid it out and walked to the next room, disrupting Sam’s video game once again. “This is yours, right? Mind if I borrow it?”
“Go ahead. It’s just a copy. They sent me a couple to give to other kids without a gene. But I don’t know any.”
“I’ll get it back to you as soon as we’re done.”
“’Kay. Thanks. For asking, I mean. Other people just do whatever they want.”
“Other people?”
“The cops, I mean. Right after.”
Tim looked at him. A moment’s pause.
Sam said, “What are you guys doing anyways?”
“Just getting some more information about your mom’s death.”
“Two months later?”
“That’s right.” Tim returned to Tess’s room, again closing the door behind him.
A triangular desk in the corner held an antique computer monitor and a cordless phone. The drawers contained Tess’s receipts and bills, which were clearly if not logically organized. Tim pulled the file holding the phone bills and set it aside on the bed—they’d ask Guerrera to start following up on the numbers she’d called in the months before her death. A checkbook showed an account that scraped the double digits several times a month.
Tim wandered into the bathroom. The ledge above the sink held a roll-on Lady Mitchum, a bottle of folic acid tablets, and a well-wrung tube of Aquafresh. Taking the bottle of pills, he went back over to the desk and sat in the tiny rolling chair, the ovoid wooden backrest of which doubled as a belt rack. He dug through the envelope stuffed with receipts from June, then moved on to May. Near the top he found a Sav-On receipt that contained what he was looking for. May 28. Folic acid—$12.99.
The bottle advertised a hundred 400-microgram tablets. He spilled those remaining on the bedspread and counted them. For both of Dray’s pregnancies, she’d taken folic acid every day of her first term. Tim counted the pills. Eighty-eight remained, which meant that she’d likely taken one a day, including the morning of June 8 when she’d died. Not necessarily the sort of long-term planning one would expect from a woman about to put a bullet through her skull.
He called Bear over and explained the incongruity to him while Bear poked at a tablet in his sweaty palm, regarding the prenatal supplement uncomfortably, as he might a feminine napkin.
“Okay, but we don’t really bank on the presuicidal to act rationally. Or to plan in advance. Especially, I’d guess, pregnant presuicides.” Bear sank thoughtfully into the tiny rolling chair, which gave off a moribund creak and collapsed. He fell back, arm striking the desk, bouncing the keyboard in the air and turning on the computer. As he rose and made a big show of dusting himself off with reserved dignity, Tim stifled his laughter, knowing how inappropriate it would sound emanating from Tess’s room.
Bear said, “Hang on.”
“I’m trying.”
“No, check this out.” Bear gestured him over to the monitor. Save a hard-drive icon, the screen was blank. Bear double-clicked the icon, opening an empty file. No programs, no documents, no applications. He thunked to his knees on the tangle of belts, examining the computer tower jammed beneath the desk. He ran his thumb across a row of tiny scratches on the beige plastic. “Clever fucker replaced the hard drive.” He moved to withdraw, banging his head, and then managed to reverse his broad frame from the cramped space. “Someone purged the computer but left it. Couldn’t steal it because that would’ve raised robbery-murder suspicions.”
Despite his excitement Tim played devil’s advocate. “Unless she had the hard drive replaced herself.”
Bear lumbered toward the door. “I’ll ask the kid.”
In the quiet of the empty room, Tim sat where Tess had sat when the bullet had entered her head.
The left side.
He turned, getting his body position correct to match the spatter from the crime-scene photos. A bit awkward but, as Dray had noted, certainly possible. He turned his head another inch and raised an imaginary pistol to his left temple. His attention snagged on one of the belts Bear had knocked to the carpet. Two distinct indentations about three inches apart notched the width of the brown leather.
He froze, staring at the familiar grooves. Standing, he went to the closet, picked up the empty holster. He pulled his own holster off his belt and slid Tess’s on. The spring clip clamped down on his belt, matching the indentations.
Tess’s bloodless hand in the autopsy photo had shown a filed nail on the right index finger, shorter than the rest. It wasn’t a repaired break, as he’d thought; Tess kept it cut, as Dray did hers, so it wouldn’t catch in the trigger guard.
Knowing of Tess’s left-handedness, the killer had made the logical—and incorrect—assumption. Three words—“the left side”—had told Walker all he’d needed to know. A right-handed shooter would not leave a suicide bullet wound in her left temple.
The image of Tess at gunpoint, being posed suicide style by her killer, brought forth in Tim a familiar wrath. What had the killer threatened her with to get her to sit still? To hold her position? What thoughts had run through her head in her final seconds of life once she’d grasped the inevitable?
Bear returned. “The kid says she used that computer every day, and there were no repairs—” He halted in the doorway, taking in the empty holster fastened to Tim’s belt. He blinked twice, the cogs meshing. “No,” he said. “Really?”
Tim held up a hand, still aligning the remaining pieces. Walker’s First Force Recon photo, his rifle slung right to left. The effortless righthand stab into Boss’s neck.
