Last shot

Chapter 70

Sam sprawled on the bed, mouth ajar, glasses askew over closed eyes, his breath coming shallow and regular. His olive green T-shirt, still sporting the folds from the store shelf, stretched over his distended belly. Walker sat on the other twin, shoulders propped against the wall where a headboard should have been. A few gauze pads and tightly wound tape had brought the bleeding under control, and he'd zipped into his flexible bulletproof vest to keep pressure on the bandaging. In the alley below, a homeless guy shouted schizophrenically, the latest dose of street theater. The lights were off. Kaitlin sat next to Sam, stroking his head.

Walker listened to the whine of passing traffic. He'd retrieved his backup Redhawk from the duffel, filled it with his last six titanium bullets, and seated it in his rear waistband. With the press of metal against his right kidney, he felt whole again. His heartbeat had finally started to slow, but his head still felt wobbly from the blood loss, and his skin was damp. "You should get out of here."

"His sleeping's been so off, I hate to wake him when he's down."

The yelling from the alley faded, replaced by a bed knocking the neighboring wall and sweet nothings grunted in Spanish. On the verge of laughter, Walker and Kaitlin shared the inside joke across the distance of the room until the predictable climax of "Ai, papi" s gave way to the sounds of a Telemundo talk show and a running shower.

The intervals between Kaitlin's yawns shrank until she switched beds, curling beside Walker and putting her cheek on the ballistic composite plating his chest. Sam murmured something and rolled over, clutching a pillow between his knees.

Walker spoke softly, so as not to wake Sam. "Sometimes we really had fun, me and Tess. We had a Thanksgiving together during our mother's little break. We walked around, watched everyone eating through their windows, these great meals. We went back to the Buick, tried to sleep, but we were too hungry. So Tess had this idea"-a faint smile at the memory-"we were so broke and so hungry we drew pictures of food. Big turkeys. Hams. Mashed potatoes."

Kaitlin looked at him with amused eyes. "Cranberry sauce."

"Why not, huh? I drew mine with a broken pencil on the back of a road map. I wish I had that drawing still. What a great Thanksgiving." On the other bed, Sam mumbled and shifted, and they were quiet until his breathing smoothed out again. Walker said, "I ever tell you that story?"

Kaitlin nodded, her cheek rasping against the vest. "Yeah."

"I never told you about when I got strep throat, though. The next month."

"I thought I knew all those stories."

"It was a few weeks later, when we kept the Buick under the freeway at Griffith Park. The whole back of my throat was white with pus. I wound up spitting into a bag because it hurt too much to swallow." Amusement crept into his voice. "I was a mess. I needed penicillin, but we couldn't go in to see a doctor because we were scared they'd report us and haul my ass off to a kids' home or something. Tess found a guy worked at the drugstore, said he'd filch some pills for us for twenty bucks. But, of course, we didn't have twenty bucks. That night I got bad. Fever, sweating, the whole nine yards. Tess stayed up with me, rubbing ice on my forehead. She told me…" Kaitlin looked up, startled, but already he was back in control. His voice, twenty-two years later, still held disbelief. "She said if she could've had it instead of me, the strep throat, she would have. Well, there was this older guy always sniffing around us. Gold Rolex, would come to the park with his wife, push his kids on the swings. He'd always watch Tess. A few times, when he came alone with his kids, he'd take her aside and talk with her. The next day after that night with my fever going, the guy comes by again. He pushes his kids on the swings. Tess goes over and talks to him, and then they go away. I remember thinking it was weird, him leaving his kids playing alone on the swings. Maybe fifteen minutes later, she comes back. She drives me to the drugstore. We get the pills."

Kaitlin was propped on her elbow, her face beside his. Her forehead was wrinkled in the middle like she might cry, but instead she stroked his face. It was the longest he could ever remember talking, his words pulling together one after another. He was probably a touch loopy from the blood loss. He found himself missing Sally and Jean Ann, his palm trees that he could see from his house in Terminal Island.

He heard himself continue. "I kept a picture of you." He tapped his temple. "Didn't fade, no matter how much I wanted it to. Not in Iraq, not in Leavenworth, not through two and a half years at TI. Maybe I didn't want to ruin that, that image. After Iraq I knew I would if I gave myself a chance."

Her cheeks glimmered in the neon light that managed to filter through the blurry back window. Her upper lip was slightly drawn, in anger or hurt or maybe both. "Coward."

