The Final Twist, Jeffery Deaver [philippa perry book TXT] 📗

to law school. He’d been particularly inspired to study the subject by one Professor Sharphorn at the University of Michigan and thought he might take up the profession. In the end, his restless nature put the kibosh on a desk job, but an interest in the law stayed with him and he often read up on the subject; it was also helpful in his reward-seeking job.

No, nothing his father had found would interest the D.A.’s office.

Shaw then found a note, presumably from a colleague of Amos Gahl, intended for Ashton. It was a small sheet of paper folded many times. This no doubt meant it would have been left in a dead-drop, a spy technique of hiding communiqués under park benches or cracks in walls, avoiding the risk of electronic intercepts.

Amos is dead. It’s in a BlackBridge courier bag. Don’t know where he hid it. This is my last note. Too dangerous. Good luck.

So “it”—the evidence—was in a company bag hidden in one of the eighteen locations Ashton had identified as a likely spot. An arduous task, but there was no way around it. He’d have to start with the first and keep going until he found the courier bag—or give up after none of them panned out.

But he soon learned he wouldn’t have to investigate eighteen locations. In fact, he didn’t need to check out any.

He discovered in the stack a map identical to the one he’d found in Echo Ridge—well, identical except for one difference. All eighteen of the locations were crossed off with bold red Xs.

After leaving the map at the Compound, Ashton, as he’d written, had returned here and searched the sites himself, eliminating them all.

Shaw sighed. This meant that the evidence that would destroy BlackBridge could be squirreled away anywhere within the entire San Francisco Bay Area, which had to embrace thousands of square miles.

Maybe Ashton had discovered other possible sites. Shaw returned to the material to look for more clues, but his search was interrupted at that moment.

From Alvarez Street, out in front of the safe house, a woman called out. “Please!” she cried. “Somebody! Help me!”

5

Shaw looked out the bay window to see two people struggling in front of the chain-link gate that opened onto a scruffy lot containing the remnants of a building that had been partly burned years ago.

The dark-haired woman was in her thirties, he guessed. Dressed in faded jeans, a T-shirt, a scuffed dark blue leather jacket, running shoes. A white earbud cord dangled. She was looking around frantically as a squat man, dressed in a dusty, tattered combat jacket and baggy pants, gripped her forearm. The man was white and had a grimy look about him. Homeless, Shaw guessed, and, like many, possibly schizophrenic or a borderline personality. The man held a box cutter and was pulling the woman toward the gate. He seemed strong, which wasn’t unusual; life on the street was physically arduous; to get by you needed to practice a version of survivalism. Even from this distance, Shaw could see veins rising high on the man’s hands and forehead.

Through the front door and down the concrete steps fast, then approaching the two of them. Her face desperate, eyes wide, the woman looked toward him. “Please! He’s hurting me!”

The attacker’s eyes cut to Shaw. At first there was a mad defiance on the man’s face, which struck Shaw as impish. With his short height and broad chest, he might be cast as a creature in a fantasy or mythological movie. His hands indeed looked strong.

“Oh, yeah, skinny boy, you want some of this? Fuck off.”

Shaw kept coming.

The man waved the weapon dramatically. “You think I’m kidding?”

Shaw kept coming.

You’d think the guy wouldn’t be in a carnal mood any longer, given the third-party presence. But he gripped the woman just as insistently as a moment ago, as if she were a home-run ball he’d caught in the stadium and wasn’t going to give up to another fan. Without loosening his hold he stepped closer toward Shaw.

Who kept coming.

“Jesus! You deaf, asshole?”

In the Shaw family’s Sierra Nevada enclave, where he had taught his children survival skills, Ashton had spent much time on firearms, those confounding inventions that are both blessings and curses. One of his father’s rules was borrowed—straight from Shooting Practices 101.

Never draw a gun unless you intend to use it.

Shaw drew the Glock and pointed it at the attacker’s head.

The man froze.

Shaw was taking his father’s rule to heart, as he usually did with the man’s lengthy list of don’ts. He believed, however, that the definition of use was open to interpretation. His was somewhat broader than Ashton’s. In this case it meant not pulling the trigger but instead scaring the shit out of someone.

It was working.

“Oh . . . No, man . . . no, don’t! Please! I didn’t mean anything. I was just standing here. Asked her for some money. I ain’t ate in a week. Then she starts coming on to me.”

Shaw didn’t say anything. He wasn’t someone who negotiated or bantered. He kept the gun steady as he gazed coolly at the puckish face, which was encircled with damp, swept-back hair in a style that, Shaw believed, mercifully ceased to exist around 1975.

After a brief moment, the attacker released the woman. She stepped away, leaning against a segment of chain-link fence, breathing hard. Eyes were wide in her stricken face.

The building must have burned five years ago but, with the weighty moisture in the air, you could still detect burnt wood.

The man retracted the blade on the box cutter and started to put it away.

“No. Drop it.”

“I—”

“Drop. It.”

The gray tool clattered onto the gravelly sidewalk.

“Out of here now.”

The man held up both his hands and backed away. Then he paused. He cocked his head and, with narrowed eyes and a hint of hope in his face, he asked, “Any chance you can spare a twenty?”

Shaw grimaced. The man ambled up the street.

Shaw holstered the gun and scanned