Double Tap

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

I take the elevator down to the main floor and go out the door and across the street.

Three minutes later I’m inside the county law library doing a Nexis search on two names.

It takes me less than a minute to find what I’m looking for. The two names, Nathan Kwan and Isotenics, Inc., produce a brief news article more than three years old. The dateline is “Capital City”:

The governor today signed into law SB 1478, the controversial state tax legislation authored by Senator Nathan Kwan (D-Capital City). The legislation is designed to give manufacturers of computer software in the state selling their products or providing services to government agencies sizable state tax incentives that would permit them to reduce their corporate federal income tax liability. The legislation became embroiled in controversy when it was discovered that a single company in Southern California was the exclusive beneficiary of the bill. According to estimates, under the terms of the legislation, Isotenics, Inc., located in San Diego County, stands to reap more than $200 million a year in corporate federal income tax savings.

It is what I feared: the confirmation that Nathan Kwan murdered Madelyn Chapman.

All the small parts of the puzzle had been in front of me all the time. For some reason I couldn’t assemble them until Karen slapped me in the face with the news that Harold Klepp had been marched from the Isotenics campus the day after I met with him at the bar. At that moment I knew that Nathan had lied to me.

The day he came bearing a gift to my office, the old picture of Nikki in the kitchen in Capital City, Nathan told me about the telephone conversation he had overheard while out at Isotenics. He told me about the midlevel executive named Jack, and his boss who he’d never met before, Harold Klepp, and how he’d overheard Klepp on the phone talking about IFS and the Defense Department. The only problem is, Nathan couldn’t have heard the conversation, because Klepp wasn’t there. He was already off the job, posted away from the Isotenics campus, on administrative leave in a holding pattern until the end of trial, when they could fire him.

It’s little wonder that Nathan went off to talk to the reporter and do an interview when he heard Karen mention Klepp’s name and what had happened to him. His heart must have gone through the floor when he heard it, wondering if I would put it together. Why would he bring me such a lie?

Ordinarily, I might pass it off as a natural “Kwanism,” Nathan trying to nose his way into the case for political dirt that he could trade in his new job once he got to Washington. But then I remembered that day when Janice handed me his new business card: the one with the embossed gold seal-the one that read 42nd Congressional District. I had seen that number someplace before.

As I stood in the courthouse hallway, watching Karen Rogan walk away, it hit me. It was on the papers found in Madelyn Chapman’s in-basket: the census data that Walter Eagan had scrambled so badly when he was dying, the papers that Chapman had grabbed from Klepp when he told her about the problem. The ones she’d told him to forget about. The ones on her desk the day she died.

There was good reason for her anxiety. She wasn’t busy. She was scared. Eagan, Chapman’s man Friday, had not made a mistake, he had cooked the numbers in the “42nd District.” Congressional redistricting is performed under federal law every ten years, following the new census. Drawing new boundary lines for congressional districts within each state is done by the state legislature in accordance with rules set forth by law.

In this case Isotenics had been hired by the legislature to create the software so that computers could lay out the new congressional boundary lines for the entire state. They would pump in the census tracking data and prepare a master plan by computer for new boundary lines, adding new congressional seats since the state’s population was growing. Within the general guidelines of those projected boundaries, incumbents and ambitious candidates could haggle to cut a few corners, but the major boundaries would usually hold fairly firm. Generally, unless there was a reason, no one would bother to look behind the cut of the initial plan, figuring it was grounded on federal census data. The press would spend all of its time looking for scandals among the shavings where corners were cut and where dragon heads were added to gerrymandered districts.

But Nathan Kwan had mastered a whole new scam. He had captured the process at an earlier stage. He had cooked the numbers at a level deep enough that no one except software experts would ever check. Eagan had arranged the initial software so that the 42nd District would become a mirror image of Nathan’s old state senate seat, where name recognition on the ballot would carry the day. Anyone wishing to run against Kwan would be dead on arrival at their campaign headquarters.

It was payback for the tax bill Nathan had carried three years earlier for Chapman and Isotenics. No doubt Eagan probably had to push the boundary lines out of shape on a dozen other districts to make it work.

The problems all started when Eagan died. Stuff fell through the cracks. Klepp saw the numbers. Because he was software-savvy, he was able to check the program. He realized that the tracking data for the original cut didn’t add up. If the courts found out, they would order a whole plan, new software to be programmed. Nathan’s dream district would end up scattered all over the map, flowing onto the turf of other political warlords who could run against him at election time and kick his ass. He wasn’t the only politician hunting for a safe seat in Congress, facing term limits and political annihilation. Members of the legislature were eating their own in the struggle to survive.

