One Clean Shot

by Danielle Girard

  Hailey waited for him to say more. “I’ll let you know what we find.”

  Jim looked surprised. “Thank you.”

  She nodded.

  “I also got a call from Inspector O’Shea today.”

  O’Shea was the lead investigator on John’s shooting. “About John.” It wasn’t a question.

  “They had another suspect,” Jim said. “They wanted to come back and look at the room again.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said they were welcome to come,” Jim said.

  Jim’s sister stood in the doorway. How long had she been standing there?

  “Oh, hello, Dee,” Jim said. “Come sit. We were just catching up.” He rose and pulled a chair out for her. “Can I get you a glass of wine?”

  “I didn’t mean to interrupt,” she said without moving from the doorway.

  “You didn’t,” Hailey told her.

  Holding her locket, Dee crossed the room with the slow grace of someone with royal blood and smoothed her slacks as she sat. “I’d love a glass of wine.”

  Her brother filled a glass for his sister.

  Hailey often wondered why Dee lived here. She had plenty of resources, was a successful businessperson, but she had never been married and she seemed to like to be close to her brother. John had mentioned a few times during their marriage that he was surprised she had remained back east as long as she had.

  Dee had moved in with Jim and Liz a few months before Hailey and the girls did. She’d been working back east and decided she needed a change. Now she occupied the huge basement suite of Jim and Liz’s house.

  “You were out?”

  “Tom took me to dinner.” The skin on Dee’s neck appeared flushed.

  Hailey recalled how grief-stricken Tom Rittenberg had looked at John’s service. His daughter Abby had died just before John. She was glad to hear he had someone though she had a hard time picturing the lively Rittenberg with reserved Dee.

  “You’ve seen a lot of him,” Jim commented.

  “We enjoy each other’s company,” Dee said.

  “You deserve it,” Hailey interjected.

  “Agreed,” Jim said, raising his glass.

  The three clinked their drinks

  Jim paid a strange deference to his younger sister, indulged her. And she him. They were sweet together, sometimes more like an old married couple than Jim and Liz.

  Hailey had never had a sibling, but the relationship between Jim and Dee seemed unusually close.

  Hailey had a hard time reading Dee. She was quiet and always spoke carefully. Except with Camilla and Ali who adored her. Watching Dee with them, Hailey was sure she regretted not having a family of her own.

  Nobody talked about that either.

  The doorbell rang and Jim frowned, while Dee, who sat closest to the door, made no move to answer it. Jim stood to get it as Hailey’s phone buzzed on her hip. “Hal.”

  “There’s two ways to look at getting called in again,” Hal said. His tone was light, playful. Hearing him made her realize he was like that less often lately.

  Hailey felt Dee’s gaze on her. “I’m listening.”

  “One, we’ve worked our asses off all weekend and we’re being called in again before I’ve finished my first beer and the game has just started.”

  Hal would be reclined in the worn navy leather chair that had been his father’s, a Bud propped on his hip, and his hand on the remote. “And the other way to look at it?” she asked.

  “This call is saving you from dinner at the senator’s.” He drew out the s like a snake sound. “You are there, aren’t you?”

  “I like the half full,” Hailey said, ignoring the dig at Jim. Old habits died hard. She’d have done the same thing a year ago. “Nice touch. So, what is it?”

  Hailey heard the groan of Hal’s chair as he sat forward, pictured the way he perched his elbows on his thick legs when he was serious. “I got the call. Ryaan’s informant says they’re going to try to move the guns stolen from Dennig Distribution. Ryaan Berry called to see if I want to be there.”

  Ryaan Berry was an inspector in the Triggerlock department. Hailey had heard she was also part of the Rookie Club dinners now, although Hailey hadn’t been since John’s death. “And you said yes?” she guessed.

  “Wouldn’t miss it,” Hal said. “I sent you a text with the address if you want to come down.”

