Fire Point (12 page)

39

Gretchen stood on the corner of California and 3
^rd
Street. Though she was still holding the puppy’s lead, the animal was gone. She tapped Krank’s number on the screen of her cell phone and waited. He picked up immediately. An elderly couple walked past her. She stood side on so that she had a view of the apartment building that she had just let Ryan Lock into.

‘What’s up?’ said Krank. ‘You get everything?’

‘You got someone looking for you. Think it’s the same guy that MG’s parents hired. His name’s Lock.’

When Krank next spoke, he sounded panicked. Gretchen enjoyed it. He wasn’t the ice-cold character he liked to project. He was alpha for sure, but he could still behave like a total pussy. ‘He didn’t catch you in the apartment, did he?’ Krank asked.

‘I was on my way out. But we had quite the talk about you.’

‘You did what?’ Now Krank sounded apoplectic. ‘Why did you do that?’

‘Chill,’ she told him. ‘I told him I lived upstairs and gave him a false name.’

‘You shouldn’t have done that. What if he figures out you’re lying?’

Gretchen rolled her eyes. Krank was such a worrier. He talked a good game, but sometimes she wondered if he was actually capable of putting his plans into action. ‘And how’s he going to do that? Relax. It’s fine. I got everything you asked me to pick up. I’ll be back at the house in an hour.’

40

Tarian Griffiths laid the phone on the kitchen counter. Teddy, already nursing the first Scotch of the day, stood next to her-ex-husband, Peter. Both men were expectant as they waited for news of how her call to Marcus had gone. Like everything else in her life with both men, it had fallen to her to actually do something about the mess they were in. Just once, she thought, she would have liked to be with a man who took charge of the situation rather than wringing his hands or pounding down whisky like they were about to stop distilling the stuff.

She managed something approaching a smile. ‘He’s coming over tonight.’

Both Teddy and Peter looked relieved. Tarian wasn’t certain that she was. She still wasn’t even sure this was the right thing to do. Part of her thought they should have gone with their initial gut instinct and called the police. After all, if Marcus had hurt someone . . .

She had spent an hour or so searching the internet for any report of a USC co-ed being murdered or attacked. Apart from a couple of stories that were a few years old, there was nothing recent. With the restraining order in place, she didn’t dare contact the girl directly to make sure she was okay. Although the court hadn’t prohibited her from such she didn’t want to raise suspicions.

Teddy had been the one to talk her round. What if Marcus hadn’t done anything? What if there was a perfectly innocent explanation for the blood on his shirt? Maybe he’d gotten into a bar fight. If they called the cops and they asked him about, she would have lost her son for good. He’d never trust any of his family again. Wasn’t it better that they confronted him themselves? If they didn’t believe his answers, Teddy had argued, then they could call the cops.

The seed of doubt Teddy had planted was all she had needed. Tarian had called Peter and they had agreed they would talk to Marcus together. But in order to talk to him they needed to persuade him to come home, and the way he had stormed out last time, Tarian knew that wasn’t going to be easy. They needed some kind of bait.

Marcus had a trust fund that had been part of her divorce settlement with Peter. They were co-signatories. Most of the money wouldn’t come to Marcus until he was thirty. It was one more thing that had driven a wedge between Tarian and her son. Marcus wanted the money now.

She had dropped a hint to Marcus during her phone call that they might have reconsidered. She hadn’t said anything upfront, just that she, Teddy and Peter wanted to discuss some financial matters with him, but first they needed to know he was stable enough to make good choices.

It had worked. After some discussion at the other end of the line, presumably with his ‘friends’, Marcus had told her he would be there at seven o’clock sharp.

‘How did he sound?’ Teddy asked.

‘Yes, was he okay?’ said Peter.

Tarian wasn’t sure how to answer. He sounded the way he had for the past year or more. Distant. Disconnected. The only time he didn’t sound like that was when he was screaming at them and blaming them, her in particular, for ruining his life.

‘He sounded like . . . I dunno, like Marcus.’ She looked at Teddy. ‘I don’t think the children should be here tonight. You know how he can get.’

