Deadly Aim

by Patricia H. Rushford

  A glob of paint dropped from his brush and spattered on the plastic drop cloth he’d laid over the shrubs. He ignored it and went on painting the eaves in front of him.

  A rapid burst of what sounded like distant gunfire disrupted his thoughts.

  “Is that what I think it is?” Kath threw him a worried look.

  He shook his head. “Can’t be. Not here in Sunset Cove.” He sucked in a deep breath, knowing as soon as the words left his mouth that they weren’t quite true. In recent years, the crime rate in coastal areas had mushroomed. Callen debated whether or not to check it out.

  “Well, if it is gunfire, I suppose that means you’ll be going to work?”

  “Maybe.” Sirens again. Curiosity almost pulled him away, but he knew dispatch would page him if he was needed. His beeper was on the kitchen counter, where he could easily hear it. Normally he kept the beeper clipped to his belt, but he hadn’t wanted to get paint on it.

  “So, little bro, think you’re going to like it here?” Kath took a sip of coffee and let her gaze linger on the rolling surf. He paused and glanced in the same direction, spotting a surfboarder paddling out past the breakers.

  “Already do.” He couldn’t help but smile. The house was almost ready. It had taken six months of weekends and days off to remodel and clean up—the house had more than lived up to its reputation as a fixer upper. Since it needed a roof, he’d torn the old one off and added a dormer to the former one-story cabin, ending up with a great master suite and an extra bathroom. It had also needed new electrical wiring throughout, some new plumbing, and sheetrock in places where mold had taken over the walls.

  “I’m insanely jealous, you know.” Kath crossed her jean-clad legs and gazed out at the water, now a perfect blue as it reflected a cloudless sky. “I’d love to live on the coast.”

  Callen gave her a smug grin. As a kid, he’d enjoyed making her jealous, and still did. “You and Stan and the girls can stay here anytime.”

  “I know.” She sighed, and her gray-green gaze settled on him. “But it’s not the same. If we didn’t have to be near the airport for Stan’s job...” She let the comment fade, a wistful expression on her face.

  “You’d still live in Portland,” Callen teased. “You wouldn’t be able to stand being in a small town like this, and you know it. There aren’t any shopping malls. No Nordstrom stores. You’d never make it. Neither would the girls.”

  Kath reached over and swatted his leg. “I’ll have you know I can go for at least a week without going to Nordie’s.” She grinned. “But you’re right. We’re all hopelessly addicted. Speaking of the girls...” She checked her watch and frowned. “They should be up by now.”

  Callen chuckled. “Darn right. I would’ve had them up and working their tails off by 7:00.”

  “Sure you would.”

  Callen’s nieces, Ashley, eleven, and Jenna, thirteen, were sleeping late because it was the weekend and they’d been up until 1:00 watching some chick flick with their mother. Callen had gone to bed early.

  He thought he heard another spattering of gunshots. Callen put the lid on the paint can and started down the ladder. Beeper or no, he had to see what was going on. He tapped the lid down tight and set the paint on the deck, then wiped his hands on the rag he’d tucked into his back pocket. He shoved open the door and nearly tripped over Mutt as the white patch of fur raced for the open door and freedom. “Mutt, get back here!”

  The phone rang. The dog kept running, and Kath took off after him. Callen snatched up the receiver from the wall phone. “Yeah?”

  “Detective Riley?” It was the dispatch operator.

  “Speaking.”

  “We have an officer involved in a shooting at Sixth and Main. Please hold for Officer Caldwell.”

  Callen recognized the name. He’d met Nick Caldwell and his boss, Joe Brady, several weeks before when he’d gotten called in on the Kelsey case. Jim Kelsey was still missing, and it was beginning to look as if the wife had killed him.

  Almost immediately, Caldwell came on the line. “Detective Riley, this is Nick Caldwell. We paged you, but you didn’t respond.”

  Callen apologized and looked around on the counter for his beeper but couldn’t find it. “What’s up?”

