“Here you go,” she told the man. “I think you should listen to the chief, sir. Pardon me,” and she moved off.
A small crackle in her earpiece and Deputy Kupitz’s voice whispered, “I see someone.”
“Where are you, Koop?” Hockley replied through the static.
Madison stood on tiptoes to look around.
“I’m Chief Will Sangster, y’all know me, and I have the privilege to serve this town . . .”
“I’m at the back of the crowd,” Kupitz said, “and I’m looking at a guy I’ve never seen before—”
“Details, Koop,” Sorensen cut in.
“About late teens, early twenties. Five ten. Dark clothes, black hood, and a baseball cap. I’ve never seen him before, and he looks real squirrelly.”
“Where is he?” Madison said as she turned left and right.
“Edge of the crowd, by the TV station’s van.”
“When something like this happens,” Chief Sangster said, “you need to know that we are doing everything possible . . .”
“I see him,” Hockley said.
It occurred to Madison that she could have been standing right next to the guy and she wouldn’t have known: she could very well spot a liar and a crook, but she didn’t know the faces of all the town’s residents like the deputies did. There was no point in trying to push her way through, so she rushed around on the outside of the crowd to get to Hockley. A few turned but most were listening to the chief—the mayor had given them the values held dear, but the chief was a decent man and they might finally get some facts instead of all the rumors that had been flying around in the Tavern and the Magpie Diner.
Brown had heard the exchange in his earpiece and noticed Madison was on the move. He kept his gaze on the van and on the young deputy near it. He stayed where he was, even if he’d rather be among them. Slowly, approach him slowly and carefully. Be polite but watch his hands.
Madison saw the van and headed for it. She spotted Sorensen and Kupitz with Hockley, arriving from the other side. They all converged on the side of the truck. The lettering on the doors read “KSKD IS THE NEWS,” which, even in the urgency of the moment, Madison thought made no sense.
Kupitz nodded toward a group. There he was: a young man, his eyes fixed on the family in the gazebo. His hands were in the pockets of his hooded top and he was balancing on the balls of his feet. A second later he took his cell phone out, checked the screen, and then the hand went back into the pocket. He did that every few seconds. His hood was up and his narrow eyes searched the crowd.
“You don’t know him?” Sorensen said.
“Never seen him before,” Kupitz replied. “You?”
Hockley shook his head.
They had agreed on a procedure at the briefing: the deputies wore the local uniform and represented the local law enforcement agency . . . they would approach any individual they wanted to check out. And Madison and Sorensen would back them up.
Hockley stepped forward. “Sir?” he said to the young man. “May I have a word?”
The young man turned. “What?”
“I’d like a word, sir.”
He had stubble on his chin and his eyes were red rimmed. Madison could smell the stale cigarette stench of his clothes from where she was standing. There might have been some marijuana in that reek too.
“What?” he repeated.
He didn’t seem any more dangerous than a campus kid after a really long night with a keg. They were looking for a murderer and the worst this kid had likely ever done was some drunk texting after too many shots. Madison’s main focus went back to the crowd.
“Would you—?”
But Hockley was cut short by a large man in a parka who had stepped up to the young man and eyed Hockley with mock suspicion. “What’s he done now, Hock?” he said.
“Hey, Walt,” Hockley said. “Do you know this young man? We’re keeping an eye out for strangers. You know how it is.”
“I know how it is. He’s my nephew. Got here last night from Spokane for a visit.”
The young man nodded.
“Thanks, Walt.” Then he added to the nephew, “Thanks for your cooperation, sir.”
“Walt’s my neighbor,” the deputy said as the two men walked away. “If he says the guy’s his nephew, he’s his nephew.”
“His nephew stinks of pot,” Kupitz said, embarrassed for his bad call.
Brown saw the young man being led away by a larger man and the deputies’ frowns. To Brown the guy looked like a stoner who had turned up at the wrong party.
Chief Sangster was still talking, and Brown tuned in for a moment.
“. . . this is a safe town and we’re going to keep it that way . . .”
He tuned out again.
In a few minutes the mob would disperse and the Tavern and the diner would reap good business. Maybe even the bakery. The sky was still clear, and there was nothing like a morning pastry after a brush with someone else’s grief.
Madison caught the last words of Chief Sangster’s speech—something about the police station’s telephone number and his own private line. In the middle of the crowd a child let out a shriek and Madison flinched.
The choir started a new song, something uplifting that Madison didn’t know and didn’t much care about. She was eager for the vigil to end, for the crowd to break up, and for everybody to go back home. Madison, who had never been claustrophobic in her life, for some reason couldn’t wait to get the hell away.
She was moving back toward her previous position as she watched people take pictures of the singers, but a sound kept intruding into her consciousness. The child shrieked again and Madison flinched. It was a sharp wail and it cut through everything else—except for that sound, still there, still tugging at her attention.
What now?
It was a dog. A dog was barking, somewhere behind them—close by, but out of sight. It had been barking for a few minutes and it was becoming more and more upset—a small dog by the sound of it. Others had noticed it and had turned away from the choir, craning their necks. A couple were walking fast toward the other end of the square and Madison picked up something in their gait, something in their hurrying that felt like panic, and she followed.