Thankfully Teddy didn’t argue. ‘I’ll see if Sylvia can take them.’

Sylvia was Teddy’s cousin. She lived in West Hollywood. She was a little on the flaky side but the kids loved her and it would be only one night. ‘We should call Dr Stentz.’ He was a psychiatrist Marcus had seen before. ‘See if he can come over.’

Peter held up his hand. ‘Already did it. He’d be happy to help us.’

‘Speaking of which,’ Tarian said, ‘what about asking Ryan and his partner if they could be here?’

‘Ryan?’ said Teddy, staring at her over the top of his crystal tumbler as he drained the last of his Scotch.

She rolled her eyes. ‘Mr Lock, then. That better?’

Teddy tilted the glass and crunched loudly on an ice cube. He glanced at Peter. ‘She has the hots for him.’

To his credit, Peter cut him off. ‘I don’t think that is helpful.’

‘Should we ask him to come over, or not?’ said Tarian.

‘I can handle Marcus if he gets overexcited,’ Teddy said.

Teddy ‘handling’ her son was what worried Tarian. Teddy wasn’t the most diplomatic of men at the best of times. Mix in the best part of a bottle of whisky and it was a recipe for disaster if he and Marcus started to go at it. ‘That’s what concerns me, Teddy,’ she said.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Teddy shot back, his hackles rising.

Tarian bit her lower lip hard to stop herself responding. She didn’t need a row with Teddy. Not on top of everything else.

‘If I could say something,’ Peter said quietly. ‘If Marcus has hurt someone and these security consultants become aware of it, won’t they go the police?’

Teddy could barely keep the sneer out of his voice. ‘They both signed a non-disclosure agreement. I made sure of it.’

Peter wasn’t knocked off track. ‘I’m fairly sure knowledge of criminal activity trumps any NDA. And even if it doesn’t, if they do go to the police or the DA then suing them for breach of contract hardly matters.’

Despite his mild, almost meek manner, Tarian had forgotten what a voice of reason Peter could be. She’d never felt the excitement with him that she had with other men, but in a crisis he kept a cool head, unlike Teddy. ‘You’re right. We can’t get them involved.’

‘So what about the shrink?’ said Teddy. ‘Don’t we have the same problem with him?’

‘Patient-doctor confidentiality is a little more robust,’ said Peter. ‘He can claim an ethical exemption. In any case, if Marcus has hurt someone, we’ll have no choice but to go to the authorities, will we?’

Tarian looked from Peter to Teddy and back again. The weight of the question hung in the air between them. Could she turn in her own son? ‘There’s probably a simple explanation for all of this. Isn’t there?’

Neither man answered.

41

Gretchen heaved the last of the backpacks onto the kitchen table. As Marcus and the others busied themselves stacking the contents of the other two packs on the floor, ready for deployment, Krank opened the drawstring of the last. He began to take out boxes of ammunition. He stacked them neatly in blocks on the table. When he was done, he stood back, puzzled. ‘You’re missing a box,’ he said.

‘That’s not possible. I took everything that was in the apartment.’

‘You must have panicked when you saw that guy snooping around,’ said Krank.

Gretchen glared at him. ‘I’d already moved everything out before I even ran into him.’

Krank scraped an index finger down the block of boxes in front of him, counting off as he went. ‘There were nine boxes of these. I can only count eight.’

Gretchen rolled her neck, reaching up and probing at a knot in her upper back with her right hand. ‘Maybe one box fell out. I’ll go check the trunk.’

She skipped past him and out of sight. Gretchen never sweated this kind of stuff. That was why they needed her. No matter the situation, she could always be relied upon to stay calm.

Outside, she hit the clicker. The trunk popped open. She peered in. Nothing. Apart from a first-aid kit, and a spare handgun she kept in its carry case, the trunk was empty. She slammed the trunk shut and opened the rear passenger door. She checked the back seat and under the front seats. She closed the rear door and opened the front passenger door. The glove box was empty. Maybe Krank’s count was off.

