Perfect Killer (10 page)

Darryl Talmadge's collapse on the VA hospital floor dominated Clark Braxton's flat-panel computer monitor. The General pushed his Aeron chair back from his black granite slab desk to give Frank Harper a better look.

Harper studied the image, leaning one bony hand on the brilliantly polished desk and the other on his polished briar cane with the brass knob cast from melted shell casings he had collected from the sands at Juno Beach. Braxton resisted the impulse to remove the old doctor's hand from his desk and polish away the residue left behind. He loathed having other people's bodily oils on his belongings.

Instead, the General studied Harper's faint trembling. Secretly, Braxton had learned Harper's new palsy had lately begun to overwhelm the Parkinson's medication. Despite this, Harper's back was straight and his bearing sufficiently military and his intellectual capacities still useful enough to warrant Braxton's continued association.

"Would you like a chair?" Braxton made sure not to sound overly solicitous. When Harper shook his head, his sparse, down-fine, white hair swayed, then landed in disarray. Chaos irritated Braxton and he turned toward the window. The General stared at his own well-crafted image in the glass, mirrored by the darkness beyond. His frown deepened as he visualized the well-remembered view down the hill—
his hill.
Braxton's frown embraced the small brushy patch at the base that belonged to a stubborn son of a bitch in the ersatz Spanish stucco McMansion on Oakville Crossroad who kept jacking up the asking price.

That brushy patch remained the sole piece of his hill he had not been able to acquire. The arrogant bastard had let the land go to hell, didn't even have the decency to plant grapes on it. The parcel left a breach in security and posed a severe brush-fire hazard.

A recurring fantasy visited him now, replaying images of a solitary jog through vineyards glowing with the faint green haze of spring. Corning round a row, he confronts the stubborn landowner and settles the dispute with a lethally honed grape knife, crescentcurved and wicked with serrations. Braxton's frown vanished as he unzipped the man from sternum to scrotum. Then the General smiled, visualizing the first sip of wine made from the grapes fattened on the man's blood.

Reluctantly, Braxton turned back toward Harper. On the flat-panel display, a burst of white coats and scrubs exploded into Talmadge's room. The phone on Braxton's desk rang then; Braxton hit the pause button on the video stream, freezing two uniformed MPs in midlunge.

