electronics.
But he was a cheat and a liar.
Clay Harris had fattened his expense report. He had done work on the side. And one day he sold photos of a client in a compromising position. I found out.
That’s when I fired him.
Next day, Harris went to Tommy, who gave him a job.
Thinking about him now, standing in the crowd, smirking as I was marched off to jail, put Clay Harris in a new category. He disliked me. He had the skills to hurt me. And I couldn’t say murder was out of his league.
I said to Tommy, “I want to talk to Clay about Colleen.”
CHAPTER 117
I took the 5, heading toward the Tehachapi mountain range linking Southern and Central California.
Clay Harris lived on a dirt road in an isolated area made up of remote ranches, parks, and forest service land. From the satellite view, I knew his house was at the edge of a three-hundred-acre parcel, marked for development then abandoned when the bubble burst in 2009. Harris’s house was two miles away from any other man-made thing.
I took the 126 to Copper Hill Drive, which sent me past a minimall and then a cluster of migrant-worker housing. After the development, there was nothing to see but dry scrub and low hills, copses of native trees, and miles of flat land untouched by the hand of man.
“Here’s our turn,” I said, taking a left onto San Francisquito Canyon Road.
Tommy had been talking about himself since we left Hancock Park, filling the air with self-aggrandizing stories about his bodyguard service to celebrities, the stunts the A-listers pulled. But he stopped talking as my headlights lit up the chain-link fence and signs reading “Harris. No Trespassing.”
I slowed as the house came into view, parked on the shoulder, turned off my headlights.
The house was at the end of a long drive, placed far back on the property; a ranch-style rambler, white with dark trim and a plain front porch.
There was a clump of mature native oaks in the yard and more oaks at the fence line, but what grabbed my attention was a brand-new Lexus SUV at the top of the drive.
I knew how much Clay Harris had earned when he worked for me, and assuming Tommy hadn’t quadrupled his income, the Lexus didn’t fit. Unless someone had given him about seventy-five thousand dollars.
I reached across my brother and opened the glove box, took out a gun.
“I don’t think you have a license for that,” Tommy said.
“Let’s just keep this between us, okay, Junior?”
We got out of the car and edged along the chain-link fence, getting cover from the trees. The gate latch was open, an oversight on the part of Mr. Harris, I thought. We were still thirty feet from the porch when the motion detector found us.
Lights blazed.
A siren blared across the open land followed by a fusillade of bullets.
Harris was unloading a semiautomatic, and shots were whizzing through the trees. Then there was a pause in the shooting.
Had Clay Harris seen us? Or was he just firing in response to the alarm? Thinking coyote. Or bear. Or, If you’re on my property, you’re dead.
I whispered, “You take the back door and I’ll take the front.”
“No, Jack. You take the back.”
“Fine,” I said.
It wasn’t fine.
I hadn’t planned for a shootout.
In fact, as of right now, I had no plan at all.
CHAPTER 118
We were trespassing.
If I called out Harris’s name and he wanted to shoot me, he could get a bead on my voice and nail me. Legally.
I dropped to the ground and pulled myself across the yard with my elbows until I had reached the side of the house, out of gunshot range.
With my back to the wall, I negotiated piles of junk and brush as I made my way to the back entrance.
I held my gun with both hands, using my foot to push the door open. Hinges creaked and I stepped into a mudroom. I expected shots or at least a challenge, but I heard nothing.
A light glowed from the center of the house, and I made for it. Using the wall as a guide, I moved forward, past garments hanging from hooks, stacks of newspapers, and towers of boxed, empty beer bottles. Clay Harris was one of those people who didn’t throw things out.
The mudroom led to the small, narrow kitchen. Pots and pans were piled on the table and in the sink. Garbage stank. There was an off-center door at the end of the kitchen, which led to a dining room.
I stepped around a table that was heaped with boxes of files and hoarded crap, kept moving toward the beams that framed the entrance to the living room. I peered around the corner into the larger room.
Clay Harris had his back to me. His gun was still in his hand, and his hands were over his head. He was facing my brother, who had his weapon pointed at Harris’s chest.
Harris was saying, “Tom. What are you doing? This is stupid. I’m not gonna say anything about that girl.”
I stepped into the room, gripping my own gun in both hands. I shouted, “Clay, drop your gun.”
Harris turned, saw me, said, “Shit,” and tossed his gun onto an easy chair.
At the same moment that the gun hit the chair, Tommy fired two shots in quick succession. Harris put his hands to his chest. He said, “Oh, fuck,” then dropped to his knees and toppled facedown onto the floor.
I went to Harris, put a hand to his neck.
He had no pulse.
“For God’s sake, Tom. I wanted to talk to him.”
Tommy put his gun back in his belt.
“I feel for you, I really do,” my brother said. He looked for his two shell casings, collected them, put them in the front pocket of his jeans. “Things don’t always go the way you want. You wanted to talk to Clay, and now he’s dead.”
I stood up, facing my brother. “You think I don’t know what just happened here.”
“It was self-defense, Jack. That’s the truth. But I guess you’ll never know for sure. Did I shoot that scum because he was going to shoot me? Or did I shoot him because he would give me up?”
Tommy was mocking me, shifting his weight from one leg to the other, moving his hands up and down like they were trays on a scale.
He went on. “Was Harris a dangerous lunatic with a loaded gun? Or was he going to tell you that I hired him to kill Colleen?”
I stared at Tommy, then looked back at the body of Clay Harris. There was an angry-looking bite mark in the fleshy part of his right hand between thumb and forefinger. The bite had been so hard, it had left a clear dental impression, a distinct bruise in the flesh where teeth had clamped down.
I took a handkerchief, the investigator’s number one basic tool, out of my jacket pocket. Keeping an eye on Tommy, I used the handkerchief to pick up Clay Harris’s phone.
I dialed 911.