  Hailey scanned the address on her phone. “What time do you need me there?”

  “An hour would probably be about right. I’ll call when it looks like it’s wrapping up. You got plans? I can handle it if the girls are home.” Hal was conscious of the fact that Hailey was her daughters’ only parent. If they weren’t both needed at a scene, Hal always offered to take it.

  “No. They’re still at the show with Liz. It’s just me and Jim and Dee.”

  “Maybe you should be doing the ride-along and I could stay home, catch the game.” Hal was also an eternal joker.

  “Nice try. I’ll be there in an hour. Call if you need me sooner.” Hailey ended the call and dumped her beer into the sink, tossed out the sandwich.

  Dee fingered her locket with one hand and held her wineglass with the other. “Heading back in tonight?”

  “Yeah.” Hailey brought down a glass for water when something pinged in the front hall.

  The sound, though soft, was distinct.

  “Get down,” Hailey shouted to Dee.

  A second bullet was fired. Another ping of the bullet through a silencer. Then, the sound of shattering glass.

  Dee dropped to her knees and crawled around one of the table’s legs, huddling in the center of the rug.

  Gun drawn, Hailey crept to the edge of the kitchen, pressed her back to the thin slice of wall beside the refrigerator. Waited to hear the sounds of someone coming.

  The house was silent except for the rhythmic ticking of the big grandfather clock in the hallway and the purring of the refrigerator on her back.

  She rounded the corner into the hall slowly, barrel first, crouched low. “Jim!”

  No answer.

  She turned into the dining room, cleared it and continued along the hall.

  The window beside the front door was broken, glass scattered across the dark wood floor, confirming that the shots had come from outside. “Jim!”

  The front door was cracked open. She froze, unsure if the suspect was inside or out.

  The hallway was the only route to the back of the house. If she stayed under the table, Dee was safe and Liz and the girls were out.

  Thank God for that.

  At the threshold to the front door, Hailey paused a beat, drew air until her lungs were full and kicked the door fully open.

  No shots fired.

  She ducked low, crept onto the porch. Empty.

  Scanned the front hallway again. Clear.

  She crossed to the top of the porch stairs, searching the street from the level of the banister. Silence penetrated the dark where the scent of rotting leaves filled the wet air, empty of the sounds of tires.

  Whoever he was, he was on foot.

  “Jim!” Panic filled her voice. The only reason he wouldn’t answer was… no. This family could not survive another death.

  Hailey halted at the entrance to the living room. If her shooter was inside, this is where he was.

  Pausing in the doorway, Hailey counted to three and hooked around the doorjamb, flipped the light switch and dropped behind one of Liz’s Windsor chairs.

  She rounded the couch and checked the fireplace—only a small mound of ashes sat piled in the center, waiting to be discarded.

  She thought of John. An intruder. All the unanswered questions around John’s death—the intruder who shot him. Now there was another intruder in the house.

  Fear c
aught in her throat, burned her eyes. Ali and Camilla could have been home.

  A trail of dark spots lined Liz’s white Persian rug.

  Behind the coffee table, Jim was flat on his back.

  He groaned and lifted a hand to cup his ear. Blood seeped between his fingers. She saw John—all that blood—and blinked the image away. “You’re okay.”

  Beside him lay a thin, white FedEx envelope. Pinned to the clear plastic on the outside was a round, white button.

  Hailey didn’t need to read its antigun message.

  She already had two other pins just like it—one from the Dennigs’ murders and one from Wesson’s.

  Chapter 2

  The van chugging down First Street hardly looked like police transport. If he didn’t know where he was going, Hal Harris would’ve walked right past the white van with green Celtic-styled letters that had once read PJ’s Plumbing—the ‘j’ was faded and the ‘m’ in plumbing was chipped off. What was left was P’s Plubing.

