One Clean Shot
Page 26
There had been a time in their partnership when they had controlled their anger under the most difficult circumstances. Unflappable, she’d called them. He was known to let his anger get the best of him on occasion.
Now, though, the anger came from her.
A second car arrived some twenty minutes later.
Detectives. Both men, they were older—late forties, early fifties, it was hard to tell. They could have been younger, too.
Police officers didn’t age gracefully.
The one on the passenger side was heavy in the middle and wore a dark suit, the pants belted across the widest part of his girth. With a bald head and round dark eyes set deep in a doughy face, the big guy looked like Humpty Dumpty.
It looked weird to see a man with a huge gut hanging over the top of his pants, but it looked stranger to see pants belted across the gut. The other inspector was Latino and lean—maybe five feet ten though his curved shoulders made him seem shorter. The hair on his head was thick and dark but around thin lips and a narrow, flat nose, the beard and mustache were grey.
The two men gave Hal and Hailey a passing glance before approaching their officers. The four huddled while the patrol officers made motions at the house.
Hailey sighed.
After a few minutes, the thin inspector reached into his pocket and drew out a folded piece of paper.
The search warrant.
“Finally,” Hailey said.
The two detectives approached, the big guy arriving first—his belly eight or ten inches before the rest of him. Both men looked directly at Hal, so he introduced her first.
Hailey ignored the slight, reached out to shake hands. “You’ve got the warrant,” she said, skipping the small talk. “Can we go in, then?”
“Soon as we clear it.”
“We’ll be waiting,” she said.
The front door opened under the pressure of a boot and the officers entered, the older two right behind. Hailey and Hal held their weapons drawn at the base of the stairs. A few minutes later, the big guy called them in. “All clear.”
Hal remembered the sense he’d had that Blake was in there. He’d been wrong. What had made him think Blake would be there?
Just before entering the house, he glanced over his shoulder, scanned the street. Caught the eye of the inspector doing the same. No Blake.
The detective put one of the patrol officers on the door in case Blake showed up.
Inside the front door was a long hallway. It was empty, the wood floor worn and stained in a dark path maybe fourteen inches wide, right down its center. Hal knelt and stared at the dark path without touching it, wondering at first if it was wet. He drew a glove from his back pocket, pulled it on and scratched the surface of the wood.
“It’s just old,” the big guy said. “Foot oil over lots of years does that. There was probably carpet here once.”
Hal opened his mouth to respond when he heard Hailey. Not a word, more like she was choking.
Hal sprinted down the hall, weapon drawn.
Hailey stared at the living room wall.
Gun dropped to her side, her left arm was wrapped across her middle. In front of her, a strand of red yarn ran across room.
Taped along it were printed black and white photographs.
Hal holstered his gun, scanned the first photograph.
A man and woman stood beside a dark convertible Mercedes. The man was reaching for the door, the image his profile. The woman faced the camera.
It was Abby Dennig.
“It’s him.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, glancing around the room. “But where is he now?”
Chapter 29
The images in Donald Blake’s house were as eerie as the worst crime scene photos Hailey had seen. The pictures captured mundane tasks—images where the subject never looked at the camera.
Abby loaded her car in front of the marina Safeway.
Hank Dennig talked on his cell phone, in front of his office.
The camera was their stalker. The images might have been weeks or days—or maybe hours—before their deaths.
Did the victims see the photographer?
There was one of Abby pushing her young daughter on the swing. Abby’s brow was creased. Her head was turned in the direction of the camera though it hadn’t caught her eye.
Did she sense that she was being watched?
Images of the Dennigs and another man she didn’t recognize—both times outside a house. In the first image, he stooped to pick up a newspaper off the curb, wearing a pair of pajama bottoms and a robe, open to display his bare chest, its belt hanging loosely around his waist.
In the second, he wore dress clothes. A briefcase sat on the stair beside him, a stack of mail in his hands.
Then there was a close-up of a car with no plates, parked in a garage that looked like it was part of the same house.
Hailey squinted at the fine print around the plate, couldn’t read it. “What does that say? Around the license plate?”
Hal leaned in, careful not to touch it. “Elk Grove Buick-Pontiac-GMC.” Looked up. “Where the hell’s Elk Grove?”
“Up near Sacramento,” the tall, older inspector said. “I was up there two weeks ago.”
“Wesson,” Hal said.
“So Blake killed Wesson,” Hailey said.
“And probably Dennigs,” Hal added. “He’s got a registered .38 which was what the caliber used to shoot Jim and Bruce, so it’s likely he was responsible for those shootings, too.”
“But he missed Jim.”
“Right,” Hal agreed. “But he hit Shakley and killed the gunrunner, Jeremy Hayden.”
During the sting. Had Blake meant to miss with Hailey and Jim? But if he was the one using the Israeli shooting stance, he was a good shot. He wouldn’t have missed. “What about Carson and the driver?”
“I think Price shot them.”