Bear yanked the door shut behind him. “But Tess was left-handed. Why would she shoot right?”
“Because her right-handed brother taught her to shoot.”
Bear’s whistle dropped from high to low. “We’ll get it reopened as a homicide.”
“Looks like someone already beat us to the punch.”
“Yup. Great.” Bear ran his hand over his weary face, tugging his
jowls even lower. “So what’s next?”
Chapter 34
Lights killed, the oversize Bronco idled beneath an overhang of pepper tree branches, Ted Sands’s complaints from the cargo area muffled by a gag. Walker had taken care to dress Ted’s visible half appropriately—dinner jacket, bow tie, starched shirt, even a white handkerchief teased into view. Important to observe proper etiquette. Sounds of the party trickled up the unreasonably broad street, reaching Walker at the steering wheel. Of all the Bel Air estates he’d passed, the Kagan mansion had the grandest setback, a rambling garden decorated with stone walls, trickling fountains, koi-stocked ponds, and a leisurely walk that diverged into loops before widening into a circular, bench-fringed patio about ten yards from the imposing front door of the main house.
It was a quarter past ten, and from the jazzish tunes and conversational hum pouring over the house with the glow of strung Asian lanterns, the backyard party was in full swing. The valets remained around the corner, their station positioned before the south entrance’s adorned gates that led to the bash. Deliveries to the rear kitchen off the service road appeared to have slowed. The house front, a classic two-story rise, didn’t seem of a particular style. Like its neighbors, it just seemed mansiony.
And right now it seemed quiet.
Keeping the Bronco’s lights off, Walker accelerated up the dark street, braking sharply at the top of the walk. He got out, his slamming door renewing Ted’s stifled pleas. Moving briskly, efficiently, Walker swung out the carrier and opened the tailgate, leaning the two aluminum strips into place. Encased in his concrete block atop the flatbed dolly, Ted jounced down the ramp. Hands on his shoulders, Walker pushed him, jerking in his mold and yelling into a mouthful of balled cotton, up the front walk. At the circular patio, Walker dumped the block off the dolly, the weight of it cracking the flagstone.
He stood over Ted, wide-stanced. A jerk of his wrist and the steel blade flicked out from the handle. “Hold this.” Walker spun the knife, reclaimed it in a fist, and punched it down into the dense muscle of Ted’s shoulder. Bellowing, veins raised in his flushed neck, Ted fought to free his hands but succeeded only in rebreaking the scabs ringing his wrists.
Walker pulled a grenade from one of his many cargo pockets, and the whites of Ted’s eyes seemed to dilate. Ted fought desperately to say something. Walker pulled out his gag. Before Ted could scream, Walker rammed the grenade in his mouth and secured it with electrical tape, which he double-wound around Ted’s head. Ted was screaming now, the noise no louder than the distant beat of the swing number struck up by the band.
Walker jogged up the wide steps to the massive porch. Dark strips of plexi-coating showed at the edges of the windowpanes—they were bullet-resistant. He saw deep into the house, past the dark front rooms. In the kitchen an imperious catering captain paced before her cowed waitstaff, barking orders, Patton gone gourmet. A plastered guest loosed his cummerbund and headed into a restroom.
Unspooling a few feet of fishing line, Walker tied an improvised clinch knot around the well-polished brass door handle and rang the bell. An exclamation from within.
The monofilament let out with a zip as he moved swiftly back down the walk. Ted stopped fighting the block once Walker slipped a finger through the grenade pin sticking up above the band of electrical tape. He tugged the knife from Ted’s shoulder, freeing a blood flow that saturated the ivory polyester of the dinner jacket. Cutting the fishing line from the spool, he tied the end to the grenade ring.
A shrill, barely audible voice from the house: “Edwin, I don’t know why, but someone’s arrived at the front door.”
Walker set his full weight behind a boot and shoved the block back a few screeching inches, bringing the line taut. Ted leaned forward as far as the concrete would allow, but still Walker could’ve strummed a high C on the razor-straight line.
Ted hyperventilated in pained grunts, snot flaring from his nostrils, eyes fixed on the burgundy front door.
From inside came the officious approach of heels on marble.
Walker nudged Ted’s bow tie straight, drew himself up, and stared down at Ted’s contorted form. “In ten seconds your head will explode.”
He flashed off, his jungle boots slapping the flagstone.
Chapter 35
Tim crouched over the blown-wide mass of flesh protruding from the neck. A chunk clung to a strip of seared electrical tape. “We ain’t getting a dental.”
Bear flipped back the tattered jacket, worked free a slim leather bill-fold, and laid it open. “Ted Sands, if we believe this.”
