‘Let’s start with what we know,’ Delaney said. ‘Somebody shot a bullet into Sarah’s car. That’s an assault on a peace officer, which Arizona law makes a class-two felony if it involves the use of a deadly weapon.’
‘A smart lawyer might object that a .22 pump is hardly a deadly weapon,’ Leo said. ‘More like a plinker for tin cans and small varmints.’
‘In my book it says “deadly weapon or dangerous instrument,”’ Delaney said. ‘Any rifle is going to qualify.’
‘There’s also the problem that she was off duty, though,’ Ollie said. ‘I looked up some stuff over the weekend,’ he said, shrugging. ‘We all ran in there Thursday with our holster covers off, ready to start a war with the bad guys who were shooting at Sarah. Then we stood around for a couple of hours while nothing happened. After I got home I started thinking, what was that all about? Nobody got hurt, the shooting seemed inept as hell. Is it possible this was just some kid who got his hands on his dad’s old rifle?’ He turned his hands up. ‘Started me thinking about the gray areas.’
‘No,’ Delaney said. ‘Forget gray areas. A peace officer has been assaulted, and in Arizona we don’t let that go unpunished. As for being off duty, Sarah is not on street patrol, she’s a Tucson police detective involved in several ongoing investigations. She doesn’t go home and forget the whole thing till the next shift. We get called out, we go. One can argue that a police detective is never off duty.’
‘Also, there’s the lurking,’ Oscar said. ‘That’s the part I hate. He stalked her; he waited in her yard. That behavior seems to fit the cartel, doesn’t it? They go after people; they are relentless.’
‘But they don’t go after people with .22 caliber ammo,’ Ray Menendez said, ‘last I heard.’
‘No, they don’t,’ Jason said. ‘And they don’t go alone and they don’t fool around. Hate to say this to you, buddy,’ he tilted his shining bald dome toward Sarah, ‘but if that was the Sinaloa cartel shooting at you on Thursday, you’d be dead.’
‘I tend to agree with that,’ Delaney said. ‘But I haven’t heard from you yet, Sarah. You said you had some thoughts over the weekend.’
‘Yes.’ She held up her tablet, showed a page of single-spaced typing, and flipped to several more pages, equally full. ‘I told Will when he got there that night that I felt something was hinky. Don’t get me wrong, my niece was in the car when the shot went through it and my mother was a few feet away in the backyard, so I was very glad to see that SWAT team come swarming in. And when you guys turned up as well, trust me, you all looked like heroes to me.’
‘Oh, now …’ Feet shuffled, Leo coughed and Ollie made a small hissing noise he’d learned from his eight-year-old son. But the self-deprecation didn’t last long because they all knew how she felt about getting attacked in her own yard. On the street, they dealt with homicide, assault, rape, without flinching – all part of the job. But that was work. Home was where you got the respite that helped you keep your head on straight. Home was not to be messed with.
‘But three days in that hotel …’ She made a face and they all chuckled. ‘I had plenty of time to think, so I did. And what I’ve got on my first page of notes,’ she held it up, ‘matches what you all said just now, almost exactly. The gun was wrong, the ammo was wrong, the single shooter was wrong. The poor aim was utterly ridiculous.’
‘The second page says this’ – she read from the tablet – ‘Hinky or not, though, I can’t make it unhappen. Somebody stood in my yard, waiting, till I turned in my driveway and offered the perfect shot. Then he fired one bullet that made a loud noise and messed up a city-owned vehicle but didn’t come close to hitting me or my niece.’ She waited a few seconds, then scrolled down and carried on reading. ‘I want to rule out the kid on a shooting spree who doesn’t even know my name. A kid on a shooting spree doesn’t stand patiently in a hedge of prickly leaves in hundred-degree heat, waiting to get a shot at a homeowner he doesn’t even know. How could this naughty kid even be sure I was due home?’
‘If he’s from the neighborhood …’ Ray said.
‘If there was a troublesome kid like that in my neighborhood, I’d know about him,’ Sarah said, looking up from her tablet. ‘You know how it is: people hear there’s a cop moving in and right away they’re on your doorstep asking you to keep an eye on so-and-so. My one hesitation about moving into the Blenman-Elm neighborhood was that there weren’t many kids around near Denny’s age. I know them all now and nobody’s ever complained to me about any of them.’