Then she remembered.
Shit
. She had been clearing the dishwasher, and thinking what an idiotic hiding place it was when the puppy had started barking. As she’d gone to see if there was someone outside the apartment she had kicked over a bowl of water she’d put down for him. She’d closed the dishwasher door and cleaned up the mess. The puppy was still barking and circling by the door. She had grabbed the final backpack, left to put it in the car, and when she came back she’d forgotten about the last box of shells.

One her way out, after running a final check, which hadn’t included the dishwasher, she had run into that private security creep hired to babysit Marcus. The ammunition had gone clean out of her mind. Then, of course, she had let Lock into the building.

Gretchen speed-walked back inside the house. Krank was in the kitchen, busy drilling Marcus about how to handle dinner with his parents. Krank wasn’t going to like what she was about to tell him. ‘I fucked up,’ she said. ‘That last box is still in the apartment.’

Krank swiveled slowly to face her. Marcus and the others fell silent, and stared at their shoes.

‘You did what?’ said Krank.

Gretchen stood her ground, legs evenly apart, chest out, chin tilted up. ‘You heard me. I didn’t pick it up.’

Krank’s eyes narrowed. ‘You let that guy into the building. Which means he would have been in the apartment. And if he was in the apartment he would have found them.’

Gretchen shrugged. ‘So what if he did? Lots of people have stuff at home that they shouldn’t have. Guns. Blow. You had a box of ammo. Maybe you’re planning for the zombie apocalypse.’

‘Armor piercing,’ said Krank. ‘Illegal.’

Gretchen couldn’t help herself. She burst out laughing.

‘This shit isn’t funny,’ said Krank.

Her hand swept out, taking in all the gear stacked in the kitchen. Body armor, Bushmasters, handguns, incendiary grenades that Krank had conjured up from God knew where. ‘With what we have planned you’re worried about being
arrested
?’

Krank took a step toward her. Gretchen lowered her hand. It fell to the knife clipped onto her belt. Her fingertips stroked the handle.

‘If I’m arrested this is all over. Or if they find this place. What about that? It’ll all be over before we’ve gotten started,’ said Krank.

Gretchen stood her ground. ‘No one’s going to find anyone. No one knows about this place. Or any of this. So why don’t you stop acting like you have your period and chill out?’

The others were waiting to see how Krank would react. Would he freak out or stay calm? If it had been Marcus or Loser who’d admitted to a slip like this he would have been screaming by now. He wasn’t, though. His hands were bunched into fists and he was angry but he hadn’t gone crazy. He seemed to be thinking. After a few long moments of silence, he turned to Marcus.

‘See if your folks say anything about it. If they don’t bring it up, ask them about this Lock guy. Don’t say anything about knowing where he’s been. Let them do the talking. Soon as you know what’s going on, or what they know, you call us. Understand?’

Marcus swallowed so hard that everyone in the kitchen could hear it. ‘I understand.’

42

The armor-piercing bullet rolled across Ty’s open palm. .45-caliber. Copper-jacketed. Handgun ammo. Copper was soft. It allowed the charge to push through easier upon impact. When the government had banned Teflon-coated bullets, they hadn’t realized that the hard coating had nothing to do with the bullet’s ability to punch through armor. Teflon was used to protect the barrel and cut down on ricochet. After the ban, manufacturers had simply started using copper. Show me a law, thought Ty, and I’ll show you a way to work round it – or, in this case, simply make a bad situation worse.

A private individual couldn’t purchase ammunition like this for a handgun. But armor-piercing rounds for rifles were easy to come by. Not that they were always needed. If you had the correct rifle for the job, it didn’t matter too much. In reality, there was no such thing as bulletproof. Only degrees of bullet-resistant. But, for obvious reasons, handgun ammunition of this type was more tightly controlled.

Handgun ammo that could punch through a standard non-plated vest, though? That was a lot tougher to come by. But not impossible. Not if you found the right person at the right gun show. Ty guessed that was what Charles Kim had done. It would have been a two-minute transaction in the parking lot.