They’d blocked off the street, but at the cordon the TV-crew lights made it look like dawn. The tux-and gown-clad guests had made a mass exodus, swarming the valets by the south gates like penguins jockeying for cliff position above shark-infested waters. Roped through metal eyelets to the gnarled oak overlooking the black-bottomed pool, a huge vinyl sign featuring the ubiquitous Vector V had commanded Tim and Bear’s attention as they’d helped usher the guests from the backyard.
The connection between their fugitive and the biogenics firm looked clear, a line that ran through the ailing liver of a seven-year-old boy. Walker had clearly uncovered some link between Tess’s murder and Vector. But how did the pregnancy fit, if at all? And the missing hard drive?
It had taken a few tries for Tim and Bear to find a Kagan underling able to forgo buzzwords and talk in layman’s terms. The party had been a celebration for the filing of Vector’s S-1, they’d learned, which meant that the SEC-required prospectus for the stock issuance had been approved, putting Vector on the fast track to going public. Dean remained holed up in the main house with his sons and security chief. Tim and Bear had yet to make his acquaintance.
Tannino headed up the front walk, still ruffled from running the media gauntlet at the cordon. Word of Walker’s involvement had leaked. A high-profile murder by a high-profile fugitive at a high-sticker-price house in Bel Air—the incident combined all that was lurid and worth holding an audience’s attention between commercials. The press explosion, Tim knew from experience, only heralded grander coverage to come. Tannino waved off Guerrera and Denley, both approaching with requests, and paused over Tim and Bear, taking in the remains of the day with the expression of irritated disgust he generally reserved for the inedible sack lunches his wife devoutly packed for him.
“Spitting distance from the Playboy mansion and Aaron Spelling’s estate,” Tannino pronounced. “Can you imagine the VIP phone calls I’m gonna have to field? For the love of Mary.” He debated spitting but caught himself, refocusing on the flesh-and-concrete sculpture that had been Ted Sands. “That his jaw?”
“No,” Bear said. “Here. I think.”
Tannino’s dark eyes shifted to observe Tim. “We jumped him to a Top Fifteen and set up a task force. Your command post is on the third floor. Say ‘I told you so’ and I’ll stick you on court duty and put Thomas in charge.”
Tim raised a hand, a silent, appreciative wave, and Tannino headed back to the tungsten-halogen lights at the cordon, muttering to himself about vultures. Bear finished rooting through Ted Sands’s wallet but came up with nothing except a stack of crisp twenties and a few credit cards.
Aaronson scurried over, gripping two chisels of different sizes. “Please let us process that first, George.”
Bear sighed and dropped the wallet into Ted’s concrete lap. “Sure thing.”
Aaronson frowned, then peeled something off Tim’s back and handed it to him. Tim looked at the familiar label-maker lettering—DEPUTY MARSHILL—and couldn’t suppress a half grin.
Aaronson shrugged at him and returned his attention to the sullied wallet. LAPD’s Homicide would catch the murderer, but, for consistency’s sake, Tim had pulled some strings to grant Aaronson’s team from Sheriff’s the crime scene. Tim’s first move back at the command post would be to assimilate Aaronson into the task force to get around any future jurisdictional jockeying. Tim touched the criminalist’s thin arm and a
sked, “Did you reprocess that evidence from Tess Jameson’s suicide that wasn’t a suicide?” Aaronson still seemed distracted by the wallet Bear had tainted, so Tim gave his arm a little shake.
“In the past two hours? Yeah, right after I repainted the Hollywood sign. Come on, Rack. We’ve obviously hooked into a whale on this one—we need time to do it right. Now, let me free Galatea here.” Aaronson settled down with his tools, ignoring Tim’s questioning glance.
Tim crossed to Bear and Guerrera in a huddle on the shadowy fringe of the crime scene. “Who’s Galatea?”
“I think a midfielder for Real Madrid,” Guerrera said.
Bear watched the criminalists work, his lips rolled forward over his teeth. A chisel stroke went awry, landing wetly. “He’s got a base somewhere,” he said. “This took planning and privacy. Equipment.”
“Looks like your boy found his cause,” Guerrera said.
Tim watched the bustle of deputies, the stressed-out house staff at the windows, the flying chips of concrete. “He’s gonna kill the shooter and anyone else—like maybe Sands—who was on scene to help. If it was a hit, he’s gonna kill the guy who paid and the guy who transferred the money. Then he’s gonna kill the guy who made the phone call and the guys in the room when he did it.”
Bear was regarding him warily. Guerrera asked, “How do you know?”
Tim just looked at him.
“Right.” Guerrera bobbed his head in a faint nod.
“Thomas done with the guy who made the positive ID?” Tim asked.
“Yeah, he’s holding him so we can firsthand it.” He rested a hand on Tim’s back and steered him toward the front door.
One of the bartenders who’d gone to an upstairs balcony for a smoke had gotten a good look at Walker when he’d passed under the porch light to ring the doorbell. The witness couldn’t see Sands because some branches blocked his view, but he’d heard the explosion.
“You keep him separate from everyone else?”
Last Shot Page 18