Last Shot

by Gregg Hurwitz

  “Whole lotta nada. But me and Haines found a red flag in her financials. Her bank statement shows she retained a lawyer on May twenty-eighth.”

  Eleven days before her murder.

  Tim snatched the bank statement across the table. The buzz of conversation in the room stopped at once.

  Guerrera held up his hands. “But we don’t know what for.”

  “May twenty-eighth is the same day she bought folic acid pills for the pregnancy,” Tim said. “Maybe she’d just found out.”

  “And hired an attorney,” Bear mused.

  “We just got off with the lawyer, and he won’t budge on discussing it,” Guerrera said. “Client-attorney privilege, no way around it.”

  “We gotta pay him a visit,” Bear said.

  Haines said, “You’d be wasting your time. I promise. We have no legal standing here, and the guy knows it.”

  Bear said, “Get him on the phone for me.”

  “I’m telling you—”

  “Just get him for me.”

  Guerrera muttered something in Spanish, dialed, and flopped his wrist, offering Bear the cordless and a smart-ass introduction: “Esteban Martinez, Esquire.”

  Bear introduced himself as a deputy marshal and fellow attorney-at-law. Tim joined Guerrera in slipping on a headset, just in time to hear Martinez express his exasperation.

  “I just explained to your colleague, I will not under any circumstances divulge the nature of confidential conversations I had with my client.” His English was clipped slightly by the cadence of his accent.

  Bear asked, “Even if she may have been murdered as a result of them?”

  “Yes. Even if that. What would it mean to the security of future clients? To my reputation? I’m sorry, sir, and believe me I’m sorry about what happened to Ms. Jameson, but it simply is not an option.” The regret in his voice was palpable, but also his resolve.

  “Will you at least tell me how many times you met?” Bear asked. A long pause, during which Tim could hear Martinez tapping his pencil against his desk. “As far as I know,” Bear added, “there’s nothing confidential about dates.”

  “Only twice.”

  “May twenty-eighth when she retained you. When was the second?”

  “June one.”

  “That Friday? Seems like a quick job…?” Bear waited, hoping to get something back. Guerrera flicked his chin, his youthful features pulled tight in a told-you-so scowl. Keeping the phone pressed to his ear, Bear resisted additional prodding, sensing, as did Tim, that Martinez was not the kind of man who responded well to pressure. They listened to the sound of Martinez’s breathing, banking on that note of regret that had found its way into Martinez’s voice. A full minute passed—an eternity of silence.

  Finally Martinez said, “If you must know, she discharged me.”

  “She spent two hundred and fifty dollars to fire you?”

  “It was a decision we arrived at together.”

  “Why?”

  “Don’t push your luck, Deputy.”

  Bear rolled his lips over his teeth, then popped them back out. “Might I ask if the subject discussed wasn’t…General Foods?”

  “I can assure you it wasn’t.”

  “Was it not…Hughes Aircraft?”

  “It was not.”

  “Was it not…Vector Biogenics?”

  “I’ll neither confirm nor deny that,” Martinez said, leaving them with a click and the hum of the dial tone.

  Chapter 39

  The churning of the roller bottles in combination with the moist warmth of the incubator augmented Dolan’s stress hangover. He sped his pace through the passage, his skin reflecting back the red tint thrown from the hundreds of quarts of gently spinning growth fluid. The events of last night, from the party to the explosion’s aftermath to the hum of the crime-scene cleaners’ machinery, had left him so wired and rattled that he’d lain in bed agitated for hours after Chase disappeared out the window. He’d awakened with a sourness in his mouth to match the toxic thoughts that had pervaded his broken sleep.

  He passed through the airlock into the test suite, the screeches of the monkeys making him smile for the first time in days. Huang wasn’t at his desk, but on his chair, as promised, were the PowerPoint slides that Dolan needed for his talk at Friday’s pre-IPO presentation. The magnifications depicted the stages of poxvirus’s transformation into Xedral. Always a crowd pleaser.

