Fourth Day (12 page)

‘Don’t even think about it,’ I said. ‘Confucius say, “Man who wears bulletproof vest should not complain if shot in bollocks,”’ and deliberately lowered my aim. His questing hand froze again, allowing me to edge forwards and pluck the stun gun out of reach. It quickly followed the baton and the other TASER over the edge of the road.

And, gradually, I became aware of the warm breeze coming up the canyon, stirring the desultory grasses that had sprouted by the shoulder. Above the ringing in my ears I heard the van’s engine ticking as it cooled. The guy I’d winged in the arm was breathing more heavily than the others. Somewhere higher up, the gunshots had set a dog barking. The sweat that pooled suddenly at the base of my spine had very little to do with exercise, but I noted almost remotely that my hands were steady.

I backed up far enough to keep the three of them covered and pulled my mobile phone out of the zip pocket of my sweatshirt with my left hand, flipping it open and stabbing the speed-dial number for Sean’s phone with my thumb.

As it rang out, I glanced across at my reluctant principal, still on the ground in front of the van.

‘Do you want to ask them, or should I?’ I said with a measure of calm.

‘Ask them what?’ His own voice was rough.

I jerked my head towards our attackers. ‘Which of them reads JD Salinger.’

Detective Gardner arrived twenty minutes after the first of the black-and-whites. She climbed out of her car and stood, hands on hips, surveying the taped-off scene with barely contained annoyance. She was wearing jeans today, boots with Cuban heels and a loose lightweight jacket that did a reasonable job of hiding the 9 mm on her belt.

Considering the possible connection to Thomas Witney’s murder, I shouldn’t have been surprised that she got the call-out on this one, but that didn’t mean any of us had to be pleased about it, least of all her.

She glanced over to where I stood, leaning against the front wing of our remaining Suburban, Sean alongside me. I half-expected her to come charging over, but she was too much of a pro for that.

Instead, pulling on a pair of latex gloves, she ducked under the tape and did a brisk walk-round of the Chevy van, still abandoned in the middle of the road with the doors flung wide. The crime scene techs had carefully marked the position of every piece of ejected brass from my SIG, and
were now busy photographing the bloodstains from the passenger’s flesh wound.

Gardner seemed in no hurry to get to us. She spoke to the uniforms who’d been first on scene, was shown an evidence bag containing my surrendered gun, and others containing the TASERs and the extendable baton, which they’d recovered after I’d helpfully pointed out their existence and location. The baton had rolled as far as the gutter of the lower stretch of road before it had snagged in the scrub.

I shifted my weight, risked a look to Sean, but his eyes were on the detective as she leaned into the rear of both cars where the uniforms had cuffed and separated the suspects, spoke to them briefly. The front-seat passenger, watched over by a burly cop, was still being patched up by the paramedic crew.

They’d cut away his jacket to treat the arm wound, and the hole in his covert body armour was plain to see. He’d been turning, and my second shot landed slightly high and right of centre because of that. Without the vest, the trajectory of the round would have carved through his chest cavity on a lethal diagonal course.

He’d be dead
, I thought.
They’d all be dead
…

Gardner looked closely at the hole I’d left and made some offhand remark to the paramedic, who laughed. We were too far away to hear, but it brought a scowl to the injured man’s face.

Only then did she discard the gloves and stroll over towards us, stuffing her hands into her front pockets so the jacket was pulled back to reveal both gun and badge. She halted a couple of metres away and subjected the pair of us to a hard stare, head tilted.

‘You people just cannot stay out of trouble, can you?’

‘They came after us,’ I said mildly. ‘Not the other way round.’

She grunted, then asked with reluctance, ‘Your guy OK?’

Sean jerked his head towards the rear of the Suburban and I opened the door. Chris Sagar was sitting hunched down nervously in the back seat and he looked up with a hunted expression, cringing away until he recognised the face peering in.

‘You promised me Bane wouldn’t know I was there,’ he said to her, mournfully reproachful. ‘What the hell am I gonna do now, huh?’

She stared a moment longer without expression, nodded and shut the door again.

‘Lucky he had you,’ was all she said, peeling the silver paper from a stick of gum and folding it into her mouth. ‘So, you wanna let me have your side of it?’

‘I’ve already given your guys a statement.’