  Back from shoulder surgery, he was ready to work. Ready to spend fifteen hours a day. Six weeks of watching TV and eating takeout was enough to convince Hal that he’d never retire. Nearly made him insane. Not to mention he’d put on ten pounds that he didn’t need.

  He liked to think the department missed him, too. At least he knew Hailey had.

  He’d known Hailey for most of his police career, had worked with her a few times as a rookie when she’d been called to a case, along with her previous partner, an acerbic chain-smoker named Charlie Foss.

  Foss had retired a few months before Hal was promoted to homicide. After her new partner made one too many overtures, the last one during a department meeting, Hailey had announced she’d need a new partner before she shot the one she had.

  With a straight face, as the story went, she’d aimed her finger at the guy and pulled an imaginary trigger. The guy only lasted a few more weeks in Homicide.

  As soon as Hal was in the door, Captain Marshall assigned Hailey as his partner, offering only, “Don’t underestimate her.”

  Hal hadn’t, and despite the fact that she stood well below his shoulder, despite the fact that he could easily lift her in one arm, he knew which of them was the heavyweight.

  Then, she’d lost John and something had shifted between them. He kept waiting for her to come back. She would.

  Hal stepped into the van, his bulk sinking the van a few inches. He scanned the ceiling for an air vent then moved toward the plastic chair beneath it, trying to imagine how the thin frame would manage his bulk.

  He sat lightly, testing it. He’d had heartier ones break beneath him and while the plastic groaned and popped, it soon silenced. He rocked across it, testing the bolts. Satisfied, he turned the vent above his head to high.

  Triggerlock Inspector Ryaan Berry was the last out of the building. Triggerlock was the SFPD department that handled any crime related to guns. Ryaan moved deftly and jumped in without help, cupping her hand to the doorjamb then dropping into the seat across from Hal. “How’s it going?”

  Ryaan and Hal had worked plenty of cases together—homicides and guns went hand-in-hand—but this was the first time he’d been on one of their stings.

  And there was no guarantee that he’d get anything from being there. The Triggerlock informant didn’t know if these gunrunners were responsible for stealing the guns from Dennig Distribution. If one of them was the thief, he might also be the Dennigs’ killer.

  Or this could be a dead end.

  Someone had to know something.

  Hal was counting on it.

  The engine revved and despite the air blowing hard on his face, Hal felt the sweat pool beneath his arms and down his spine.

  It was winter, but still warm. Hal preferred the cold, breathed better in brisker air.

  The van began to bump across the pitted department parking lot and Hal, to avoid feeling sick, stared out the window. From the outside, the van panels appeared solid. From inside, they looked like regular windows.

  Behind him, two other vans carried members of the department’s task force.

  “Uh, Hal?” Ryaan asked. “You okay?”

  “Fine,” he lied, fighting the nausea.

  He’d never suffered from claustrophobia until he was sitting in the back of a black and white on a day after his father died. He was twenty-three. The panicked sensation in small spaces had never gone away, like the shadow of his father’s death that he couldn’t shake.

  After one particularly harrowing experience in a basement during a domestic call, he’d gone to see the department shrink, but her endless theories on his condition just seemed like fluff. He’d never been locked in a box or a trunk. His childhood was as normal as childhood could be. His mother had been a nurse at Children’s Hospital in Oakland. His father, before his death, had been an Oakland cop. His two older sisters were healthy. No one else suffered from any phobias.

  He’d been in class the day his father was killed, had come home and been on leave when the allegations were released—his father had been accepting bribes from a few local businessmen.

  On his application to the academy only eight months earlier, he’d written that his father was an Oakland police officer, used his old man as a stepping-stone into the academy, and it had worked. Departments liked legacies. They were proud to foster the notion that the department was a sort of fraternity to which membership could be passed down, generation to generation.

  At least, it was like that until his father was killed.

  Hal had been excused from the academy for the week of the death, and two days after the shooting, his father had received a full police burial.

