B007GFGTIY EBOK (23 page)

“But I’ll need another injector. Duke broke it during our fight.”

This fiasco wasn’t getting better. Lockhart wasn’t going to be pleased.

“Is there anything else I should know?”

“He knows my name.”

Beckerman cursed silently.

“But don’t worry, I’ll finish him tomorrow.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

“I am going to get paid, right?”

“You’ll get what’s owed. Let’s meet tomorrow morning, oh-six-hundred. You know where.”

T
he rising sun spread light over the delta. The chill in the air was enough for Beckerman to pull the zipper up another inch on his jacket. People forgot that California was essentially an irrigated desert. It got cold at night and it took time for the sun to warm everything back up.

He stood atop the levy. At his feet, the river slid by effortlessly. The gray water resembled sheet metal rolling off a mill. He surveyed the levy on both sides. No early-morning joggers or dog walkers. Not that he expected many. Urban sprawl had yet to invade out here.

The crunch of dry grass behind Beckerman disturbed the perfect calm.

“Good morning, Tony.”

“Christ, you’ve got good ears.”

He didn’t. Not really. He just knew how to listen.

“Where’s your bike?”

“I stashed it a couple of miles back up the road, but I bet you heard that, too.”

He had.

He’d listened to Mason clamber up the levy. The guy labored too hard up the steep incline. Mason was out of shape, but he didn’t need to listen to his heavy breathing to know that. Mason should have been able to cover the two-mile distance in well under twenty minutes. Hiring him had been a big mistake.

Mason stopped next to him and stared at the river. He looked like shit. His fatigue jacket and jeans were scuffed with grime and the right knee of his jeans was ripped. “You and your super power. You always did have ears like a damn dog. What did they call you in the Gulf?”

“Who fucking cares? The Gulf was a long time ago.”

“Wake up on the wrong side of the bed this morning?”

“Don’t expect me to be pleased to see you after your fiasco yesterday.” Beckerman stuffed his hands deeper into his pockets.

“Hey, you can’t blame me for that.”

“Can’t I?”

“OK, you can.” Mason walked to the river’s edge and turned around. He blocked Beckerman’s view of the idyllic scene. “I fucked up, but I’ll put it right.”

“Did Duke do that to your face?”

Mason frowned and touched his swollen eyebrow. “Yeah. And, he busted up my kneecap. I’ll have to see a doctor.”

“Jesus. Duke is a civilian. You’re supposed to be a trained professional.”

“What can I say? He knew how to handle himself.”

“And you didn’t. I’m sorry, Tony. You’re off the job.”

“I’m being paid what I’m owed, right?”

“You were paid twenty-five hundred up front. That’s yours. And under the circumstances, I think I’m being charitable.”

Mason stabbed a finger in Beckerman’s direction. “That’s only half.”

“You didn’t complete the job.”

“Fuck you, Beckerman. I want my money.”

Mason made a move for Beckerman. Beckerman didn’t hesitate and squeezed the trigger on the Colt hidden in his jacket pocket. The ejected shell brushed the back of his hand.

The bullet stuck Mason in the groin. The man doubled up, blood spilling between his clenched fingers. His legs buckled and he dropped to his knees.

“You bastard,” Mason croaked. He reached behind him for something in his waistband.

“You armed, Tony?”

Mason said nothing and continued to wrestle with whatever was tucked in his waistband. The bullet to the groin had robbed him of his coordination. His hand flailed but wasn’t going to connect with its prize anytime soon.

Beckerman removed the automatic from his pocket and crossed the short distance to Mason. He jammed the Colt’s muzzle against Mason’s head, slapped his captive’s arm away from his back, and jerked a Smith & Wesson Chief’s Special from his waistband.

“Don’t you trust me, Tony?”

“What do you think?”

Beckerman pistol-whipped Mason with his own revolver, sending him sprawling. Then he tossed the Smith & Wesson toward his car.

“Don’t worry about seeing a doctor for your kneecap.” Beckerman fired a round into Mason’s knee and he screamed out, following it with a string of curses. It was a mean move, but it immobilized him, leaving Beckerman to work in relative comfort. Not taking any chances, he picked up the spent shell casings.