‘What do you think?’ Lock asked him.

Ty pinched the bullet between two fingers and held it up to the light streaming through the front windshield of Lock’s car. ‘This right here is cop-killer shit. You want to get a civilian wet, you don’t need anything close to this. Long as you can shoot straight and you have the right hardware, you’re already good to go.’

Lock didn’t say anything. He’d obviously had the same thought.

‘What else you find at Homeboy’s crib?’

Lock took out his cell, tapped at the screen and handed it to Ty. ‘Take a look.’

Ty took the phone and began to work through the pictures that Lock had taken inside the apartment. The wide shots of the hallway and rooms didn’t give much away, apart from the fact that the guy was a neat freak and kept his place clean. Ten pictures in, Ty got some close-ups of the bookshelves in the living room. He had to squint to make out the titles on the spines.

‘Your eyesight going south, Tyrone?’ said Lock.

‘Don’t worry about my eyesight. How about you maybe learn how to zoom the next time, motherfucker?’ said Ty.

Lock did a bad job of biting back a grin. Ty kept swiping until he got to the pictures of the bottom shelf. He looked up again from the screen. ‘Columbine. Sandy Hook. Virginia Tech. All the chart toppers.’

‘Keep going,’ said Lock.

Ty did. Not that he understood why Lock had developed such a sudden fascination with bathroom ceilings. He turned the cell around and held it up. ‘What am I supposed to be looking at?’

‘Absence of the normal. Presence of the abnormal,’ said Lock.

It was one of his partner’s little mantras. But Ty still didn’t know what Lock had seen when he took the picture that he was missing.

‘Or, in this case,’ said Lock. ‘presence of the normal.’

Ty could feel himself getting irritated. ‘We going to stand here and talk in riddles all day, or are you going to tell me what I’m missing?’

‘What did I say about the story the girl I ran into spun me about how she met Krank?’ said Lock.

Ty remembered. ‘The flooded shower?’

‘Exactly. Except the ceiling in his bathroom wasn’t damaged or patched.’

‘So maybe they took out the whole ceiling in there. Made over the whole thing.’

‘That’s what I wondered,’ said Lock. ‘So I went upstairs to check and guess what? Whoever I ran into doesn’t live in that apartment. So I got curious. I asked round some of the other people in that building. No one recognized the name Kimberley. There’s no one that lives in that building who matches the girl wit
h the French bulldog. In
fact, they don’t allow dogs that are any larger than handbag-sized.’

‘But she knew enough to make up some bullshit story about living there to throw you off the trail.’

‘And,’ said Lock, ‘she sure knows our boy.’

‘Girlfriend?’ Ty asked.

‘That’s what I’m thinking,’ said Lock. ‘But why say anything to me? Why not just keep walking when I ran into her?’

Ty didn’t have to give it much thought. ‘Why do people do dumb shit every day? Especially when they have something to hide.’

‘A lot of the time I think it’s because part of them wants to get caught. So their subconscious gives them permission to screw up.’

Ty smiled. ‘Maybe, but you might be going too deep. People do dumb shit because they think they’re smarter than they actually are. You ever hear of this thing called the Dunning-Kruger effect?’

Lock shook his head.

‘I read this article about it. These two professors at Cornell worked it out. A dumb asshole doesn’t know he’s a dumb asshole because he’s dumb. Instead, they think they’re slick. And smart folks listen to dumb people telling them they ain’t as smart as they think they are,’ Ty said.

‘I don’t know. She asked me a lot of questions too. Like who I was, and why I was interested in this guy.’

‘You didn’t tell her anything, though, right?’

‘Not much more than I was comfortable sharing.’

‘So what’s the problem, then? We’ve established that we’re not dealing with some kind of brains trust here.’

Lock stuck out his hand. Ty dropped the bullet into it. Lock put it back in the box with the others and jammed it back into the glove box of his Audi. ‘Well, let’s hope you’re right, because a dumb asshole with a bunch of these, and who-knows-what other hardware, can still cause a world of pain.’