Last Shot (2006) (43 page)

A slender woman with clean, pleasing features and maroon-rimmed eyeglasses pushed around some paperwork behind the reception window. On the counter a ceramic tooth held a stack of WESTIN DENTISTRY business cards in caricatured hands.

Tim tapped his knuckles on the glass, and the woman looked up with a smile. A pencil protruded from her dark brown hair above her ear.

"Can we see Dr. Westin, please? We need to ask him a few quick questions."

"That's me." She stood--not far--and offered a hand. "Michelle Westin."

Behind Tim, Bear fake-coughed his amusement.

"My wife would back him on that one," Tim said. "I'm sorry."

"That's okay. I lost my office manager a few months ago, so I'm trying to cover the cracks between temps." Michelle's expression shifted as she took in the Glock at Bear's belt and Pete in his Erik Estrada getup. "What can I help you with?"

She listened intently, troubled, as Tim filled her in. "Follow me back." She let them through, peering up at Bear; she was maybe five-four, and the contrast was humorous. "You are one big guy."

"I'm on the North Beach Diet," Bear said. "Chips and pasta."

Her smile lingered an extra moment, and then they moved down the hall in single file. Flecked tiles, scrubbed clean, squeaked underfoot. The chilled air smelled of latex and the faux-fruit flavorings that enhance fluoride.

The suite accommodated a dentist chair and a desk tucked into the corner.

Michelle regarded the empty chair. "As much as it sounds selfish, I still have a hard time forgiving her."

The injustice again hit Tim--not just that Tess had been dispatched after such deliberate mistreatment but that her place in people's thoughts had been altered as well. From what Tim had learned of her, he knew she'd have been mortified to have the taint of suicide accompany the mention of her name. Not only had she been murdered but her memory doomed to a sort of haunting. She was a specter unavenged, unredeemed, trapped in the rags of false surrender. Alive, she'd seemed vibrant and strong. The face saved from mere prettiness by a thin nose and intelligent eyes. The self-deprecating tone she'd struck in her letter to Walker. The piles of reading she'd accumulated in a quest to save Sam, a son who now knew her as a mother who'd given up on herself, on him, on everything. She'd been reduced by her death in more ways than one.

Michelle slid a rolling chair out from the desk and beckoned for Pete to sit down. "Help yourselves. This was the computer she used."

Pete grimaced at the iMac. "Great. Macintosh."

"What did she do?" Tim asked.

"What didn't Tess do? Insurance, billing, scheduling, the books."

Tim said, "You were close?"

"We got to be. I hired her right out of her associate's program. She told me about Sam in her interview, and I admired how she threw herself into it, going back to school, all that. She worked after hours every chance she got. I was glad to pay it. We have one of the best group insurance plans, and it still sucks. It's like blood from a stone these days, but I'm sure you know that. I helped her navigate the billing at first, but soon enough she outpaced me. She spent hours every day on the phone with our patients' plans, so she learned how to talk to them. The time came when I'd go to her with questions. Same thing with Sammy's condition. I pointed her in a few directions, a month later it was like she was a geneticist." Her voice warbled, and she paused to recompose herself.

Bear pouched his lips, his eyes pulling to meet Tim's. Tess knew the science behind Xedral. Where had that led her?

Pete, no master of tact, paused from banging on the keyboard and said, "Gimme her work e-mail again?"

Glad for the distraction, Michelle dictated it to him. Munching on a sugar-free lollipop he'd requisitioned from a glass jar in the lobby, Pete proceeded.

Bear said, "Sounds like you lost a good friend."

Michelle nodded and patted him affectionately on the arm. Their eyes met and held an extra beat, and for the first time since Tim had known him, Bear colored. He mumbled his condolences, then blushed again and excused himself for the bathroom. Busy at the iMac, Pete snickered into a fist. Bear smacked him on the head as he passed.

With amusement Tim noted Michelle watching Bear's exit.

Pete's hammering rose to a furious pitch--he could work a keyboard so fast Tim sometimes didn't believe he was actually typing. Pete tilted back in the chair with a sigh and spit the hard candy back into its cellophane wrapper. "You deleted the trashed e-mail cache," he said accusatorily.