‘OK,’ Delaney said. ‘I’ve been thinking about it too and I agree with you. Forget the kid. What other thoughts did you have during those three long days?’
‘That we were being played,’ Sarah said.
Jason Peete said softly, ‘Bingo.’
Around the table, heads nodded and the faces of her teammates showed relief. ‘Been waiting for you to say it,’ Ollie said. ‘I think so too. It’s the only way all this conflicting evidence makes sense.’
‘To make us think the cartel was going after Sarah, right?’ Oscar said. ‘I’ve been wondering about that myself.’
‘It’s pretty lame, though, isn’t it?’ Ray said. ‘I mean, I like it, but how could anybody think we’d be stupid enough to believe one shot from a .22 pump—’
‘We were stupid enough to believe it for a couple of hours on Thursday night,’ Delaney said. ‘You want to do the math on what that little game of hide-and-seek cost the department?’
Looking stricken, Sarah said, ‘Hey, boss, I—’
‘No offense, Sarah, you did the right thing calling for help and our response was by the book. We’re not going to change protocols over one screwy incident. But think about this: we might be a little slower to send the SWAT team to the next alarm from Sarah’s house. So maybe it wasn’t so lame.’
Sarah felt a shiver, and looking down saw goosebumps forming on her arms. Damn! She waited three seconds to be sure her voice was steady when she said, ‘So we need to catch this bugger before he makes his next move.’
‘Fine,’ Ollie said. ‘I’ll be glad to go after him myself, barefoot and unarmed in the dark if necessary. Just tell me who he is.’
‘Well,’ Sarah said, ‘I have some thoughts about that. May I read you some more notes?’
‘Go ahead,’ Delaney said.
She picked up the tablet again. ‘Lois Johnson kept saying Calvin’s killing looked like a cartel hit to her. I said to her once that there were things about this murder that didn’t seem to fit that scenario – that the victim had no resistance wounds on his hands and arms and the door wasn’t forced. All the evidence at the scene said the murderer knocked on the door and the victim let him in. She said something like, “Well, sure, in a clown outfit, why not? He would have presented as part of the entertainment. A marcher asking for a drink of water.” And Lois had all the clout in the room, so I let it go.
‘But ever since then I keep going over it again in my head, that the evidence in the house said that after this attacker shot the friendly homeowner in the ear he beat his head to a bloody pulp.’ Sarah put the tablet down and watched the faces blinking at her around the table. ‘After. You hear what I’m saying? After Calvin Springer was dead he got his cheekbones broken and his tooth knocked out of his jaw.’
‘That’s right,’ Delaney said. ‘The ME was wondering why there wasn’t more blood from such a beating and you said something about not liking the idea that the killer kept on beating on the guy after he was dead.’
‘Yes. It’s been bothering me ever since. You’ve all been to a lot of homicide scenes. You get to know what to look for, don’t you? So think about it – did this one look like the work of a professional hit team? All surgical and clean, get the job done and get out? No, it did not. A big fight, and the window broken – to me, it had all the earmarks of one man in a bloody rage.’
Seeing she had everybody’s full attention, Sarah leaned back in her chair. ‘Lois Johnson and her accountants spend th
eir careers trying to put guys in jail for money laundering. Nothing wrong with that, but now that we know Calvin Springer was really Bill McGinty I don’t think we should let her influence what we believe about who murdered him.’
‘OK,’ Delaney said. ‘Go ahead; what do you believe about it?’
‘That in the last few minutes before this killer took off his clown suit and walked away, he wasn’t working for money. He was intent on revenge, close up and personal.’
‘Oh, Sarah,’ Jason said, ‘I see where you’re going with this and I am so ready to walk that path with you.’
‘You put my feet on it,’ Sarah said, ‘by saying you thought there were things he was leaving out.’
‘Things who was leaving out of what?’ Leo said. ‘Are you two talking in code?’