"Braxton," the General barked into the mouthpiece. He tilted his head as he listened.
"Ben, how many times do I have to tell you, price is not the issue?" Braxton dosed his eyes for a moment and squeezed the bridge of his nose.
Harper watched the microtremors ripple across Braxton's jaw that indicated he needed to adjust the General's medication. Harper had trained himself to see the symptoms where others couldn't. That's why he and he alone treated the General. The speed with which the tremors intensified now alarmed him.
"Just get me the fucking wine, Ben!" Braxton's voice carried a deep, honed menace few ever cared to provoke. "This is my
collection
and it is incomplete. Incomplete! Do you know what that means? It means this collection is worthless—worthless—without that 1870s solera vertical....
"Yes, I know I've already spent millions, but this is not about the money; this is about having a complete collection. Complete!"
Braxton listened for a few more seconds. "Ben, I am paying you for results. Get me the collection or get the hell out of my life!"
Harper looked discreetly out the window as Braxton struggled not to slam down the receiver. The dosage and formula of the General's drug cocktail had become increasingly complicated with week-to-week and sometimes daily adjustments needed. Neither the General nor any other person knew how much effort Harper put into keeping one of his oldest surviving patients on an even keel.
After hanging up the phone, Braxton restarted the Talmadge video. After Braxton's microtremors subsided, Harper said, "I still don't understand why you didn't have Talmadge killed like the others."
Braxton offered the old Army physician another question: "Well, for one thing, have you recovered the old microfilmed files
you
left in Belzoni?"
Harper sighed and, with considerable effort, straightened up and faced Braxton. He was taller than the General and more than two decades older. When he spoke, his voice failed to hide his own lack of patience.
"Obviously I would have told you if I had. Why do you keep giving me that question instead of an answer?"
"Because you keep asking me that very obvious question." Braxton worked to maintain a neutral tone. "You know darned well our Mr. Talmadge got his hands on those records and his do-gooder lawyer burned them all on CDs. For all we know, lawyer Shanker or an ally made arrangements to have the CDs turned over to the press if Talmadge dies in our hands." Braxton paused to select a tone of voice conveying the appropriately serious edge. "The problem with old men is that time and guilt loosens their lips. When consequences disappear, people do things that we can't tolerate."
"Clark, you know that without the microfilm of the documents, or your testimony, the CD copies can be dismissed as forgeries," Harper responded. "Something concocted by desperate people who want to block your election." He paused. "Besides, the real dynamite is still here." He tapped his head.
Braxton shook his head. "Frank, with all due respect"—
which is rapidly diminishing, you old fool,
Braxton thought—"you simply don't understand the process. All those ankle-biting Chihuahuas in the media have to do is release the CD a couple of weeks before the election and I've lost."
Harper shrugged.
"Until we find those documents—and any copies which might be out there—we cannot be sure, and until we are sure, my bid to rescue this great country from its own sloppy foolishness is in grave danger."
"Yes, yes." Harper waved his free hand about. Braxton noted that Harper had, indeed, left a handprint on the black granite. "But don't you think the longer he continues this"—Harper pointed toward the screen—"this repeating drama, the greater the danger?"
Damn! The old fool was losing it. And he's wasting my time as well,
Braxton thought as his eyes strayed to his desk and the two unread hardcover thrillers by David Baldacci and Dale Brown. They were his favorite authors and had much rather be reading them rather than nursemaiding a broken-down old sawbones.
"Frank, you're a brilliant physician, a gifted researcher, and a loyal, patriotic soldier who has served his country well." Braxton turned toward Harper and placed his hand on the old man's shoulder and felt the bones. "You understand the inner workings of the human body, and I, for one, am grateful for your work." Braxton paused as he shifted from the richly warm congratulatory tone that had brought a smile to Harper's face, to one now of wisdom and caution.
"But, Doctor, dealing with these sorts of situations is not your expertise. The Good Lord didn't bless me with the immensity of your intellectual gifts, but he did give me an operational sense of how to handle things such as this, and I think you should let me worry about that. It's worked well so far—this division of labor—for damned close to forty years, hasn't it?"
Braxton paused. "Think about it: How many from your original program are left?"
"Only Talmadge and you," Harper said without hesitation. "We have a few more recent head-wound veterans using the medications, but those are administered indirectly"
"And who knows the whole story from beginning to end?"
"Just you and I."
"There," Braxton said. "See? I've done all right with that part of things, have I not?"
Harper offered an uneasy smile. "I only wish I had been as successful with the others." He nodded toward the screen.
Braxton was disappointed at Harper's swift concession. Not long ago, Harper had been a formidable intellectual opponent. They had enjoyed sparring and Braxton didn't always win. But, the General knew, it was time for being graceful.
"Frank, I admit we failed by not taking Talmadge out before he fell into the hands of people we don't yet control. But by the time we found out, he was spilling the beans to the shrinks in Jackson. You know as well as I do, we can't do anything while he's in custody. That would only invite more questions. Things will change after my election, but until then we need to work with what we have.
"But you have to admit his mental condition and the nature of his crime pretty much destroyed his credibility. Nobody wants to believe a man like that."
Harper shrugged and made his way to the window "Except for Jay Shanker and the nosy bitches at the legal foundation." He looked over at Braxton. "And of course we still have the daughter to contend with and she's as bad as her mother. And there's Stone."
"I disagree. She's not half the lawyer her mother was. And we're well on the way to taking care of Stone."
"Oh, yes, your crack teams have taken very good care of him so far"
"Stone's a capable man," Braxton said evenly enough to keep the brief flare of anger from showing on his face. "He's a natural two-percenter—and not one of ours. We have ways to handle him."
"How— "
Braxton shook his head. "You don't want to know." He nodded. And the gas chamber will take care of Talmadge. Either that or the cancer. That's my bet." Braxton faced his old comrade. "Frank, things will be fine so long as
your
records don't emerge from the grave
you
were supposed to put them in."