"What?" Michelle looked surprised by his sharp tone.

"You have an autoerase feature set up that deletes trashed e-mails after--guess what?--two months." Pete looked at Tim, his palms flipped skyward.

"That's because any e-mails of substance get filed," Michelle said. "We keep records connecting to patient complaints, claims, litigation even. Everything of relevance should be saved in her e-mail files."

"Not everything of relevance," Pete said bitterly.

Bear came in, wiping his hands on his pants. "What?"

"Tess Jameson's old e-mails. They're not on here. I shouldn't be surprised--she probably deleted it herself anyways." Pete rocked forward in the chair and unplugged the computer. "I'm gonna have to take this with me and restore the data."

"Do you mind?" Bear asked.

Michelle shook her head. "Not if it'll help Tess's case. But can you do that? Find data that's been erased?"

"Nothing ever actually gets deleted except the pointers to find the data." Pete stood, tucking the iMac under his arm and rapping its side with his knuckles. "That e-mail's in here. Somewhere. It's just a matter of teasing it out."

Chapter
61

The house, when quiet, worried Tim. Tyler's squalling arrival on the premises had ratcheted up the average noise level several decibels, and Tim had grown accustomed to laughter and crying and shouting. Signs of life. The day had started with Tim at gunpoint by his own curb, so his normal unease at the uncharacteristic silence was exacerbated.

Tim had spent a punishing three hours at the command post planning security operations for tomorrow's Vector investment presentation with one of Dean Kagan's innumerable mouthpieces. His headache had largely subsided, but the bruise at the base of his skull remained swollen. It had been painful when he leaned his head back against his chair, which he did, forgot, and did again in a five-minute loop, a Homer Simpson reprise. Finally he'd come home to catch a few hours' sleep before festivities kicked off.

He gently closed the door from the garage, the alarm's quiet chime announcing the breach. He took off his shoes so he could creep soundlessly down the hall. Miraculously, the Typhoon was asleep, spun in his sheets, the Tasmanian devil gone Tutankhamen. Relief unknotted Tim's stomach, and he bent to kiss his son's sweat-moist head. Tyler stirred, his mouth suckling air. Tim patted his back, his arms, his legs, taking comfort in the undeniable physicality of him.

Dray lay flipped with her back to the door, a fall of soft yellow light illuminating her side of the bed. A paperback lay face open on the comforter beside her. Tim thought she was asleep until he heard her uncock the hammer of her Beretta. Her shoulder shifted, and the gun slid out from under her pillow. After Walker's cameo at the house that morning, Tim had renewed his appreciation for housewives who pack heat.

"Hi, babe." Dray handed him her gun, and he secured it in the safe. "How'd it go?"

"Bear has a new girlfriend."

Dray's lips pursed. "She a cop?"

"Dentist."

"Good. Never trust a woman in law enforcement."

Tim slipped into bed, and she rolled over with a faint groan, a sound effect she'd acquired during pregnancy and held on to. She petted his chest lazily while he filled her in.

"She's under your skin," Dray said. "Tess. I get it. But why so much?"

It took Tim a few moments to hit an answer--he was unsure if it was the right one or the complete one, but it felt as if it gave a pretty good shape to his sentiments. "She really turned it around. She came from not much and found herself in a tough place with a sick kid. And she handled it. Got a degree, a new job, therapy, was working hard to cover medical bills. How many times do you see that? I mean, forget the triumph of the human spirit, forget people empowering themselves, forget all the liberal bullshit. How many times does someone, for whatever reason, actually turn their life around? They usually wear down under the weight of it. Give up. But Tess didn't. She struggled and fought and was making it work, and then someone canceled her. And framed her as a failure."

Dray kept petting him, and he let his eyelids droop, though he wasn't tired, not yet. Dray clicked off the light, and they lay there in the still house with the rasp of the baby monitor and the wind rattling the metal catch of the side fence.