"That, too, I guess."

A weak voice from the other bed. "Guys?" Sam had awakened, and his face looked yellow and bloated. "I don't feel so good."

A dog growled out front, and Walker stiffened. He crossed the room and fingered down the front blinds to see the Troubleshooter leading seven men in raid gear up the stairs.

Tim crept to Apartment 22, the brass numbers matching those that Morgenstein had scrawled on a torn bit of pizza carton. One of Pierce's portfolio companies had diversified into slumlording, this fine property north of the airport one of numerous holdings. MP5 in the high-ready position, Tim shouldered to the knob side of the jamb as Miller's explosive-detection dog cleared the door for booby traps. Maybeck's battering ram hit home, the door smashing open, and Tim charged in, the other ART members fanning out behind him to cover the rooms.

No people, no furniture, no bed-nothing but stained carpet and a startled rat in the far corner. Bear returned from the bathroom and stood beside Tim, half illuminated by the slash of streetlight yellow leaking through the splintered front door. Zimmer dropped his MP5, letting it dangle across his chest from the sling. Maybeck cursed, and Denley, still humming, poked at the rat with his boot.

Thomas said, "I'm getting tired of raiding empty rooms."

Bear's Remington shotgun swung at his side, its sawed-off tip brushing his knee. He dug the torn patch of pizza carton from his pocket and double-checked the address. "Lying piece of shit."

"Maybe." Tim used the tip of his gun to lift a torn strip of carpet by the door. A bullet lay just beneath the ripped seam, the cause of the tiny bump. Using his barrel, he flipped it out. Homemade. Awfully familiar tint to the bullet head. The missing bullet from Walker's recovered gun?

Thomas said, "Really?"

"Doubt it," Tim said. "Walker's not this careless."

"Even if he cleared out in a hurry?"

"He's trained for worse than a hurry." Tim stepped out into the floating hallway. He was standing on the short end of the L that formed the second floor, the staircase intersecting the nexus of the wings. A Latino guy in a towel, still glistening from a shower, peered out one of the doors across the way, then closed it quickly.

Why would Walker bother leaving evidence behind? To make them think he'd camped there, sure. But what benefit would that be?

Bear stood beside Tim, studying the pizza-carton corner. He spoke in a rumble of a whisper. "He'd want to know if we showed up. Because then he'd know Morgenstein leaked. The bullet's so we'd figure we missed him, that he already cleared out. So we'd know there's no sense in us sticking around."

"And he wouldn't want us to stick around because…"

Bear nodded. "He's watching us. Right now."

Tim said, "Let's ring some doorbells."

Sam held his stomach and moaned. From the window Walker watched the deputies fan out along the second floor, knocking on doors. He glanced at the back window. He'd tested it already-it screeched, and the rusty fire escape made a racket. Waiting it out was the best option. He still felt too weak to outrun eight men with MP5s.

Walker said, "Put him in the bathroom. Close the door. Now." He caught Sam's eye. "If they hear you, someone's gonna have to die. I'm trusting you. That makes us family."

Kaitlin coughed out a note of disgust at Walker. With her help, Sam staggered to his feet. She sat him in the bathroom and said, "Honey, just hang on for a couple of seconds, okay?"

"No," Walker said, "keep the light off. And put the fan on for white noise in case he keeps moaning."

"I'll close the door, but I am not leaving him in the dark."

"I'm not scared of the dark," Sam said.

Through a sliver in the closed blinds, Walker watched the huge deputy flash a crime flyer at Humpy Gonzalez next door. No worries there, since Walker had been careful to come and go without being sighted. The flicker in Morgenstein's eye-greed? envy? — when he'd handed over the apartment keys to Walker had raised a red flag. As promised, the building was in an ideal nowhere location, peopled by nowhere tenants. Walker had taken advantage of his father's hospitality but moved down the hall into another empty apartment to find out if Morgenstein was as untrustworthy as Walker suspected. Unlike the proffered pad in the short wing, this apartment-the door of which an angry-looking deputy with a thick mustache was about to bang on-had a fire escape leading to an alley that fed into a network of back streets.

Kaitlin drew near and whispered fiercely, "His stomach's hurting. I'm not keeping him out of my sight for more than a minute."

"You won't have to."

A hammering on the door. They froze in the darkness, standing back from the front window. "Police. Open up, please." A pause and then another series of knocks. "Open up."

