Last Shot Page 7

  A long night, and they’d wound up with three words. Three words that could mean a lot of things but were cause enough for Walker Jameson to kill Boss Hahn and break out of prison.

  And were likely cause enough for him to do more than that.

  Chapter 12

  The run-down community within earshot of freeway traffic showed off couches, carports, and rusted truck bodies languishing on dirt lawns. The street was 3:38 A.M. quiet. Walker pulled over his Accord, shut the door soundlessly, and prowled.

  Shadows, shrubs, tree trunks—even the pit bulls didn’t pick him up. A light through a particular kitchen window caught his interest. He crept close, on his toes, peering. An open refrigerator door cast a golden glow across the sleep-puffy face of a slim brunette in her mid-thirties. Attractive features starting to wear down from work and worry. A pert mouth showing the pull of gravity at the edges. Shoulder-length hair cut in no particular style and parted in the middle. Her body, visible beneath a too-long L.A. Clippers T-shirt, still looked fit. Firm in the chest, pinched at the waist when the fabric shifted. Wide, flat feet, nails covered with chipped pink paint.

  She returned the water pitcher to the refrigerator shelf and shuffled back down the hall with her glass. His steps muffled by the barren flower beds, he mirrored her movement outside, picking her up in her room through a seam in the blinds. Converted den, fold-out couch. She eased back beneath the sheets, took a final sip, and set the glass on her bed-stand. He followed the movement of her torso in the faint blue glow of the night-light. After a few minutes, her breathing grew deep and steady.

  Walker withdrew silently, circled to the back of the house, and found a sliding glass door with a broken latch. He moved down the dark hall as if floating—not a creak beneath his boots. The doorknob turned soundlessly. Five well-placed steps and he was bedside. He inched the top sheet back, exposing a bare shoulder, and took in the swirl of brown hair on the pillow.

  He stood over her sleeping form, the cool metal of the Redhawk pressed to the small of his suddenly sweating back.

  Chapter 13

  Boston bounded past Tim over the porch, leapt through the truck’s open passenger door, and Bear pulled out from the curb with a wave. Tim entered the house quietly. Dray was out cold on their bed, paperback butterflied on her chest.

  She stirred, grinding a hand into her eye. “Your son requests your presence.”

  Tim checked his watch. “He’s not down?”

  “Is he ever? He doesn’t fall asleep for good until he sees you. We know this.”

  Tim crossed the hall and saw Tyler’s head poke up over the padded guardrail of his bed. Snowball, the aptly named hamster, snoozed on his exercise wheel. Habitually lazy, Snowball had never evolved into the playmate they’d hoped for; he’d just evolved into a larger hamster.

  “Fuff pillow.”

  “It’s fuffed. You want me to fluff it again?”

  A solemn nod. Tim tapped the pillow on either side then kissed the outsize head. “Sleep tight.”

  “Elmo funny.”

  “I love you.”

  “I want a dog.”

  Then Tyler was asleep.

  Tim sat on the glider rocker and watched him. Most parents he knew remarked that their children looked like angels when they slept. Not Tyler. His chin inexplicably weakened and his lips pressed out like a duck’s bill. He wound himself in the sheets, contorted like a head case fighting a straitjacket. Sweat matted his fine blond hair. His head felt to be two hundred degrees—it had taken Tim and Dray months to figure out that he wasn’t running a nightly fever, that he just slept hot.

  From the time Tyler was a baby, Dray had dealt with him directly and easily—“Sorry, pal, the breastaurant’s closed.” Tim had been largely responsible for Ginny during her first three weeks of life when post-C-section complications had kept Dray bedbound; from the gates, his relationship with his daughter had felt more natural than his with Tyler. Ginny’s murder at the hands of convicted child molester Roger Kindell, Tim worried, had taken away a part of him that he’d yet to recover or replace. But he was also ever more certain that during his and Dray’s two-year childless gap, he’d revised Ginny’s brief upbringing into something idyllic. He’d forgotten how thin a kid could wear a parent’s patience. How irritating it was fighting tiny socks onto uncooperative feet. The exhaustingness of a child, this living machine designed to eat and cry and poop and resist and require, all from within an impenetrable shell of self-absorption.