  The macaques settled from the excitement of Dolan’s entrance, emphasizing the emptiness of the suite. Tuesday morning’s departmental stratcom had drawn Huang’s team into the conference room on the south corridor.

  Grabbing the slides and turning to go, Dolan extended his arm to receive Grizabella’s high five. His hand whiffed through air.

  The cage was gone.

  Dolan stood dumbly, regarding the blank space.

  Across the suite the storage-closet door sucked open from an unfelt breeze, the latch bolt tapping back against the plate. Before the door a janitor’s mop protruded from an abandoned rolling bucket.

  Uneasy from the sudden calm of the monkeys, Dolan set down the slides. He crossed the lab and toed the bucket. It rolled to the side on squeaky wheels. He gripped the door handle and pulled.

  An empty cage sat centered on the closet floor, Grizabella’s name and ID number rendered on the affixed plaque.

  Two men in generic Beacon-Kagan lab coats entered. They nodded, and then the burlier of the two breezed past Dolan, claiming Grizabella’s cage.

  “Where is this test subject?” Dolan asked.

  “We don’t know. We were just told to clean up.”

  “What do you mean? What happened to the test subject?” The men didn’t slow, so Dolan followed them. “Was she in the cage when you started?”

  The other said, “She was removed from the study.” They were maddeningly uninterested, unhalting in their progress toward the doors.

  “This is part of my experiment,” Dolan said. “Who gave you permission to remove this test subject?”

  “I’m sorry, Dr. Kagan. We’re just following instructions. Isn’t this Dr. Huang’s section of the lab?”

  The sliding doors opened with a hiss, and they passed through.

  “Who authorized this?” Dolan shouted after them.

  The doors sealed with a vacuum slurp. A few of the monkeys tittered, in on a private joke. Dolan fell into Huang’s chair, rolled a few inches.

  Huang’s screen saver bounced around. A monkey striking the pose of Rodin’s Thinker. Witty.

  Dolan allowed his pinkie to graze the keyboard. The screen saver vanished, revealing a Windows desktop. Huang was still logged in.

  Alone in the suite, no approaching footsteps on the hallway tile.

  Dolan did a search/find using Grizabella’s subject ID number, calling up a number of documents. The most recently changed was a spreadsheet titled Subject log—X3-AAT thru X5-AAT.

  He stared at the Excel icon for a very long time, the chatter of monkeys echoing around the sterile walls.

  Then he double-clicked on it.

  Chapter 40

  I said no lime.” The paunchy gentleman waved off the waiter with a flare of his manicured fingers.

  “I’m sorry. Let me bring you a new glass.”

  “Why don’t you bring me a new bottle.”

  The kid backed up, cheeks flushed, bottle of Pellegrino tilted in both hands, still on display. Below his server’s apron protruded scuffed Converse low-tops, an Ohio State Buckeye tattooed on the bare strip of ankle. “Right away.”

  The lingering patrons awaiting the maître d’s nod made it easy for Walker to loiter as he inventoried the waiters. He didn’t exactly blend in in his father’s suit jacket and a T-shirt, but a few Armenians going Miami Vice casual put him more at ease. On its framed menu, The Ivy announced itself as country cottage, but Walker thought it was to a cottage what Restoration Hardware was to Home Depot. A white picket fence hugged the perimeter of a raised patio framed with ivy. S
omeone had put a lot of time into the wood to make it look distressed. It wasn’t too distressed, though; it looked pretty content watching the slender European types slither past in tight dresses to eat scallops among the so-called rustic antiques.

  Robertson Boulevard’s perennial congestion put the valet off the main street. The narrow mouth of the driveway disgorged foreign-make SUVs, each larger than the last. There was a break in cashmere, and Walker eased forward, catching the maître d’s attention.

  “Excuse me, I called in earlier? My employer believes she left a purse here the night of June first?”

  The maître d’s phony British accent amped up a few watts. “That’s a long time ago.”

  “She’s a very busy woman.”

  “No one’s left a purse here.”

  “Maybe I should tell her to call the manager herself?”