‘Humour me,’ she said. The same words she’d spoken to Randall Bane in that interview room – was it only yesterday afternoon? A chill passed across my shoulder blades and I twitched it away.

Voice as level as I could manage, I delivered a clear, concise run-through of events, from the moment I’d first spotted the Chevy, to Sean’s arrival, less than six minutes after I’d called him. And while I was talking, I clamped down hard on my emotions, not giving them a crack to slither through.

Gardner listened without interruption until I’d finished, occasionally jotting down comments in a slim black notebook.

‘Why d’you call him first?’ she asked then, nodding towards Sean.

‘Because I knew he’d get here faster, and I was concerned about keeping three of them contained on my own unless I shot them again,’ I said candidly. ‘Just to be sure.’

She ignored my poor attempt at humour. ‘You know these guys claim they were driving along, minding their own business, when you jumped out and attempted to hijack their vehicle at gunpoint?’

‘Of course,’ I echoed. ‘We went out for a run and simply got too tired to walk back, is that it?’

‘And how fortunate,’ Sean added blandly, ‘that they’d all taken the precaution of wearing body armour this morning, just in case of such an eventuality.’

I tensed.
Jesus, Sean! Did you have to remind her
?

But Gardner, still making notes, didn’t outwardly react. She smiled almost in spite of herself, shrugged a shoulder. ‘Tell me about it,’ she said, wry. ‘I think it’s safe to say they’re not the brains of the operation. And if it’s any consolation, Charlie, looking at the evidence, I reckon it probably all went down pretty much how you say.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, without irony.

‘But, what I still don’t know is why.’ Her expression hardened. ‘And unless you people stop jerking my chain with all this, I’m gonna run you all in and sweat you ’til you drown in it.’

I resisted the urge to glance at Sean, kept my eyes focused on Gardner’s, emptied my mind of anything approaching guilt.

‘I have no idea why,’ I said, which was pretty much the truth of it anyway. I shrugged. ‘The rest of our team has pulled out. We’re just waiting to go home.’

Gardner favoured us with her best cop stare a little longer, then sighed and shook her head, as though she’d given us our chance and we’d blown it.

‘It wasn’t a hit,’ Sean said as she began to turn away.

Gardner stopped. ‘How d’you work that out?’

Sean leant back against the Suburban’s bodywork and folded his arms casually, as if we were discussing some utterly mundane subject. ‘If that had been the case – and if it had been a serious attempt – both Charlie and Sagar would be dead.’ Those expressionless eyes skimmed over me, even if something twitched at the corner of his mouth. ‘No offence intended, of course.’

‘None taken,’ I said, equally grave. ‘To be honest, I’d already come to the same conclusion. They should never have stopped moving. Just open up the side door as they came past and let rip with a couple of Uzis. They wouldn’t even have to be decent shots. Just point and spray. No fuss…plenty of mess.’

Gardner’s eyes drifted over to the squad car where the two men were sitting in the rear seats, bodies rucked forwards awkwardly from the restraints. I followed her gaze and remembered suddenly the way Thomas Witney’s hands had been wired tight behind him. I blinked slowly, trying to clear the image. It proved stubborn.

Gardner’s attention came back to me, sober. ‘Lucky for you they weren’t going for a hit, then, huh?’ she said and frowned. ‘But in that case…’

‘It was a snatch,’ I said. ‘Hence the TASERs and the baton. They came prepared to subdue, not kill.’

Sean’s eyes flicked to mine.
Not yet, anyway. Not here
.

You think I don’t know
?

Gardner gave that cool consideration for a moment, then nodded, closed the notebook and slipped it back into her pocket. ‘We’ll find that out once I get these jokers into Interview,’ she said grimly, and gave me a final assessing stare. ‘Like I said, Sagar was lucky he—’

Whatever she’d been about to say next was lost as her eyes moved past us, to a point further up the canyon road. Sean and I both turned to see a group of Suburbans bearing down on us at speed. Discreet black, with limo tint on the windows, they had government issue written all over them.

‘What the hell are the Feds doing here?’ Gardner muttered under her breath. She glanced at us sharply. ‘Did you call them?’

‘Not guilty,’ Sean said quickly.