  The first time they’d taken Tyler to the park, Tim had hovered over him, righting him when he stumbled, steering him clear of metal and asphalt. Finally Dray had called him over. “The world doesn’t work that way.” She gestured at the playground equipment. “It has sharp edges and hard surfaces. He’s gonna learn that. The longer he takes, the worse it hurts.” Even as she was talking, Tim had scooped Tyler midair from a fall off a slide. Dray’s grim silence on the walk home had an air of condescension to it.

  Tim had been freed up by Ginny’s removal from their lives to take insane—inane—risks. No human had been wholly reliant on him, in his charge. It was a kind of liberty that he’d put to use. And exploited. In the squalling calm of the past two years, he’d wondered whether he was still the deputy he’d been in the void between Ginny and Tyler; there was no doubt, his softening back into affection and concern had dulled his edge. It was just a question of how much.

  Tim rose and padded down the hall. He picked up the copies of the TI security tapes from the counter and popped one into the VCR. As it rewound, a commercial was kind enough to inform him of one more pediatric disorder with which he wasn’t familiar.

  “An estimated one in every two thousand individuals is affected worldwide by alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency,” a movie-trailer voice alerted over a slow-pan shot of a particularly pathetic little boy with a stained shirt, frown dimples, and too-big glasses.

  Pointing the remote, Tim set the tape in motion. He viewed Boss’s stabbing a few more times, looking for intricacies he might have missed, then switched tapes and watched LaRue’s scamper across the dining hall. Matching words with image, he played the whispering scene again and again, speaking the words as LaRue did. “The left side.” “The left side.”

  Getting up from the couch, he sat on the carpet before the TV and frame-by-framed Walker’s reaction after LaRue delivered the news. Walker’s head settled slightly on his neck—a split-second recoil. Tim froze it on-screen. The instant revealed a look on Walker’s face Tim hadn’t caught previously. A hidden expression, but one Tim recognized immediately. Grief.

  Walker’s mouth shifted, as if it were still working on the corn, though he’d swallowed seven frames back. Sorrow shifted to rage—an emotional logic with which Tim was intimate. Finally Walker rose and strode off camera, purpose quickening his step.

  Dray’s voice from behind caught Tim off guard. “How’s the Need Monkey?”

  Tim kept his eyes on the screen. “Down.”

  “The Tyrant keeps me up half the night, and now that he’s soundly snoozing, I’m wide awake.”

  “I’ll come give you Sleep Hold in ten minutes. Put you out like a stale cigarette.”

  “I love it when you talk dirty about sleep. Only problem is, a ten-minute estimate when you’re working, based on previous findings, really means”—a pause, during which she pretended to crunch numbers—“an hour and fifty-three minutes. And we have to be awake by then.”

  “Twenty minutes tops.”

  “Do I hear thirty?”

  Tim reversed a few frames, capturing the recoil again. Emotion loosened Walker’s features, giving them an almost vulnerable cast. He wore the expression awkwardly; it had barely managed to slip to the surface.

  Dray slid down behind Tim on the carpet, her sturdy legs on either side of him. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and chest and gave him a squeeze, then rested her chin on his shoulder and watched Walker’s exit from the chow hall.

  “I miss it sometimes,�
� she said. “The job. Almost as much as I don’t miss it.”

  “It’s always there. You’re still your captain’s favorite.”

  “I’d rather partake vicariously. Better hours.” She waited through a moment of silence, then turned, lips brushing his cheek. “That was your cue, dummy.”

  He found himself re-sorting the information as he told it to her, ordering his thoughts. She listened quietly and attentively, her muscular body still enfolding him. In the intense yet comfortable silence that followed his account, he could sense her working over the facts.

  “The Palmdale Station covers Littlerock, right?” Tim asked. “You still in touch with Jason Elliott up there?”

  “Now and then. You’re thinking as a maybe-former sheriff’s deputy, I could get a fuller picture of the sister’s suicide investigation?”

