Free Total Immunity by Robert Ward Page B

down, and the officer put his arm around her.
    Oscar tapped Jack gently on the back.
    â€œThey got a tow truck here. You want to go over the car first?”
    â€œYeah,” Jack said.
    They walked across the parking lot, which was strewn with chunks of concrete from the cafeteria wall, and scraps of the burned vehicle. Jack looked down at a red mass, thinking for a second that it was his old boss’s intestines. But when he knelt down to take a closer look, he realized that it was stewed tomatoes, one of the items on the lunch menu for the day.
    He started to walk away when he noticed something else lying there, just a few feet from the mangled car.
    He reached down and picked it up.
    It was a torn piece of a photograph, looked to be the bottom corner of an old Polaroid. It looked as if it had been taken long ago, but the image on it couldn’t have been old at all.
    He was staring at a picture of a gravestone with the name Zac Blakely on it. The birth date was October 5, 1946, which, Jack was pretty sure, was his old friend’s real birth date. The date of death was today.
    â€œWhat the fuck is this?” Jack muttered to himself.
    Jack called Oscar over and showed him the torn photo. Oscar’s eyes grew wide as he stared at the scrap of photo.
    â€œJesus, Jackie, somebody already bought Blakely’s gravestone!”
    â€œI don’t think so,” Jack said. “My guess is this thing has been PhotoShopped, and was left here by the perps just to play with our minds.”
    Oscar shook his head.
    â€œDon’t take a genius to figure out what the next part of the photograph is going to be. Headstones with Hughes, you, and me on them.”
    â€œThat would be my guess, too,” Jack said. “Somebody is playing with us.”
    â€œYou mean Steinbach’s playing with us?”
    â€œI don’t know,” Jack said. “It seems a bit melodramatic, even for him.”
    â€œBut who else, then?”
    â€œI don’t know that either,” Jack said.
    He put the partial photo in a plastic evidence bag and handed it to a technician.
    Jack signaled to the driver of the tow truck to hoist the trashed frame of the car, then ducked underneath.
    He looked at the rear brake casing and saw exactly what he expected to find — a filing job.
    He looked out at Oscar.
    â€œElectric file. Could do this in twenty to thirty minutes.”
    â€œBut on the street?”
    â€œZac lives right up the top of Hollywood Hills Road. In a cul de sac. His neighbor up there is one of those young movie stars. He told me she’s over in Europe shooting a movie right now. The perp could get under his car and do the whole job in the dark last night.”
    â€œStill, he had to drive up there. Maybe somebody saw him,” Oscar said.
    â€œRight. We have to get a timetable from his wife.”
    Jack felt a wave of exhaustion almost buckle him at the knees. The thought of driving up to the house and telling Val . . . Jesus, that was the worst.
    â€œNo air bag either,” Oscar said.
    â€œYeah, and the emergency brake had been disconnected.”
    â€œZac was just gonna retire, too,” Oscar said.
    Jack felt a stab of pain in his chest, took a deep breath, and headed for his car.

PART II
THE MAZE

9
    THEY PARKED DOWN the street from the cul de sac where, until an hour ago, Zac Blakely and Val Lewis had lived.
    â€œNice up here,” Oscar said. “Feels like you’re in the country.” “Zac always parked facing downhill so he wouldn’t have to
    turn around every day.”
    â€œTrees and bushes obscure his car. Guy could come up here at night and not be noticed at all,” Oscar said.
    â€œYeah,” Jack said. “But how did whoever did this get Zac’s home address? He was totally secretive about it.”
    â€œThese days there are a million ways,” Oscar said. “You heard about the guys in D.C. who put ‘Federal Agents’