The Last Resort

Book 2: A Jen Lu Mystery

by Michael Kaufman

Genres: Police Procedurals; Dystopian; High-tech & Sci-fi Thrillers

Synopsis

It’s March 2034, six months after D.C. police detective Jen Lu and Chandler, her sentient bio-computer and wannabe tough guy implanted in her brain, cracked the mystery of Eden. The climate crisis is hitting harder than ever: a mega-hurricane has devastated the eco-system and waves of refugees pour into Washington, D.C. Environmental lawyer and media darling Patty Garcia dies in a bizarre accident on a golf course. Of the seven billion people on the planet, only Jen thinks she was murdered. After all, Garcia just won a court case for massive climate change reparations to be paid out by oil, gas, and coal companies. Jen is warned off, but she and Chandler start digging. Signs point to Garcia’s abusive ex, a former oil giant, but soon Jen turns up more suspects who have an even greater motive for committing murder. Soon Jen is in the crosshairs of those who will ensure the truth never comes to light, no matter the cost, and has to move quickly before she becomes next on the killer’s list.

Release date: January 10, 2023

Publisher: Crooked Lane Books

Print pages: 272

Sample

1

Friday, March 3, 2034—15:28:01

“I never killed anyone before.”

Yeah, that’s what they all say when they’re staring at prison through their big brown eyes. But I admit, the hedge fund CEO had us both convinced, Jen and me. A freak death by an errant ball at a snooty golf course.

Despite being a Timeless, the man looked unwell. His skin was now the color of liverwurst that had been left out too long in the sun. He charged from the posh meeting room toward the restroom. Second time since we had brought him up to the clubhouse.

My boss: Jen B. Lu. Age thirty-eight. Washington, DC, police detective. Me: Two years and nine months. Biocomputer implanted into her neocortex.

“What do you think, boss?”

Jen said, “I think he should take golf lessons before he kills anyone else.”

“She’s not dead yet.”

“No,” Jen agreed. “Not yet.”

When the hedge fund president finally staggered back, dabbing the corners of his narrow mouth with a blindingly white handkerchief, we ran through it all again. That’s your most basic police questioning technique: get them to repeat their story 150 times and try to spot discrepancies. It’s one of the many areas where I run circles around humans. Of course, it also lets the bad guys lock in their stories, but no mind.

Trebook said, “As I told you twice—”

“Sorry, Mr. Trebook, I need to make sure we capture every detail while things are fresh in your mind.”

“—when you’re on the tee box—”

“On the fifth hole.”

“Of course on the fifth damn hole.” He glared briefly, his normal rich-guy moxie starting to bubble up. “From up there, you can’t see the place we found her.”

“You knew she was playing in front of you.”

“Yes. As I have also already stated several times.” He shot Jen a look that couldn’t have withered a daisy, let alone my boss. “We saw her in the starter’s cabin. And it’s her regular time. Everyone knows.”

“Did you speak to her?”

He looked uncomfortable. “No.”

“She was by herself?”

“Right. No service unit. But the fifth hole descends steeply at about a hundred and fifty yards. She was down there, out of sight.”

“Isn’t that risky? Hitting your ball when someone could be there?”

“Our tee times are fifteen minutes apart,” he said with a voice so smug it made me itch.

“Is that good?”

The high roller rolled his eyes, apparently recovering from his abject whining and now reclaiming his natural superiority. He fuzzed a hand back and forth over his close-cropped hair like a little boy might do after his first trip to a barbershop. Seventy-six years old, but looked about twenty-four. Not a good-looking twenty-four—his lips were far too skinny, his mouth far too small, and his ears looked like someone had slapped iceberg lettuce leaves onto the sides of his head—but not everyone can be as handsome as me.

“Most good private courses,” Trebook said, “send out groups at eight- to ten-minute intervals. At a course where you might play”—here he sized Jen up and down as if calculating her net worth—“you’d be packed in every six minutes. Here we believe members absolutely must have the course to themselves. Fifteen minutes ensures this. And the fact that she was playing alone meant she should have been well ahead of the two of us by then.”

She. Patty Garcia.