The footpath lined the end of the square, and beyond it rushed the stream that Madison had seen that morning. On the other side a steep bank rose to the forest, the firs so close that hardly any light filtered to the ground.
Madison caught up with the couple on the footpath. They were somewhere in their late sixties, and the woman was leaning forward against the railing.
“It’s Tucker! That’s our dog!”
A small brown poodle was on a leash, tied to a tree on the top of the bank, on the other side of the stream. The dog had seen them and was dancing in a frenzy of happiness, yapping and whimpering and straining against the collar.
“That’s my dog,” the woman said to Madison, as if that explained everything. And Madison remembered her in the police station the previous night. Eagle bait.
“Stay here, hon,” the husband said. “I’ll go to the bridge.”
“We had lost him, see?” the woman said. “And I told the chief.”
“It’s okay, sweetheart, I’ll go get him.”
Madison looked at the dog, and from somewhere the image of a goat on a tether came to her. Eagle bait.
A handful of people had joined them and Madison heard someone behind her say, “We can’t cross here, we need to—”
The first pop was like a firecracker, and it hissed close to her ear.
The second found its target next to her.
A muzzle flash flared between the trees, and the third pop flew above her head as Madison grabbed the woman and dropped to the ground on top of her.
“Shots fired! Shots fired!” she yelled into her radio as the fourth pop landed somewhere to her right.
The railing was metal bars screwed into the ground and afforded no protection at all: the shooter was in the woods
above them, and they had nowhere to run.
A shooter?
Madison struggled to understand what was happening, but her training kicked in. She was crouching and shooting before she even realized what she was doing. She had seen the muzzle flash in the gloom under the trees and that’s where she aimed, sweeping the area around it, covering anybody who was trying to run away from the sniper and emptying her magazine into the woods. Her chest had been punched by the adrenaline spike and it was hard to draw breath and think straight.
Let them get away, let them get away.
Her ears rang and buzzed and her hands automatically ejected the spent mag—quickly, without thinking, because thinking makes you slower and slower makes you dead—body memory at work, she reached for the new mag in her belt, clicked it into place and was about to start shooting again when she stilled and breathed. Breathed and listened. All around her the square was quiet and only the elderly couple remained next to her; everyone else who had been near them had vanished.
Madison lifted her Glock toward the woods—her hands were shaking. The woman lay curled up at her feet. Madison kept her eyes on the line of trees. “Ma’am, are you shot? Are you shot, ma’am?” she said.
The lady shook her head. Next to her on the ground her husband lay on his back: he had been shot four times in the chest, a tight grouping that would make any sniper proud.
Across the bank the dog was barking, struggling to free itself, miraculously unhurt.
Brown watched Madison veer away and hurry in the opposite direction from the gazebo. He narrowed his eyes. She had definitely seen something and two people ahead of her were in a serious rush.
Brown saw them arrive at the bottom of the square, and saw the woman point at something. Others had joined them now.
The first crack was a distant pop that didn’t mean much to the crowd in front of him. He heard the second and the third, and he knew it—even before Madison’s voice burst through his earpiece. He bit his lip and tasted blood.
“Shots fired! Shots fired!”
The choir kids were still singing as Brown grabbed Sangster’s arm. “Clear the square. Now!” he said. And then he ran.
How long was the square? How long would it take him to cross it?
There was an explosion of noise on the radio as the chief issued his orders.
Chapter 19
Alice Madison felt a slick of something on her cheekbone and didn’t wipe it off because she didn’t want to see the red on her hand. Sounds seemed to find her with difficulty: she could hear the dog, she could hear the exchanges on the radio; nevertheless, she was in a bubble of half silence. And reality—even the reality within the reach of her arm—seemed very far away. She saw more than heard the woman scream as she knelt by her fallen husband.
Without realizing that she was doing it, she checked herself for injuries and found none. How could it be? She had been standing right next to the man. Somehow, she had not been hit. And as Madison looked around—standing with her piece still trained on the trees—it seemed that no one but the man had been shot. Some people were cowering behind the benches nearby, others were running toward Main Street. Those still at the gazebo end were also moving off, she registered.
There was no movement in the trees aside from the jumping little dog. After a minute Madison allowed herself to look down: the man was obviously dead but she reached for the spot under his jaw and felt for his carotid pulse anyway. There was none.
“Madison? Are you hit?” Sorensen’s voice came through the radio.
“I’m okay,” Madison replied. “We need a bus. Zero-one-zero, two-nine-one.”
It was the Seattle Police Department code for homicide and person with gun. Madison had used it without thinking—Colville County was probably using a different code. Another damn thing that wasn’t working in this crazy setup. She was angry. She was furious.
Madison looked up and Brown was there, his eyes taking in the situation. Two people on the ground—one fatality, one witness—Madison standing over them, and a dozen spent shells around her feet.
“He was over there,” Madison pointed.
“One shooter?” he said.
