Last shot

Chapter 47

A young security guard led Tim and Bear down the shiny warehouse corridor. Storage racks, bolted to the concrete floor, stretched up to the forty-foot ceiling, assiduously labeled boxes and crates filling each shelf. Industrial rolling ladders with handrails were parked at intervals like well-tended vehicles. In the dirt yard outside, the spike-collared Doberman kept protesting the deputies' intrusion. Barks and growls reached through the high windows, echoing around the bare walls of the vast building. Even Bear, nicknamed the Dog Whisperer around the Arrest Response Team for his preternatural rapport with the explosive-detection canines, had failed to settle him as he and Tim had strode to the long-term-storage warehouse's entrance.

Tim checked the lettering on the storage containers looming overhead. MARCONE. MARDEL. And at last a raft of MARTINEZes. The common surname continued around the corner to the next aisle before Tim encountered a run of legal-width cardboard boxes stamped ESTEBAN MARTINEZ, ATTORNEY-AT-LAW. The file boxes, organized roughly by date, carried stickers in hazard-warning orange-CONFIDENTIAL: LAWYER-CLIENT MATERIALS.

Tim rolled a ladder over and put his foot on the bottom rung to begin his ascent. The guard rested a hand on his forearm, halting him, and turned to Bear, whom he figured for the heavy. "Listen, you can check out whatever, but I know you're not supposed to open anything without a warrant."

Bear quelled the kid's concerns with a Godfather-like patting of the air. "Like we said, we're just following up on a trademark infringement. If there's no knockoff logo on the outside of the box, we're out of here. If there is, we'll come back with paper."

Tim scaled the ladder, reaching this year's June dates on the third shelf up. He located the box from the last week of the month, grabbed it by a punched-out handle, and jogged it loose, letting the shelf support the far end. Barely pulled into view, a typed label filled the index square on the lid's side flap. Tim scanned the names, none of them familiar, then tried again with the neighboring box from mid-July. Will Newell. Fred Marcussen. Theresa Jameson.

The box Tim held propped before his face contained the legal records of Tess's meetings with her attorney on a matter likely involving Vector Biogenics. Meetings that had taken place days before her murder.

And Tim couldn't so much as crack the lid.

Bear regarded the box reverently. Tim squirmed his hand around through the punched-out handle, fingertips brushing papers. He let the tiny metal device fall inside, nodded at Bear-mission accomplished-then said, with feigned exasperation, "No logo. Struck out," and shoved the file box back into its slot among the others.

He descended the ladder, and he and Bear headed out, leaving Tess's files behind.