Free October's Ghost by Ryne Douglas Pearson

D.
    “Ringing,” Tomás said.
    A minute later, almost three thousand miles away, ten digits appeared on the screen of a cell phone buzzing inside a man’s pocket. With just a single look, he knew what to do. His USA Today had been finished hours before with his breakfast.
    *  *  *
    Art Jefferson walked off the elevator on the fourth floor just after sunrise, at a time when the L.A. office would normally be quiet for another two hours. This day, though, there were more than a hundred agents already on duty, more than half there on their day off. That was just the way it was. You didn’t kill an agent without striking a chord in the collective body of the FBI. Art pitied the perps who had robbed Thom Danbrook of his life.
    “Art.” It was Cameron Lowe, the supervising special agent of the L.A. office’s Violent Crimes Section—Art’s boss.
    “Morning, Cam.” Art walked to his desk in the bullpen area of the floor, which was divided into dozens of “rooms” by attractively upholstered shoulder-high dividers. He and Frankie shared one on the north side of the floor, near the row of glass-enclosed offices that housed the supervising agents of the office’s sections. Art had rated one once as head of the OC (Organized Crime) Section. That time was now just a fond, detested memory.
    “How’s Aguirre?” Lowe asked, leaning his short frame against the pseudo wall that surrounded Art’s and Frankie’s desks.
    “I made sure Shelley got her home last night.” He slid out of his jacket, hanging it on the single metal hook clipped to the divider’s top edge. “It ain’t easy, Cam. She’s hurting.”
    “Are you going to need someone else to back you up on this? I mean, if she needs some time...”
    Art’s head shook. Frankie had made it clear that she wanted in on this, and Art expected no different. He’d never known an agent to back away from the chance to catch the killers of a fellow agent. The offer had to be made, but... “No. She’ll be in. Is everything squared away with LAPD?”
    “All set.” The LAPD, which had jurisdiction over the area where the murders were committed, had technical authority to be the lead agency on the case. But the fact that a federal officer had been killed in addition to the other victim had prompted the local police to cede the lead to the FBI. Now they had two murders to solve, and that of the other victim presented the best chance at finding the killers. Thom Danbrook had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. “TS figured out what happened with his gun.”
    “What?” It was a subject of interest to the Bureau as a whole, as every agent carried the same Smith & Wesson Model 1076 that had somehow failed at the critical moment. The office’s Technical Services Section had immediately gone to work to determine the cause of the failure.
    “Shooter error,” Lowe explained, pulling his own 1076 out. He removed the magazine and cleared the round in the chamber before proceeding. “Look.” He gripped the weapon in the proper manner, with the off hand supporting the front and underside of the gun hand. “Danbrook had a nasty gash on the skin webbing between the thumb and forefinger of his off hand.”
    Art’s head dropped. “You’re kidding.”
    “Nope. He held it like a revolver, off hand wrapped over the side with the thumb on top. When he fired his first shot, the slide hit his hand and didn’t travel far enough back to pick up the next round. He reverted to Academy training when the stress kicked in. Unfortunately we were still with revolvers when he went through.” Lowe reloaded and reholstered his weapon. “That’s why the weapon failed, but I don’t know if he could have done anything to change the outcome.”
    It was a cop’s nightmare: walking in on something and having the initiative in the bad guys’ favor.
    “Anything on the getaway vehicle?” Art inquired, sitting down and turning on the ten-cup coffeemaker strategically placed on his