Cold Aim

by Janice Cantore

  Tess frowned. “So what do you have?”

  “This guy checked into the hotel as Walter Ferguson.”

  Tess felt her heart drop, her mouth go dry. “Oh no. That’s the agent Bass sent. What you’re telling me—”

  “Chevy said that Ice liked to think of himself as a chameleon. Jim Smith killed Ferguson and sure as shooting, he’s going to try to pass as Agent Ferguson.”

  Tess froze as that sank in. Smith was after Chevy, and the only way Tess could get word to Chevy and Livie was through Oliver. Tess quickly said good-bye and called Oliver as she hurried back to her car, praying she’d get to him before the fake Agent Ferguson did.

  47

  Oliver brought a hand to his chin, scratching his beard, hoping this request from Agent Ferguson wouldn’t take long. He heard his phone but wanted to finish with the agent first. He’d check messages in a minute.

  “Yeah, she’s with Livie Harp. Harp’s home is very secure; no one is going to get to her there.”

  “Can you take me to this Livie Harp?”

  “Now? Can’t it wait a bit?”

  “No, it can’t. And I was told that you were the only person to speak to. I certainly don’t want to arrive there out of the blue and frighten the girl. After all, she has been through a lot.”

  “Yes, she has.” Oliver knew he was the only one who had Harp’s phone number. Realizing that he’d have to wait to see Tess, Oliver swallowed his disappointment. He didn’t want Chevy frightened either.

  “I can call them—”

  “I’d rather go in person. A phone call is too cold, impersonal.” The agent smiled.

  Resigned, Oliver said, “Okay, sure, I can take you there. Let me grab my coat.”

  When he returned to the porch, Agent Ferguson was on the bottom step.

  “My car is in your church lot.” Ferguson gestured toward the lot, indicating Oliver could walk in front of him. Oliver lived on the church grounds, and the parking area was a short walk along a stone path. He started up the path, Agent Ferguson on his heels.

  As they approached the lot, Oliver saw a gray sedan. The only out-of-place vehicle there, it must be the agent’s. He was headed toward it when a Rogue’s Hollow PD SUV pulled into the lot and parked next to it.

  Tess. Oliver’s heart skipped a beat.

  “Ah, the chief is here,” he said to Ferguson without taking his eyes off Tess.

  She stepped out of the car and started toward them. Something was wrong—Oliver could see that right away. There was something in her body language that made Oliver tense up. He felt the agent at his shoulder.

  Tess’s eyes never left the agent, even though Oliver was trying to catch her gaze.

  She said, “Hello, Oliver, going somewhere?”

  “This is Agent Ferguson. Agent Bass sent him to check on Chevy. We’re on our way there now.”

  Tess nodded. But Oliver saw her hand unsnap her duty weapon just as Agent Ferguson wrapped an arm around his neck and pulled him close. In shock, Oliver felt the arm tighten against his neck and the cold steel of a gun barrel as it pressed into his temple.

  –––

  Tess tried to hide her terror when she saw Oliver with Jim Smith. They were way too close together. She knew that there would be no negotiation with this man; he was a no-hesitation killer. Her gaze went straight to the blue eyes of the tall man, and she saw the murderous calculation there. Her only hope was to get some distance between him and Oliver and hopefully take him down.

  But it all went wrong. As she approached—at a loss for how to get the message to Oliver that he was in danger, there was a killer at his back—she saw Smith move even closer to Oliver, and she had no choice but to draw her weapon. She cleared leather the same time Smith wrapped his arm around Oliver’s neck and pulled him close, gun to Oliver’s head.

  “Drop it, Smith. This is the end of the line. You have nowhere else to go.” Tess took a shooter’s stance. She knew backup was en route. Surely Smith had to see there was no endgame here.

  Then again, he was a cold-blooded killer.

  “No, no, Chief. You drop your weapon, or this town will be minus a clergyman.”

  Tess couldn’t look at Oliver; she kept her eyes fixed on Smith.

  “Not going to happen. The sheriff’s department, state police, and officers from my department are going to converge on this spot in seconds. There is no way out for you.”