Add to this the fact that Chapman was already embroiled in the political firestorm of her life. Congress and the press were bearing down on the Primis project, Isotenics’s crown jewel. She didn’t have time for Nathan and his problems. She certainly didn’t need the distraction and added strain of a budding scandal over redistricting. Ordinarily it is one of those subjects that tends to cause the eyes of wary citizens to glaze over. Learning that politicians are prone to engage in shady deals when feathering their own nests has all the jarring revelation of informing them that the ancient Greeks spoke Greek. Talk to the average voter about census-tracking data, and they will go to sleep. But tell them about a deal to carve a district in return for a new tax loophole involving bribery, a deal in which the name of a certain company, Isotenics, surfaces and you have a story with legs. Add to that the fact that Isotenics is already on the working press’s hit parade because of its intrigues with the Pentagon and its proclivity to produce software that allows government to snoop into John Q’s e-mail, and you have a story that might just get up on those legs and trample your company.

Chapman’s deal with Nathan suddenly took on risks she wasn’t prepared to face. If Klepp talked about what he saw, it wouldn’t take rocket science to connect the tax bill with the funny district boundary lines favoring Kwan.

Seeing the dangers, and considering Chapman’s natural inclination to grow and to defend her empire, she would have cut right to the chase. She probably told Kwan to go away. That the deal was off. After all, what could Kwan do? He couldn’t go running to the police or the press and complain that Chapman had reneged on a deal to bribe him: a cushy tax break in return for a seat in Congress.

My guess is that when she told him to get out, Nathan must have gone ballistic, Caligula on his worst day. It must have put a shudder through her. This was probably the reason she asked Ruiz to help her out, to keep an eye on her for security’s sake, off the books. Chapman couldn’t go back to her board of directors and ask for security again, not after making a scene over the video in her office and canning the executive protection detail. The board would want to know why. What could she tell them: that she’d gotten a good deal on bargain day and bought a legislator to boost the bottom line? Corporate directors might appreciate the results, but they wouldn’t want to know the details if it might mean an invitation to a courthouse party by way of a felony indictment. Any hint of a scandal and they would push her out the door.

The stage was set for a bloody collision. Unless he wanted to go out, hang a shingle, and go broke practicing law, Nathan had to get rid of her before she could reprogram the redistricting software and scatter his dreams of Congress.

Nathan-the former prosecutor, the former Capital City cop, the ex-Marine-would know a good handgun when he saw one. How he found out about it and knew where it was is anyone’s guess. But, knowing Nathan, where there was a will, there was a way.

With the laser sight to zero his shots, the silencer to dampen the recoil, and the railing on the balcony to steady the piece, putting two shots into Chapman’s head from upstairs as she stood in the entry below was probably one of the easier things he had to accomplish that day. On the others he didn’t do as well.

In the brief time that he was a prosecutor, the analysis of evidence was not high among Nathan’s gifts and talents. The closest Nathan ever got to a crime scene as a cop was setting up barricades at the perimeter and driving by in a squad car. Putting the silencer on the rocks and setting the pistol in the flower bed as if it were made of crystal-I’m sure that never dawned on him as an issue.

Nathan’s burning need to know where the case was going, and to steer it in any direction except the one that might take it back to his own front door to roost, was the reason Kwan attached himself to me and why he has been camped in the courthouse for the last two weeks. Nathan wasn’t there to glad-hand the press: he was trying to make sure that all the diversion he engaged in that day at Chapman’s house continued to lead us all in the wrong direction.

I print out a copy of the story on Kwan’s tax bill and walk toward the elevator. If we had our cell phones I would call Harry at the courthouse and give him a heads-up. As it is, they are locked in our cars out in the parking lot.

In the empty elevator I ride to the main floor. It’s already getting dark outside. I hustle out the front door, right into his arms.

“I was wondering what you were doing, going to the library. What do we have here?” Nathan plucks the folded paper from my hand before I can fold it further and lose it in a pocket.

He opens it and reads. “That’s what I thought.” At this moment Nathan seems filled with regret, his face a portrait of lament. He shakes his head, but doesn’t say anything, as if he can’t speak. “I never wanted it to come to this,” he finally says.

When I look down, he is holding a small automatic, blued gunmetal, the slide on top slick with oil glistening in the light from the streetlamp overhead. It’s almost lost in his hand, which is tucked under his open suit coat. Anyone looking at him, even up close, might think he has his thumb tucked over the top edge of his belt, talking to me western style.

A block down, on Broadway, the street is teeming with people, all heading home at rush hour. But on the side street along the courthouse, the sidewalk is empty.

The gun looks like a.380. Deadly. Gangbangers use them all the time because they are easy to hide.

“Nathan, you don’t want to do this.”

