The Final Twist by Jeffery Deaver (free ebooks romance novels txt) 📕

Russell stepped forward fast and clamped a hand on the drawer, an instant before the manager got to it. Simultaneously Shaw plucked the phone from his hand and disconnected.

Barney’s chair rolled four feet and hit the wall. “Please, don’t hurt me!”

Russell opened the drawer and removed the little .25 semiauto, ejected the round in the chamber and pushed out the bullets from the mag one by one. He pocketed them.

“What’d he tell you?” Russell asked bluntly.

When Barney didn’t answer, Russell drew his own weapon.

Barney eyed the SIG and, vacillating between fear and rage, said breathlessly, “You didn’t goddamn tell me your aunt was a psychopath. Now, what the hell do you really want?”

45

So,” Shaw said, “Spilt recognized the picture.”

“Of course he did. Wouldn’t you remember somebody who handcuffs you, drags you through the archives and threatens to shoot you if you don’t cooperate?”

“What was she looking for?” Russell said.

“I don’t know. How would I know?”

Shaw said, “Call him back.”

“What?”

“Call Spilt back.” Shaw nodded impatiently, and Barney did as told.

Shaw took the phone from him.

“Barney,” came the urgent voice on the other end. “Are you okay? What’s going on?”

“Jimmy,” Shaw snapped. “Listen to me. Barney’s okay. So far.”

“Oh, Jesus,” the manager gasped.

Russell touched his own ear, and Shaw too heard the siren in the distance.

Goddamn it.

“Jimmy, I need you to do two things.”

“The fuck’re you? You the nephew of that bitch who—”

Shaw put the phone on speaker and glanced at the manager. “Two things, Jimmy, if you want your friend to be okay.”

Barney called, “Please, Jimmy. Do whatever he asks.”

“Okay, okay,” came the voice.

“First, we’re going to hang up and you call nine-one-one back and tell them it was a mistake. Somebody was playing a joke on you. Or something. Be credible. Then call me back.”

Russell was on his phone. He lifted it toward Shaw.

“And, Jimmy,” Shaw said, “we’ve got a scanner here, police scanner. We’ll know if you don’t do it. And that means you can say goodbye to Barney, and we’ll come visit you too.”

“Jesus, no, no, no! I’ll do it. I’ll do it!”

“Call. The. Police.” Shaw disconnected.

What Russell was displaying probably wasn’t a scanner app. More likely, Shaw guessed, he’d be speaking with Karin, but she would be patched into the city’s emergency frequencies.

Fifteen, twenty seconds later the sirens stopped and Russell, listening into his mobile, nodded.

Just after that, Barney’s phone hummed.

Shaw glanced at it and answered, punching the speaker button once more. “Okay, Jimmy, good job. The second thing you need to do. Answer some questions. Then we’ll leave you and your buddy alone. Are we happy with that?”

“Yes, yes, anything.”

“Tell us exactly what happened that day our aunt came to the warehouse.”

“The hell are you?”

Barney cried, “Jesus, Jimmy! Answer the man’s question. He’s got a gun. Are you fucking crazy?”

“All right, all right. It was some weekday morning, I was the only one working. You know for the past fifty years the place’s just been a repository. Nobody brings stuff in or takes it out. Your aunt comes in and asks for some records. I tell her it’s not like a library. Only polite. I was real polite to her. Before I can release anything, I need a form filled out at city hall. She says she doesn’t have time. And she’s with this guy who’s acting weird, twitchy, you know. They both scared me.”

“Did he look like a rat?” Shaw asked.

“Yeah, kinda.”

Russell: “What did she want?”

“Judicial records, she said. Judges’ files. I tell her again I can’t do anything without the form from city hall or the state, filled out proper. I tell her to leave and that’s when she pulls a gun. The guy with her puts handcuffs on me.

“I tell them I don’t know where judicial files’d be. She asks me how they’re organized and I tell her by year. She says that’s good enough. So, we go in the back and, and I point them to the year she wants, nineteen oh-six. And they both start going through everything, throwing stuff all over the floor. This goes on for an hour, maybe less but it seemed like an hour. Then she finds something and is like, ‘Goddamn. At last,’ or something.

“They look at me like they’re deciding to kill me, not to kill me . . . Jesus. I’m begging them. She says, ‘We were never here.’ I just nod. I can’t even speak. Then they leave.”

“What was it she found?” Shaw took over the questioning.

“I have no idea. I didn’t ask. They were ready to shoot me!”

“Was it a single sheet of paper or a bound document?”

“One page.”

“Judicial records. So, a court decision?”

“No, we don’t have those. They’re published anyway. They could’ve found those in a law library or online. She wanted correspondence, notes, anything in judges’ individual files.”

“You call the police?” Russell asked.

“Of course not. They knew where I worked. They might come back.”

Shaw said, “Listen, Jimmy. Just forget we talked to you.”

“You fucking bet I’ll forget.”

Shaw disconnected and set Barney’s phone on the desk.

Russell held up the peashooter of a gun. He hit a button and pulled the slide off. “This’ll be in one trashcan outside, the magazine in another.”

Shaw was amused. Maybe this was playbook procedure in some circles. Ebbitt Droon had done the same thing with Shaw’s weapons in Silicon Valley not three weeks ago.

As the brothers walked to the door Shaw looked back.

Barney held up his hands, as if he were a surrendering soldier. “I get it. I get it. Just like your aunt—you were never here.”

46

The new safe house wasn’t bad; it certainly was in a better neighborhood than the one in the Mission.

Located in picturesque Pacific Heights, in the northern part of the city, the two-bedroom suite was in a sandstone apartment building whose front windows offered views of the Bay, Alcatraz, the Golden Gate Bridge and Sausalito, where some of the faint, distant greenery