‘Any chance,’ Sarah asked them, ‘you got the make and model on that auto? Or the license?’
‘Beat-up Dodge Ram pickup. Club cab,’ Henry said.
‘Looked old,’ Jacob added, ‘but they must have some kinda souped-up motor. That baby could move.’
Henry said, ‘Arizona license but that’s all I got.’
‘First three letters XMZ,’ Jacob said, earning a surprised look from Henry. ‘I didn’t get any numbers.’
‘Color?’
‘Ehh, dirty gray. Or dark blue. Getting back on the road, he just missed colliding with the patrol cars coming in pursuit. Cut in right in front of them.’
‘I think we heard some of that,’ Sarah said. ‘We were on our way by then, listening on the radio.’
‘Yeah, well, then didja hear the part,’ Jacob could not repress a grin, ‘where them patrol cars was goin’ so fast they missed our driveway and had to go way up the road to turn around?’
‘While you stood here with a dead man in a van, right?’ Sarah said.
‘But we didn’t know that yet,’ Henry said. ‘What I did know was that motor was still running and I was sure it was gonna explode. So I run over here to turn it off.’ He looked back along the driveway he had run, remembering. ‘But when I got here somebody was yelling inside the van and doing a lot of thumping.’
‘Henry was all set to give the driver hell for reckless driving,’ Jacob said, grinning some more. ‘But he never got a chance because the passenger was just inside in a wheelchair, yelling and pounding on the door with his cane.’
‘Were there other passengers?’
‘No, just him.’
‘Was he hurt?’
‘No, but he was gasping for breath,’ Henry said. ‘Yelling that the driver was hurt, it wasn’t safe in there, we had to get him out.’
‘Truth is he was perfectly safe once the shooting stopped,’ Jacob said, ‘the wheelchair locks into a frame on the floor, he wasn’t rolling around or nothing. But it was Mr Ames in the chair, and we all know it’s no use arguing with him. So I grabbed the portable oxygen tank that we keep in the van and helped him get the cannula in his nose and around his ears.’
Sarah made a note: Ames status?
‘And even Mr Ames can’t snort oxygen and yell at the same time, so for a couple minutes things quieted down,’ Henry said. ‘So then I did turn toward the driver … for help! Because after all, the passengers are his job, not mine. But—’ Henry made a choking noise and put his hands in their heavy work gloves up to his face.
Till now he had seemed the model of an authority figure, but as Sarah watched, his shoulders began to shake and he made little mmp noises. Sarah waited three breaths and then said quietly, ‘But you found him slumped over the steering wheel, is that it? Unresponsive.’
Henry said, through his gloves, ‘With blood coming out of his eyes and nose …’
‘You done better’n I did,’ Jacob said, trying to comfort Henry. ‘I took one look and jumped out of there yelling for help. Lucky thing was right then those three cop cars got back to our driveway. Two of them went on after the shooters but one turned in, and two boys in blue jumped out. So I got them to help me get Mr Ames out of the van.’
‘Was he in very bad shape?’
‘Nah,’ Jacob said. ‘He was just havin’ a panic attack. I thought maybe he was going to have a stroke but he never shut up long enough to fall over.’
Henry turned sharply, shook his head and made a tamping-down motion with his hands. Jacob shrugged and looked at his shoes.
‘OK, so you got him out …’
‘Yep.’
‘And then what?’
‘Took him inside. This time of year, we got strict orders – don’t leave any of these folks in the sun for more’n a minute or two.’
Sarah nodded; Tucson PD had the same orders. Monsoon rains were drying up but September was still a scorcher – it would be a hundred degrees in this parking lot before lunch. Homicide had recently taken a beating about an elderly bystander who collapsed while a pair of detectives questioned him on the street. All investigators now got reminders with the morning brief: Get your witnesses out of the sun!
‘Does he need medical attention now?’
‘No,’ Jacob said. ‘Happens this is the nurse practitioner’s day to visit. We turned him over to her and she put him on a respirator.’
‘But he’s still very upset about the shooting,’ Henry said. ‘Giving everybody hell about it like we could make it unhappen if we tried hard enough. Mr Ames is in about the best shape of anybody living here. But he always wants to be sure he gets his share of everything we got.’