  As if to punctuate her point, sirens became audible in the distance, growing closer.

  He fidgeted, and Tess saw indecision cross his face, but it was quickly replaced by a hardness, a resolve. He wasn’t going to give up easily. She tried another tack.

  “Look, we know Cyrus Beck sent you. He’s the one we want. Let go of Pastor Macpherson, give up, cooperate, and things could go easier for you.”

  He chuckled mirthlessly. “Snitch? Not likely.”

  A patrol vehicle screamed into the lot. Tess didn’t turn but knew it was most likely Del Jeffers.

  The siren died, and Tess tightened her grip, sharpened her aim. She was confident in her shooting ability, but Smith wasn’t giving her a very big target.

  As if reading her thoughts, Smith stiffened his hold on Oliver.

  “I want out, simple as that. I—”

  It was Oliver who acted. Tess jumped, nearly fired as Oliver brought his elbow hard into Smith’s ribs, causing the man to cry out in pain. Everything happened at once—Oliver lurched to the left. As Smith crumpled in the opposite direction, he fired the gun toward Oliver. Tess saw Smith try to swing his gun around toward her, and she fired four times, not stopping until the man was down and not moving.

  But then, the same could be said for Oliver. He was down and not moving.

  48

  Tess rushed to Smith’s downed figure, wanting to be certain he was no longer a threat. He wasn’t. She picked up his gun, holstered her weapon, and leaped to where Oliver lay. Del was already kneeling next to the prone form.

  “Oliver!” Sliding to her knees, she felt fear fill her, nearly split her apart when she saw blood. Fireworks exploded in her head. But Oliver moved. And groaned.

  Tess saw that the blood was coming from his face, a slice of red from where the beard on his chin had been creased by a bullet.

  “I think he’s okay,” Del said. “It’s a nick, that’s all. Like he got socked in the jaw.”

  Tess didn’t take her eyes off Oliver.

  “I better manage the crowd,” Del said.

  “What? Sure, yeah.” Tess didn’t even look up.

  Oliver groaned again, and she focused on him.

  “Are you okay?”

  He looked dazed, but his eyes cleared rapidly. He brought a hand to his chin and Tess helped him sit up.

  “I’m fine. Feels as if I got coldcocked.” He looked at the blood on his hand. “Did he shoot me?”

  Tess sat back on her heels, relieved beyond belief and a little irritated that Oliver had taken such a risk.

  “Looks like the bullet grazed you. You might need a couple of stitches.” She pulled a handkerchief from her pocket. “Here, apply pressure.”

  He did as she directed.

  “Oliver, what were you thinking hitting him like that? The bullet could have just as easily gone into your head.”

  Two fingers pressing the cloth into his chin, Oliver gave her a lopsided grin. “I remembered hearing you and Sergeant Logan talk about him being hurt, that his ribs probably didn’t feel so good. I took a chance that I could distract him. It worked.”

  Tess stared into his stormy green-gray eyes, emotions swirling. She grabbed his face in both hands. “Oliver Macpherson, I love you.”

  She pulled his face close and kissed his lips, not caring about the blood or who was watching.

  –––

  Steve arrived on scene a short while later. The state police were handling the shooting investigation, and Tess was fine with that. There were plenty of witnesses to the shooting. Alana was one of the first to run up t
o Tess and Oliver.

  “I can’t believe that just happened! I mean, you saved his life!”

  The newspeople had been there for the purpose of interviewing Rosita Vasquez about Tami and her ordeal. They were putting stuff away, getting ready to leave when the shooting started. Needless to say, after the shooting, their cameras were up and rolling.

  Tess had been so focused on Oliver that she’d not even noticed the crowd until after everything was code 4. As for the shooting of Smith, Tess herself felt confident that she’d had no choice, considering what she knew about the man. Briefly, she wished that she’d had a chance to interview him, but it was doubtful he would have talked. He killed people too easily; there was no room for half measures.

  “Medford PD found another body in the hotel,” Steve told her.