Sure enough, when the lead vehicle in the little convoy came to a halt alongside our own Suburban, it was Conrad Epps who stepped down onto the cracked asphalt, looking around him with supercilious expectancy. A general surveying the field where he’s just decided a battle will be fought.

‘Detective Gardner,’ he greeted, his men fanning out behind him. He flashed some kind of official ID, fast like sleight of hand, and folded it back into his inside pocket, not bothering to look at her directly. ‘Thank you, Detective. We’ll take it from here.’

‘The hell you will.’ Gardner’s voice was flat with outrage. ‘On whose authority?’

‘Mr Armstrong’s people have been working for the federal government on this matter.’ Epps’s head swung very slowly in her direction. To her credit, she didn’t back down. ‘If I have to, I will get your chief on the line, right now, to quote the relevant sections of the Patriot Act to you, in words of
one syllable,’ he grated, ‘but forcing me to do that will not have a beneficial effect on your long-term career prospects, Detective. That enough authority for you?’

Gardner paled. ‘Yes,
sir
!’ she said, lip curling. She turned back to us. ‘Don’t leave town, either of you.’

‘On the contrary,’ Epps cut in. ‘I believe Mr Meyer has reservations out of LAX this evening.’ He paused. ‘I would strongly advise you and Ms Fox not to miss your flight.’

Behind us, Chris Sagar opened the door and slipped down onto the road.

‘And what about him?’ I demanded. ‘Still planning to put him on a Greyhound bus?’

A muscle twitched in the side of Epps’s jaw. ‘Arrangements have been made for Mr Sagar to enjoy more…secure transport,’ he said.

From Epps, that could have meant anything from a private jet to a sealed casket, and Sagar paled accordingly.

‘I-I…um…what about my stuff?’

‘I’m sure you can detour to collect your gear on the way to Van Nuys, Mr Sagar,’ Epps said. He turned slightly and the driver of one of the Suburbans jumped out and held the rear door open. Sagar didn’t need telling twice, but he hesitated awkwardly in front of me, hardly able to meet my eyes.

‘I…’ he began again, swallowed. ‘Thanks, Charlie. You… um…saved my life, y’know?’ And with that he scurried over to it, keeping his face averted as if trying to avoid eye contact with any of the men from the beige Chevy van. The Suburban did a multipoint turn in the narrow road and sped away.

Epps, meanwhile, had been taking in the spent brass and
the bloodstains. When he was done he glanced at me fully for the first time.

‘Good job this wasn’t a professional crew,’ he said, and strode away before I could think of a suitably cutting retort.

‘Well, I’m kinda glad to know he has a problem with
all
women,’ Detective Gardner said wryly, watching him go, ‘and it’s not just me he’s pissed at.’

‘Not exactly a people person, is he?’ I murmured.

Gardner gave a snort, then reached into her pocket and pulled out a business card. She clicked her pen and scrawled something on the back of it.

‘Here’s my cell. You think of anything else you wanna tell me about this…’ Her voice trailed off as she handed the card over, but when I tucked it straight into the side pocket of my hooded top, her gaze lingered meaningfully.

‘… We’ll call you,’ Sean said.

We climbed into the Suburban and Sean started the engine. Epps’s people were already transferring the prisoners to their own vehicles. The men who’d attacked us didn’t look too happy about that but, I reasoned, if they were the ones responsible for grabbing Witney – and killing two of Epps’s men in the process – they had every right to be anxious for their immediate future and personal
well-being
.

As Sean backed up and turned the Suburban around, I pulled the card Gardner had given me out of my pocket again and looked at it. On the front it simply said ‘B. Gardner’ and listed two phone numbers designated ‘office’ and ‘cell’.

Frowning, I turned the card over. On the back, in an
untidy hand, she’d written, ‘Malibu Seafood. PCH. One hour.’

‘Gardner wants a meet,’ I told Sean, showing him the card. ‘Any idea why?’

But part of me wondered if she’d finally get round to asking the question I’d been dreading. The one I’d been waiting for ever since I fired the first shots into the guy behind the sliding door. The question I’d asked myself, with various stages of recrimination.

Sean glanced across, his expression unreadable. ‘One way to find out.’

Back at the house in Calabasas, a quick Google search revealed that ‘Malibu Seafood’ was a local fish restaurant, and ‘PCH’ was shorthand for its location on the Pacific Coast Highway – Highway 1 – which followed the twisting coastline all the way up to San Francisco. ‘One hour’ needed no translation.