  “We’re going to need you on this one. I know this is your weekend to move in, but we have a major problem here.” Caldwell filled him in on the pharmacy robbery, and as he spoke, Callen’s level of guilt escalated. He should have responded to the gunfire sooner. “We went after the shooters,” Caldwell continued, “and Officer Delaney cornered one of them, a kid about twelve. She had to use deadly force.”

  Groaning inwardly, Callen brushed his fingers through his hair and tipped his head back. This was not on my to-do list. But to Caldwell, he said, “I’m on my way.” He hung up and glared at his sister, who was leaning on the counter with Mutt squirming in her arms and whining to be put down.

  “You have to go in, right?” She rubbed Mutt’s tummy and received a wet kiss for her efforts.

  “Where’s my beeper? I left it on the counter this morning.”

  Kath bit her lower lip and frowned. “I don’t know, unless.... Oh, my goodness. I bet it got put in with the other kitchen stuff.” She opened one of the drawers, fished around, and finally pulled it out. “Callen, I’m so sorry. I didn’t look at it closely. I must’ve thought it was a timer or something.” She looked stricken. “They’ve been paging you, haven’t they?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he grumbled, grabbing the pager and clipping it to his belt. Paint or no paint, he should’ve had it on him. Going to the closet, he lifted his shoulder holster and gun from its hook, expertly slipping it on. As he put on his jacket and opened the door, he said, “It’s okay, Kath. I doubt I could have made a difference anyway.”

  Once in his car, an unmarked Crown Victoria, Callen hit the switch to turn on his lights, burning rubber in an effort to make up for the time he’d lost. It took him all of three minutes to reach the scene.

  Officer Delaney was sitting in one of the patrol cars when he pulled into the parking lot in front of the old cannery warehouse. It wasn’t hard to pick her out, since she was the only woman around. She looked in his direction, then tipped her head down to stare into the cup of coffee in her hands. Something about her demeanor and the glazed look in her eyes squeezed his heart. For the first time since leaving the house, Callen wondered if things would have been different if he’d responded when he heard the first barrage of gunfire.

  Nick Caldwell and another uniformed officer stood next to her, and when Caldwell saw Callen, he hurried toward him.

  “Detective, Officer Mason was just going to take Angel back to the station. Do you need to talk to her first?”

  Callen shook his head. “We can give her some time to pull herself together. My main concern is making sure the weapons are all checked, and I’d like to do a gunshot residue test on all of the officers involved.”

  “You got it,” Nick said. “I already told her we needed a urine specimen, and I collected Angel’s weapon and bagged it. She fired three shots into the victim. Several of us got shots off at the pharmacy. I think Eric and I are the only ones who didn’t fire.” He pointed to a squad car. “Eric’s the one getting into the car with Angel.”

  Callen opened his trunk and secured the GSR kit. “We’ll check him first, then the others.”

  After introducing himself to Angel and Eric, Callen turned to Eric. “I’ll need to check your weapon.”

  “Sure.” The officer produced his duty gun, confirming what Caldwell had said about him not firing. He had a full magazine. “Nick said you were thorough,” Eric said when Callen handed the .40-caliber Glock back to him.

  “I try to be. I’d like to do a GSR test too.”

  Eric frowned. “What’s that?”

  Callen wasn’t surprised at the question; most officers didn’t know about the procedure. The Oregon state lab was one of a dozen or so places in the country that had the
equipment for GSR. He produced a sterile swab from his kit. “I do a swab of each officer’s hands and send it to the lab, where they test for gunshot residues.”

  “Interesting.” Eric nodded and offered his right hand.

  Callen dipped the swab in a bottle of sterile water and rubbed Eric’s hand with it, then placed it in a paper envelope. Glancing over at Nick, he said, “I’d like you to get the other guys lined up, and we’ll do them all at once.”

  He went around to the passenger side of the squad car and tested Angel as well. Her hand flinched as the swab went across it. Callen made the mistake of looking at her and got caught up in the depth of her violet blue eyes. Beautiful eyes.