  Tess was sitting in one of the chairs on Oliver’s porch. The weather was balmy, in transition, the cold front having moved on, a warmer one moving in, so it was pleasant to be outside, and she didn’t want to be closed in. Jethro had taken Oliver to the hospital to get his chin stitched.

  Steve sat in the other chair.

  Tess turned to him. “Smith killed someone else?”

  “We think so, yes. Dead guy is Doug Dugan. According to Agent Bass, who will be here shortly by the way, Dugan was Cyrus Beck’s girl Friday.”

  Tess smiled. “That’s a funny way to put it.”

  “I know. I thought we needed some levity. The guy was actually a decorated Vietnam vet, had worked for Beck for years.”

  “Smith bit the hand that fed him.”

  “Apparently.”

  “There’s something else. What’s the matter?”

  He gave a tilt of his head. “You always could read me. I’ve got some good news and some bad news.”

  “I’m too tired to pick what I want to hear first. Just give it all to me.”

  “Okay, first the good news. LAPD is sending up a couple of cold case detectives right away to collect the gun we recovered. They’ve had a couple of dinosaurs working the case for years and they’ve uncovered some fresh clues and leads. They weren’t surprised about who had the gun.”

  “Really? They knew about Smith?”

  “Jim Smith is not his real name.”

  “No surprise there,” Tess said. “Who was he?”

  “Real name, Royal Redd. There were prints on the .357 we recovered. And since they had Redd’s prints on file, it was easy to make the comparison. He had minor arrests back when he was eighteen, but no police contact since then.”

  Tess arched her eyebrows. “Seriously? That dirtbag hasn’t been in trouble with the law since he was eighteen?”

  “He seems to have been good at staying off the radar. As far as Isaac Pink’s case goes, after speaking with the LA cold case guys, they’ve come a long way in twenty-five years.”

  “New evidence?”

  “Yeah, and help from new forensic tests. How much do you know about the Pink investigation?”

  “The basics. I never read the whole thing in detail.”

  “Well, one thing they recovered was some blood found at the back door of the kitchen. It didn’t belong to any of the Pinks, but the blood was preserved and eventually matched to a dead body that was pulled out of the LA River. Denton Young. Moniker of Devo. He was from Long Beach, a drug addict and burglar, found in the trunk of a stolen car that surfaced in the LA flood control channel as water from winter rains subsided. And there was a slug recovered from his body, .357. It matched Pink’s gun.”

  Tess stopped the gentle rocking she’d been doing. “Pink killed him?”

  “The evidence points that way. Young bled in Pink’s house, so he was shot there. And breaking into houses with security systems was his MO. Had an extensive record in Long Beach. He was detained once in Pink’s San Pedro neighborhood about two weeks before the Pink killing. Field interview cards recorded that he and Royal Redd were thought to have been casing cars. But cops found no evidence of any crime, so after they were questioned, they were released.”

  “Whoa.” Tess leaned forward as the picture crystallized in her mind. “Those two dirtbags killed Isaac and his family.”

  “That’s where the cold case guys are going. They’ve wanted to find Redd for a long time.”

  “Any connection to Beck or Cross?”

  “Cross, yes. The guys found travel records showing that Redd left the country with Cross some twenty-five years ago, but it’s not known when he returned.”

  “He must have returned and assumed the Smith identity,” Tess said. “Or maybe he got the ID somewhere out of the country.”

  “He got it somewhere. Redd had a passport; none has been found for Smith. And Redd is known to be an associate of Cyrus Beck. The cold case guys really wanted to go the distance with Redd in the box.”

  Tess leaned back. She understood that. The LAPD detectives probably had a whole script for the interview if they’d ever gotten Redd into an interview room. Almost made her sorry she’d had to shoot him. Almost.

  “Needless to say, the investigators are anxious to get up here and do more digging, hopefully close the case as solved. It’s actually amazing that this guy, at his age, has been able to avoid even a traffic ticket for all these years.” He fidgeted, and Tess finally picked up that something was wrong. She realized she’d been distracted by fatigue and thoughts of Oliver.

  “Why are you telling me this, Steve? What’s the bad news?”

