Last shot

Chapter 8

Bear crouched with his prodigious ass floating above his heels and let his flashlight beam pick over the trash below. At his side Tim watched. It couldn't have been much clearer. The mattress, split like a pita. One Coke-bottle segment pushing clear of the top fabric, the second one smothered in the trash below. Finger furrows up the wall of the pit. And then, a few strides from the lip, a puddle of ruined clothes.

A B-movie monster hatching.

Bear spoke with a sharp, wounded intensity. "So he sawed off a Coke bottle, then peed into it just to draw our attention away from the missing bottle tops?"

Tim said, "That's right."

They'd raced over from the prison. The garbage-truck driver, a rotund bearded man, had forged over hills and around sunken plots to show them where he'd made the dumps. Now, a scant forty minutes later, flash-lights were visible across the landfill, bouncing like fireflies. Dogs stood slack on their leads, and deputies hollered their frustration over the wind. If there was any amalgam better at killing a scent trail than garbage and ash, Tim didn't know what it was. Bleach and civet, maybe.

San Pedro PD units were prowling the surrounding streets, but the landfill was close to a number of thoroughfares and the 110, and they weren't working on a time frame that made Tim optimistic. A tech had identified the blood type as O from a streak on the mattress, giving them a match. She was running a DNA to be sure, but Tim already was.

Bear said wryly, "Got us looking the wrong way."

"That's right."

"A stall."

"Uh-huh."

"Bought himself time."

"That he did."

"The dental floss? The bedsheet?"

"Set design."

"Clever fucker." Bear rose and planted his hands on his hips. "So now he's out. Maybe he moves to Cambria, opens an antiques store."

Tim recalled Walker's face in the dining hall once the shock had faded and he'd stood and made his way to the exit. Steel and focus. Whatever Walker was out for, he had risked being incinerated, compacted, or buried alive to get it done.

"Doubt it," Tim said.

"Me, too." Bear heaved a world-weary sigh. "Bakery, maybe."

Bulldozers peered over the edges of the wide pits. In the distance a queue of landing lights dotted the darkness, a lineup for John Wayne Airport. Rats tugging at the bent pizza box that Tim was standing on retreated a few feet when he shooed them with his boot. He preferred his rodents demure. And his fugitives less inventive.

Every household and business in San Pedro generated trash, and it wound up here. Tim thought about the garbage pipeline stretching back from this foul hub to all those places and then to all the places beyond those. A million spots for a smart fugitive to hole up and plan his next move.

A smart fugitive with extensive combat training.

More than anyone that Tim had squared off against since joining the Service six years ago, Walker Jameson could take him head-on, test his limits. He hoped it wouldn't come to that but already knew better.

As Tim followed Bear back to the truck, glass and eggshells crunching underfoot, the Nextel vibrated at his hip. He flipped it open and pressed it to his ear.

Newlin said, "I got you a phone number."