  “More than we’ll get out of the crime-scene report and a CYA phone conference.”

  He switched the tapes—back to the toothbrush through the carotid artery.

  Dray watched, rapt, and made a noise at the back of her throat as if she’d just seen Barry Bonds send one into the Bay. “Impressive. No hesitation.”

  “Former military.”

  “You know how those boys are.” She plucked the remote from Tim’s hand and rewound the tape. “Look at that. Not even adrenaline. No anger, no tremor in the hand, nothing.”

  “He seems to be a dispassionate guy.”

  She paused the video, inadvertently capturing Boss’s grotesquely twisted face as he sailed over the rail. “If you buy the veneer. But in the dining hall footage, your boy’s working through some material. Here he’s not. He doesn’t even slow down to take in Boss’s reaction to getting stabbed. Doesn’t seem personal to me, as far as murders go.”

  “That’s the problem. No one—not the guards, LaRue, or Freddy—came up with a motive for why Walker would whack Boss.”

  “Maybe there isn’t one.”

  “There must be. If we can find it, we’ll at least be on the right trail.”

  “Like if you could find out what the mint mouthwash was for?”

  Tim shifted, regarding her across his shoulder.

  She clicked “play,” sending Boss to plummet into darkness. “Helluva spectacle, this murder. Blood spraying. Free fall. This wasn’t no quick-and-quiet on the catwalk. Remember, Walker’s a strategist. He used decoys in his cell. To sidetrack you.”

  “So you think he killed Boss to create a diversion?”

  “I think you’re looking at this backward. There’s no need to pitch the guy three floors just to hear the thud. Boss’s murder wasn’t the reason Walker decided to escape.” Dray pointed at the inmates mobbing the screen. “It created the spectacle that allowed him to escape.”

  Tim felt the range of possibilities crank wider, a sensation that was both exhilarating and alarming. “Okay. But we’re still stuck with this one: What’s a guy that close to the end of his sentence escape for?”

  Dray rose, tugging Tim to his feet and leading him back to the bedroom. “Something that couldn’t wait a year and a half.”

  Chapter 14

  Walker sat on the sagging couch watching the dust filter through the slant of early-morning light that fell through the back slider. He stayed leaned over, elbows on his knees, his fingers laced to form a pouch. On the scratched glass coffee table before him lay a dish of stale potpourri, a cluster of keys linked to a blue rabbit’s foot, and, enigmatically, a used electric label maker with a red gift bow on it. A few ambitious commuters whined by on the freeway, the distant sound carried into the family room almost as a vibration. A clock ticked. Somewhere up the street, a dog barked. He’d forgotten what the world sounded like.

  “Get out of my house or I’ll fucking shoot you!”

  Calmly, he turned his head, getting a partial view of the woman behind him. She stood in the mouth of the hall, clutching a gun with trembling hands before her L.A. Clippers nightshirt.

  “Safety’s on,” he said.

  “Walker?” And again, angrily. “Walker!” Kaitlin squared her shoulders when he stood, as if to meet force with force. She’d slid on a pair of jeans, and the black box of a beeper showed at her hip. For a few moments, she was at a loss. He watched determination forming on her face, an act of will, and when she spoke again, her voice was steady. “You’re bigger. New and improved.” Her lips tensed. “You stopped drinking.”

  He nodded.

  “Why?”

  “Lack of supply.”

  She pointed at one of the crooked cabinets hanging beside the TV. “There it is. Go get it.”

  “Other things on my mind right now.”

  She ran a curious gaze across him, like a decade had passed, though it had been only three years. Prison must have altered him more than he thought. His sleeve was wrinkled back from his biceps, and he sensed her eyes catch on the fucking paisley tattoo and then, mercifully, move on.

  “You’re out early.” It was not quite a question; she was still sorting through the possibilities.

  He nodded again, slowly.

  “Oh, Jesus,” she said. “Wonderful. Another rehabilitation success story.” She shook her head and let a hand clap to her thigh, looking away like she didn’t know where to start. The freeway noise had increased to a drone. “Well, while you were otherwise detained, I inherited a mess here.”