Through the bathroom's closed door, above the hum of the fan, Sam's cough was barely audible. Walker eased the Redhawk free of his waistband. Kaitlin caught it on the rise, folding it in both hands and holding it firm so it pointed at her stomach. She shook her head-no way. Walker couldn't risk prying the gun free, not without risk to Kaitlin and not with a deputy three feet away, separated only by a two-inch hollow-core door.

If the deputy was coming in, he'd have a free shot at Walker.

Kaitlin matched Walker's glare until the deputy's footsteps ticked down the hall. She shoved the gun away and ran to the bathroom, throwing open the door. Sam lay sprawled by the toilet. Kaitlin let out a cry and flipped the light switch.

Splashes of bright red vomit stained the tiles.

The standby paramedics flicked their cigarettes through open windows and drove off. Tim cabled and padlocked his MP5 in the rear of his Explorer.

Bear stood on the runner of his truck, peering at Tim over the open door. He looked about nine feet tall.

Tim said quietly, "I think he's here. Make a show of clearing out."

"There's a few buildings there with a view," Bear called out, pointing to some office buildings a few blocks away. "Let's go take a look."

The deputies strung up along the block nodded and climbed into their various SUVs. Bear lowered himself into his truck and rattled off. Tim backtracked to the building, eyes on the ground, the walls, searching out any indication of Walker's presence. He jogged upstairs, his hand skimming the railing. Thanks to Maybeck's ram, the front door of 22 sat crooked and loose in the frame. Miller had secured crime-scene tape across the jamb to dissuade squatters until he could send a handy-man out. Tim tapped the door open, ducked beneath the yellow tape, and crouched over the slit in the carpet. He was reaching to feel the edge when he noticed a stroke of red painting the insides of the fingers of his left hand. He smoothed a thumb across, and it came away sticky.

No sign of blood anywhere in the apartment. He checked the front-door knob. None there either.

He called Bear. "Any of the guys cut themselves on the entry? Anyone bleeding?"

"Not that I saw."

"You'd better come back here."

"Why?"

"Found some blood."

"Where'd you find it?"

"On my hand."

"Okay. We're up in the office buildings checking out sniper roosts-be there ASAP."

Tim went back onto the landing and looked at the doorknobs of the apartments he'd checked. No blood. He jogged down the stairs, halting halfway. He ran his hand along the dark wooden rail. Toward the bottom, he hit a run of wetness.

He stared at it a moment, then started back up.

Sam's head lolled weakly on his slender neck. "I tried. I tried to be so quiet."

Kaitlin sat on bent knees, wiping the blood from his chin. "Why didn't you call for me?"

Sam's voice came strained through a seized-up voice box. "They would've got him."

Walker stood speechlessly, idiotically, his feet stubbornly planted since Kaitlin had shoved open the bathroom door.

Kaitlin scrambled over to her purse, dumped its contents on the bed, and grabbed the cell phone. Rushing back to Sam, she keyed in three digits. She sat in the blood, cradling Sam's head in her lap, and stared at Walker, her eyes blazing reproach. Sam swayed, a stream of blood spilling over the side of his mouth. His lips goldfished as he dry-heaved.

Sam's eyes rolled north, giving a prize view of his yellowed sclera, and then his body went limp in Kaitlin's arms.

Tim heard the complaint of a window forced open. He sourced the noise to the last apartment Thomas had checked. No one had answered Thomas's knock.

Pressing his ear to the door, he heard murmuring and what sounded like soft sobbing within. Directly in his line of sight on the worn-down sill, a single drop of blood stood out, flecked at the perimeter with tiny splash petals.

Tim stepped back, drew his Smith amp; Wesson, jerked in a breath, and kicked. He landed the sole of his boot beside the knob, picking up the resistance of the lock assembly so he wouldn't wind up putting his leg through the cheap door, leaving the rest of him trapped outside. The dead bolt ripped through the inner frame.

His eyes took in the dim interior in a sweep that matched the movement of his. 357. Blood, shockingly red against white bathroom tile. A little boy's legs and waist in view by the toilet, his torso blocked by the half-closed door. Kaitlin's sob-stained face looking up, panicked and helpless. A disposable cell phone pressed to her ear.

Directly across from the door, framed perfectly from the waist up by the open back window, Walker mirrored Tim, aiming straight back at him.