He thought Dray had long fallen asleep when she said, "I don't care how much you like him, or how much you think he's right, you gotta take him down when the time comes." Her tone was not combative or stern; if anything, it was sympathetic. "You know that."

Tyler's restless shifting came through the monitor, and then he settled back into silence. Tim stared at the shadows of branches scraping across the dark ceiling. "Yeah," he said.

Clad in boxers, Walker sat on one of two twin beds with sheets so thin they showed off the ticking beneath. A duffel bag, misshapen with the ordnance packed inside, rested next to the jagged hole where years ago a wet-bar minifridge had been ripped from a cabinet during the building's conversion from crappy motel to crappy housing complex. To his right, a fire escape wound down from the second-story window into an alley in which he'd already seen two blow jobs negotiated and executed. Sloppy, stumbling exchanges. He'd closed the blinds on the front window that overlooked the floating walkway and the parking lot. The carpet stank of tequila and lemon freshener, and the toilet in the tiny nook of the bathroom looked to be made of durable plastic. When he'd set foot in the shower, the molded floor had dented down with a thunderclap like sheet metal bending, the noise repeating each time he'd shifted his weight.

His latest cell phone at his ear, the cool stainless steel of the Redhawk pressed to his bare thigh, he let the other end ring and ring. Finally Kaitlin picked up the cell he'd left her, a dreary, half-asleep mutter.

He gave her his location right away, rattling it off before she could hang up.

"And?" she said, deadpan.

So much like Tess. He heard her push herself up in bed, and he could picture her body position exactly, the slouch against the headboard, her hand holding her bangs at bay. "There's a dirt lot four blocks north, behind a Denny's."

"Sounds appealing."

"Bring the kid by. Around eight."

"He's not doing so hot right now, Walk, in case you haven't noticed. He doesn't need to stand around in a dirt lot at night."

"Please." He couldn't remember the last time he'd used the word, and he imagined that's what her stunned silence was about. "I won't ever try to see you again. Or him. Just gimme a shot to explain it to him better. About his mother."

A long silence, just the two of them breathing in the darkness. Again he could see her face, the sleep-softened cheeks, the way her hair got mussed by the pillows so it framed her eyes.

"You owe it to him," he said.

"You're not the best judge of who's owed what." Her anger lingered on the quiet line, and then she said, "Why's it gotta be so late?"

Walker snapped open the gun to eye the six bullets staring out from the chambers, each one containing a piece of Tess's titanium cross. "I got a very full day."

Chapter
62

Given the VIP handling, the carefully negotiated seating, and the dramatically timed arrivals, Tim would've thought he was attending the Academy Awards. The private security firm Beacon-Kagan had hired was surprisingly competent, constituted of former soldiers, a few of whom Tim knew in passing. They'd put up metal detectors just beyond the revolving doors in the building's lobby and a checkpoint at the entrance to the Vector labs. A sentinel at the auditorium door inspected the laminated IDs; he even politely stopped Tim his first time through to radio-check his creds. Every angle had been covered, down to car-bomb-deterrent trash cans hiding metal posts, positioned on the sidewalk outside the corresponding stretch of building.

Though the various hedge-fund honchos, I-bankers, Wall Street journalists, and mutual-fund managers had been told that the precautions were to discourage information leaks--a ruse bolstered by the guards' insistence that cell phones with built-in cameras be turned off--the current of whispered conversation showed that the attendees knew otherwise. The murders of Ted Sands and Chase Kagan were national news, and as much as the Kagan Machine continued to put out that they were by-products of a private, misguided vendetta, they held enough allure and promise of danger to add another layer of excitement to the afternoon's proceedings.

To augment the rising sun's glare through the two thin, tinted casement windows set high in the east wall, well-positioned recessed lights beamed down, lending a reading glow to the pitch books and prospectuses. On the raised dais behind the draped podium sat an enormous glass sculpture of the Vector logo, the ubiquitous V capped with an arrow. A fine backdrop for the sanctioned press photographs. Draping the east wall was a giant Xedral poster, the same version Tim had seen in Dean's office, and another captioned THE LIVES WE TOUCHED, with Sam ironically featured in the grid of multiracial children.