Texan. Fifty-two. Lawyer. Celebrity. Media darling. Daughter of farmworkers with a rags-to-riches story. Star athlete back in college. Rumored presidential candidate. Time magazine Person of the Year for leading the landmark civil suit against the oil, gas, and coal giants. That Patty Garcia.

When the call had come in, we happened to be a block away, so we were first on the scene. The polished gates of the golf club had breezed open to our police scooter. We charged up a drive that wound through thick woods where springtime leaves were popping out in front of our eyes. As we reached the steps to the clubhouse, a young woman dashed out and greeted us like a society dinner party hostess who was trying to control her panic that the beef Wellington would get soggy if we didn’t hurry. She whisked us into a Tesla golf cart with heated seats, and as she sped away, she launched into her commentary. “A member named Mr. Trebook phoned me from the fifth hole. He thinks another member was hit by his golf ball. He thinks she’s dead.” She floored that puppy, and we charged straight across two holes, bombed through a patch of woods, blazed past a green, and arrived on the fifth hole. Good times.

Patty Garcia was lying there on the fairway, not moving, but then again, it kind of freaks me out when corpses start moving on you. Jen doesn’t like it when I talk that way, but I’m not a kid anymore, and she can’t tell me what to do.

We climbed out of the golf cart. The grass was as soft as a well-padded carpet.

Although our panicking hostess had said Garcia was dead, another woman—she was, we soon found out, Trebook’s playing partner, Dr. Jane Kershaw—saw us and said, “I’ve found a pulse. It’s extremely weak.”

Garcia had a bump on her temple the size of a quail egg ready to hatch twins.

I checked comms and reported.

Jen said, “We expect an air ambulance in four minutes.”

Here’s the picture. We were in the northern half of Rock Creek Park, the section that hadn’t been incinerated in the fire last year. In the old days before I was booted up, this course had been a run-down municipal track that could have doubled as a dirt-bike course. It was to golf what netless, bent rims mounted on warped plywood above an undulating slab of asphalt were to basketball: nice that a million people had access to it, but damn, couldn’t we do a bit better for our citizens? But after Disney bought the National Park Service, it flipped the course to a small consortium of super-rich Timeless who decided they indeed had a social responsibility to do better. They landed a ninety-million federal Better Future for All grant and rebuilt it as an urban golf resort—golf course, pool, gym, spa, and private suites for the pleasure of 246 deserving members.

And that’s smack-dab where we’d found Patty Garcia. The fifth hole of Viridian Green Golf Resort.

Other than the not-quite-yet-dead person lying in front of us, it was a pretty decent day. We were having a fantastic early spring—what Jen, when she’s out of Zach’s earshot, calls the good side of climate change. Zach is (your choice) her boyfriend, partner, common-law spouse, significant other. The trees around us were filling in with the tenderest of green leaves, each looking like a delicacy you’d want to pluck off and eat. It was an overcast day, but throughout the woods, like dabs of paint by Monet, redbud and dogwood bloomed, and patches of wild flowers carpeted the ground. Jen told me to enjoy it while I could. Our “seasons” now seem to last a week or two, then we have a wild swing with temperatures climbing or crashing by twenty degrees.

Here was the cast of characters: Ms. Garcia on the ground looking dead. Mr. Trebook looking gray. Dr. Kershaw, kneeling at the lawyer’s side, looking concerned. Two service units, each with a hand resting on top of a golf bag, standing off to the side. Four golf course employees shuffling from foot to foot—one whispering into his phone, the others with hands folded in front of themselves as if dress rehearsing for the funeral.

Just as I detected four sirens—an ambulance, a police motorcycle, and two cruisers—I also caught the first whumping of the air ambulance. Bad news about big people travels fast.

Garcia was wearing soda-pop-orange shorts—tightly cut and fashionably short—with a persimmon-orange shirt and a wide purple belt. Lying at her side was a neon-green golf bag. If I had my own set of eyes, they’d be pumping tears like a busted spigot trying to cope with this clash of colors. But somehow it worked on her. This was one very cool woman.

A gleaming white golf ball lay on the tightly mowed grass like a pearl in a display case on green velvet. We squatted down, looked, but did not touch.

“It’s mine,” the man said. His skin now seemed to be experimenting with interesting shades of green, which at least added a splash of color alongside his beige golf attire.

