Final Target

CHAPTER 1

C ome on buddy, don’t die on me. Don’t you dare die on me.”

The rain-slickered EMT pressed hard on the side-by-side bullet holes in the fifty-year-old jogger’s sternum while a paramedic slipped an oxygen mask over the man’s nose and mouth. The runner was splayed out on a predawn sidewalk fronting ten-million-dollar mansions in San Francisco’s Pacific Heights.

“Come on, man. Hang in there. You’re gonna make it. You’re gonna make it. You just gotta help me.”

“One, two, three, lift,” and the victim was moved from the wet concrete to the collapsible gurney. “One, two, three, lift,” and the gurney was raised and rolled toward the fire department ambulance.

“Any ID?” a beat-weary patrol officer asked as the gurney slid into the back.

“Nothing. Just this hanging around his neck.” The EMT tossed over a silver chain and house key. “Sorry, I couldn’t get his name.”

The cop rotated the key between his fingers and inspected it under the streetlight as if puzzled by how a jagged sliver of metal could imprison him on duty long after his shift. He shook his head slowly, then looked up. “Am I supposed to try this thing in every fucking door in San Francisco?”

“Just do your job,” the EMT mumbled as he ran toward the cab. “Just do your job.”

Private investigator Graham Gage lowered the barbell onto its crutches, then grabbed his ringing cell phone from the carpeted floor of his basement gym.

“Graham, it’s Spike.”

“Can’t be.” The wall clock read 5:37. “The only Spike I know is still lying in bed dreaming about bass fishing.” Gage expected a clever response. He didn’t get one.

Spike’s voice held steady. “It’s about Jack Burch.”

Gage felt his heart twist in his chest. He pushed himself up from the weight bench, then braced the phone against his shoulder and ripped off his lifting gloves. Spike was the lieutenant in charge of SFPD Homicide.

“How bad is it?” Gage asked, heading toward the stairs to the main floor.

“I don’t know. It just came in.”

“Where’s he now?”

“Hold on…3E44…What’s your 1020?”

Gage took the steps two at a time. He caught a jumble of voices and static as the officer answered.

“They’re just pulling into SF Medical,” Spike said.

A crack of thunder drew Gage’s eyes toward a wall of windows in the living room of his Oakland post-and-beam house. He had expected to see the lights of San Francisco across the bay, but a late-October alloy of fog and storm clouds sweeping in from the Pacific had enveloped the city. Even the oak branches that framed his view were webbed in gray, their resident birds mute, invisible, cowering against a squall advancing up the hillside.

“What happened?” Gage asked as he climbed toward his third floor bedroom.

“The uniforms on the scene are telling me it was road rage. Witnesses said he’d just started jogging from his house when a guy blew the stop sign at Webster and Pacific. Jack yelled something and the asshole did a U-turn, fired a couple of shots, then took off. A neighbor recognized Jack as they put him into the ambulance.”

Gage knew his friend’s morning route, knew the intersection. Animated stick figures reenacted the shooting in his mind as if in a virtual re-creation. He fought off the image of an early morning downpour washing Jack Burch’s blood into a leaf-clogged gutter.

“Anybody ID the shooter?” Gage asked.

“Nobody we’ve talked to yet, but chances are slim. The commute hadn’t started and there weren’t many runners and dog walkers out because of the weather.”

“And the car?”

“Generic every which way, and nobody caught the plate.”

Spike’s radio crackled in the background. Gage heard him double-click the handset to confirm receipt of the message.

“What’s that?” Gage asked.

“They asked me for his next of kin.”

Gage froze at the top of the stairs, then caught his breath, steeling himself for the answer before he asked the question. “Did he…”

“No. Sorry, man. It’s not that. They just wanted contact info.”

Gage exhaled. “Put me down until his wife gets there.”

“Where is she?”

“With Faith up at the cabin. I’ll call her on the way.”

In his bedroom, Gage slipped on a pair of Levi’s, then reached for a gray hooded sweatshirt, and slid it over his body like armor.