  A quietly hurt voice from the hall behind her: “I never asked you.”

  Walker was on his feet, hand at his lower back.

  Kaitlin turned, the anger smoothing out of her face. “Honey, I didn’t mean—”

  A boy, about seven years old, peeked around Kaitlin’s hip to see who she was talking to. He took note of her lowered gun with fear and natural excitement.

  Walker let go of the Redhawk handle protruding from his rear waistband and brought his hand back to his side. “The hell is this?”

  “Your nephew.”

  “Oh. I thought he was…” He couldn’t bring himself to say yours. He didn’t want to admit his thoughts had gone to a new boyfriend, to possible stepchildren.

  “He is now.”

  The boy eased out from behind Kaitlin’s back, scared but defiant, a terrier holding ground against a rottweiler. Anorexic arms poked from the sleeve holes of a Dragon Ball Z shirt. Camo pants bagged around his legs. A pair of clumsy glasses magnified the yellow tint that had over-cast the whites of his eyes.

  Walker tried for a name. “Sam.”

  “My uncle is in the marines, you know. He killed terrorists.”

  Kaitlin leaned to whisper to the kid, her fine brown hair falling to block her face. Sam swallowed once, hard, like he was tamping something down. His stare fixed on Walker; he took a step back, then another, then he ran back down the hall. A door slammed.

  Kaitlin shoved her hair up on either side of her head and gave a sigh that said that this exchange was just a tiny glimpse of a grander downhill slide.

  “Why do you have him?”

  “We couldn’t work out building a bunk bed in Terminal Island.”

  “Every cell comes equipped.”

  “If only we’d known.” She shouldered against the wall, keeping the space of the room between them. “You knew she had a son. It never occurred to you what would happen to him, did it?”

  “Someone would take care of it.”

  “Right. Me. I’m taking care of ‘it.’”

  At thirty-six, Kaitlin was five years older than Walker, just two younger than Tess. During their marriage the relationship between his wife and his sister had been tepid. Two tough women with strong feelings for and about the same man and not enough geography or age separating them. It was hard to make his recollections fit with the current arrangement here under Tess’s roof.

  “That’s why you’re living here,” he said.

  “Consistency for Sammy. And more space. I just had a crappy one-room across Pearblossom. You might remember it.”

  Walker tipped his head to indicate the hall. “What’s wron
g with him?”

  “His liver’s shutting down. He needs a transplant. Yeah, it’s nonstop fun here. We’re in the biggest donor region, you see, which means the longest waiting list. And he’s an O, the worst type. Someone dies with an O liver, it can go to an O, A, B, or an AB—pretty much anyone. But he can only take an O. So guess how many people that puts ahead of us on the list?”

  “Tess knew about this?”

  Kaitlin laughed, but her eyes stayed cold. “You are amazing. Of course she knew. What do you think she’d been dealing with these past two years?”

  He took a step back and sat on the arm of the sofa.

  “There was a shorter list for a while in Region One—Maine and all that—but she didn’t have the money to relocate and establish residency,” Kaitlin said. “By the time she scraped together three grand for the flights and an apartment there, the wait list had grown enough to make it pointless.”

  “She couldn’t figure out enough money to move?”

  “Oh, right, like with all the cash you were sending from prison to help her out? I think we both know that gravy train wasn’t running on schedule.” She studied him, clearly spoiling for a reaction, but he was too tired to take the bait. “She had some money from the divorce, but I don’t know where it went. You know Tess—not the world’s best financial planner. Till this.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I dunno, Walk, maybe finding out your kid’s gonna die unless you get your shit together is a pretty good motivator. She worked two jobs, went back to school nights, got an accounting certificate. I started watching Sammy sometimes to help her out. An overtime here, maybe even a movie there. This was two years back, just after you went down for your repeat performance.”

  “She never told me.”

  “Were you interested?” She studied his blank face with enmity. “You didn’t even recognize him, for Christ’s sake.”

  “I been gone for three years.”

  “How about before that?”

  “I was fighting a war. A few of them.”