Last shot

Chapter 63

The glass sculpture behind the podium webbed instantly, thousands of cracks appearing as if thrown on at the instant of the bullet's impact. Dolan reeled back, falling from the dais into the arms of a waiting guard, who dragged him to the secured back exit. Attendees were on their feet, yelling and hastening for the main door, the contagious panic of the corralled. Dean stood frozen as the sculpture finally burst, fragments pattering on the thin carpet. Tim rolled from his stomach, sweeping Dean's legs and bringing him down as another bullet whined past, punching a hole through the projection screen behind the space Dean's head had occupied an instant prior. Tim raked Dean toward him by an ankle, gathering him in like a hockey goalie, and handed him off to three advancing guards. Dean disappeared in their midst, joining the current toward the back exit.

Tim looked up into the sudden warmth, realizing that his uptilted face perfectly captured the circle of light and-likely-Walker's crosshairs, too. As he threw himself off the dais, he registered the stab of a view he'd caught through the window's missing disk-a curtain flickering behind a slid-back door on a fourth-story balcony across the street.

He ran, cutting through the crowd, lips moving against the radio as he coordinated the task-force members to seal off the apartment building. Fleeing bankers had massed at the revolving doors, so Tim cut back up a side hall and kicked out an emergency exit, joining Thomas, Freed, Maybeck, and Bear. Haines and Zimmer, assigned the building from the start, had secured the main entrance from Tim's first lockdown command, swinging four LAPD units into perimeter position seconds later. The building, six stories of dilapidation, had somehow dodged the Westwood renovation. From the looks of the passing residents Miller had backed out of the lobby, the place provided shoddy housing to students and some elderly couples, likely hangers-on from when the building was new.

Zimmer waved Tim through, and the deputies fell instinctively into their ART entry stack up the stairwell. They wouldn't have time for bulletproof vests or MP5s-it would be an improvised raid. They hammered up to the fourth floor, the stairwell spitting them out onto a floating corridor on the east side.

Two units down, a door stood open. Tim barely slowed his momentum around the turn as they exploded into the cramped space, shouting, flooding the galley kitchen, living room, and bedroom, handguns trained at every corner. Bear's kicking into the bathroom took the door clean off its bottom hinge.

No one.

Slicing through the fluttering curtains, Tim caught himself against the balcony railing. He peered down across the street at the ground floor of the towering Beacon-Kagan Building. The excised circle of tinted window provided a narrow vantage into the Vector auditorium, exposing a spot of visible dais-podium, ring of carpet, scattered glass. A clean line of sight, the precise reverse of the one he'd had minutes before from his sprawl on the floor.

"Hey, Rack!" Filling the front jamb, Bear pointed to the triangular stop wedged into place, holding the door open. It had been nailed into the floor. His finger next indicated the pair of saloon doors at the mouth of the living room. Oddly, they'd been pressed flat to the walls and nailed into place.

Tim felt his insides go to ice.

He moved through the permanently open saloon doors and brushed past Bear onto the floating corridor. A sleek, modern high-rise crowded the east side of the apartment building. Two stories up was another balcony, another open slider, another fluttering curtain. Behind the thin cotton drapes stood the outline of a sniper rifle, abandoned on its tripod.

Walker had cleared a path for the bullet's trajectory and shot straight through the building in which the deputies were currently gathered. A trained sniper, he could easily hit his mark from two hundred yards-another building back-especially since he'd cleared all the glass between his muzzle and the target, removing the possibility of bullet deflection or fragmentation. He'd known that the deputies were waiting to storm the closer, more obvious location, buying him extra time for the getaway. He'd anticipated Tim's anticipating him and come out one move ahead.

Tim shouted at the deputies, and they sprinted out, legs aching as they attacked a set of stairs, a stretch of pavement, another set of stairs. Bear radioed in for the broadened perimeter, but Tim knew, even before he kicked through the next door and found himself two floors up and one building over, that Walker would be gone.

Breathing hard, Tim stood before the suspended. 300 Remington Mag. Bear, Freed, and Thomas milled behind him. The others had hit the street, helping LAPD canvass the area. Good luck there. The mini-stampede caused by the shooting had created a broad diversion-town cars, rental-car-ensconced New Yorkers, and masses of pedestrians still blocked the nearby intersections. Without touching the rifle, Tim lowered his right eye to the Leopold variable power scope, the same one he kept mounted on his match-grade M14.

The podium remained centered in the crosshairs.

Walker had seen Tim's face through this very scope, had watched him looking up through the hole in the tinted window from his sprawl across the glass-strewn dais. The magnified view of the site where he could well have lost his life was chilling. Tim wondered if he'd rolled away before Walker could squeeze off another round or if Walker had chosen to spare him. Neither scenario made him feel less incompetent.

Tim's Nextel rang, and he pulled back from the tripod-mounted rifle. Caller ID flashed L V TSK FRC.

He answered, and Ian Summer said, "Rack, we flipped a little fish in the Aryan Brotherhood. We nailed him for trafficking, but guess what, he's staring down a career-criminal enhancement, so he's cooperating. You want the good news or the bad news?"

"Whatever."

"The good news is AB did dispatch a hit man to track down Walker Jameson, and we have a line on him. Caden Burke."

"The bad?"

"He's already in L.A. We've been monitoring his credit cards, and a charge just dinged at the RestWell Motel in Culver City."

Tim covered the phone. "Bear, we gotta go. Freed, hold down the fort till CSI takes over the scene?" He swung the Nextel back to his mouth and jogged out to the elevator, Bear at his heels. "Can you get me a photograph?"

"I'll have someone dig through our surveillance files, see if they can find a clean shot. I'll have them scan it and send it to your phone."

"Please. Soon."

Tim had almost hung up when Ian said, "Hey, Rack. Someone in your office was looking for intel on the Piper, right?"

"That's right. Same case-high priority. You got something?"

"You might want to call DeSquire in the Albuquerque office."

"Why?"

"Just give him a call. Confidential shit, but I went through FLETC with him."

"Got it. Thanks."

The phone cut out on the elevator, Tim watching the reception bars as he summarized for Bear. The doors dinged open, the lowest bar held, and Tim hit "dial." He had the CSO from comm center dig up a cell number on DeSquire and patch him through. Cars screeched as they ran across Wilshire to Bear's Ram, parked in the outdoor lot off Gayley.

DeSquire picked up on a half ring. Sirens and rattling wheels in the background-the song of the crime scene. He paused when Tim introduced himself, placing the name. "Sure," he said. "The Troubleshooter."

"I'm working the Walker Jameson case, and I caught word you've got something on the Piper."

"I might."

"I understand what you've got might be sensitive till you take it public. I can keep my mouth shut. I just need information."

"How's this involve Walker Jameson?"

"We believe the Piper executed Jameson's sister in June."

"That would be pretty tough."

Tim barely got the door closed before Bear roared off toward Culver City. "Why's that?"

"Because I just found him in the back of an auto-parts garage, pickled in poured concrete. Been dead six months, easy."