“Who are you?” Jen asked.

“Peter Trebook. Jane—Dr. Kershaw—and I were the group playing after Ms. Garcia.” He pointed to the service units. “Those two are ours.”

“This is your ball?”

“I didn’t mean to hit her. Of all people.”

“I’m sure you didn’t. You’re certain this is your ball?”

He nodded.

“Did you see it hit her?”

He turned back and glanced up the sloped fairway, beyond the top of the hill. “You can’t see down here from the tee.”

“Did you touch it? The ball?”

He blushed strawberry. I was already figuring out this guy was a veritable rack of paint chips.

“I wiped off some mud with my towel to make sure it was mine.”

“Did you put it back right where you found it?”

“Of course I did.”

Jen turned to Dr. Kershaw. “Where’s your golf ball?”

Dr. Kershaw stood up and pointed down the fairway to a ball close to the green. “That’s mine.”

“You’re sure?”

“From where I was hitting my second shot, I could see the green and where it landed. So yes. Definitely.”

“But you couldn’t see Ms. Garcia here.”

“No.”

“And where is her ball?”

“I have no idea,” she said. Trebook shook his head, enthusiastically confirming he didn’t know either.

Jen took out her phone and popped off a series of photographs: the famous lawyer, a close-up of the wound, the ball, the golf bag she’d been carrying, the people, the surroundings. She scooped the ball into an evidence bag.

The sirens and helicopter were getting loud.

Jen raised her voice. “How long since she was hit?”

Trebook and Kershaw started muttering back and forth to calculate the time.

He: “I teed first.”

She: “I flubbed my tee shot. Went a hundred and twenty yards, still on the upper level. We walked to my ball, and I hit my second shot.”

“We reached the top of the hill and saw her.”

“Ran down.”

“Got to her, say, eight minutes from my tee shot.”

“Maybe a bit more.”

“Phoned 911 right away.”

I double-checked to confirm the time of the 911 call.

They were still talking.

“While you were calling them, I phoned up to the clubhouse,” Kershaw said, checking her watch.

“Fourteen, fifteen minutes ago,” Trebook said. “So nineteen or twenty minutes from when we teed off.”

Which means, I said to Jen, the ball hit Garcia between fourteen thirty-two and fourteen thirty-four.

Any more talk was drowned out by the belly-deep thumping of the helicopter.

That’s when we’d invited Mr. Trebook up to the clubhouse for a chat. Jen figured that sounded friendlier than admitting we were going to grill the guy until he cracked. He was now on his own—Dr. Kershaw had insisted on accompanying Garcia in the chopper.

The clubhouse was in a quiet uproar: everyone whispering, sitting in stunned silence, or sharing the excitement over their phones, but with their well-tended hands covering their well-fed mouths so others wouldn’t hear.

The woman staff member who had driven us back up to the clubhouse escorted us to an elegant meeting room. Jen asked Trebook to have a seat, then stared at the woman until she got the message and closed the door behind her.

Jen began with an open-ended gambit: “That must have been quite a shock.”

That’s when Trebook said, “I never killed anyone before,” and rushed out to toss what was left of his lunch.

When he returned, his face was gray-greeny white. We reassured him that Patty Garcia was still alive. He nodded, but it was obvious from the panic etching his face that he figured that might not be true for long.

Trebook closed his eyes and breathed like a yoga master. By the time he opened them, his tanned color was returning. It seemed to finally occur to him that his odds of getting dragged into a lawsuit were solid enough to turn an actuary into a gambling man. He abruptly announced that if we had any further questions, he wanted his lawyer at his side.

And so we said adios to the Timeless man who thought he had it all and headed down the long drive and out the polished gates of Viridian Green Golf Resort.

2

Friday

At the end of a tough day and a long week, Jen was home and Chandler was switched off. Alone and tired, she sipped an ice-cold Manhattan that was warming her up fast.

The long afternoon had ended with her correcting and adding to Chandler’s report on the accident at the golf course. She dialed Zach. Took a sip of her cocktail—velvety, but something was missing.

“Your Manhattans are better than mine,” was the first thing she said.

