"What do you mean?"
"Why they didn't pick me."
From Bear's face it was clear the comment had caught him as off guard as it had Tim. A severe pause ensued, Sam looking at them with wide, curious eyes, awaiting an answer that might help him make sense of it. Tim's Nextel vibrated at his hip. Bear crouched down, his broad knees cracking, to mumble an answer to Sam so Tim could step away and take the call.
"The shooter used a silencer."
Tim held the phone away from his face, checking the caller ID. "Aaronson?"
"I took a look at the slug that killed Tess Jameson."
"I thought you couldn't tell from a slug if a silencer was used."
"Usually. But this silencer was rifled, with a different number of lands than the gun barrel. There were two sets of grooves on the projectile-one just barely offset from the other. I picked it up under the stereoscope and cast the marks in Microsil."
"Why wasn't this checked before?"
"Because most silencers we see are the smoothbore homemade variety. And most criminalists aren't as good as I am."
"I won't argue with that."
"And you shouldn't. Because I sourced the red stain for you, too."
Bear glanced up at Tim's expression, excited by proxy. Sam had wrangled away his badge and was busy flashing it from various poses.
"It's paintball fill," Aaronson continued. "The photo of the mark on the sidewalk outside Tess's house suggests it was squashed-stepped on, not fired. So I'm thinking you're right that it may have rolled out of the shooter's car, gotten crunched."
"He would've left more marks if it had gotten on the sole of his shoe."
"Not if he stepped up onto the grass to circle the house for a rear break-in. You said the back slider's missing a latch?"
"But then they'd have seen marks on the-"
"Sprinklers. June was dry as usual." Aaronson took a well-earned moment to be impressed with himself, then said, "More good news: It's a custom paintball, called the Bunny Bopper, designed to reduce bounces. It's got a brittle shell and easy-to-wipe fill. And it's made exclusively for a place called Game. Because they require easy-to-wipe fill and a softer, brittle shell."
"Why?" Tim asked.
Aaronson laughed, a nasal stutter. "Because the targets are naked."
Tim hung up and said to Bear, "We gotta go."
With reluctance Sam relinquished the five-point star, and they thanked him and stepped out into the brisk air. Her shoulders rounded, Kaitlin was on her knees by the kicked-over anthill, facing away. She didn't acknowledge them as they approached. A breeze parted her hair at her neck.
"I always wanted kids." She watched the red ants scurrying over the avalanched side of their home, set into unthinking motion. Endless repair work, one dirt speck at a time. "But I couldn't hold a pregnancy. Not past a few months. Walk didn't care so much, but me…" A listless shrug. "And now this."
"What can you do?" Bear said, rhetorically.
"I can wash his clothes and drive him to the hospital and pet his head at night," she said. "And if I'm lucky, we can do it over again."
She rose and walked past them into the house, the screen door banging behind her. After a moment Tim and Bear headed to the Explorer. The SUV pulled away from the curb, its taillights fading in the dusk.
The stand of juniper at the property line rustled and released Walker Jameson into the yard.
Chapter 44
Kaitlin looked up from the pot on the stove and started, dropping the wooden spoon.
Walker stood in the doorway. He said, "Sorry."
"You just-" She pointed to the front door.
"That's the guy?"
"Yeah. The one who-"
"Looks like me. Right." He ran a hand across his mouth, his palm rasping over the scruff. "You were right. I won't come back here anymore." He removed a disposable cell phone from his pocket and set it on the chipped table. "I want to leave this."
She stirred the sauce, pausing twice like she had something to say. Finally she cleared her throat, knuckled her nose awkwardly. "I'm sorry. What I said. About you never doing anything for anyone but yourself. I haven't forgotten the ways you were good to me."
He stepped once and hooked a hand behind her neck, pulled her forward on her tiptoes so their foreheads touched. She reached to press her hands to his chest but then didn't. They stayed like that for a moment, frozen, breathing the same air, her hands raised either to feel him or shove him away.
"I am Hrothgar of the Tree People! Fear my rat!" Sam guarded the hall, cracked plastic light saber raised, Viking helmet loose on his head.
Kaitlin settled back flat on her feet. "I think you mean 'wrath.'"
"Hrothgar of the Tree People might have a rat," Walker said.
Sam grabbed a plastic horn and shoved the oversize helmet back out of his eyes. His was an awkward face, years short of growing into itself, but something in his smile pulled his features into line, made the nose bow slightly, the chin firm. It made him, briefly, handsome.
"This is true," Kaitlin conceded.
Sam's stare still had not left Walker. "Why are you here?"
"To talk to you."
"I'm important today." Sam ran back down the hall, fending off imaginary villains with the Force.
Walker followed, finding him sitting on his bed, a lump beneath the comforter. A fluorescent length of light saber protruded like a tail. "The stuff that could've cured me is a syrup, like chocolate syrup," the lump said. "Except instead of chocolate, it's filled with the gene I need. I just had to take it in a shot once a month, and the other kids'd even be jealous because I got to have chocolate syrup and not them. But then they said I couldn't have it. The chocolate syrup. Why not?"
"Prob'ly because we can't pay for it."
"We?"
"Tess. Kaitlin. Whoever. It's too expensive's my guess. Look, I can't be here long and I need some answers."
Sam tugged at the comforter so it slid down over his head, leaving his hair mussed and his glasses pitched left. With a few wiggles of his cheeks and a nose scrunch, he righted the frames without raising his hands. "If I help you, can I get my gene?"
Walker looked away, but the kid's reflection was waiting in the mirrored closet door and then in the dark window. "Sure."
Sam's hopefulness forced a smile. "Promise?"
Walker said, "At the commercial shoot, you rode in a limo, right? Who was there?"
"Dolan, Chase, a bunch of camera guys. Oh-and that guy with the Magnum, P.I. shirts. Mr. Keating."
"What was the limo company called?"
Sam scrambled out of bed. "The driver gave me a card. He said I could call him if I ever needed a limousine." He dug in a drawer and handed a glossy card to Walker-ELITE CHAUFFEUR SERVICE, no driver name. "I was gonna call him for Mom's birthday. She was gonna be thirty-nine, you know, and…darn it…darn it." He returned to the mattress and pulled the comforter back over his head, and then Walker heard him snuffling.
"Take that thing off your head."
Sam tugged it off. He pulled off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, then wiped his nose on his shirt.
"Was your mom with you the whole time?"
"Except when she left once in the middle to get her jacket from the limo. I was nervous, but she said she'd be right back, but then she wasn't. Not until they smeared off the makeup and stuff from my face-not girl makeup but TV makeup that even guys are supposed to wear. Then she was all weird when she came back."
"Weird how?"
"On the drive home, I thought she'd be all happy, but she wasn't. She had her jacket on, zipped up all the way, but it was hot."
Walker felt his skin get taut, as in a cool breeze.
The words of Victor the incompetent waiter returned, now sharpened with meaning. I heard him say something about what happened in the limo at the shoot. He was sorta, I guess, apologetic without really being apologetic. I remember thinking, The problems these rich folks have, right?