Kill Switch (40 page)

He could describe some of what had happened, and Craft was confused because the man seemed to want to help. He was desperate to help, but there were huge gaps in his memory.

“It was like I was watching it,” said Cross. “Like it wasn't me. I could feel it … see it. All of it. But it wasn't me doing it. I swear to God.”

“You're going to have to do a whole lot better than that,” snarled Craft. “Do you want to see the video again? Do you want to see what you did? I'll show it to you again.”

“No!” he wailed, and he looked from her to Davis, her partner, and back again. Sobbing, pleading, begging them to believe what he was saying. “Please, God … it wasn't me. I swear to God Jesus it wasn't me.”

Craft's phone rang. She glanced at the display. “Auntie,” she said.

“Go ahead,” said Davis. “I got this.”

Craft stepped out into the hall to take the call. “He's holding to it,” she said into the phone. “We've been at it for hours and he hasn't budged. And, I don't think he's feeding us a line. Something happened to him and—”

“Listen to me, girl,” said Aunt Sallie in a voice that could blister paint, “you put on your big girl panties and go get me some answers. I'm going to call you back in one hour and I want to hear something useful, do you hear me, sweetcheeks?”

“I—”

The line went dead.

“Bitch,” breathed Craft, resisting the urge to drop her phone and stomp on it. The interview room door was closed and she stood for a moment glaring at it, willing the situation inside to be different than what she'd left a moment ago. She took a breath, squared her shoulders, and reached for the knob.

That was when she heard the gunshot.

Through the door it was a muffled
pok
.

“Oh, shit,”
she cried and tore the door open, drawing her own gun, fearing what had happened. Fearing that Cross had somehow gotten free and …

She froze in the doorway. Nathan Cross sat there with his head thrown back, mouth open, eyes staring up at the ceiling. There was a small black hole above the bridge of his nose. Behind him the wall was splashed with bright red that was speckled with bits of gray and knots of hair.

Phil Davis stood beside Cross's chair, his Sig Sauer in his hand.

“Jesus Christ, Phil …
what have you done
?”

Davis turned to her and smiled. “Sorry, Phil's not here at the moment,” he said. And he shot Allison Craft twice in the face.

He was still smiling when he put the hot barrel under his own chin and blew the top of his head off.

 

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

MISSION BAY DRIVE

SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA

SEPTEMBER 8, 5:44
P.M.

I'd left my car with the valet people with orders to keep the engine running and air-conditioning up high. Ghost sat in the front passenger seat, head erect, brown eyes watching me, and there was a weird spark of suspicion in his eyes. He even bent to sniff me when I slid behind the wheel. He made a noncommittal
huff
sound.

“The fuck's with you?” I demanded.

Ghost flinched back from the severity of my tone and I immediately felt bad. The dog was scared and confused. Maybe it was the smell of the hospital. Maybe it was the stink of my own fear and shame. Either way I had no reason to bark at him. So I twisted in my seat and bent close to press my forehead against his. We do that. Junie calls it a mind kiss. For me it's a pure animal thing, a communication between members of the same pack. Only this time Ghost pulled back. He turned and looked out the window as if I wasn't there. Or, as if he was looking for his real pack leader. I stroked his fur but he did not respond at all. It made me strangely sad and disconnected. I put the car in gear, pulled out of the parking lot, and began heading back to the Pier.

I was on Mission Bay Drive behind an old De Soto woody with surfboards on the roof and stickers all over the back from great beaches all over the world. I could see a pair of shaggy blond heads in the front, broad brown shoulders—one set bare, one in a dark tank top. An old Del Shannon tune floated back at me from their open windows. “My Little Runaway.” Ah, it must be great to have nothing to do and be able to surf the waves, work on your tan, romp with the sun bunnies, hoist cold ones with your crew, and listen to that old-time rock and roll That's what sunny Southern California days are made for. If you have troubles, go drown them in the big blue Pacific. Feed your worries to the fish.