  Words got stuck in his throat, and he cleared it. “Caldwell said you were going back to the station,” he managed to say. “That’s a good idea.” Best to remove her from the scene as soon as possible, before the media descended on them. He’d need to talk to her eventually, but his interview could wait. For the moment he’d get statements from the other officers at the scene.

  Callen hated situations in which an officer had to use deadly force, and this one sounded bad. Shooting a kid—the media would have a field day. He frowned as he watched the squad car drive away.

  Angel Delaney. What kind of name is that for a cop?

  On the way back to the station, Angel reminded herself she’d done the right thing. These things happen, she told herself again and again.

  “Anything I can do to help?” Eric asked.

  She offered him a weary smile. “I was just thinking.”

  “What about?”

  “I—I could’ve sworn I only fired one shot.”

  “So?”

  “There were at least three shots fired.”

  “That’s what I heard.” Eric frowned. “You’re saying someone else shot the kid?”

  “I don’t know.” Angel glanced at him. “You’re thinking that’s not possible, aren’t you? That Billy and I were alone in the building.”

  “What I’m thinking doesn’t matter. You know what went down. If you say somebody else was there, I believe you, but...” Eric hesitated and glanced in the rearview mirror as they approached city hall. The police station was housed in the north half of the building. Since Sunset Cove was a small town, and since they only had fourteen officers in the entire department, they didn’t have a lot of the perks of a big city.

  “But?” Angel folded her arms.

  “Just be sure you have your facts straight, that’s all. You were pretty shook up back there. It’s possible that you blocked it out. It happens. I remember my first time. I was nervous—I can tell you that. This guy came at me with a knife. I had to shoot.” He frowned. “Craziest thing. I thought I only fired once. Turned out I’d cranked six bullets into the guy.”

  Angel had heard similar stories before. She’d been trained to fire in succession at body mass. Had she done that? Apparently, but she remembered having second thoughts. She didn’t tell Eric how she’d hesitated, how she almost hadn’t fired at all. Her weapon, a semiautomatic, had a hair-trigger response. Was Eric right? Had she blocked it out?

  She closed her eyes, trying to remember, but all she could see was the blood pumping out of Billy’s wound and the color seeping out of his face. She stared at her red-streaked hands and blood-soaked pants. Would the stains ever come out?

  “I’m not the only one that’s happened to,” Eric went on. “Talk to anyone who’s had to use deadly force and they’ll tell you the same thing.”

  “I suppose...”

  “Angel.” Eric settled a hand on her shoulder, his blue eyes filled with empathy. “You did the right thing back there. The kid was bad news. All I’m saying is, it doesn’t matter if you fired one shot or three—or if you emptied your gun. You did what you had to do.”

  Angel nodded. “I guess I did.” But his reassurance did nothing to ease her anguish.

  Eric dropped her off at the back entrance of the historical red brick building, promising to check up on her later. Angel headed straight for the women’s locker room, where she stripped off the bloodied uniform and placed it into a plastic bag. Once the crime lab techs finished examining the clothes, they would dispose of them. She’d have to get another uniform. But there would be plenty of time to do that while she was on administrative leave, waiting for the investigation to end.

  She stepped into the steaming shower, letting the hot water pound against her skin and watching the swirls of soap pour into the drain. Her throat clogged with sobs she tried to stop.

  He had a gun. I did what I had to do, Angel reminded herself again. She turned off the shower, dried off, and made her way across the tile floor to her locker. She pulled out her off-duty uniform—a pair of running shoes, jeans, a T-shirt, and a sweatshirt. She dressed quickly, blaming her chills on the coolness of the room.

  Angel decided to write out the report while it was fresh in her mind. She wanted to get it down and get it over with as soon as possible. She took the uniform to the temporary evidence lockers, opened an empty one with her key, stuffed the bag inside, then signed it in along with the locker number. She put a tag on the locker to let other officers know it was in use.

  In the report room, Angel poured herself a cup of coffee, picked up the forms, and settled herself at a table. Thankfully, no one else was around, partly because it was Sunday and partly because all the available officers were at the crime scene.