‘I’m sorry,’ Sarah said. ‘We’re remembering a conversation we had after we interviewed Jack Ames. Jason felt he was leaving something out of his story about old times on the boats in the Baja. Ever since then we’ve both been kind of turning over rocks in our minds—’
‘Oh, please,’ Jason said. ‘Not that again.’
Everybody laughed but not for long. They were all excited now, wearing the intent expressions of a team on the hunt, still puzzled but sure they were closing on the quarry.
‘Finish your story,’ Delaney said. ‘Who needs revenge?’
‘Jack Ames,’ Sarah said.
‘For what?’
‘For the brutal killing of his foxy girlfriend, Poppy McGinty.’
‘She’s his girlfriend now? I read your entry in the case report after that interview and I thought you said they were just good friends.’
‘I didn’t say that. Jack Ames said that and I reported it, but Jason and I both thought he was blowing smoke.’
‘Then you should have put that in the case report.’
‘I guess I should have. It was just a feeling and I was looking for some evidence to back it up.’
‘Don’t do that. Never again, you hear? You’re a detective who’s interviewed many people and your feelings are evidence.’
‘OK, my bad. But follow me through this, will you? We had what seemed for a while like a red-hot theory, that since McGinty was hooked up with the cartel he probably killed Calvin Springer. That’s all gone up in smoke now. So why don’t we consider that maybe the drug dealers weren’t involved at all?
‘Mabel – the widow Conway, remember her? Ollie, you thought she was a reasonable woman, didn’t you?’
‘Solid as a rock,’ Ollie said.
‘Certainly not one to go spinning romantic fantasies, right? But she was sure Jack was in love with Poppy McGinty. She told Fred she was worried about it. And Fred, being the male buddy, saw it too but said leave it alone, Jack’s a grown-up. But if she was right, Jack Ames lost two women he loved within three years. That’s a lot of pain and anger to absorb and keep to yourself. Jason, you didn’t believe what Jack said about his feelings for Poppy, did you?’
‘Sure didn’t. He was tappin’ up a storm by the time he made that speech. He couldn’t sit still anymore.’
‘OK. I felt the same way. I think that Jack Ames never got over the pain of losing Poppy. Now suppose Mabel was right about something else. Suppose that years later, that day at the Mercado, Fred actually did see Bill McGinty? If he did, the chances are Jack saw him too. He’d always believed McGinty killed his wife. Then he saw the guy where he least expected to, right here in Tucson. It must have brought all the pain back to him. If I’m right, the Fourth of July parade offered him his first chance to punish the no-good husband who killed the woman he loved.’
‘I don’t know, Sarah,’ Leo Tobin said. ‘That’s a pretty far-fetched story. But say for the hell of it we buy your revenge idea – we agree Jack Ames was probably the man in the clown suit who killed old Calvin because he turned out to be old Bill. Why would that make Jack Ames come into your yard and shoot up your car?’
‘Well,’ Sarah said, looking at the ceiling light, ‘maybe I jerked his chain a little too hard the last time we talked.’ She told them about her last conversation with Jack Ames.
‘I don’t think you jerked too hard,’ Jason said. ‘I’d say it worked exactly the way we hoped it would. He decided you were getting a little too close for comfort so he’d see if he couldn’t plant a little doubt in everybody’s mind.’
‘You think,’ Delaney said, ‘that when that drug war started in Agua Prieta he thought an attack on Sarah might get us to look across the border?’
‘Yes,’ Jason said. ‘He must be able to shoot better than that. I think he was hoping to mislead us.’
‘What worries me a little about that idea,’ Ollie said in what Sarah thought might be the best example of understatement she’d heard this year, ‘is it might have seemed clever to him while he was mad at Sarah but as soon as he calmed down he might have started thinking he should have used a better convincer.’
‘Yeah,’ Ray said. ‘And then, you know, shooting at Sarah probably felt pretty good to him. Maybe so good he’d like to try it again with bigger ammo.’
‘Or closer up,’ Delaney said. ‘He’s proved he can kill close up.’
‘So,’ Sarah said, ‘now that you all finally bought the idea, are you going to sit here and scare me to death or shall we figure out how to get this guy?’
‘Aside from having no proof that any of this story is true,’ Delaney said, ‘I’m ready to plan. What physical evidence have we got? One bullet?’