The red light turned green and the small convoy—the surfer boys and me—started up. Road speed was forty and we'd just gotten to thirty-five when the driver suddenly stamped hard on the brakes. I was two car lengths back and I have fast reflexes, but the front of my Explorer still chunked into the back of the De Soto. Not hard enough to deploy the airbags but hard enough to hurl me against the seat belt with enough force to snap my teeth shut and half the breath to be punched out of my lungs. Ghost went flying forward, slamming heavily into the glove compartment and then crashing down into the footwell. He yelped and barked and then began to growl as he scrambled to claw his way back onto the seat.

I threw the car into park, and sat there, neck hurting and head swimming.

Through the window I could see the two surfer jocks open their doors and step out. One wore bright blue trunks and woven hemp sandals, no shirt. The other had a threadbare
SURF SAN DIEGO
tank top over khaki shorts and flip-flops. Ghost was leaning forward, nose pressed to the windshield, muzzle wrinkled, teeth bared. I was so pissed that I was tempted to let the dog go use his teeth to teach these stoners some manners. Instead I clicked my tongue a couple of times to give him the code for standing down. He continued to growl, so I poked his shoulder with a stiff forefinger.

“Ghost, settle.”

He turned toward me, teeth still bared, and growled again. At me.

My anger turned to a deep and sudden apprehension.

“Ghost,” I said, forcing my voice to be firm, commanding, but calm, “
settle
.”

We stared at each other for five long seconds. The look in Ghost's eyes was hostile, feral. His six titanium teeth—replacements after a fight with Red Knights in Iran—glittered like daggers. I love my dog, and my heart was hammering at the thought that this moment might twist its way down into something weird and bad.

Then I saw doubt flicker in those familiar brown eyes. His muzzle trembled, the lips dropping to cover those teeth.

“Ghost,” I said, “settle.”

The tension drained slowly from his muscular shoulders and neck and he sagged back, looking confused and even a little scared by what had happened between us. He whimpered softly and thumped his tail. I reached slowly over to him and he pressed his head into my palm. I wanted to pull him close, hug him, fix whatever was wrong between us.

I never got the chance.

There was a heavy thud on the outside of my door, hard enough to rock the car on its springs. I whipped around to see Blue Shorts cock his leg for a second kick. Ghost snapped back into combat mode, rising, snapping out a warning bark.

Tank Top kicked the window on Ghost's side of the car. It was a powerful kick that sent a crack running from side to side. It sent Ghost into a frenzy, barking loud enough to burst my eardrums and throwing his body against the glass.

So I thought, fuck it.

I jerked the door open. Ghost whirled and I gave him a command.

“Roll down.”

It was our code for taking someone down but not killing them. He shot past me with a look of wild animal joy in his dark eyes. He shot past Blue Shorts and there was a howl—human, I think—as Ghost launched himself at Tank Top.

Blue Shorts tried to deck me as I got out of the car. He kicked the door, trying to smash my leg, but I jammed it with the heel of my palm, then shoved it open as I got out. He swung a heavy right hook punch at my face, and he put his whole body into it, trying to drop me with a single blow. Even weak and wasted I slap-parried the hit and drilled a single-knuckle punch into the flat meat of his left pectoral. It staggered him, but not as much as it should have. He was muscular and his chest was beefy, but he wasn't made of stone. That punch should have hurt him, but he shook it off and waded into me with a series of fast lefts and rights, swinging wide but not wild, trying to get torque into his hits so they'd do real damage.

There are a lot of ways to manage a fight. If I thought this clown was a real bad guy, a killer, I'd have put him down in about two seconds. If you're an expert, killing is easier than controlling. Thing was, though, I didn't know why he was attacking me. He was dressed for the beach and he looked like an overgrown beach bum. A professional might have dressed like this for surprise but in such a case there would be a gun in play by now. He was just wailing on me. Maybe he was high, maybe he was nuts. I danced backward, tucking my chin, using shoulders and elbows and palms to keep him from doing real damage, and all the time I was yelling at him to get him to stop, to tell me what was going on. He said nothing. His eyes were glazed, almost unfocused, and there was very little expression on his face.