“He stayed put. Didn’t change position. I only saw one muzzle flash.”
“Where exactly?”
“Four feet to the left of the dog.”
Brown looked at the man on the ground and his eyes met Madison’s. The sniper had been interested in only one person out of the hundreds in the square, only one person out of the group right there by the railing. He could have picked them out, one by one.
“I’m going to pursue,” Madison said.
“No,” Brown laid his hand on her forearm. “You can’t. Your hearing is compromised. You would be a target, and you would make me vulnerable too.”
Madison opened her mouth to argue, but Brown was right. His voice—what she could hear of it—was muffled and reaching her as if she were inside a box. She tried to object anyway, but he had already climbed over the railing and down the bank to the stream.
“Officer in pursuit,” Madison called into the radio. Forty-eight hours earlier they had been chasing one unarmed kid down the alleys in Seattle’s International District with the support of the whole department. Here, Madison considered, they had a shooter and not enough cruisers for the whole department.
The water was freezing but Brown had to cross the stream and get to the other side. He was glad the dog would be a marker for where the sniper had lain in wait, because there was no way to cross where he was. The water was ten feet wide. And who knows how deep?
Was it worth getting himself wet if it slowed him down? If it made him more vulnerable?
Twenty yards to his right he noticed that the stream was narrower, and he headed there. Six feet wide, with a protruding rock on one side and a stuck log on the other that might—maybe, hopefully—carry his weight. He took a couple of steps backward and launched himself forward. One of his boots skipped in and out of the water, but somehow he made it across.
The dog greeted him enthusiastically, and Brown was glad that the little thing was tied to a tree—even though he wished it would shut up. It must have been terrified by the shooting. Brown was about to pet it and then stopped himself. There might be DNA or other trace evidence from the sniper on the dog.
Even with the sun still high in the sky there was a distinct murkiness in the forest that felt damp and mulchy, because daylight didn’t often make it all the way to the ground—and when it did, it was too drained after its struggle to matter. And Brown saw it: a spot where the dirt had been disturbed, where a long form had lain in wait, where metal casings from the shells glinted in the shade. Metal casings that the shooter had not bothered to take with him.
Brown—his weapon out in front of him and moving with the sweep of his eyes—progressed yard after yard, from one tree to the next, looking for someone who had probably already left. Or who might still be there, ready and waiting for the cops who would inevitably follow.
There was something rank in the air and it spoke to Brown’s natural instinct: it was the scent of death, recent death, like a shrill warning drifting all around him.
His footsteps were muted on the dirt and Brown was glad that Madison was not there: anybody could have snuck up on her on the needle-covered ground with the odd patch of snow. Everything on the forest floor was decaying and covered in moss: rotten wood and fallen logs, fluff from the fur of a small animal, and feathers from another animal’s prey.
Once he was out of sight of the dog it felt as if the view in every direction was nothing but the same repetition of trunks, low branches, and heavy, silent murk. He paused and listened. Birds rustled above him, high in the trees and close to the light. And yet, where he was, there was no sound except for the thunder of his heart. He should have been the one being shot at, not Madison. He pushed away that notion, the cool lump it brought to his stomach, and pushed on.
The putrid smell was becoming stronger and a sudden
thought froze Brown where he was: Could it be a distraction? Could it be something the shooter had devised to sidetrack the attention of his pursuers? It would have been easy to hunt and kill something and leave the carcass as a disturbance to the focus of any other person who would come after him.
Brown breathed in the foul smell, trying in vain to become desensitized to it. His eyes swept his surroundings and caught a movement—barely a flicker of movement—on his left. He aimed his piece. He breathed in. He directed every ounce of perception to that point in space.
Nothing moved, nothing shifted.
He was exposed and unprotected, but no gunshots rang out.
He progressed again, and there it was: the fox had been killed recently by something bigger, faster, and stronger. The injury that had killed it had not been made by a knife or a bullet. Whatever had taken its life had probably been disturbed by the shooting and left it there—in death, as in life, part of the life cycle of the forest floor that would claim it back. The words of a poem found Brown like a startling gift from his school days, and he shuddered: the woods might have been dark and deep, but they sure as heck were not lovely.
After a few minutes trying to move ahead in a straight line, he felt the warmth of the sun on his face, the firs opened to the sky, and Brown walked onto a paved road that sliced the forest in two.
Shit.
The road was deserted on either side. If the shooter had left a car parked and ready for him—and why would he have not?—he could have been anywhere by then. Brown looked to the left and to the right. The shooter could have been gone forever, or, if he so wished, he could have gone to Ludlow and checked in person on the aftermath of his work.
The lack of noise made Brown uneasy: by then, in Seattle, the air would have been rent by sirens, while in Ludlow there was only a swish of wings as he turned and went back into the shadows.
Colville County was already catching up with the rest of the state.
Madison watched Brown cross the stream and stand where the shooter had been. She lost sight of him after that and unconsciously pressed the earpiece into her ear to make sure she would hear anything that might pass. The square was the size of a football field, and Brown had covered it at record speed to get to her.
Sweet After Death Page 12
