Gregg Hurwitz - Prodigal Son

Dog the dog was up, growling. Seeming to sense that Evan had the situation in hand, he padded back to the Red Vines tub that served as his bowl, lapped up some water, and huffed down onto the pillowtop again.

Evan kept his stare level on Bridger. “I didn’t catch a last name.”

“Bickley. But I go by Bicks sometimes, ya know.” He shoved his hands into his pockets, rose up on his tiptoes, rocked back on his heels. “Anyhoo. Joey and I were supposed to, like, hang out.”

“Hang out?” Evan said. “It’s two in the morning.”

“So it’s a bad time?”

“Yes,” Evan said as Joey said, “No.”

“Okay. Cool, cool.” Bridger bobbed his head, managed eye contact with Evan. “And you are…?”

“My uncle,” Joey said in a rush. “This is my uncle. He’s protective— really annoyingly protective —and I guess he needs to talk to me now about some stuff, so could we, like, reschedule?”

“No worries,” Bridger said. “Grab you tomorrow? Like eight o’clock?”

“Surethat’dbegreatthanksbye.”

Joey ratcheted the door closed in Bridger’s nonplussed face and delivered Evan an extra-pointed glare; on the receiving end, it felt like a shiv to the chest. “What the actual hell, X?”

At her tone Dog the dog lifted his head, collar tags jangling. Joey went on tilt, coming at Evan, driving him away from the door.

Evan said, “Language.”

“I cannot believe you. You’re such a dipshit.”

“Joey,” he said. “That’s offensive.”

“Yeah, to dipshits for having to be compared to you.”

“He’s eighteen years old.”

“I’m in college. Who am I supposed to date? Middle-schoolers?”

“Because that’s the only other option.”

“You can’t just come in here like you own the place—insert punch line here—and be all controlling .”

“It’s not about being controlling. It’s about making a few inquiries about a guy named Bicks with a soul patch who says ‘anyhoo’ and wants to hang out with you at two in the morning.”

“We were gonna go to a party!” she said, again digging furiously at that muscle knot near her shoulder blade. “Oh, my God. I should just give up on ever being normal and enter a nunnery.”

“Before that can you help me with the geotagged cameras?”

She made a noise like a horse whinny but more rageful and then stomped off to her workstation, where she began pounding on the keyboards.

Evan retreated to the bolster bed and sat on the floor next to Dog the dog, who offered him a sympathetic gaze. For a while Evan scratched at his scruff, the dog grumbling with pleasure, a sonorous groan-snore.

Finally Joey said, “Get over here.”

He obeyed. Dog the dog obeyed as well, getting halfway across the room before realizing that the command had not been directed at him. With relief he slunk off.

Evan took up a position behind Joey. “What am I looking at?”

“A variety of digital footage from cameras around the block cued up and frozen the night your boy was killed. We’re starting here.” She pointed at a monitor behind Evan’s head, her fingernail barely missing his cheek, a near gouging that seemed not unintentional. “An EyeSky Web-connected cam at a First Union Bank of SoCal ATM.”

She tapped the mouse and the frozen black-and-white scene thawed to life, a silent winter film. Leaves scuttling across a sidewalk. A city bus hogging both lanes, there and then gone. A Hasidic Jew shuffling by wearing his wisdom on his face, a twelve-inch charcoal beard, brittle and ragged.

And then a Corvette drifting into the camera’s purview, creeping along at a pedestrian’s pace. Tinted windows. Blank license plates.

It eased from the frame, and Joey clicked again. The neighboring monitor picked up the Corvette from a different angle, capturing it pulling up to the curb across the street from the tall chain-link fence of the impound lot. It idled opposite the open gate. No sign of movement except fog wisping from the exhaust pipe.

Nothing happened. And then more nothing.

Joey nudged the footage of both screens forward, the time-stamp numbers flipping like slot-machine reels, closing in on 3:00 A.M.

Back on the previous screen, a Prius darted into view on fast-forward and then swept into the new field of vision. Joey slowed down the world as the car turned in to the parking lot.

In the dark Corvette, no one moved. It sat there heavily, breathing exhaust, lights gleaming across the impenetrable windshield.

Joey’s fingers rattled across her Das Keyboard, and then she flicked her chin at yet another screen up on the third row of monitors. A slice of a view onto the impound lot from a neighboring rooftop camera allowed them to track the Prius. It pulled up the main lane carved through the wrecked vehicles, creeping toward the kiosk. The kiosk door was ajar, the big window mirroring a fireworks burst of skyscraper lights.

The Prius halted midway up the lane. A man climbed out.

Jake Hargreave.

No idea he was being watched.

He walked over to a totaled Bronco and tried the caved-in driver’s door, but it wouldn’t budge. He circled to the passenger seat, tugged it open, and ducked inside.

Evan sensed movement and pivoted back to the second monitor, which held the parked Corvette in view. He snapped his fingers. “Look.”

A man and a woman finished climbing out of the car. They kept to the shadows on the opposite side of the street, holding tight to the buildings. The man wore a fine-tailored suit that seemed at odds with the sense of menace he projected. The woman, too, was done up, fluffy hair, jeans, a fitted top. They could have been heading to a night at the theater.

The man’s elbow was bent, a hand held out to the side as if bearing an invisible butler tray. Nothing on his palm.

Together they strode a few paces up the sidewalk, presumably to gain a better vantage on Hargreave. They paused, partially illuminated by a streetlight. The man was locked on, a predator’s stare pointed off frame, staring through the darkness at Hargreave.

But that’s not what lifted the hair on the back of Evan’s neck. It was how the man was holding his palm up, as if it contained something incredibly dangerous and delicate.

The woman gave a nod, walked calmly back to the idling Corvette, and sat behind the wheel. Ready to take off.

The man remained in the outer throw of the streetlight, hand still raised. And then he lowered it to his side.

Monitor Three: Hargreave backed out of the truck abruptly. He stared in the opposite direction of the couple—toward the depths of the impound lot.

“What’s he looking at?” Evan asked. “Do we have an angle there?”

Joey shook her head, transfixed.

Hargreave stood with his back to the street, staring at someone or something. Head tilted to one side with curiosity.

There was an awful calm, the breath-held moment before calamity.

Hargreave turned partially.

And then he seized, muscles jerking.

Blood shot up from his neck.

With a hand he tried to stem it, to no avail.

He crumpled.

And wound up in the crescent pose Evan recognized from the crime-scene photos.

The man in the suit observed calmly. Then held his palm upturned in the position he’d had it before.

Monitor Three: The kiosk door flew shut. It was right at the edge of the camera’s purview, so they couldn’t see who or what had struck it. The same invisible force that had opened up Hargreave’s neck?

But no, the man on Screen Two lowered his arm again, frustrated. Glared into the darkness. Something had not gone according to plan.

In the Corvette the woman’s mouth was moving. Her face strained, cords in her neck. Anger? No—concern.