“Why? Price worked for Blake as well as Harvey Rendell?” If Blake was avenging the death of his family, why hire it out? And why kill a couple street kids with guns? It was unlikely that any of these San Francisco kids were related to the Oakland shooting that happened three years ago.
The kids who shot up Blake’s family would be in their twenties by now. Many of them would be in prison or like Jeremy Hayden—dead. Had Blake killed them, too?
But the kids involved in the guns in San Francisco were not the kids who shot Blake’s family. Not likely. Gangs stayed in their own neighborhoods. They didn’t go shooting up neighborhoods across the bay.
Hailey and Hal were quiet.
“Let’s hope something here gives us some answers,” Hal said.
Hailey moved down the images.
She wanted to reach the end, to see Jim’s face, if it was there.
The next images were of Harvey Rendell. He wore a different suit in each—four separate days, at least.
In two, the dark façade of the Bank of America Building showed behind him.
In another, he stood in the door to a restaurant she’d eaten at a few times—a small, wonderful French place John had liked called Le Central.
Hailey scanned the background, half expecting to see someone she knew. The other patrons were obscured by lace curtains. The specials were handwritten in white chalk on a large blackboard that leaned against the glass beside Rendell, who held a cell phone to his ear, stared at his feet.
“Check this out,” Hal said.
A large color photograph hung on the wall behind the red yarn. The image was framed in a thin black plastic frame, like a college might use to frame poster. The image was almost that large. The image was grainy and out of focus, the file not high enough resolution for the enlargement.
The backdrop was deep blue with swirls of white like wispy thin cloud cover, a photo studio backdrop.
Blake looked happy in the photograph. A child stood on either side of him and his wife—a young girl in a blue pinafore beside her father and a boy in a blue sweater and khaki pants beside his mother. Mrs. Blake held a third child in her lap. The infant wore a white one-piece outfit that made guessing its gender impossible.
Blake held his palms flat on his thighs as though he were about to stand, or was struggling to hold still.
Each of them was smiling. Only Blake wasn’t looking at the camera, his gaze sideways. He wore the crooked smile of someone crazy in love.
The mug with John’s face was the one image of John that Hailey looked at regularly.
Images of him were everywhere in their home—pictures of him from infancy and youth. The upstairs hallway was lined with school photos and team shots of little league, baseball and the high school basketball team. There were pictures of him with his high school and college friends, their wedding and photos of him with the girls.
They lined the walls, the bookshelves, the desktop.
In the days after his death, the images had stopped her like painful shocks. Walking from the bedroom to the bathroom was an assault of what she’d lost.
The girls stood and stared at the ones in which John held them. Liz had made each girl her own collage, ones that still sat beside their beds filled with pictures of their father and them.
There was a time when Hailey considered asking Liz to take some of them down, to store them for a bit while the initial pain eased.
But for all the agony the images caused her, they seemed to provide solace to Liz.
Hailey learned to gaze past them, over them, through them—anything to avoid meeting John’s eyes. She couldn’t imagine how painful it would be to look at her entire family lost.
It would have made her crazy.
Maybe that was what it had done to Blake.
Hailey glanced back down the row of images—Dennigs, Wesson, Rendell. How did they involve the deaths of Blake’s family? There were no pictures of Officer Shakley or Jeremy Hayden. Were they just accidental victims?
Missing, too, were Carson and the driver as well as Kenny Fiston and James Robbins. Was that because they were shot by Gordon Price?
Was this record exclusive to Blake’s own murders?
“What the hell is this?” Hal squinted at a yellowed newspaper article framed beside the family portrait.
Hailey read along with him.
Frank Littick is charged in the murder of six-year-old Dorothy Williams, known as Dottie. The shooting occurred Thursday sometime after dark in the Rodger Young Village. Littick was found passed out in his Quonset hut, heavily intoxicated. The murder weapon, a German Luger Littick claimed he took off of a dead Nazi, was found in his possession. Littick, back from duty only nine weeks, will be formerly charged next week. His two children, a boy aged 7 and a girl aged 5, have been taken from his custody and sent to live with family in Pennsylvania.
“Quonset hut?” Hal said.
Dottie. Blake knew about Dottie.
Was that why he’d shot at Jim?
Hailey focused in on the name Frank Littick, the smudged edge of the newsprint around the last letters of the name.
Jim and Dee had taken their aunt and uncle’s last name when they were adopted. That name was Wyatt. They were originally Jim and Dee Littick. John’s last name would have been Littick. Her name would have been Littick, too.
She felt hard, cold shivers at the thought.
“Oh, shit.” The voice belonged to the round inspector. “You guys had better get in here.”
Around the corner, the series of photographs continued. A gasp stuck in the back of her mouth.
An image of Jim, standing on their street.
At the base of the stairs to the house—the place where Bruce had been shot just yesterday.
Hailey covered her mouth. “Hal.”
Hal was looking at something else.
She couldn’t draw her gaze off Jim. A worried look on his face, he was holding the banister in one hand, his case in another.
