She took a few steps forward. “This is where I saw his red sneakers and the other man squatting over him.”
She’d moved to nearly the same spot Rick had landed on when he’d tested her earlier statement with Brynn. He’d like to conclude that the doc’s statement was truthful, but in fact, she could have gotten a look at the shooter’s face and just gotten lucky that her denial panned out. Most investigators would take this as a confirmation, but he wasn’t like most investigators, and he’d probe for additional details. “Tell me more about the other man.”
“I can’t tell you anything more than I did at the station.”
“Try closing your eyes. Think about stepping around the corner. How did it feel? What did you see?”
She looked up at him. “You’ve obviously had interview training. I’d likely have said the same thing in my counseling practice.”
Another nonanswer. “Then I’m sure you’re willing to try it.”
Her eyes closed, her long silky lashes settling on high cheekbones covered in freckles. Her shoulders shot back as if she was trying to make herself appear larger for whatever was coming. “He wore a camo jacket with a hoodie underneath. But the sleeves were pushed up. He raised the knife. Came toward me. There was something on the inside of his wrist.”
“What?”
“A tattoo. I think, anyway. But it was dark so I can’t be sure.”
“Left or right side?” he asked, ignoring her doubts so she would, too.
“His left. He was holding the knife in that hand.”
“Then he was left-handed.”
“Yes, I suppose he was.”
That was something new. Not much, but little things often added together to build a solid suspect profile.
“Could you make out the tattoo’s design?” Rick asked.
She shook her head.
“What about his pants? Were they camo, too?”
She scrunched her eyes tighter. “Maybe. I’m not sure.”
“Was the jacket a dark or light green?” he asked, as soldiers wore lighter-colored army combat uniforms at the local national guard center.
“It was too dark to tell.”
So he might have been in full uniform or not, or he could simply be a civilian who liked camo jackets. Or a hunter, as they often favored military wear. Either way, his clothing meant the team should check with local shooting clubs and firing ranges for a man who might have served in the military and had a wrist tattoo. With Cal’s extensive knowledge of weapons, he’d be right at home with that crowd, so Rick texted him a request to get started on compiling a list of locations.
Dr. Dobbs opened her eyes and blinked a few times before meeting his gaze. “It’s odd that he wore a jacket in this heat.”
“He was likely concealing a weapon.”
A delicate brow arched. “His knife, or do you mean he could have had a gun, too?”
“Maybe both.”
“If so, then why didn’t he shoot me?”
“Maybe he isn’t our shooter.”
She sighed. “Then who was he, and what was he doing with Ace?”
“He could simply be a guy who happened upon the body and was looking for money.”
“But why chase me, then?”
“He might think you got a good-enough look at him to ID him, and he wants to keep you from sharing that info with us.”
She met his gaze solidly. “Then the risk to me is over, because I’ve told you everything I know.”
If only that were true. “He doesn’t know what you’ve told us and might still be thinking about locating you.”
“But at this point he could assume I told you everything, right?”
Rick shook his head. “Witnesses often remember things as time goes on. Like you did just now. Maybe he’s afraid you’ll continue to remember. Or he wants to make sure, if he’s caught, that you won’t be alive to testify against him.”
She shuddered, but said nothing. Rick had to wonder again if she was keeping something from him, but he wouldn’t dig deeper at this point. To do so would reveal she was a suspect, and that could close her down even more.
Brynn crossed the street and handed the doc a small plastic bag filled with items from her purse. She clutched her belongings to her chest as if searching for a lifeline, and he felt bad about having to continue to question her.
“Thank you,” she said, her focus on Brynn. “I hope you can find something of value on the purse.”
“If touch DNA exists on the bag, I’ll find it.” Brynn shifted her focus to Rick. “Can I talk to you alone for a minute?”
“Don’t move from this spot, Doc,” he warned, then stepped out of earshot, but kept her in view in case she ignored his directive and decided to wander. “You have something new?”
“I recovered a partial McDonald’s receipt at the hide. Only the bottom half, showing a Sausage McMuffin was purchased.”
A burst of excitement brightened Rick’s outlook. “Do we have a credit or debit card number for the purchase?”
“No, sorry. It’s a cash receipt, and I don’t have a date or time of purchase either.”
His excitement bubble burst. “You keep saying it’s hard to lift prints from receipt paper, so I don’t see how this will help.”
“Wow. You really do listen when I share technical details.” She grinned. “You rarely comment, so I figured you were zoning me out.”
“Don’t get a big head.” He gave her a wry smile. “I tune you out plenty of times, too.”
She rolled her eyes good-naturedly. “Well, the good news is there’s a fingerprint expert in Nebraska who’s recently refined the technique for lifting prints from receipts. And McDonald’s receipts are the easiest to process. She isn’t sure why their paper yields better results, but thinks it’s related to the thermal layer.”
“Then you may get a print.”
“Yes, but this all assumes that the shooter dropped the receipt instead of some random person who ate breakfast on the roof.”
“Odds are good that few people have breakfast on a rooftop where access requires a key.”