“Another unassailable reason not to ditch me.”

“First day okay?” He was in Raleigh, North Carolina, for a

conference of the Green Prosperity Network. Two months ago he’d landed a job as a member of the GPN’s economic team.

“Folks here are still in shock from Mable.” Mable was the late-season mega-hurricane that had destroyed the Outer Banks, ripping apart every house and bridge, gouging out so much sand that the area was now a collection of miniscule islands. Anyone who had taken the advice of the governor was now dead: he had said the warnings of scientists were wrong, it would be no worse than storms that had hit them in the past, and God would protect them because the state had outlawed abortions and homosexuality.

Jen and Zach were silent for a moment.

“Aside from that?”

“Tons of energy. Media everywhere. Presentation from the Norwegians on how they ditched their oil industry.”

“Cool.”

“There’s this huge delegation of Midwest farmers who spend half their time lamenting what they used to believe and who they voted for fourteen years ago. Although the most fun is the gang from the Fox News purge. Did you know—”

“Zach.”

“Yes?”

“And how was your day, dear?”

“Right, sorry. And how was, et cetera, et cetera?”

“You heard about Patty Garcia getting hit by a ball?”

“It was all everyone was talking about at dinner. Is she—”

“I was there.”

“You’re kidding.”

“The latest is that she was in surgery.”

“Very freaky.”

“Why I never took up golf.”

Saturday

Jen slept in on Saturday morning, but even at nine when she raised the blinds, she saw frost edging the fresh leaves on the trees. “Jesus,” she said out loud, “yesterday it hit seventy-five.” She checked the weather. High today: forty-one. It was what Jen, when Zach was within earshot, called the bad side of climate change—weather wildly swinging through the seasons in a heartbeat.

She monkeyed through a banana, downed a cup of strong coffee, and crunched on half a slice of multigrain toast spread with the raspberry jam she and Zach had made with his parents the previous year. She bundled into the cool-weather running gear she had prayed wouldn’t be needed again until the fall.

Zipping her phone into a snug pocket, she headed out to pick up Les, her former partner.

Six months earlier, on the last case they’d worked together, Les had almost died rescuing Jen. He’d pulled through surgery, and the nurses and rehab staff had him moving within a week. He was transferred to a rehab hospital, not so much because there was anything physically wrong with him but because he hadn’t yet spoken. In fact, he didn’t acknowledge anyone or anything going on around him. He did what you told him to do, but almost like a machine. He would run or work out until you said stop and eat when you told him to, all the while making no eye contact or showing a lick of emotion. If he didn’t get any instructions, he’d vegetate in one spot for hours.

Les was living back home with Christopher and still in this strange fugue state.

Before Jen ended her own sick leave and returned to work—the only lasting effect was a fatigue she couldn’t shake—she had timed her visits to coincide with Christopher being out. The ever-cautious Christopher still blamed her for what had happened to his husband. Avoiding him was no longer always possible, but Jen figured Christopher was happy to have some time when he didn’t have to worry about Les and at least glad that Les was getting a good workout. Christopher was not an exercise guy.

Christopher buzzed her up to the fourth floor. She’d once had the condo door code; no longer. He opened the door. Diffuse morning light spilled in from the large balcony doors; the skin of his beautiful face glowed reddish brown. He grunted a perfunctory hello and let her stew in the hallway while he got Les ready, nattering away as he might to a kid, his voice a deep, singsong softness from his native Brazil. “Did you pee? Let’s go make sure … It’s cold out there; you better bundle up … Definitely will need gloves … I’m putting tissue in your pocket.” After kissing his unresponsive husband, Christopher hung on for an extra second as if he didn’t want to relinquish his proprietorship.

Jen led Les to the stairs, all the while feeling Christopher’s eyes jamming into her back.

Damn it, Christopher, she thought, can’t you just be decent to me? Tell me I’m the only one you trust? Tell me you know it wasn’t my fault that Les ended up this way? But Jen knew he wasn’t yet there.

They took the fast electric shuttle up 14th to avoid city running and the burnt-out section of the park. Just before Arkansas Avenue, the Upshur Park baseball and soccer field had become a new Shadow encampment.