‘And gets it first,’ Jacob said. ‘Never too sick to see to that.’
‘So with him out of the way I finally did get the motor turned off,’ Henry said. ‘I had to go right up there close to …’ He choked again briefly but went on. ‘Blood all over the place and even, God, I guess, must be pieces of his head …’ He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, opened them and said, ‘Shouldn’t there be a doctor coming?’
‘The coroner will be here soon. Tell me about the victim. What’s his name?’
‘The vic— oh, you mean the driver? Same as mine but Spanish – Enrique? But everybody around here calls him Ricky.’
‘Any idea why somebody would shoot him?’
‘Hell no,’ Henry said, ‘Ricky’s a muffin.’
‘Must be a mistake,’ Jacob said. ‘Of all the guys I know, Ricky’s the last one I’d shoot.’
‘What’s his last name?’
‘I don’t know,’ Henry said. ‘Ask the manager.’
‘All right. What’s his name?’
‘Her. Letitia.’
‘That’s all?’
‘’S’what she said to call her. Everybody’s first names here.’
Both men shrugged. Who knew what managers would do next?
‘Except Mr Ames,’ Sarah said. ‘Why is he special?’
‘Dunno,’ Henry said, ‘probably because he demanded it. He’s a better’n average demander.’
‘Right up in the top tier, I would say,’ Jacob said. ‘Him and his pal Millicent.’
Sarah was thinking, Where’s my crime scene crew? She asked the gardeners, ‘Have you seen a tall patrolman named Pratt, about this wide—’ She held her hands up.
‘With a hillbilly accent?’ Henry’s eyes recovered a little luster.
‘And freckled all over?’ Despite the stressful morning, Jacob began grinning again.
‘That’s the guy,’ Sarah said, thinking, nobody like Bobby Lee Pratt for warming up the crowd.
The young gardener pointed toward the entrance and said, ‘There he comes now.’
She turned to look. Pratt was coming across the porte-cochère with his hand under the elbow of a tall, handsome woman who walked with a self-confident air. Pratt saw Sarah’s nod of recognition and strode toward her with a gleaming smile. So big and all-over-blue, he looked like a uniformed tsunami ready to sweep her across the beige-pebbled grounds that surrounded this elegant building. Sarah got ready to fend off – they were not back in the day and it wouldn’t do for the lead detective to be lifted and twirled by the meaty ol’ boy from West Virginia. She settled her jacket with a quick shrug and stood tall.
But she relaxed as she saw him stifle his grin. Bobby Lee Pratt had never been the clueless hick it pleased him to impersonate, and they had stayed in touch during his years of teaching wannabe law officers down on Kolb Road. He had even treated her once to the standard tour of the training school, with gunshots and lunch. So he knew she had been over plenty of jumps herself and advanced several pay grades, including the big move to detective, in the thirteen years since he’d been her field training officer. He squared up in front of her and said, ‘Detective Burke, good morning.’
‘Good to see you, Officer Pratt. What have we got here?’
Waving a magisterial hand toward the capable-looking woman beside him, he announced, ‘
This here’s Letitia Broderick, the manager of this fine senior living establishment.’
She was a bottle-blonde dressed in Business Impermeable, a copper-toned faux-suede jacket over a beige sheath that looked guaranteed to have no natural fibers. Exuding confidence on the gleaming asphalt of her domain, she re-set the tone of the morning. Her face said, Time I got this mess squared away.
‘I’ve told her,’ Bobby said, ‘that you’re here to help us sort this out.’
‘Sorry for your troubles, Letitia,’ Sarah said. She put out her hand. Letitia, instead of shaking, put an elegantly embossed card in it.
‘My card has all my numbers,’ she said. ‘Call me any time, I’m always on duty.’
‘Here’s mine and I’m always available too,’ Sarah said. ‘Although you do have to go through this headquarters number to find me, I’m afraid. Do you know why these people attacked your van?’
Letitia looked dubiously at the vehicles and uniforms clustered around her entrance. ‘No, I certainly don’t. And if you’ll excuse me for a moment, I have to find out – why’s Millicent sitting over there on the bench all by herself?’ She looked at Henry. ‘Who brought her out here?’
