The retail stores had been closed for almost an hour and the boy looked too young to drive…maybe fifteen. Automatically, Cole noted the rest of his descriptors…about five-six, ninety-five to a hundred pounds; Caucasian, or possibly Hispanic since dark hair hung around his face; a Giant’s baseball cap worn backward; carrying a plastic shopping bag.
After a furtive look around, the boy turned in on the passenger side of an SUV several spaces down. Cole automatically headed that way to see what the kid was up to.
Suddenly the kid jumped back into the drive. Cole froze. He wore a plastic Elvis Presley mask and had the shopping bag pulled up over his left forearm…pointed straight ahead and held in place by the kid’s elbow pressed against his side. The plastic conformed to the shape of a gun muzzle inside. Now the bobbing of the kid’s head and shoulders looked like the twitches of a junkie.
After a glance around, the kid slid the bag down his arm far enough to display the butt of a compact semiautomatic…with the hammer cocked and his fingers gripping the weapon so tightly they were white. “Trick or treat.” He pulled the bag up again.
Cole spread his arms away from his body, and made his voice casual. “Are you sure you want to be doing this, partner?”
“Oh, shit!” The reedy voice cracked. “You’re a cop!”
A quick glance down showed Cole that his suit coat hung open far enough to reveal the star still clipped on his belt. Two thoughts raced through his head simultaneously: that he had to prevent the kid from wigging out, and get rid of him before Benay showed up.
Keeping his tone soothing, Cole said, “This doesn’t have to be a problem. Nothing’s happened yet. You can just put down the gun and walk away.”
“Oh, sure.” The hand in the bag twitched.
Cole forced himself not to wince.
“Then you’ll tackle me.”
“No. But if you’re worried, don’t turn away. Back off until you feel it’s a safe distance.” Just go, you little bastard; get the hell out of here.
The tweaker shifted from foot to foot. “As soon as I run, you’ll be on your radio, I bet. I gotta have a better edge than that.” His free right arm reached up across the top of his head, then dropped to rub at his left shoulder and fiddle with edge of the Elvis mask.
Cole waited for a glimpse of the face beneath, but the mask stayed in place.
As though driven by a will of its own, the arm flopped back across the top of the tweaker’s head. “I know. Go get in your car, the passenger side, and toss your gun in the back seat. And move easy.”
Cole moved as though carrying nitroglycerine. “You don’t have to do this.”
The tweaker followed, halting to the rear of the open door, where he stood shifting from foot to foot. His voice slid up a register, cracking. “I been in juvie once. I ain’t goin’ back.” Granite determination rang in the words. “Handcuff yourself behind your ankles.”
Cole breathed slowly. Their positions hid his hands from view, giving him the chance to use a technique he and Razor had practiced for just such situations. As he closed the first cuff around his left wrist, he deflected the rachet section so the blade slid along the outside of the cuff and the pieces overlapped instead of engaging. At the same time he squeezed the other cuff with his left hand, creating sound of a closing cuff. So far, so good.
As Cole started to run the chain behind his ankles, the tweaker said, “No, no…wait…wait. I got a better idea. Lock the other one around the adjustment bar down there in front of the seat.”
Cole complied. As soon as the tweaker left, he would pop the rigged cuff open and be home free.
The tweaker giggled. “I like that. It’s like the bar on the bench in Booking.” In Cole’s peripheral vision his whole body twitched. “It’s gonna be real embarrassing when you’re found and have to tell the other cops what happened. Oh…wait…wait.” He giggled again. “I got an even better idea.”
Peripheral vision caught the tweaker reaching into the car. The next second Cole felt the gun muzzle behind his ear. Surprise, anger, and terror collided in his head in screaming pandemonium. He wrenched desperately at the rigged cuff. No, wait! But before the cry left his throat, explosive pain hurled him into blackness.
Cole’s head snapped forward, staggering him. A spin and lurch against the Neon kept him on his feet. He clung to the spoiler while chaos echoed in his head and sent shivers through the rest of him. Shit. He never expected to relive the damned memory! Had it given him anything except a bad trip?
When the shivers subsided and all but the terror in the air around him faded, Cole realized it did give him more. The Elvis mask did not hide the shooter’s ears. They had no lobes, a distinctive enough feature to help identify him. And while the shooter might well be a kid — there were plenty these days capable of cold-blooded murder — he was no tweaker. Now Cole saw it had all been an act…designed to maneuver him into position for an easy kill. The proof was finding the Taurus. A real junkie would have sold it to a chop shop for drug money, not driven to San Jose and dumped it. Cole also doubted a junkie would bother hauling the body away.
So it was a hit. He had been set up.
The location and timing pointed toward Donald Flaxx arranging it. While the tweaker act seemed a complicated way to make a hit when a drive-by would do the job, it did keep things tidy. The car caught all the blood.
Cole knelt down to peer under the Neon and neighboring vehicles, searching the garage floor. Sure enough, the area looked clean. No stains that might be blood. No spent casing, either. With his body removed, nothing indicated a murder had taken place here. An important point considering the garage’s proximity to the Flaxx offices.
The trouble was, as much as he liked Flaxx for the hit, Flaxx had no motive. Flaxx could sneer at anything Benay found in the files. Criminally greedy pond scum he might be, but not stupid. Part of his arrogance included showing off how familiar he was with the search and seizure rules. So when Benay admitted she and Inspector Dunavan discussed searching the company books, Flaxx would realize it was an illegal search. Which made all her discoveries fruit of the poisoned tree…evidence inadmissible in court.
Cole climbed to his feet and started dusting off his knees before realizing what he was doing. Catching himself, he shook his head — reflexes! — and considered one other problem with Flaxx ordering the hit on him. How could it have been set up in the time between the call to Benay and when the shooter appeared?
Benay, on the other hand, had two days if she wanted him dead. His gut said no…something threatened her and he was still here I order to stop it. Yet the old saw about the fury of a woman scorned ran through Cole’s head. He leaned against the Neon, drumming his fingers on the spoiler, and considered the possibility Benay set him up. Killing him because of Monday seemed extreme, and even two days was not very long to find a hired gun. A psycho might lurk behind those butterflies, though, and, being someone who spelled “weekend” P-A-R-T-Y, she might have connections.
Still…he would swear the fear in her calls was real. Even in memory it felt palpable, as intense as his terror swirling around here.
Or was this his? He had been assuming so because he died here. Now something about it gave him doubts. Cole closed his eyes to concentrate…and found disbelief mixed in the terror, rather than his anger and surprise. This terror was someone else’s. Whose?
“Miss Benay? Sara? Was it you?”
What were the odds of an unrelated incident generating terror in this same spot. What created her terror, though?
Possibilities ran through his head. She came looking for him and arrived in time to witness him being forced into the car and killed. Paralyzed by shock, she stood there instead of running…and the shooter caught and shot her, too. Or she came looking for him and the shooter lay in wait to eliminate her. Her disbelief maybe came from being shot by a kid.