The Shadows. Homeless. Jobless. Wandering millions from hurricane-destroyed Miami, washed-away Louisiana bayous, and burnt-up chunks of northern California. They’d set up encampments in cities and towns across the country or sought refuge in Canada or Mexico. Nothing to fall back on. Nothing to look forward to. Nothing but nothing but nothing. Treated like mere shadows of humanity.

Jen spotted a tattered flag from the dried-up state of Kansas hanging from a scraggly tree. These folks must have been among the million people who’d fled that state, many on foot since they had long before sold their pickup trucks and cars. They’d trudged across the country. North, south, east, and west. Anywhere that seemed to promise relief.

Jen and Les stepped off the bus at Military Road NW and set off in a run. As they skirted the edge of Viridian Green, Jen pulled up a mental map in her head. Soon they were alongside the fifth hole, but even now in early March, the foliage was already becoming too dense to glimpse the course through the woods. “I was in there yesterday,” she said to Les. “Not much more than a hundred yards away.” She told him about the freak accident.

They ran at a good clip, working their way uphill along the newly widened Valley Trail. They passed other runners. A pod of teenagers on trail bikes zoomed by.

“Keep your eyes peeled, Les. Maybe we’ll see the hyena.” A striped hyena had escaped from the nearby zoo a week earlier. It was a scavenger, so it wasn’t about to attack them. But it would be cool, Jen thought, to spot it before it was recaptured.

“Zach’s down in Raleigh at a conference for his new job. I told you about it.”

She paused as was her habit, hoping he might be responding in his head.

“I’m happy he’s got this job,” she continued. “What with my expenses for Mom and our portion of house costs with Zach’s folks.” As if this made any sense to Les. “Even with all that, we’re finally able to save.”

Jen’s mom. Whose severe Alzheimer’s had strangely turned her into a nice person.

“But … there’s always a but, isn’t there?”

Pause.

“Since Zach got the job, it’s been two months of nonstop chatter about climate change and organizational intrigue. The other day I finally put my foot down. ‘I get it,’ I said. ‘We’re doomed.’ Zach kind of laughed, kind of sounded preachy when he said, ‘Then you don’t get it. We set up Green Prosperity precisely so we won’t be doomed.’ ”

Pause.

“Pretty sanctimonious, don’t you think?”

Pause.

“I do hope he’s right.”

They ran in silence until they reached the top of the park and turned around.

“Work … it’s still strange,” Jen said. “I mean, last year I went from no one believing me to getting suspended to, well, getting paraded around like a hero. But now, it’s like everyone is waiting for me to make a mistake. Vultures lining up for a feast.”

Jen focused on the rhythm of their running shoes smacking on the dirt.

“You better not tell anyone at work how worried I am.”

Les didn’t say a thing.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

Monday

End of a boring day catching up on paperwork. When she arrived home, cold from the chilly bike ride, Jen made herself a cup of mint tea.

Mug in hand, she settled at the small kitchen table and dialed Zach.

“I miss you,” Zach said.

“I’m pretty sure I miss you too, but I’m too tired to say for certain.”

Zach started to answer but Jen cut him off, her tone now serious. “Shitty news about Patty Garcia.”

Zach’s silence said more than any words.

Jen went on, “She never regained consciousness.”

“Which I guess means she didn’t suffer.”

“Who knows,” Jen said, but this felt too brutal. “You’re right, probably not.”

“It’s a truly massive setback to our work.”

“Generally? Or something more specific?”

Zach hesitated. “Well, general, for sure. She was a great advocate for action on climate change.”

“She was supposed to speak at your conference, right?”

“Yeah, tonight. The closing address. She was …” His voice trailed off.

Jen had known Zach long enough to hear the unstated follow-up line: As for the rest, I’ll fill you in when I get home. Some things weren’t for the phone.

They talked for a while, Jen about work, Zach about his conference and its attendant intrigues of personalities and politics. Jen heard the front door open, and a moment later Zach’s parents, Leah and Raffi, came into the kitchen, lugging cloth bags of groceries.

Jen waved to them and said to Zach, “My saviors have arrived with provisions.”

“My parents spoil you.”

“And I love every second of it.”

“See you tomorrow afternoon.”

“Mañana.”