‘And one bone button,’ Leo said, ‘that looks like it belongs on an old raincoat.’
‘But that button can’t belong to the shooter, do you think?’ Oscar said. ‘Why would anybody wear a raincoat when it’s a hundred and three in the shade?’
‘To hide his rifle while he walks to his car,’ Jason said.
‘And keep himself from being scratched all over by an oleander bush,’ Leo said. ‘This guy’s a planner, isn’t he?’
‘Yes. A very sweaty planner if he wore his raincoat in my yard that afternoon,’ Sarah said. ‘Let’s ask Sandy if she found evidence of DNA in the swabs she took off the corner post.’
‘Even if she did, what have we got to compare it to?’ Delaney said. ‘The whole universe in NCIC, I suppose. But Jack Ames isn’t going to have a file in there, is he? He’s just been doing good deeds out in Marana, according to you.’
‘And murdering Calvin Springer, according to me,’ Sarah said. ‘But you’re right – we may not have that evidence filed yet either. Where are they, the DNA tests on the clown costume?’
‘Don’t know,’ Delaney said. ‘Ask Sandy about that, too, while you’re at it. Here, use my phone; put it on speaker so we’ll all know.’
‘The swabs from your yard are safely stored in the cooler here,’ Sandy said. ‘They’re in a kit. It’s all labeled, don’t you worry – we won’t lose it.’
‘But you haven’t done any testing on it yet? You don’t know if the samples will yield any DNA?’
‘No. They’re listed – they’ve been assigned a number. When the number comes up we’ll start the procedures. That’s how it works.’
‘How about the clown suit? Has anybody started on that yet?’
‘The clown suit?’
‘Yeah, the one we found in the dumpster. With the mask, you know, and the shoe?’
‘I don’t know, offhand. I’m not the only scientist in this section; there’s five of us full-time and a couple of—’
‘Sandy,’ Sarah said, ‘we have an urgent need for that information. What would it take to get those two items tested today?’
‘You kidding?’ Sandy said. ‘Do you know how long that queue is right now?’
‘No idea.’
‘Somewhere between five and six hundred cases. As usual.’
‘OK. But I did hear somebody say the test can be completed in about forty-eight hours if it gets top priority.’
‘Which is about as likely right now as a heavy snowfall on East Speedway Boulev
ard. If the president of the United States got shot there this afternoon we would do that if there was any doubt about the identity of the shooter. It would require all other work to be put aside while we ran that one test. I do not want to be around for the uproar that would cause. Some of the cases we’re working on now have been waiting over a year just to start. A hundred or so lawyers phone this section every month to ask about progress. Forget it, Sarah. DNA is a complicated, expensive process, and one of the things it takes is a lot of time.’
‘I hear you,’ Sarah said. ‘Just thought I’d ask.’ She hung up, sat back and asked her superior, ‘What’s the next option?’
‘Hardball,’ he said. ‘If you’re pretty sure your mojo is working. Are you?’
‘You said to report my feelings. I strongly believe my feelings about Jack Ames will be verified by the evidence in hand but I can’t prove it unless we test the evidence.’
‘Fair enough.’ Delaney’s pale eyes rested on Jason. ‘You started this witch-hunt, apparently. You still think you were right?’
‘He was tap-dancing around something. And I think she’s nailed what it was.’
‘OK. Then you all need to get out of here while I call the chief and do a little soft shoe of my own.’
His cheeks were flaming brightly by the time he reassembled his team. The chief had triggered his allergies by quoting from the price chart for DNA tests and pointing out the way they multiplied when they displaced ongoing tests.
‘I asked him if he would rather face the prospect of another attack like the one in your yard last week and he admitted the test was a bargain by comparison. So we’re on, they’ll start immediately – simultaneous tests of the clown suit and the swabs from your yard. Then he reminded me that the department emergency funds are down to almost nothing and we have been told not to ask the city for relief. Till people start building houses again, the city of Tucson is broke. I tried to get a word in about all the cartel money we’re going to share with ICE but his final words to me were, “This had better be a very good hunch or we are fucked.”’
Sarah sat up straight in the brittle silence that followed. When she thought her voice would work, she said, ‘Forty-eight hours?’
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