  A prissy down-the-nose glance. “June first was a”—his nail tapped a few beats on a tiny square calendar taped to the stand—“Friday. Victor works Friday nights.” He whistled over the last waiter Walker had inventoried.

  Victor came quickly, putting a jog into his step.

  “Please see to this gentleman’s questions,” the maître d’ said.

  Walker drew Victor away from the cluster of people. “Uptight crowd, huh?”

  “You’re telling me.”

  “I thought you were gonna pop that asshole about the lime thing.”

  “You saw that?” He shook his head. “I know, huh. What are you gonna do?”

  “Listen, I was hoping you could do me a favor. I just moved out here from Columbus—”

  “No shit? I went to school there.”

  “Fellow Buckeye? All right. Anyways, I been trying to make my way in journalism, freelance, but it can be tough. You know how that is.”

  “Hell, yeah. I’m a musician myself.”

  “So I’m writing a story on Vector, that biology firm. They had a dinner party here on June first?”

  “Sure, I remember. They rented the whole place out.” Victor nodded emphatically, thumb dusting his first two fingers. “It was a celebration. They got some patent approved or something, had people making speeches.”

  “I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions for my story?” Walker pulled out a photograph of Tess. “Was this woman there that night?”

  “Yeah, I remember her.” A smirk. “Past her prime, but still pretty smokin’. She’s a photographer or former model or something.”

  “Is she? How do you know that?”

  “Well, she got into a discussion with this other guy over here by the valet—”

  “Show me.”

  Victor walked him a few paces down the sidewalk. “I remember because there was some kind of valet mix-up, caused a little commotion.”

  Walker noted a dark portal in the restaurant’s side, overlooking the valet stand. “What’d the guy look like?”

  “I don’t really remember. I remember the chick better, right? I was circling with chardonnay, and I heard him say something about what happened in the limo at the shoot. He was sorta, I guess, apologetic without really being apologetic. I remember thinking, The problems these rich folks have, right? Like the guy probably packed Cristal instead of Dom Perignon or something.”

  “Did you hear anything else?”

  “Naw, I was busy.”

  “You guys have a security camera or anything?”

  “Yeah. See that little window?” He pointed, and Walker feigned surprise. “The security director keeps a valet cam, ever since some has-been TV star sued because someone stole personal photos from his glove box. They won’t tell us who—part of the settlement, I guess.”

  “Do you think you could get ahold of the security tape for me from that night?”

  “I wish I could. But no way. Especially not for press. The security director would have my ass.”

  “Maybe he’d let me take a look?”

  “No, he’s kind of a dick. Actually, scratch the ‘kind of.’ Plus, they store like three years of the old shit at the security company, in case a lawsuit pops up down the line. It’s a hassle to retrieve it. I know because one of the valets got accused of emptying an ashtray full of change my second week. You’re not gonna get old footage easy.”

  The maître d’s head poked above the crowd, swiveled, and found Victor. His conveyance of inconvenience was no less than epic.

  “Gotta go. Sorry I couldn’t be more help.”

  Walker smiled and returned the handshake. “You been plenty.”

  Chapter 41

  Dean barely glanced up when Tim and Bear entered. His office was surprisingly small and unpretentious, save the desk’s almost wall-to-wall breadth and the expansive window framing his broad build. From the twenty-sixth-floor perspective, his shoulders ranged from the neat rows of granite marking the dead in the veteran’s cemetery to the old Fox Village tower, long subsumed by Mann’s of Chinese Theatre fame.

  Gripping a beautiful guitar by the neck and looking stylishly disheveled in a baggy grosgrain-ribbon button-up, deck shoes, and linen khakis, Chase went to the trouble to meet them at the door. A stack of copies sat neatly centered on a side table. Dean gestured to Tim and Bear, indicating that they should sit, but they remained on their feet, picking through the offerings. The so-called file of disgruntleds. Beacon-Kagan’s employment records for Ted Sands included the basic facts, nothing more. A pamphlet on Human Resources guidelines. A few pages on test-subject selection read as if they’d come out of the marketing department. The party guest list Tim knew, by its inclusion, to be as sanitized and inessential as the other documents. He flipped the final folder closed, unimpressed.