Chris Sagar had already been and gone by the time we arrived back. I suppose the chance of another ride aboard that Gulfstream was too good to miss. Sean and I quickly finished our own packing, not that there was much to pack. The letting agent arrived for her walk-through just as we were leaving. I tuned out Sean’s smooth excuses as I stowed our gear in the Suburban.

As he climbed behind the wheel, though, he was smiling.

‘What?’

He unhooked his sunglasses from the rear-view mirror. ‘I thought I’d take advantage of the lady’s local knowledge and ask her about Malibu Seafood,’ he said.

‘And?’

‘Best place for seafood for miles.’ He put the Suburban into gear. ‘She recommends the red snapper or the ahi tuna burger.’

‘Well, at least if this meeting with Gardner is a washout, we can still get a decent lunch,’ I said lightly, although the thought of food made me slightly queasy. I paused. ‘Why exactly
are
we meeting her, by the way?’

He shrugged. ‘Does no harm to extend an olive branch when our paths are bound to cross again sometime,’ he said. ‘Better, in that case, to have the local cops thinking of us in friendly terms.’

Yeah, Sean, but she’s not just a local cop. She’s Homicide
…

Malibu Seafood didn’t look like much from the outside. In the UK it would have been in a pass-by lay-by on the A1 somewhere north of Doncaster, with the wheels removed in a thin attempt at permanency and sophistication.

But out here it had an allure all of its own. Being right across the highway from the beach did it no harm, either. A sign outside the unprepossessing single-storey building boasted a fresh-fish market as well as takeaway and the Patio Café, which turned out to be little more than a raised decking area to one side, with a fabulous view of the ocean. Ordering a meal involved queuing up at the counter inside and collecting a number, which was then squawked through an external speaker when your food was ready. The restrooms were a hike up the parking lot.

I let Sean handle the food while I climbed the short flight of weather-bleached steps to the patio deck, partly
sun-shaded
by climbing vegetation. I’d grabbed a fast shower back at the house and my hair was still damp. I couldn’t think of a better way to dry it than with the warm breeze coming up off the Pacific.

Detective Gardner – presumably ‘B’ to her friends – was the sole occupant at one of the rough picnic-style tables, tucking into a voluminous green salad, liberally draped with some of the biggest king prawns I’d ever seen, although I knew they were called shrimp over here. To me, shrimp were tiny pink crescents, usually served suspended in solidified butter, like prehistoric insects captured in amber.

I slid sideways onto the fixed bench opposite Gardner with my back to the trellis, and nodded to her plate.

‘Looks good.’

She paused long enough to swallow and wipe her fingers delicately on a paper napkin. ‘Is good,’ she said then, well brought up enough to cover her mouth with her hand as she spoke. ‘You find the place OK?’

‘Why, were you hoping we wouldn’t make it?’

She put down her fork and took a slurp of her drink. ‘Depends,’ she said, then, ‘if you’re planning to keep bullshitting me or not.’

‘In that case, why don’t you ask what you want to,’ I said sedately, ‘and we’ll see if it stinks?’

As I spoke, I kept my eyes moving. Along the opposite shoulder of the road, a lone female jogger ran, eyes on the ground in front of her feet. I watched the passing vehicles, particularly vans or minivans with opening side-doors, or anything with the glass dropped towards the restaurant. Just because our attackers bungled things this morning, didn’t
mean there wouldn’t be a second – altogether more serious – attempt.

I felt footsteps on the planking and Sean came up the steps and slid onto the bench alongside Gardner. She frowned at that, but he smiled blandly, not putting out any overt threat. We were early for lunch and, for the moment, we had the place to ourselves.

‘How’re we doing?’ Sean asked me.

‘I was just about to find that out.’

Gardner sighed. ‘That bastard Epps has shut me down,’ she said, rolling her shoulders. ‘Totally. Bunch of his guys showed up and took everything related to the Witney crime scene – files, forensics, photos, even my notes. You name it, they boxed it up and carted it out of there.’

‘What about this morning’s little incident?’ I asked.

She grunted. ‘Won’t even get as far as an official report,’ she said. ‘I’ve already gotten hauled in by my captain and told to hand everything over to the Feds and forget I ever heard about it.’