“Don’t be such a baby.” Beckerman returned to his car and retrieved a length of chain and three padlocks from his open trunk.

Mason had crawled down the levy—or rolled to be more exact. He’d gotten only a few feet. It was pointless, as it’d taken him thirty minutes to jog two miles without a couple of bullet wounds. Beckerman put it down to the indomitable human spirit. Rousing stuff.

Beckerman snatched a fistful of Mason’s collar and dragged him back to the top of the levy. “You’re not going anywhere.”

“You piece of shit.”

He chained Mason’s wrists and ankles behind him and padlocked it all together. He’d pulled the chain so tight he was already cutting off Mason’s circulation.

“You won’t get away with this,” Mason growled.

“You’d be surprised what I get away with.”

Beckerman kicked Mason in the side, rolling him over. Mason tipped over the levy’s edge and momentum took over. He rolled over and over and into the river. He hit the water hard, disappearing below the surface in an instant.

Beckerman clambered down the levy into the water, then waded out to Mason. Air bubbled to the surface from Mason’s nose and mouth. He thrashed as best he could to get his head above water. Trussed up, he wasn’t going anywhere. If he thought instead of panicked, his natural buoyancy would have brought him to the surface. But Mason had proved that he wasn’t a thinker. Beckerman grabbed Mason’s collar and pulled his head above the surface. The frantic thrashing ceased, and Mason sucked in ugly breaths. He panicked again when Beckerman brought out his Colt. Beckerman pushed Mason’s head below the water to give him something else to think about and waded out until he was knee-deep.

The river looked slow-moving, but the current was strong. Beckerman knew the river well and banked on its power to do his work for him.

Mason’s head popped above the water. “No,” he screamed.

“But yes,” Beckerman said and pressed the Colt against the back of Mason’s head. Mason stiffened. He knew what was coming. Beckerman fired two rounds into his captive’s head. The large-caliber rounds removed half of Mason’s face—a helpful but unnecessary fringe benefit. If he was doing a thorough job, he would have removed the head and hands to prevent identification, but thanks to Mason’s sloppiness, his identity was known.

The pistol had ejected the two spent shell casings into the water. He liked things tidy and would have preferred to collect them, but in the scheme of things, it didn’t matter. He hadn’t left any trace or fingerprint evidence and it was unlikely anyone would find the casings after the river had its way.

Mason was still now. A red cloud blossomed in the steel-gray waters and rapidly lost its cumulous shape in the current, becoming an elongated streak of pink within seconds. Beckerman strode out until the water was chest high before he released the dead man. The river took Mason and the chains dragged him below the surface.

Santiago felt a flush of excitement when Hayden produced the weapon Mason had tried to use on him. He held it up to the light by the corner of its sealed plastic bag. The device might have been cracked and split, but one part remained intact—the rectangular aperture with the rounded corners. Without a doubt, he knew it would fit perfectly with the bruises on his three “suicides.”

He put Hayden and Rebecca in the department’s briefing room with coffee and bagels while he rallied the troops. Rice and Dysart arrived a half hour later and Santiago closed the door. He slid the bagged contraption across the table to Dysart. The coroner investigator examined the device through the bag. He brought out a pair of calipers, measured the opening, and nodded. The results were in. Santiago had his answers.

“Do you know what that thing is?” Hayden asked after watching the back and forth.

“Yes I do,” Dysart said.

“Anything said here doesn’t leave this room, OK?” Santiago told Hayden and Rebecca.

“You have our word,” Rebecca said, answering for both of them.

Santiago had noticed how they’d become a duo over the course of this train wreck of an investigation. They didn’t make independent decisions. What went for one went for the other. It made dealing with them somewhat easier. It only got difficult for him if they disagreed with him. Then they became an awkward bargaining unit that he had to struggle to break.

Dysart rose from his seat and placed the device in front of Rebecca and Hayden. Santiago and Rice left the comfort of their seats for a closer look.

“This is a powder-injection syringe. They’ve been around for a while, but they’re still relatively uncommon.”