  She’d only written a few words when her boss, Joe Brady, Sunset Cove’s police chief, ambled into the room. “Nick told me I’d find you here.” Joe was a big man with a stomach badly in need of toning. He wore a suit and tie—church clothes.

  “I’m sorry you had to come in. I know how important Sunday mornings are to you.”

  He set a plastic collection bottle on the table in front of her. “Why don’t you take care of this now, if you can. When you’re through I’d like you to come into my office.” He leaned over, resting his hands on the back of the chair across from her.

  “Sure. No problem.” Angel grabbed the bottle and hurried to the women’s rest room. Giving urine samples wasn’t all that unusual. The department did random drug testing on all of their officers from time to time. But this was different and humiliating.

  She washed her hands and took the specimen with her into Joe’s office, where she set it on his desk and sat in a chair across from him. She clenched her hands to keep them from shaking. Then, maintaining more control than she thought possible, she told him what had happened.

  She thought about telling him the same thing she’d told Eric—that she’d fired only once—but like Eric had said, she needed to have her facts straight first. And she just plain didn’t know what the facts were. Her magazine would show how many shots she’d actually fired, and Nick had that sealed in an evidence bag.

  Joe leaned back in his chair, then let it bounce forward. “Sounds like you followed procedure. We’ll probably hit a few rough spots dealing with the press on this one, with him being a kid and all. But I don’t foresee any problems.”

  Angel felt a thread of relief weave in and out between the tension. “Good.” She pushed herself out of the chair and headed for the door. She had her hand on the knob when Joe’s cell phone rang.

  While he listened to the caller, his lips formed a tight, thin line. He held up his hand for Angel to wait. “I see. Right. Thanks for the call.” Joe looked up at Angel, then pulled his gaze away. “You might want to sit back down.”

  “What’s wrong?” she asked as she eased back into the chair.

  Joe rose and walked over to the window.

  “Joe?”

  Stuffing his hands into his pockets, he turned around to face her. His hazel eyes held hints of anger and accusation. “He was only twelve years old. Did you know that?”

  “I... yes. I met him a couple weeks ago.” Angel gripped the arms of the chair. “He had a gun, Joe. I followed procedure.”

  “For your sake, I hope that’s the case.” He r
an a hand across his balding head.

  Angel frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  “It was a toy gun, Delaney. The kid was carrying a stinkin’ toy gun.”

  They’d find J.J.’s body soon. Duke raised his foot and set it on the rear bumper of his car and bent over to tie his shoelace. The cops were still swarming all over the place, looking in every nook and cranny for the men who pulled off the robbery. A futile effort—those kids would be long gone by now. There were a lot of places to hide in Sunset Cove.

  Duke was plenty steamed about the robbery. Those idiots were supposed to keep a low profile, not hit the local establishments with guns blazing. He had expected petty theft, but not armed robbery—not gunning down an innocent old man.

  Things were getting out of control. An icy trickle of fear ran down the back of his neck. If these guys weren’t careful, they could blow the entire business apart, just like they’d shattered that window at the pharmacy.

  Since he’d eliminated J.J., he would have to find a replacement and quick. He needed someone with as much street smarts and pull as J.J. He’d met several potential dealers through the Dragon’s Den over the weekend. He sneered. The saps who ran the place had set up the teen club to help kids who’d gone down the wrong road. They hoped the kids would somehow find God and turn their lives around. Fat chance. The kids came in to shoot pool and hang out and eat, not to be rehabilitated. Their “safe” weekend dances were safe all right—safe for the kids to pop designer drugs.

  Maybe he’d go to the club tonight, play a little pool and pick out his new contact. It wouldn’t be hard. All he had to do was keep his eyes open for the one guy the others looked up to. There was always a pecking order. He had a hunch the highest guy in that pecking order was the one who’d set up the pharmacy hit.

  Duke knew just how to bring him into the business. Money would interest him initially, but keeping him would require something more compelling. The threat of being turned over to the cops might do it. His main man would make the initial contact and bring him in.