‘So, Detective,’ Sean said, linking his hands together on the tabletop and regarding her levelly, ‘I assume from that – and the fact we’re all here and not in your office – that you’re off the books on this one?’

She gave him a cool stare that was probably inherited from her mother, but was all cop.

‘What about those four hundred other murders you mentioned?’ I asked. ‘I thought you said you’d be glad to have the Witney case taken off your hands.’

‘There’s a big difference between giving something away and having it stolen,’ she said flatly. ‘I don’t like being told how to run an investigation, and I especially don’t
like being told to stop running it. So…what gives?’

Sean and I exchanged a long silent look across the table.

Does it gain us anything to tell her
?

I don’t know. Does it gain us anything not to
?

‘OK,’ Sean said at last. ‘We can understand your frustration.’

And so we told her, carefully and with judicious editing, almost the whole story, from going into Fourth Day to extract Witney, to my 911 call after the ambush that morning. We admitted that Parker had kept his previous involvement with Thomas Witney quiet, even from us. That we hadn’t known he was Witney’s safety net, could shed no light on why Parker had chosen to leave the schoolteacher in the cult’s clutches. Maybe that explained his delayed determination to retrieve him now.

In the middle of all that, our number came over the speaker and I made two trips to the little serving hatch to collect our food. Sean had ordered enough for an army and, I noted, had gone with the letting agent’s recommendation of the Pacific red snapper. Without appetite, I’d picked fish tacos, assuming from the modest price that they’d be less substantial. I’d been wrong on that one.

‘So that’s why your pal Epps was so desperate to get those three guys away from us,’ Gardner was saying when I returned with the second tray. She looked away sharply, anger plain on her face. ‘Son of a bitch,’ she murmured. ‘He screwed up and he’s covering his ass. What’s the betting he’ll have those guys on the first transport to Gitmo, just so’s it never gets out that he lost two of his own?’

‘I should imagine they’re already on their way,’ Sean said.

‘Thing I can’t work out,’ Gardner said, ‘is why they tried to abduct this Chris Sagar guy? I mean, if he’s been outta Fourth Day for as long as you say, any information he coulda given you would be real out of date. OK, so whack him, yeah, that I can see. But kidnap? Why the risk? And what could he tell them?’ She absently picked up a remaining shrimp from her plate, bit it in half and shook her head. ‘Makes no sense.’

Sean sliced open his fish. ‘What makes you think,’ he asked calmly, ‘that they were after Sagar?’

Gardner glanced between us and then went very still as that processed. ‘You think they were after Charlie?’ she demanded, not quite incredulous, but not far from it. Her gaze lingered on me. ‘What makes
you
so special?’

I unwrapped my knife and fork. ‘Thanks for that,’ I said dryly. ‘I’ve been asking myself the same question.’

‘We know they aren’t afraid to kill – Witney or Epps’s boys,’ Sean said. ‘And yet, this morning they failed to adhere to the first most basic rule of attack.’

‘Which is?’

‘First kill the bodyguard,’ I said, picking up one of the tacos and trying to work out how to get it into my mouth without ending up wearing most of it.

‘Maybe they were doing their best,’ she said, laconic. When I simply grinned at her, she added, ‘Or maybe they were after both of you and never made it past first base.’

Sean shook his head. ‘They didn’t have the manpower. Not for a double snatch on a target with a professional bodyguard. Three men – including a driver – just isn’t enough.’

‘If Sagar hadn’t tripped over his own feet when I told him to make a run for it, then as soon as we separated they’d have been stuffed – even with the TASERs,’ I agreed. ‘If it had been my op, I’d have wanted two mobile teams. Six men at the very least.’

Gardner picked up her fork again, winding the tines into her lettuce. ‘OK,’ she said then, reflective, ‘I’ll buy that for a dollar. Question is, why you? You said you spoke with Witney the morning after you grabbed him. Did he say anything? Give you a hint what Bane’s up to that’s suddenly gotten Homeland Security’s panties in a twist?’

I shrugged. ‘Witney knew his life was in more danger on the outside than it had been when he was still with Fourth Day, but he wouldn’t be drawn on why,’ I said, frowning. ‘Was it coincidence, I wonder, that Witney was the one injured in the attack last year that Bane mentioned?’