‘Tammy did. She’s right over there in the—’
‘Here I am, coming right now!’ the uniformed aide who’d been weeping when Sarah arrived came running. She had cleaned up a little but her face was still ashen and strained. ‘I was just in the—’ She waved apologetically toward the bathroom as she pulled up in front of Letitia, who regarded her stone-faced.
‘You know Millicent can’t be left alone anymore,’ she said, quiet and fierce. ‘And it’s getting hot. Get her inside right away.’
‘I know. I will. She just wanted to know about the noise so I came over to see—’ Letitia continued to look at her coldly and she bolted again, to Millicent’s side.
Abandoning her finger-counting, Millicent looked up and said, ‘What’s going on, Tammy?’
‘Nothing to worry about,’ Tammy said, ‘the van driver made a little boo-boo, that’s all. He ran right into the garage door, can you believe it?’
‘Sure I believe it. You can’t get good help anymore, everybody knows that.’ She shrugged irritably. ‘I’m getting hot.’
‘Well, I have a magic fix for that,’ Tammy said. ‘I’ll take you inside, whaddya say?’
‘I’m feeling too weak to walk,’ Millicent said. ‘You’d better fetch a chair.’
‘Oh, come on, you need to walk, here we go, we’ll work up an appetite for lunch.’ Overriding the whining objections of her patient, she made small petting gestures and cooing noises till she got Millicent up on her feet and moving toward the entrance.
The manager watched them get into the shade before she turned her purposeful gaze on Sarah and asked, ‘Detective, how soon can you get this mess cleared out of here?’
‘Well, Letitia, do you know who killed your driver?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘Then I’m afraid we must investigate his death, and the first part of that process starts right here, right now. So tell me, what’s the biggest problem that gives you?’
‘My biggest concern is to maintain peace and quiet,’ Letitia said. ‘I’m very worried about all this noise and confusion. Our clients are here to rest.’
‘I understand,’ Sarah said. But looking past Letitia she saw the crime scene crew pull in and park their truck and three cars. Half a dozen people began pulling their tools out and asking questions, looking around, impatient to start.
Sarah gestured toward them and said, ‘Right now I need to get this forensic team started while the evidence is still fresh – and then you and I can go inside and talk. Before I let them in the van, though, are you ready to step inside and identify the victim for me? Please don’t touch anything – and I should warn you, this won’t be pleasant.’
‘Don’t worry about that,’ Letitia said impatiently. ‘I’ve pretty well seen everything in this job. But will you please emphasize to all these people how important it is to keep their voices down? Serenity is what we sell here.’
She turned toward the façade of her classy facility, regarded the van still haplessly impaled in it, and sighed. ‘God, what a mess.’
Sarah lifted the crime scene tape and Letitia ducked under it. Facing the van, she squared her shoulders and took three decisive steps toward the side door. Sarah pressed the latch and slid the big door open. The two steps slid out from under the chassis, Letitia climbed them, stepped into the vehicle and turned toward the driver’s seat.
Then she began to scream.
TWO
Monday
Getting her out wasn’t easy – Letitia was a tall, strong woman, and rigid with shock. But Pratt got her right arm looped over his shoulders while Bogey, a head shorter, managed to keep breathing somehow until his stoic cop’s face emerged from Letitia’s left armpit. Somehow, the two cops adjusted their different heights in order to work as the manager’s crutches.
Sarah took hold of both her hands and walked backwards out of the company shuttle saying quietly, ‘Look at me, Letitia, look at me now,’ assuring her it was going to be all right, they would stay right with her and here – ‘just here, do you see it?’ – is the first step down.
The crime scene crew, who really had seen it all, set up the legs on a gurney without being asked, and Gloria, the light-hearted photographer who usually floated above the fray, silently reached around Sarah to help hoist Letitia onto her ride. Then the scientists went back to unloading their stuff while the three law officers wheeled the manager toward her front door.
As soon as they got her into the shade of the porte-cochère she began to revive. She caused more trouble then, trying to sit up, protesting that she was all right now, she’d be fine. But Pratt, who under all his vamping was a sublimely pragmatic street cop, just pushed her flat, saying, ‘Lie still, we got no sides on this thing,’ and they rolled on.