“True.” She furrowed her brow.
“What’s wrong?”
“Takes a calculating guy to coolly sit on the rooftop and down a Sausage McMuffin, then plug a guy with a .50.”
“Good for us, though, right? If he really did eat a McMuffin up there, then he had to get it from a twenty-four-hour location. We can request security footage for all twenty-four-hour McDonald’s in the general area around the time of the shooting.”
“It’s possible I could lift DNA from the receipt, too.”
“Then process it,” he said, and even as he spoke, he was disappointed with the lack of evidence at this point. “Like ASAP. We need a strong lead. We’ve been moving like snails today. Shoot, even snails could move faster.”
“It’s early on. Give it time.”
“Normally I’d agree with you. Even tell everyone to chill out, but our shooter could be setting up right now for a sure shot to end someone’s life. Or maybe he’s trying to sell the technology. Either way, people will die if we don’t speed things along.”
She gestured at the street. “Max is headed your way. Maybe he’s got a solid lead for you.”
Rick turned to see his boss slip under the yellow crime scene tape cordoning off the inner perimeter.
“I need to get back to work,” Brynn said.
As she walked away, Rick had to wonder if she was bailing to avoid Max, who didn’t look happy about something.
He stopped in front of Rick, and his gaze shifted to the doc. “Dr. Dobbs, I take it.”
Rick nodded.
“You get any information from her other than the purse?”
“The shooter wore a camo jacket with hoodie underneath and potentially has a tattoo on his left wrist. She couldn’t make out the tattoo design because of the darkness. He held the knife in his left hand.”
“Every little bit helps.” Max pulled a folded d
ocument from his back pocket.
“The warrant for her records?” Rick asked hopefully.
He nodded. “I’ll be happy to slap it in her hand if you’d like.”
“Let me,” Rick said, surprised that the idea of Max slapping anything in the doc’s hand left him uneasy.
“Who am I to take the joy of serving a warrant away from you?” Max gave Rick the document.
Rick told him about the Salvation Army shelter. “The manager said they have records for that night, but he needs a warrant to show them to us.”
“The local PD hooked me up with a judge willing to work with us, so it should be easy to produce one within an hour or so.”
At least something seemed to be going their way today. “I’d like to head over to the doc’s office to get her files. Could you assign someone to question the manager?”
“If her files are electronic, she can simply transfer them to you.”
“At her convenience, yes. But I’m sure I’ll get faster results if I’m standing over her waiting for the files.”
“Good point,” Max said. “You head out. I should have time to get the warrant and question the manager.”
Max conduct a routine interview? Rick’s jaw nearly dropped at the thought, but he managed to keep his mouth closed. “I assume Brynn told you about the receipt.”
Max nodded.
“I’ll also need someone to run down the twenty-four-hour McDonald’s locations in the area and get security footage.”
“Grabbing video is pretty straightforward. I’ll hand it off to the locals and light a fire under them.”
“Thanks,” Rick said. “Every bit of help will move us forward faster.”
Max stepped away and Rick returned to the doc, who narrowed her eyes. “Who was that man you were talking to?”
“Our team leader, Max White.”
“I thought you were intimidating, but him? Sheesh.” She mocked a shudder. “He gives off a crazy vibe.”
Rick didn’t bother denying that both of them came across as intimidating. But in Rick’s case, in addition to his size, the sharp sense of focus he’d acquired as a sniper often left people thinking he was trying to intimidate when in reality he was just appraising a situation.
Still, his take on the situation didn’t matter when he needed the doc’s help. “I’ve been told that before. I’ll try to keep it in check.”
“No need to change who you are for me.”
“Spoken like a true shrink.” She grimaced, not at all the reaction he’d expected. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t like that term.”
“Duly noted.” He handed over the warrant and made a mental note not to say shrink again, as antagonizing her wouldn’t help the investigation.
She unfolded the paper, her gaze fixing on the first page. He wanted to get moving, but she had every right to digest the details.
When she looked up, he forced a professional smile to his face. “I need to get my hands on the records ASAP. Do you have electronic files with remote access, or do we need to go to your office?”
“I once kept files online, but then I was a victim of identity theft and my bank accounts were emptied. Now I don’t trust even the most secure networks.”
Interesting. “Tell me about the identity theft.”
She eyed him. “I fail to see how my personal business is relevant.”
“You never know what might be related to Ace.”
She crossed her arms. “I doubt my stolen money has anything to do with him. My personal accounts were breached, not my professional ones.”
“Did you contact the police?”
She nodded. “They haven’t been able to figure out who stole the money.”
Bank fraud fell under the FBI’s jurisdiction. That combined with her status as a suspect gave Rick a legit reason to investigate her theft, and he wouldn’t dismiss it as easily as she seemed to be doing. After the doc’s evasive answers, he’d make sure Kaci followed up on the missing money to determine if it was one more area where the doc shouldn’t be trying to evade his questions.