‘Alleged attack,’ Sean put in. His eyes flicked to Gardner. ‘I assume you checked up on his claims?’

She nodded. ‘Witney was pulled out of a wreck on one of the back roads leading from Fourth Day’s place. Claimed he’d been run off the road, but we never proved it one way or the other.’

‘Witney seemed to think it was significant that it’d been left until now to get him out. He said Bane would double what we were getting to deliver him back. And he assumed we’d drugged and interrogated him while we had the chance.’

I looked up and found Gardner’s eyebrow raised inquiringly.

‘Which we didn’t,’ Sean said blandly.

‘Whatever he knew, he told me nothing that would have been worth trying a grab raid to find out,’ I finished, almost lamely.

‘They tortured him,’ Gardner pointed out quietly. ‘He would have told them anything he thought they wanted to hear, just to make it stop.’

‘You don’t have to remind me,’ I muttered.

I had a stark flash of Witney’s body, left broken in the bath of a cheap motel, remembered his earnestness, his grief over his son, and his dignity. Something bubbled up in my chest and I reached for my drink to help force it back down again. Sorrow was never far from the surface these days. I looked away sharply, out over the gently rolling breakers, coming in slow and steady along the shoreline, tried to regulate my breathing in step.

‘There was nothing you could have done, Charlie,’ Sean said, tension pushing roughness into his voice. A warning. ‘Don’t try shouldering the blame for this.’

‘Maybe that’s not what she’s feeling guilty about, huh?’ Gardner said into the silence that followed.

‘Meaning?’ I snapped. But I already knew.

Sean turned to look at the detective, slowly, coldly, and something about the way he did it reminded me of Epps. In spite of herself, Gardner shifted slightly on her seat.

‘Meaning?’ Sean repeated softly.

She pushed her plate away, wiped her mouth again and rested her elbows on the tabletop, linking her fingers together. ‘Exactly when did you realise those three guys were only carrying TASERs, Charlie?’ she asked. She paused
meaningfully, the way I could imagine her pausing with the gang-bangers and the rapists and the murderers she’d spoken of. ‘Was it before or
after
you realised they were all wearing vests?’

I’d been expecting this, but I still hadn’t found an answer. Not a convincing one, anyway.

‘Probably both at the same time,’ I said, then shook my head. ‘No, I knew the driver was wearing something – or was on something – when he came at me. Four to the chest will normally stop just about anyone.’

‘Stop them?’ Gardner asked. ‘Or kill them?’

‘In close-protection work, your only concern is to protect the life of your principal,’ Sean said, stepping in smoothly. ‘We’re trained to react to a threat, Detective, just as you are. To keep firing until the target goes down.’

It was interesting, I thought, that he made no mention of our shared military background, where the priorities had been slightly different – identify your enemy and get the first shot in before they do.

What are you trying to hide, Sean
?

What do you think I need to
?

Gardner took all this in with those quick bright eyes, storing away our every tic and reaction for future reference. She was intuitive and tenacious, neither qualities I wanted in someone who had me under a microscope.

‘You know that if they hadn’t been wearing those vests, and all we’d found on them were non-lethal weapons, you’d be cooling your ass in a jail cell right now – spooks or no spooks.’

In my experience of Conrad Epps, I felt she was vastly underestimating the range and scope of the man’s authority
but, I reasoned, now was not a good time to point that out.

‘I know,’ I said calmly.
And don’t you think I haven’t gone over it, a hundred times, since it happened
?

‘You ever had a TASER hit, Detective?’ Sean asked.

‘Oh yeah,’ she said, wry. ‘In training. Hurts like a son of a bitch.’

‘So, if you were faced with an assailant –
three
assailants – armed with them,’ he went on, ‘wouldn’t you do whatever it took to avoid taking that hit?’

‘Yeah,’ she allowed, but her eyes were back on me. ‘So, you knew they were TASERs?’

‘Honestly?’ I let out a long breath. ‘No. You see a gun – or what looks bloody like a gun – pointed at you with clear intent, and that’s enough. You react. You don’t fixate on the weapon itself. It’s just an inanimate object. You look at the person behind it. Their eyes, their hands, the way they hold their shoulders. That’s what tells you they’re going to shoot.’