Once inside the building, Sarah left Letitia with the two policemen and hurried out to her crime scene crew. They had started without a briefing since, as Gloria said, ‘Our uncanny instincts told us to start with the guy whose eyes were leaking blood.’
Six feet tall and solid, an ex-basketball scholarship jock from UCLA, Gloria had swallowed the disappointment of not making the Olympic team and toughed out a work/study program to get a degree as a criminalist. Once out of sweatpants, she’d ‘decided to spruce up,’ she said – dyed her hair copper to match her skin and poured her streamlined body into the tightest pants she could zip up. Some of the Tucson crew still thought she was ‘kind of off the wall’; Sarah appreciated her bounce and her admirable work ethic.
Sarah climbed aboard with the three scientists and scrolled through her notes to give them a run-down on the chase and shooting that preceded the scene they were working on.
‘So there’s not much doubt about cause of death.’ She looked around the charnel house the front of the van had become. ‘We’re looking for reasons. A carload of bandits thought there was something on this van worth killing for. I haven’t seen anything that precious so far, so anything out of the ordinary …’ She paused, looked around the blood-smeared massacre confronting them and shrugged. ‘Well …’
‘Gotcha.’ Gloria swept her south-LA deadpan around the gore. ‘If we see any trolls we’ll call you right away.’
‘Can’t say we don’t have plenty to work with,’ Lois muttered, and the three techies went after it, Gloria shooting pictures, Lois lifting latent fingerprints and Sandy taking swabs for DNA tests.
They paused only to dicker over spaces. Sarah stood wherever they nudged her to, doing her best to see everything while she stayed out of their way. She did another complete three-sixty-degree inspection and shot some pictures on her own phone. The four of them worked on, uncomplaining, as the crowded space got hotter and the smell got worse.
After half an hour she told the crew, ‘I’m going back in to talk to that manager now, and Bogey can ta
ke his turn in here to get a look at this.’
Gloria paused from aiming her digital flashes. ‘You mean you brought along this Bogey I been hearing about? The one they say bagged all them gang-bangers single-handed?’
‘Yup.’
‘Well, why didn’t you say so? Ooh, now I’m excited! OK if I pat his butt?’
‘You might want to hold off,’ Sarah said, ‘until you’ve watched a few of his moves.’
‘Now why would I need to do that,’ Gloria said, swinging her camera back to the streaks on the shattered windshield, ‘when I got a good buddy like you whose nose for fake heroes is legendary?’
‘Even for more of that flattery I can’t tell you what I don’t know,’ Sarah said, ‘So far, he’s been quiet and polite.’
‘Aw shee-ee.’ This time Gloria actually lowered the camera. ‘A well-behaved detective? Girl, I got no previous experience that enables me to deal with that.’ She climbed into a second-row seat to try some overhead views. ‘Present company excepted, of course.’
‘Uh-huh,’ Sarah said. ‘Take your best shot.’ She stepped out of the grotesque scene in the van into a sparkling bright morning and stood still a moment, enjoying a tunnel vision view of the perfectly groomed entrance across the parking lot. If I don’t turn my head, she thought, this still looks like a wonderful place to retire to.
Then she pivoted forty-five degrees and walked through a noisy, confusing snarl of TPD vehicles and forensic equipment, to where Bogey stood with digital devices in both hands. He was still interrogating the tape-stringing street patrolmen who had been first responders, recording their answers and taking pictures of the scene.
She asked him, ‘Anybody over here know what this is all about?’
‘Not a clue,’ Bogey said. He had filled out the printed incident forms he carried in the car, entered their names and badge numbers along with the few facts he’d been able to elicit – partial plate numbers of the attackers’ car, and fragments of shouted threats.
Relaxed now that the next layers of law enforcement had taken the situation out of their hands, the street cops were signing off on their comments before going back on patrol. They knew they would probably be called on later to repeat the few facts they could recall about today’s event, and the more experienced ones had already commented that none of their evidence would be enough to identify the killers or provide a motive for the driver’s murder. Their careful work this morning might never be brought to court or even be discussed again. But the street patrolmen were cheerful – they had done their part well, none of them had been hurt, and the incident had made the shift go faster.
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