  “I hope that’s a help,” Chase said. “Everything you asked for.”

  “Not everything,” Bear said.

  “I’ve got a very busy day.”

  “Yeah”—Bear nodded to the unplugged Gibson acoustic—“you look pretty wrapped up here in high-level corporate affairs. We’ll try not to inconvenience you too greatly.”

  “On Friday we have our pre-IPO presentation to investors and management. Which means…” Chase’s lips pressed thin. “My staff at Vector and I have three days to prepare to receive a hundred of Wall Street’s top money managers here in the auditorium on our first floor. Not to mention a raft of business reporters and various other members of the media. So as for inconveniencing us? You haven’t. But Mr. Jameson has. And you seem a lot more interested in harassing our company than in apprehending him. Why is that?”

  Dean continued alternating between the various lines feeding his headset and the countless stacks positioned at even intervals along the vast run of oak. He paused to offer his son a patient warning: “Chase.”

  Bear answered the question. “Because you’ve turned over what looks to be an embarrassment of riches from your PR department, but not much that’ll shed light on why Walker Jameson is out to wreck you. Until we can find some answers, we’ll keep coming back to you with the same questions.” He shifted his attention to Dean. “Where’s Dolan?”

  A raised report covered Dean’s eyes. “Any second.” An assistant entered with a question about where to house a hedge-fund group winging in for the presentation, and Dean said, “Four Seasons. The whole team. But rooms—not suites.”

  “Okay.” Chase sat on an arm of the leather couch, set his guitar across the cushions, and busied himself on his BlackBerry. “I’ll play along. What more do you need?”

  Bear said, “We need you to answer some questions.”

  “Like.”

  “Why did your former employee get killed in front of your house?”

  “Haven’t the foggiest.”

  “Coincidence, maybe?”

  “A lot of power forwards at that party. So. Maybe it had to do with one of them.”

  “As we suggested—but your father’s pretty sure the guest list is not the motive. And it was his flagstone that got stained.”

  “Indeed it was.” Chase lowered his BlackBerry and
offered an intentionally insincere smile.

  “Listen,” Tim said, “maybe we got off on the wrong foot. We know how valuable your time is, but you’re giving the impression it’s routine for brutal killings to happen on your doorstep. If that’s the case, you can understand our deepening interest in you.”

  Chase put down his BlackBerry and slid his guitar onto his lap. “My company is about to launch its first product. It’s not a video game or a hair conditioner. It’s a viral-vectored genetic enhancement that will save the lives of a hundred thousand children in this country alone in the coming year. So as for the relative importance of Ted Sands, who seems to have been exactly the kind of sleazeball you think he was…?” He twanged the opening notes of “Taps” on his guitar.

  Dean removed his glasses and tossed them on his desktop. “Knock it off, Chaisson.”

  Chase stopped immediately. At Dean’s glare he set down the guitar altogether.

  Dolan came in, slightly winded, nervous energy twisting his hands around each other. “Sorry I’m late.”

  “Sit down,” Dean said from behind the report.

  Dolan dutifully moved to the couch as Dean mumbled his displeasure at whatever he was reading, then turned his focus to Tim and Bear. “What are you after? Tess Jameson, family connection with Sands’s killer. What about her?”

  Tim said, “You were looking into why you dropped her son from the trial.”

  “The specifics on that are proving harder to retrieve than we thought—there are so many applicant subjects,” Chase said. “We’re still digging. But my guess? Since there’s nothing specific, it means he was disqualified for the same reason ninety-six percent were: didn’t meet the criteria.”

  “What were the criteria?”

  “Well. There are a lot of medical variables when it comes to—”

  “Because I took much of last night to read your corporate Web site—very impressive, by the way—and I found out that what’s so great about Xedral is…” A considered pause as Tim patted his pockets, withdrew his notepad, licked a thumb, and found the page. “Here we are. ‘Xedral is unique in its broad applicability and effectiveness. Preliminary tests project an eighty-six percent success rate in treating anyone from infants to adults afflicted with ATT.’”