The left side.
He turned, getting his body position correct to match the spatter from the crime-scene photos. A bit awkward but, as Dray had noted, certainly possible. He turned his head another inch and raised an imaginary pistol to his left temple. His attention snagged on one of the belts Bear had knocked to the carpet. Two distinct indentations about three inches apart notched the width of the brown leather.
He froze, staring at the familiar grooves. Standing, he went to the closet, picked up the empty holster. He pulled his own holster off his belt and slid Tess's on. The spring clip clamped down on his belt, matching the indentations.
Tess's bloodless hand in the autopsy photo had shown a filed nail on the right index finger, shorter than the rest. It wasn't a repaired break, as he'd thought; Tess kept it cut, as Dray did hers, so it wouldn't catch in the trigger guard.
Knowing of Tess's left-handedness, the killer had made the logical-and incorrect-assumption. Three words-"the left side"-had told Walker all he'd needed to know. A right-handed shooter would not leave a suicide bullet wound in her left temple.
The image of Tess at gunpoint, being posed suicide style by her killer, brought forth in Tim a familiar wrath. What had the killer threatened her with to get her to sit still? To hold her position? What thoughts had run through her head in her final seconds of life once she'd grasped the inevitable?
Bear returned. "The kid says she used that computer every day, and there were no repairs-" He halted in the doorway, taking in the empty holster fastened to Tim's belt. He blinked twice, the cogs meshing. "No," he said. "Really?"
Tim held up a hand, still aligning the remaining pieces. Walker's First Force Recon photo, his rifle slung right to left. The effortless righthand stab into Boss's neck.
Bear yanked the door shut behind him. "But Tess was left-handed. Why would she shoot right?"
"Because her right-handed brother taught her to shoot."
Bear's whistle dropped from high to low. "We'll get it reopened as a homicide."
"Looks like someone already beat us to the punch."
"Yup. Great." Bear ran his hand over his weary face, tugging his jowls even lower. "So what's next?"
Chapter 34
Lights killed, the oversize Bronco idled beneath an overhang of pepper tree branches, Ted Sands's complaints from the cargo area muffled by a gag. Walker had taken care to dress Ted's visible half appropriately-dinner jacket, bow tie, starched shirt, even a white handkerchief teased into view. Important to observe proper etiquette. Sounds of the party trickled up the unreasonably broad street, reaching Walker at the steering wheel. Of all the Bel Air estates he'd passed, the Kagan mansion had the grandest setback, a rambling garden decorated with stone walls, trickling fountains, koi-stocked ponds, and a leisurely walk that diverged into loops before widening into a circular, bench-fringed patio about ten yards from the imposing front door of the main house.
It was a quarter past ten, and from the jazzish tunes and conversational hum pouring over the house with the glow of strung Asian lanterns, the backyard party was in full swing. The valets remained around the corner, their station positioned before the south entrance's adorned gates that led to the bash. Deliveries to the rear kitchen off the service road appeared to have slowed. The house front, a classic two-story rise, didn't seem of a particular style. Like its neighbors, it just seemed mansiony.
And right now it seemed quiet.
Keeping the Bronco's lights off, Walker accelerated up the dark street, braking sharply at the top of the walk. He got out, his slamming door renewing Ted's stifled pleas. Moving briskly, efficiently, Walker swung out the carrier and opened the tailgate, leaning the two aluminum strips into place. Encased in his concrete block atop the flatbed dolly, Ted jounced down the ramp. Hands on his shoulders, Walker pushed him, jerking in his mold and yelling into a mouthful of balled cotton, up the front walk. At the circular patio, Walker dumped the block off the dolly, the weight of it cracking the flagstone.
He stood over Ted, wide-stanced. A jerk of his wrist and the steel blade flicked out from the handle. "Hold this." Walker spun the knife, reclaimed it in a fist, and punched it down into the dense muscle of Ted's shoulder. Bellowing, veins raised in his flushed neck, Ted fought to free his hands but succeeded only in rebreaking the scabs ringing his wrists.
Walker pulled a grenade from one of his many cargo pockets, and the whites of Ted's eyes seemed to dilate. Ted fought desperately to say something. Walker pulled out his gag. Before Ted could scream, Walker rammed the grenade in his mouth and secured it with electrical tape, which he double-wound around Ted's head. Ted was screaming now, the noise no louder than the distant beat of the swing number struck up by the band.
Walker jogged up the wide steps to the massive porch. Dark strips of plexi-coating showed at the edges of the windowpanes-they were bullet-resistant. He saw deep into the house, past the dark front rooms. In the kitchen an imperious catering captain paced before her cowed waitstaff, barking orders, Patton gone gourmet. A plastered guest loosed his cummerbund and headed into a restroom.
Unspooling a few feet of fishing line, Walker tied an improvised clinch knot around the well-polished brass door handle and rang the bell. An exclamation from within.
The monofilament let out with a zip as he moved swiftly back down the walk. Ted stopped fighting the block once Walker slipped a finger through the grenade pin sticking up above the band of electrical tape. He tugged the knife from Ted's shoulder, freeing a blood flow that saturated the ivory polyester of the dinner jacket. Cutting the fishing line from the spool, he tied the end to the grenade ring.
A shrill, barely audible voice from the house: "Edwin, I don't know why, but someone's arrived at the front door."
Walker set his full weight behind a boot and shoved the block back a few screeching inches, bringing the line taut. Ted leaned forward as far as the concrete would allow, but still Walker could've strummed a high C on the razor-straight line.
Ted hyperventilated in pained grunts, snot flaring from his nostrils, eyes fixed on the burgundy front door.
From inside came the officious approach of heels on marble.
Walker nudged Ted's bow tie straight, drew himself up, and stared down at Ted's contorted form. "In ten seconds your head will explode."
He flashed off, his jungle boots slapping the flagstone.
Chapter 35
Tim crouched over the blown-wide mass of flesh protruding from the neck. A chunk clung to a strip of seared electrical tape. "We ain't getting a dental."
Bear flipped back the tattered jacket, worked free a slim leather bill-fold, and laid it open. "Ted Sands, if we believe this."
They'd blocked off the street, but at the cordon the TV-crew lights made it look like dawn. The tux-and gown-clad guests had made a mass exodus, swarming the valets by the south gates like penguins jockeying for cliff position above shark-infested waters. Roped through metal eyelets to the gnarled oak overlooking the black-bottomed pool, a huge vinyl sign featuring the ubiquitous Vector V had commanded Tim and Bear's attention as they'd helped usher the guests from the backyard.
The connection between their fugitive and the biogenics firm looked clear, a line that ran through the ailing liver of a seven-year-old boy. Walker had clearly uncovered some link between Tess's murder and Vector. But how did the pregnancy fit, if at all? And the missing hard drive?
It had taken a few tries for Tim and Bear to find a Kagan underling able to forgo buzzwords and talk in layman's terms. The party had been a celebration for the filing of Vector's S-1, they'd learned, which meant that the SEC-required prospectus for the stock issuance had been approved, putting Vector on the fast track to going public. Dean remained holed up in the main house with his sons and security chief. Tim and Bear had yet to make his acquaintance.