  “Ah, this is where it gets dicey.” He stood, wiping his palms on his thighs. “You know Livie Harp never came in to be printed. And with everything that’s been happening, I haven’t had a chance to find out why. So I pulled some prints off the guns we recovered from her.” He swallowed.

  Tess froze. “What is it?”

  He shook his head. “She’s not Livie Harp; she’s Heather Harrison. LAPD will be all over her if they find out.”

  Tess stood and faced him. “You didn’t tell them? Or Bass?” A knee-jerk reaction in her wanted to rush out and arrest Heather Harrison; for years she’d believed the woman was a vicious murderer.

  But now, after all she’d learned, was Livie Harp really a cop killer?

  “No. I found out after I talked to LA, and Bass is more interested in Redd and the bodies at the Marriott. And . . . well, Tess, I can’t believe she’s a murderer. She saved everyone in Faith’s Place from a couple of cold-blooded killers.”

  Tess did a circle on the porch, one hand on her hip, one on her forehead. She remembered the day before, thinking at the time, when Steve was interacting with Livie, that something had sparked. Was that interest on his part? Was it clouding his judgment?

  Maybe it’s clouding mine as well, she thought, because I’m kinda glad he didn’t tell the LAPD detectives.

  “We have to confront her—you know that. It’s not up to us to decide whether she’s guilty or not. Is there still a warrant in the system?”

  “Yes, there is.”

  “I knew she was hiding from something,” Tess said, “but I have to admit, I don’t see her as a killer. Yeah, she shot someone, but it was clearly self-defense. She did it to protect everyone at Faith’s Place. To me, there’s a difference.”

  “We have to go talk to her. We can’t keep this quiet,” Steve said. “Can you call her?”

  “I don’t have her number. Oliver does.”

  “I’d really like to talk with her before I say anything to the cold case guys. I know it’s not procedure. If you want to step away, I won’t blame you.”

  “I’m as curious as you are.” Tess smiled. “Besides, you covered me over the whole Faith’s Place fiasco. We can drive up there now or—”

  She was interrupted by the arrival of Agent Bass.

  “Chief, glad to see that you made it out okay after tangling with Smith. I just left one young agent who wasn’t so lucky.” He nodded toward Steve and then faced Tess, his features grim, and Tess imagined that she knew how he felt. She prayed she’d never have to oversee the line-of-
duty death of one of her officers.

  “Sorry about Ferguson.”

  “Yeah, looks like he never had a chance. And I’m afraid I have more bad news. We found the forger, the man who made Gage’s fake creds. He gave up Beck; we know Beck paid him for the paperwork.”

  “How is that bad news?”

  “It’s just another charge. But without Beck in custody it’s empty. The man has disappeared. As I said before, it’s obvious now he fled the country, and bringing him in will be no easy feat, especially if we have to deal with extradition issues.”

  Tess closed her eyes and sighed. “Is he still a threat to Chevy?”

  “I won’t say no until he is in custody. And I’m not giving up looking for him. This guy needs to go down.”

  Tess considered this news, not sure what to feel. Relief? Anger? So much death and destruction attributed to the man over the last few days . . . She felt numb and prayed that Beck would face justice soon.

  The shooting investigation chewed up the rest of the day. Tess and Steve decided they’d confront Livie Harp in the morning. It was cutting it close, with the cold case guys on their way, but everyone needed to take a breath after the incident with “Jim Smith.”

  49

  Four stitches were required to close the crease in Oliver’s chin. They didn’t hurt as much as having to shave his entire beard off to avoid looking silly with simply a shaved patch where the stitches were. He’d had the beard since his twenties and felt decidedly naked without it. But the pain of shaving the beard had been tempered by two things. First, Oliver had been able to call Livie and Chevy and tell them that Jim Smith was dead and no longer a threat. And second, finally, he had Tess alone and could pour out his heart.

  “Wow, what a look,” Tess said, eyes dancing with mischief. They were in her office. So much had happened since the shooting, they hadn’t had a minute to themselves until now.

  Tess put a hand on his freshly shaved cheek. “It makes you look so young. Now I feel like a cradle robber.”