Chapter 7
A mere ten minutes from the murder scene, Rick followed the doc up wide stairs to a converted lemony-yellow Victorian home located on a tree-lined street. The building served as her office and fit the warm and welcoming vibe she continued to give off. Tall trees and thick underbrush lined the far side of the street, likely to keep down the noise from the busy road behind them.
They passed through a grand foyer with rich wood floors and banister leading up a winding staircase. She took the stairs up to a long hallway, her full skirt swishing in front of him and grabbing his attention.
How could he let a simple sway of her hips make him forget about his reason for being here?
His phone chimed, and he checked the text from Cal in response to Rick’s earlier message. Glad to look into hunting associations and shooting ranges.
“Thanks,” Rick replied while she unlocked and opened a squeaky door painted bright blue. He trailed her into a room just big enough for two chairs and a table with a lamp. Neat stacks of magazines lined the table. With her clientele, he wasn’t surprised to see titles like G.I. Jobs and Military Spouse, but the fashion magazines surprised him. Likely the doc’s own collection. She stepped toward another door, this one with a box containing a buzzer and small camera mounted beside it. Her clients likely rang the buzzer to let her know they’d arrived.
She entered the other room, a hint of vanilla air freshener filtering into the waiting area. He followed her into an office that was bland. Neutral. A beige sofa took up one wall, the windows covered with darker beige curtains that she flung open. A leather easy chair sat to the side, a tiny glass table nearby. Not much of a hint to her personality, but the space looked the way he’d expected a shrink’s digs to look.
She crossed the room to a small desk in the corner. On the wall above, she’d hung her diploma and Georgia counseling license, reminding him that he really didn’t know much about her, and he wanted details that the initial report Kaci had provided didn’t include. “Did you go straight from school to private practice?”
She shook her head and clicked on a crystal desk lamp, the only hint in the room of what he was coming to recognize as her very feminine tastes. “I fulfilled a required year of supervised internship, then worked three years at the local VA before I started my practice.”
“Is that how you became interested in PTSD?”
She shook her head and sat, but didn’t speak, raising another red flag.
“What made you become a shr—What should I call you? Counselor? Therapist?”
“Technically I’m a psychologist, but therapist or counselor works.” She opened a laptop with a shiny silver case and focused on the screen.
He pulled a wooden chair closer and straddled it. “So why did you want to become a counselor?”
Her head popped up, and she blinked a few times. “From your tone, I’d say you have something against counselors.”
They were here to talk about her and her practice, not his issues, but he suspected that if he blew her off, she wouldn’t give up, so he had to answer.
“Not counselors with ethics, no,” he replied, purposely not sharing the bad experiences he’d had with shrinks.
“You’re questioning my ethics?”
Okay, he wasn’t going there and risking offending her more. “Your interest in PTSD. How did it come about?”
She pressed her lips together for a moment. “Is this small talk or something I need to answer for the investigation?”
Her touchiness surprised him, and yet it didn’t. In his experience, shrinks got touchy when you turned the tables on them. “Does it matter?”
“Actually, I’d rather not discuss my motivations for the job. So if you’re not requiring me to answer, then…”
Griffin’s death easily connected her counseling practice to the investigation, but odd as it might seem, he found himself wanting to get to k
now her. Even more now that she didn’t want to talk about her motivations. “It could be helpful to the investigation.”
She sighed, sat back in the chair, and laid her hands on her skirt. “My interest started with my father, who was career army. He served tours in the Gulf War and Afghanistan. Each time he came home, he was less and less like himself.” She recited the words as if they were just facts, but she kept twisting her hands, telling him she was bothered by sharing this story. “I was six when he went to the Persian Gulf. That fun-loving, caring guy never returned. I got a sour, unhappy father instead, and I just wanted my daddy back.”
Rick didn’t want to force her to talk about something so personal, but now that she’d mentioned a military connection, he couldn’t let it drop. “Did he get treatment?”
She shook her head. “Back then PTSD was recognized by the AMA, but it still wasn’t being treated effectively. I remember my mom saying Dad was a faker and telling him to snap out of it. Over time he improved some on his own. Still, he wasn’t the same. And then…then he deployed to Afghanistan for two more tours before retiring, and his symptoms got progressively worse. He came home the week of my seventeenth birthday. He was barely functioning and started drinking his days away. He was totally wasted the day of my party and made a scene. As a teenager I was mortified, but mostly I was horrified that my dad was struggling so badly. I vowed that day to figure out how to help him.”
“And were you able to do so?” he asked, completely wrapped up in her story now.
Her lips trembled as if tears were imminent, but she sat quietly, and he didn’t press. Just waited and fought the urge to offer comfort by holding her hand. To tell her everything was okay, when that was a lie. Life rarely turned out with storybook endings. He’d seen far too many lives torn apart over the course of his military career to believe that.
“Sorry,” she said. “I wasn’t able to help him. Still haunts me.”
“What happened?”
“He kept drinking to drown out his issues. He managed to hold down a job, so he didn’t think he needed help. He was such a stubborn man. So stubborn that my parents split up.” She fidgeted with a delicate gold chain she wore around her neck. “He died one night from a self-inflicted gunshot.”
Kill Shot Page 7