Jasmine's head rested on my right shoulder. We leaned against each other in adjoining plastic chairs in an unoccupied office at the LAPD's Pacific Division Headquarters. She slept lightly, wrapped in a borrowed blanket.

The open door gave on to a fluorescent-lit deskscape of paper, phones, and tired people winding down their watch. At the far corner, two uniformed officers and a plainclothes detective escorted a handcuffed man tagged with prison tattoos out of an interview room, the same one I had occupied for almost two hours. Events before then had been predictable: first there was one black-and-white, then a Smokey-and-the-bandits parade populated by backup uniforms, plainclothes detectives, scene supervisors, crime scene van, forensic techs, then finally the coroner and a meat wagon.

Jasmine and I had made things as easy for them as possible. We bagged my gun and our assailant's in separate Ziplocs, labeled them properly, and set them on the kitchen counter before going outside to wait.

Then they brought us here to the architecturally undistinguished building on Culver Boulevard just off Centinela in a nondescript neighborhood filled with two- and three-story stucco apartment buildings, strip malls, gas stations, and dueling gang graffiti.

Across the big squad room, Darius Jones, the detective sergeant who had driven us here, emerged from the watch commander's office shaking his head. I heard nothing, but someone in the office must have spoken because the detective stopped in the doorframe and turned around. He stood a couple of inches taller than me, nearly as broad in the shoulders, a lot sloppier at the waist, and nearly filled up the doorframe. He'd played defensive tackle for USC until he'd blown out his right knee at the end of his senior year.

Darius Jones shrugged and continued to shake his head as he headed toward the main reception area. My stomach growled; I rubbed at the stubble on my jaw with my free hand and checked my watch. Again.

Hours had dragged by after detectives had interviewed Jasmine and me and then quickly agreed it was self-defense. But because there had been a homicide, Jones needed his supervisor's okay to let us go. Approval took a lot longer than expected thanks to a platoon of Oakwood boys who showed up in rival gang turf a couple of blocks away with Molotov cocktails and large-caliber weapons.

I tried now to enjoy the feeling of Jasmine's head against my shoulder, but the intractable fatigue and adrenaline hangover of the past twelve hours had left me drained, distracted, and dwelling on death. In a previous life, I had seen a lot more than the average person and had frequently been on the dealing end of it in service to my government.

During that time I had casually ridden a ballistic path of workaday death and risk that I accepted as an inevitable part of my personal trajectory. My acceptance didn't change until the day I realized death wasn't only for the other guy. My finger grew more reluctant on the trigger then I started to wonder where people went when they turned into one more seeping sack of organic soup waiting for the cell walls to burst and feed the waiting bacteria. I struggled with the durability of consciousness and realized it was the only thing that mattered. If you're unaware of being alive, then dying's not all that different. Did death represent the irrevocable loss of that individual or could a disembodied mind prevail? If it prevailed, was it our soul? Questions led to more questions. Was consciousness our soul peeking dimly through the meat-ware of the human body? Did bad people have good souls sabotaged by bad meatware?

No memorable epiphany stands out; no discrete single event redirected me from killing to healing. The process ran more like dust accreting on one side of a balance scale until one day it tipped, propelling me out of one life into another. Medical school turned me into a better than competent but less than brilliant neurosurgeon. Nevertheless, I reveled when I opened a cranium and moved my fingers and instruments among the living stuff that made someone who he was. Making him well felt even better, especially when I had cut away a tumor or relieved a pressure and had returned a profane, vile patient back to the congenial, likable person he had once been.

The most poignant cases came from the families of patients accused of the most hideous crimes, criminals whose malevolent creativity produced horror that seemed to verify the existence of evil.

"Please tell us it's a brain tumor," the families would plead. "Or an artery blockage or same sort of lightning storm in the brain cells." Something,
anything
that could be seen, touched, treated, removed, that would confirm that this loved person was not evil, only suffering from a merely physical lesion, which would absolve them of crime and guilt.