Coming home.
Two stairs above him, looking back, was Tom Rittenberg. Absent was the jovial Tom. The grief she’d seen was gone, too. In the photograph, anger was tight in his face.
Hailey studied the small check print on his tie, tried to remember that tie. His suits were almost all dark and for the most part, they looked the same to her. She hadn’t paid attention.
“Hal,” Hailey said again, tearing her gaze from the image. What was Rittenberg so angry about? Was it a coincidence that Blake had captured this image or was he pointing a finger at Tom Rittenberg as well?
Hal watched her. The inspector and one of the patrol officers did, too.
“What?”
She started toward the next images. Hal grabbed her arm, held her at a distance. Alarmed, she pulled away. She had to know, pushed past to see the other photos.
She cried out, fell.
Hal caught her, moved her against the solid wall.
Her legs shook. Her knees wouldn’t hold her. Her pulse trumpeted in her temples. The other officers were talking, their words overlapping Hal’s until all the voices swarmed around her like hornets. “No. No!” she screamed.
“You have to sit,” Hal said. “Come sit.” The words didn’t make sense though she understood them.
“Should I call an ambulance?”
“She needs air.”
Hands gripped her shoulders, her arms, one pressed to the small of her back. She couldn’t walk past. She had to see.
She pulled herself free. Studied the three images.
The first was of her standing in front of the Hall at the press conference. Her chin was cocked up. A sliver of Marshall could be seen on the other side of her—his shoulder and part of an arm, fingers on the microphone.
In the second, Hailey was at the Bank of America Building, talking with Roger.
When she looked at the third, some animal noise burst from her throat.
The image was of her on her street. She was turned sideways, holding a bag of groceries in one arm and two small backpacks in the other.
It was a few days old. Three or four maybe.
Trailing behind her were Camilla and Ali. Camilla was climbing the stairs with her back turned. But Ali had stopped.
She was looking directly into the lens of Blake’s camera.
Chapter 30
No one answered at the house.
Liz didn’t pick up her cell phone.
Jim’s office said he and Dee had already left for the day. Dee didn’t answer her cell. Neither did Jim.
Again, there was no answer at home.
The image of Ali’s face filled her head with every blink.
Her girl’s face on a killer’s wall. Would he kill her child? Or was it a reminder that she was a target?
If Blake had arrived before Bruce pulled into the driveway… She would be dead.
Her children would be orphans. Like the Dennigs’ children.
Now the Dennigs’ tragedy circled her like a vulture on the scent of rotting flesh. How easily it could be her…
She felt sick. With trembling hands, she punched redial again and again—prayed for a real voice.
Liz didn’t always carry her phone. It often sat overnight in her car, ran out of battery. This wasn’t unusual.
They didn’t always answer the home phone. Jim and Liz didn’t grow up in the generation where everyone was expected to be accessible at any time. There were plenty of days when Hailey couldn’t reach Liz during the day. Plus, it was three
o’clock. Liz would be on her way to pick up the girls. This was normal.
Please let it be normal.
Hal gripped the steering wheel in both hands and drove faster than she’d ever seen him. Lights streaked across the underside of the tunnel as they passed over Treasure Island. Sirens howled in their ears, making conversation impossible. She could not talk.
She dialed the phone and in the seconds that lapsed between calls, she watched the road.
Hal didn’t have to honk. Somehow, cars just cleared the way.
As though they knew that this emergency was real.
His phone rang. “Harris.”
She heard someone talking.
“Is it about Blake?”
He shook his head. “Hang on, Ryaan. I’m going to put you on speaker so Hailey can hear, okay?” Hal set the phone on the seat between them. “Hey, Ryaan, can you repeat that first part—and maybe talk a little slower?”
“Yes. Okay,” Ryaan started, breathless. “The forensic accounting group has been digging into Regal Insurance and we hit pay dirt.”
“We’re listening.”
Hailey stared at her phone. The blank screen. They were still in school. For the next ten minutes, they were safe. She tried to focus on what Ryaan was saying.
“Hank Dennig and Colby Wesson were both beneficiaries of large claims on policies. Both had insured weapons that were stolen from their facilities. And get this, they were covered for multiple losses. Dennig had two different claims for stolen weapons. Colby Wesson had three—all paid out in full, all in the eighteen months before they were killed.”
Carson had told Hal that Regal did this to him. Like it was a name.
“Carson said Regal but who did he mean?” Hal asked, clearly thinking along the same lines. “I assume Regal’s a big company.”
“It is big but guess who is a fifty-one percent stakeholder in Regal Insurance Group?” Ryaan continued. “Tom Rittenberg.”
How often had Tom been at the house lately? At her house, near her daughters. “Dee is seeing Tom. They’ve been going out,” she whispered to Hal.
“There’s more,” Ryaan said, not hearing her. “Rendell had a lease on a secured storage area down by the airport. Guess what’s in there.”