Suddenly an icy hand clamped around my heart. It was exactly the same kind of expression that had been in Rudy's eyes.

Exactly the same.

Shit.

Ghost had the other guy down, and I could hear growls but no screams. That wasn't good. All around me cars were stopping and people were gathering, watching, yelling, demanding to know what was going on.

Blue Shorts slipped a nice one past my guard and tagged me solidly in the short ribs, driving the air out of my lungs in a deep whoosh. The Killer inside my soul roared and I could feel his bloodlust, his murderous desires trying to batter aside my conscious control. God, if he took over this fight, then surfer boy here was going to die in a quick and ugly way.

I jumped backward out of range of his next punch, and away from my own ability to reach out with a killing blow.

And then the Killer was gone.

There was a sudden immense silence inside my head. The red rage was gone as soon as it had appeared. The other aspects of myself, the Modern Man and the Cop, were jarred into silence, too.

The next punch nearly took my head off.

I heard someone yell, “Hey—
watch
!”

I got a hand up just in time, but the blow was packed with everything Blue Shorts had. It crashed into my forearm and sent me reeling sideways into a parked car. I rebounded and he hit me with a straight right hand to the chest that stalled me into a statue. It was like having a mining machine bore a hole straight through my sternum and out through my backbone. Then Blue Shorts closed in to smash me with an elbow across the face.

I fell against him to jam the blow and because I had nothing else. Not in that instant. I was bigger and heavier than him and my sagging weight drove us both backward like a boxer clinching with a better fighter while trying to catch a little air. Lights were exploding inside my head and I knew that I was maybe one hit away from going down.

So I used the clumsy embrace to slam him against the fender of my car. As we hit I drove my knee into his crotch, head-butted him, and then grabbed his hair and jerked his head down as I brought my knee up again. It mashed him. His nose and lips split and the power went out of his knees. Gasping and dazed, I shoved myself back from him and took him down with a sloppy foot-sweep. He landed hard and badly and lay there, curling into a fetal ball.

I staggered back and had to lean on the car to walk around it, afraid of what I was going to find on the other side. Tank Top was down and bloody, but Ghost had been in more control of his fight than I had. His guy was chopped up a bit, but not in any way that wouldn't heal. Tank Top would be fine after some stitches, some cosmetic surgery, and a lot of physical therapy. He got off lucky, because although Ghost is a loveable goof most of the time he is by nature and training a killer. He has a lot of experience in the hunt and in the kill.

I got some flex-cuffs out of my car and bound both men and then leaned like a sloppy drunk against the door and called the police and the Pier.

 

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

THE PIER

DMS SPECIAL PROJECTS OFFICE

SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA

SEPTEMBER 8, 6:38
P.M.

The EMTs took the surfer boys away and I wasted time filling out police reports. By the time I got back to the Pier I could feel each separate place where I'd been hit, and I hurt. A lot.

I went over it with Church, with the duty officer, with Lydia-Rose, with the DMS attorneys. The story did not vary and it did not make sense. Was this a mugging? Was it some kind of drug-induced road rage? Neither of the surfers had a record more serious than parking tickets. Neither had any political ties of any significant kind.

So … what was this?

I thought of Rudy and Glory Price and wondered it if was possible for there to be such a thing as a plague of random violence. Normally that would be the kind of question I'd ask Rudy.

Damn it.

I went into my office bathroom and splashed some cold water on my face and wondered who the hell the old guy was who looked back at me from the mirror. Thin, sallow, with bags under his eyes and a shifty expression. I wouldn't trust that face if I was seated next to him on the bus.

“Well,” I told him, “are you a lot of fun to be around.”

He told me to go fuck myself.

My phone rang and I hurried back to take the call. It was Church and I could hear the whine of a helicopter behind him. An echo of that reached me through my window and it was clear he was on the roof helipad.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“Airport,” he said. “I'm going to Madison.”