“You’re right, I don’t.” He shakes his head.

I can’t imagine the panic and confusion going on inside his brain at this moment.

“Why couldn’t you just leave it alone?” he says. “You won your case. Your man is free. Why did you have to go poking your nose in? I love you, but you’re a. .”

A woman comes out the door of the library, shoots us a quick glance, and keeps going.

“You’re a pain in the ass.” He finishes the thought.

I start to walk past him, like I’m going to follow the woman toward the courthouse across the street. Kwan moves in front of me and blocks the way, his little pistol almost in my stomach.

“Don’t. I want to talk,” he says. “I want you to understand.”

“Nathan, listen to yourself. Do you hear what you’re saying?” At the moment I have to wonder if I’m talking to Jekyll or Hyde.

His eyes dart toward the entrance of the library, where the lights have just flickered. Closing time. He knows we can’t stand here.

“Let’s go this way.” He follows up the suggestion by nudging me with his free hand, turning me away from the courthouse.

I turn and start to walk, slowly.

“Nathan, listen to me.”

I start to raise my hands, he says, “Put ‘em down.”

“Nathan.”

“Don’t. . don’t talk right now, just walk.”

He is right behind me, the pistol in his outside coat pocket. Nathan knows this is a risky area. The jail is just down the street ahead of us, the courthouse behind us.

When someone has a gun in your back, there is a natural inclination to cooperate. But reason tells me that, given what I now know, if he gets me out of this area, I’m a dead man.

He comes up next to me like we’re two friends strolling down the sidewalk, with me on the inside. He now has both hands stuffed into the pockets of his suit jacket so that it looks more natural. End-of-the-day working stiff just stretching the pockets of his coat.

If I try to run he is going to put a bullet in me. Maybe more than one, considering the speed with which a.380 can fire.

In the distance I see a figure, a lone man wearing jeans and a light tan jacket as he steps from the main entrance of the county jail a block away. He turns and walks up the street toward us on the other side. In the dim light just after dusk I cannot make out any features, though he appears to be looking this way. For an instant I think about calling out. Nathan reads my mind.

“Let’s take a shortcut.” He takes his left hand out of his pocket, turns to me, and guides me toward an alley that divides the block.

“Keep going,” he says. He’s looking around, at the sides of the building and the utility poles. My guess is Nathan is looking for cameras. He’s not taking me for a ride. Whatever he’s going to do, he intends to do it here.

Kwan is pushing me westward along the alley. This is not good. There is nothing ahead except littered service entrances and a few dumpsters. With muni buses a block away, revving their engines as they pull away from the bus stop at rush hour, if Nathan pushes me against the side of a building and gets up close, he could put a bullet in me and it’s possible no one would even hear it.

We cross the street and we’re halfway down the alley on the next block when he stops just beyond the end of a large green metal dumpster. “This will do,” he says.

I turn and look at him. “This is where you want to talk?”

He pushes me into the breach formed by the end of the metal bin and the concrete protrusion that is the rear service entrance to a building.

My back is against the wall.

“You wouldn’t understand,” he says. “You couldn’t.” There’s a sound like someone clearing his throat in the alley behind him.

As Nathan turns to look, there is a quick flash, a reflection off an arcing stream that disappears in the shadows of his face, his free hand reaching up toward his eyes. The stringent smell.

I hear him moan as I reach out and push the hand with the gun to the side and away.

“Excuse me.” Before I can even process what I am seeing, Emiliano Ruiz closes the distance like an apparition. He is wearing jeans and a tan jacket, the figure I saw exiting the jail. In a fluid motion he takes the gun in one hand and the back of Nathan’s head in the other. When he brings his knee up, Kwan’s head sounds like a hollow melon hitting a boulder. Nathan’s knees buckle, and he hits the asphalt like a sack of cement.

Stripping the clip from the.380, Emiliano pulls the slide and ejects the round from the chamber while he bares his teeth, holding a small red plastic squirt gun between them.

I’m leaning against the wall of the building, unable to stand upright with Kwan lying across my feet.

Ruiz takes the squirt gun from between his teeth, tosses the metal pistol into the dumpster, and crushes the clip under the heel of his shoe. Then he rolls Kwan off my feet so I can stand up.

Ruiz is wearing street clothes, the T-shirt, jacket, and jeans that I must assume he was wearing the night the cops arrested him. You would never recognize him in a crowd. The everyman, wiry and invisible.

“They took me back to the jail so I could change, get my stuff. I was heading back to the courthouse to look for you. You disappeared. Then I saw you coming this way, but you went down the alley. I thought I’d check it out. Didn’t think you guys were ever gonna stop walking,” he says. “And I didn’t want to leave without saying good-bye.”