The Memory Agent & Fool Me Once (4 page)

“Tell special agent Gray.”
 
Brent yells as he flies through the back door into the alley.
 
Brent spies Riker near the motorcycle.
 
Brent aims his gun.
 
“Riker!
 
Freeze!”

Riker turns and sees Brent.
 
Grinning like the devil, he calls out.
 
“Duke, help!”

Duke comes flying from his lookout spot near the entrance to the
alley.
 
He purposefully positions
himself between Brent and Riker, defending his brother.
 
Riker, having Duke as a human shield,
raises his gun and fires.

In the van…

Claire, in the midst of disassembling the surveillance equipment, hears
Victoria screaming for help into the microphone on Brent's glasses just as the
first
gun shot
goes off.

Claire, having heard the shot, flies out of the van, drawing her gun,
and hoofs it into the alley while calling on her earphone.
 
“Robbery in progress!
 
Gun shots fired behind Barkley' Jewelry
Store!
 
We need back up!
 
Now
!!!!”

In the alley…

Brent gets one shot off before two shots hit him.
 
The first shot, a wounding shot, hits
him in the shoulder.
 
The next shot
hits Brent directly between the eyes.
 
Brent falls to the ground dead.
 
It's unclear which brother shot the fatal shot.

Duke, having been hit in the head by Brent's bullet, spins from the
force of the bullet and falls face down on the pavement.
 
Riker high tails it down the alleyway
leaving behind his wounded brother.

Claire arrives on the scene just missing Riker.
 
She sees Brent’s lifeless body with the
bullet wound between his eyes.
 
“Oh, no.”
 
She sighs.

Claire approaches the other body that is face down on the pavement.
 
“At least Brent got Riker.”
 
Claire tries to reassures herself.

Claire turns the body over.
 
It's not Riker.
 
She studies
the face that's now covered with blood, recognition finally registering.
 
“Duke Reeves?”

Duke stirs.
 
He's not quite
dead, but close. He's a breath or two away from dying when Claire starts
CPR.
 
“Don't you dare die on me,
you bastard.
”
 

Claire continues with the CPR until the
EMTs
arrive
and take over.
 
Within moments the
alley is teeming with feds and cops.

Victoria, shaken, stands near the back door.
 
Claire joins her.
 
“What happened?”

“I came out to have a cigarette and this guy jumped me.
 
Showed me my son on his cell phone and
told me if I didn't fill a bag with jewelry he'd torture and kill him.”
 
Victoria relates as she wipes tears
from her eyes.

Claire takes Victoria by the arm and leads her to the seriously injured
and unconscious Duke.
 
“Was this
the man who held you up?”

“He's so bloody.”
 
Victoria
gasps in shock.

“Look at him, Victoria.
 
Focus.
 
Is he the man who
held you up?”
 
Claire states firmly
yet calmly.

Victoria focuses.
 
“No.”

Claire takes her smart phone from her pocket, finds a photo of Riker
Reeves on it and shows Victoria.
 
“Is this the man?”

“Yes.
 
That's him.”

Claire whistles to get the attention of the cops and feds on the
scene.
 
She hollers with
authority.
 
“Listen up,
everyone.
 
Riker Reeves has gotten
away.
 
He may be on foot.
 
Search the entire area.”

Gary Cahill, a CSI fed examines the area between Duke and Brent.
 
“Looks like there was a duel” he says
to Claire.

“I heard four shots, there are two in Brent, one fatal, one wounding,
and one in the perp.
 
I want to
know what happened to that fourth bullet.”
 
Claire commands.

“Maybe it's in Riker.
 
I'll
know more when I examine the guns.”
 
Gary responds as he inspects the crime scene.

“Be extremely diligent in your investigation.
 
I will not let Brent's killer go free on a
technicality.”
 
Claire says curbing
the emotion she’s now feeling for the loss of the
probie
.

The
EMTs
load Duke into the ambulance.
 
“I'm going to the hospital.”
 
Claire informs the feds and cops at the
scene.

In the hospital waiting area Claire sits alone, trying valiantly not to
drown in a flood of emotions.
 
She’s pissed that Riker got the better of her and got away and most
especially she’s saddened by the murder of Brent Langer.

Whitmore joins Claire and takes a seat next to her.
 
He sits close, their bodies touching as
if silently offering comfort and wanting comfort through the closeness. “You
were right.”
 
Whitmore reveals with
regret.

Claire cuts him off.
 
“Don't
go there, Whit.
 
You are not
responsible for what happened to Brent. That could have very easily been me in
that alley and it probably would have played out the exact same way.”

Whitmore didn't want to hear that, his eyes revealing that her loss
would hit him hard.
 
Claire sees it
and touches his hand, briefly, before re-focusing on work.
 
“This whole scenario makes no sense.
 
Riker knew
his target
location was compromised by Moose, thus the hit on Moose
.
 
He completely changed his MO.
 
And his brother, I thought Duke Reeves
was on parole?”

“He was until about a month ago.”
 
Whitmore shares with Claire.
 
“His probation ended early.
 