“So this is the solution for people who don’t like needles?” Rice asked.

“Yes and no. It helps, but it wasn’t developed for that reason. Needleless injections have their advantages. The likelihood of infection and cross-contamination are eliminated because the skin is never broken. Plus, less drug is needed.”

“How does it work?” Rebecca asked.

Dysart grabbed the pen Santiago was holding. Santiago recognized this as the nearest Dysart could get to acting out. He kept his playful nature for the cops, but he was always a professional in front of the public.

Dysart pointed with the pen to what looked like a supersized vitamin pill. “The drug is held in this cassette. Behind the cassette is this canister filled with pressurized helium. When the button is pressed on the end here, the helium is released. It busts through the cassette, snatches up the particles of the drug, and is fired at a high velocity into the epidermis.”

“Does it hurt?” Rebecca asked.

“There’s some discomfort. The patient is being jabbed by thousands of minuscule particles shot-blasted into the flesh, but it’s nothing major. It’s less painful than a conventional hypodermic needle, but it does leave this bruise, which fades soon after.”

“The bruise has been a common feature of late,” Santiago said, returning to his seat. “Shane, Sundip Chaudhary, and Malcolm Fuller all had a rectangular bruise on their bodies. It’s shaped exactly like this.” Santiago tapped the opening on the needleless syringe. “The bruise has bugged me since day one. Although I told you that Shane and Chaudhary had a narcotic in their bloodstream, the autopsy revealed no signs of ingestion or needle tracks.”

“After the tox screen came back positive for narcotics, I had the bruised tissue excised and analyzed,” Dysart said. “It came back with a high concentration of the drug.”

Santiago let Dysart take the glory for this result by not mentioning it was his insistence that the bruised area be tested. He’d keep that tidbit in his back pocket and pull it out when he needed something fast-tracked.

“Did you find these syringes on Shane, Chaudhary, or Fuller?” Rebecca asked.

“No, we didn’t,” Rice said.

“So, someone drugged Shane.” Rebecca’s eyes glistened with welling tears. The tears weren’t just of sorrow but of vindication. She now had proof for what she had always believed. “Someone did this to him.”

“What about Trevor Bellis?” Hayden asked.

Bellis was the odd man out. He’d come back clean and sober. No bruise. No drugs. His fingerprints were on the shotgun. He’d pulled the trigger knowing full well the consequences of his last action. Santiago couldn’t imagine the courage Bellis had summoned up to take his life. People saw victims of suicide as cowards. Yes, they ran away from their problems by jumping off a rooftop or eating a bullet, but a person required guts to follow through on the deed.

“There’s no doubt over his suicide.”

“Why did he kill himself?” Rebecca asked.

“Guilt,” Rice ventured. “It was no coincidence his suicide came after all his people had been killed.”

“So he knew what was going on,” Hayden said.

“That’s our guess,” Rice said. He was about to say more but one glance from Santiago told him it wasn’t advisable. Santiago had embarked on a sharing exercise with Hayden and Rebecca, but it only went so far. He guided the conversation back to subjects he wanted to cover.

“Getting back to Mason. You gave us a pretty good description and we might even get lucky with some prints off the syringe, but what about the fire at MDE? I know you only saw a reflection of the person that attacked you, but could he have been the man?”

Hayden reflected for a moment before shaking his head. “No. Wrong body type. The guy at MDE was tall and lean. Mason was stocky. Strong but out of shape.”

A swing and a miss, Santiago thought. The news didn’t disappoint him. While it would have been nice if the arsonist and Mason were the same person, he hadn’t expected them to be. There’d been too much collateral damage for it to be one man’s work.

Santiago stood. “I’d like to thank you for your time.”

Hayden frowned. “You’re squeezing us out.”

“You’ve given me a lot to look into. I can’t do it with you at my side. What I need you to do is stay out of trouble. Stick together. If any strangers come knocking, you call me.”

Hayden’s expression said he didn’t buy the argument, but he didn’t complain. He and Rebecca stood, and Rice saw them out.

“Now that the kids have gone, can we talk using big words?” Dysart said.