  Hal and his two sisters—then twenty-six and twenty-nine—had been pallbearers along with his father’s partner and two other patrol officers.

  The day his father was buried was so hot that sweat had soaked all the way through Hal’s uniform coat, through the pants at the backs of his knees.

  But it was hotter the next day when he’d gone outside, wearing only his shorts and tennis shoes, and had lifted the paper off the dew-covered grass, unfolded it, and seen the headline. “Slain cop charged with three counts of felony.”

  His father’s name in the first line. They claimed his father was crooked.

  Hal had shoved the paper deep into the trash can. Without going back inside, he started to run. He ran hard, fast, the way they made him in academy but without his sergeant there to drill him. He felt like he could have run forever.

  Sitting in the van, Hal jumped slightly as Ryaan flipped on the interior lights. The van was cast in a red haze. The red light protected their night vision but it also worsened Hal’s nausea.

  He felt his pockets and pulled out a piece of gum—his last piece—and wadded it into his mouth to fight off the nausea.

  This was Ryaan’s team. Hal had met them before. Lopez was the driver and in back were Erickson and a third guy—Hal couldn’t remember his name. Michaels. He had triplets—three boys.

  The last man in the van sat at the control panel. A gray-haired white guy, his large girth filled the chair so completely that his sides were wedged in beneath the metal armrests, and the gray hairs in his reddish beard stuck out like frizzy white sprouts.

  “Inspector Ryaan Berry,” she said, offering her hand. “You’re new, right?”

  “Sam Gibson,” he replied, his fingers never leaving the keyboard, eyes fixed on a screen displaying their destination. “Transferred down from Seattle.”

  Ryaan studied the feed on the screen, which originated from cameras positioned on roofs surrounding their destination. The images had been enhanced to make the details emerge, even in the dark.

  “The guys we’re going after are moving a big shipment stolen from Dennig Distributors more than a year ago. Estimates are these kids have fifty to seventy-five guns. That many guns means some big los
ses when we show up.” She scanned their faces. “Expect a fight, you hear?”

  Hal felt a jolt of adrenaline. Homicide Inspectors rarely dealt with live scenes. It was good to get the blood moving.

  The air shut off above his head and Hal fiddled with the vent without success.

  “Lopez,” Ryaan called to the driver without so much as a glance in Hal’s direction. “Turn the air up while we can, would you?” Using a whiteboard, Ryaan drew a box to represent the building where the sting was to go down then added two rectangles for the double doors.

  Hal kept his gaze in her direction but had to focus out the window. The gas fumes and lack of air making him feel worse.

  “Front of the building is glass.” She shaded in the windows. “Doors are glass. Windows next to the doors and on the second floor above, too.”

  Glass was easy to shoot through.

  She added a line of Xs to the right side of the doors to represent members of the task force. “Special Ops will circle from the back of the building and be here, ready for our call.”

  The Special Ops group handled anything that required a large, coordinated offense—stings, riot or hostage situations. The group included a group of very talented sharpshooters. They were visible along the roofline now.

  “Gibson, you see the cars?”

  Gibson struck at the keys and the screen displayed a feed of the building Ryaan had drawn. She pointed to a black Lexus and silver BMW parked in front. “These are the suspects’ cars. We think there are two guys in each car. Recon believes the weapons are in the Lexus.” She turned back to Gibson. “Can we look at the sharpshooters?”

  Gibson changed screens and Ryaan pointed out the sharpshooters again.

  “As soon as we confirm the merchandise, we go. Get them down on the ground. I’ll lead. You—” She pointed to Erickson and Michaels. “You’re on my back, so watch your fire.” She turned to Hal. “You just hang tight unless all hell breaks loose.”

  Hal liked watching Ryaan at work. She was intense, focused. Her job required it and there weren’t a lot of women who could pull it off. Her people respected her and so did he. Every time they worked together, he wondered about her personal life. He’d never heard anything about her personal life. Was she married? Did she date?