Final Target

CHAPTER 37

A voice mail from Peterson was waiting for Gage when he arrived at his office. He thought of Granger’s promise to come clean with Peterson when the time comes. As he reached for his phone, Gage hoped for Burch’s sake that the moment had already arrived.

“Let me put you on conference,” Peterson said.

Gage heard nothing for a moment, then the static of the speakerphone.

“Zink is here with me.”

“What’s up?” Gage asked.

“Just like your pal Burch, you’re a hub around a very bad wheel.”

Gage heard Zink snort in the background.

“What do you mean?”

“You meet with Granger?”

“Maybe.”

“He got murdered this morning. At the driving range. Shot once in the head.”

Gage’s whole body tensed. The linchpin that held together his strategy to rotate the case away from Burch had broken off.

“Damn.” Gage said the word more to himself than to Peterson.

“Why damn?” Peterson asked. “He was about to finger Burch.”

“No he wasn’t.” Gage sat forward in his chair. His voice intensified. “You wanted him to finger Burch. That was the one thing he told me he wouldn’t do. And he had something on Matson. Something big.”

“So you say.” Peterson’s snide tone made him sound like a schoolgirl gossiping at the lunch table.

Gage blew past it. “Look, I needed him more than you did.”

“Being needed by you is a very dangerous occupation. First Burch, then Fitzhugh, and now Granger. My indictment is getting shorter every day. It looks like we’ll need to cast the net a little bit wider.”

“Is that a threat?”

“Against you? No. Unless you know something I don’t. But we’ll be looking real hard at anything that connects to Burch.”

Gage hung up, then rose from his desk and stepped to a window. He watched a tugboat, its nose to the bow of a container ship, nudging it toward the Oakland Port. He realized that this was what he’d been trying to do with Peterson’s indictment, steer it from the outside. But it wasn’t going to work. Peterson had too much momentum, and with Granger dead, Gage had nothing left to push with.

Gage called Courtney, trying to sound upbeat, wanting to protect her and Burch from the world closing in around his ICU room.

“How’s he doing?” Gage asked.

“Not good.” Her tone was weary. “He’s got an infection, maybe pneumonia. They’re working on him now.”

Gage heard conversation in the background.

“What’s that?”

She didn’t answer immediately. “The doctor is talking to one of the nurses…Oh, dear. They’re going to put the breathing tube back in.”

“I’ll call back.”

“Wait. They want me to step outside.”

Gage heard her footsteps on the linoleum floor, then the room sounds faded.

“I hear something in your voice,” Courtney said. “Is something wrong?”

“No. Other people are trying to blame Jack for things they did. But it’s nothing to worry about. I’ll take care of it.”

Gage hung up, then examined the flowcharts covering the walls of his office. Too many arrows pointed at Burch and the companies he’d set up for Matson.

He wished he’d hung up two sentences sooner.