He was supposedly on a cross country fund raising motorcycle run serving
as the group's mechanic.”

“Why weren't we informed that his probation had ended?”
 
Claire wants to know.

“There's been no connection between the brothers since Duke went to
jail.
 
He was monitored but
considered low priority.”

“He's not low priority now.”
 
Claire states with determined vigor.

A doctor, wearing surgical scrubs, approaches. Claire and Whit stand and
join him.
 
“The bullet has been
removed,” the doctor reveals.
 
“But
there's still a fragment left.
 
He's stable but still critical. We'll have to do more surgery once the
swelling has subsided.”

“When can we talk to him?” Claire asks as she paces with nervous energy.

“We had to induce a coma before we could operate.
 
It might be some time before he's
cognizant,” the doctor shares before heading to the nurses’ station.

Whitmore touches Claire’s arm. “Come on, let's go get something to eat.”

“I'm staying here,” she declares.

“Why?
 
The
perp's
not going anywhere and we have a cop on guard.”

“He's our one link to Riker, Whit.”

“You're not going to get any information from an unconscious man.”

“No, but I want to be the first thing he sees when he wakes up.”
 
Claire asserts as she heads for Duke’s
room, leaving Whitmore alone.

Claire enters Duke’s private room.
 
Duke, his head bandaged, lies comatose in bed.
 
He's hooked up to various monitors and his right hand is
hand-cuffed
to the bed's railing.
 

Claire stands next to the bed, studying Duke.
 
The front of his hospital shirt is opened to allow for
monitors to be affixed to his chest.
 
His ruggedly handsome face looks peaceful, innocent; he’s a mix of raw
sex appeal and raw vulnerability.

She makes a call on her cell-phone.
 
“This is special agent Claire Gray.
 
I'd like you to gather all
intel
you can on Duke Reeves.
 
Riker Reeves' younger brother.”
 
She listens to the answer from the
other end of the call before responding gruffly. “I know we already have a
thick file on him.
 
I want a
thicker file.
 
Dig up everything
you can no matter how minor or insignificant you think it is.”

Claire ends
the call and takes a seat next to the bed.
  
She waits.
 
And waits.
 
Hours go by.
 
She dozes off.
 
Another hour goes by.
 
The ring of her cell-phone awakens
her.
 
She sees that it’s Gary from
the CSI fed unit calling and answers the call.
 
“What do you got?”
 

*****

Claire rushes into the FBI CSI lab and joins Gary.
 
His eyes widen when he notices how
ragged she looks.
 
“With all due
respect, Special Agent…”

“I know. I look like crap.
 
Tell me what you got.”

“We found the fourth bullet.
 
It was lodged in the siding four feet above and three feet to the right
of the doorway to the jewelry store.”
 
Gary informs Claire.

“High and wide.”
 
Claire
calculates.

“This bullet came from the same gun that shot the fatal shot.”

“Duke Reeves' gun?”
 
Claire
asks.

“No.
 
Presumably
Riker’s gun.
 
The same make
and model as Duke's gun.
 
Duke's
gun shot the wounding shot to agent Langer, not the fatal shot.”
  
Gary approaches a computer
monitor.
 
“Based on the body
positions and bullet trajectories, this is how we believe the scene went down.”

Gary displays a crime scene reenactment image on a large computer
monitor.
 
“Once Riker obtained the
jewels from Victoria he headed towards the motorcycle that was parked here.”

Gary points at the computer monitor.
 
“Agent Langer exited from the back door of the store and
made it as far as where he fell here.”

Gary points to a different location on the monitor.
 
“Duke Reeves must have come from this
direction and positioned himself between Riker and agent Langer.”

Gary continues to point out the computerized reenactment on the screen.
“The first bullet shot was the one that landed in the siding.
 
The next two shots were probably fired
fairly simultaneously and those two shots were the shot fired by agent Langer
that hit Duke and the wounding shot fired by Duke.
 

“Riker shot the fourth shot, the fatal shot that hit agent Langer.
 
Agent Langer only got one shot off, and
he may have been aiming at Riker who was standing here.”
 
Gary points at the screen.
 
“Duke either was in the way or got in
the way.”

“So Duke could have taken a bullet for his brother much like he took the
fall for him three years ago.”
 
Claire infers.

Gary continues.
 
“What's
curious is Victoria's statement.
 
She claims that once she gave Riker the bag of jewels he told her that
he really didn't have her son and then sauntered, didn't hurry, towards the
motorcycle.”

“Why would he do that?
 
Why
would he expose the one piece of leverage he had over her unless he wanted to
get discovered?
 
He must have
figured she would have screamed as she did.” Claire thinks aloud.

Claire paces, continuing to share her thoughts with Gary.
 
“Maybe he wanted agent Langer out in
the alley to engage him in a gun fight.
 
He must have assumed that the security guard was an undercover agent
since Moose, the informant, was killed.
 
That's why Riker shot Langer in the head and not the chest.
 
He would have figured he was wearing a
vest.

Claire stops her pacing.
 
Her face goes pale.
 
“Riker
shot to kill.”