Chapter Six #2
“Well, we won’t think about it for a while,” Sam said. “Let’s enjoy whatever this is.”
Baz met them at the door. “You’re late,” he snapped.
“One minute,” Kit snapped back, then froze. “Oh my God. What is this?”
Because Alf Ashton’s living room coffee table was covered in laptops and a whiteboard had been set up in front of a giant TV screen.
Sergeant Ryland from CSU and Alicia Batra, the medical examiner, sat on the sofa, reading on their phones. On a love seat was Kevin Marshall, whose arm was in a sling. Kevin’s wife Leslie sat beside him. Alf Ashton sat in a recliner with his leg elevated.
Baz grinned. “Marshall and Ashton are having a party. We all came to see how they’re doing. Come on in.”
She and Sam stepped into the house, staring numbly at all the activity.
A woman came up to greet them. “Kit! And you must be Sam. I’ve heard so much about you two.
I’m Alf’s wife, Stacey. Please, come in.
Make yourselves comfortable. There’s soda and water in the cooler.
You’ll find subs and chips on the table. Help yourselves.”
Kit was still blinking. “What is this?” she asked again.
“I told you,” Baz said patiently. “Some of the team is on their lunch break, so they don’t have much time. Come, come. Check out what Ryland brought for show and tell.”
He tugged Kit, who tugged Sam, not willing to release his hand. He looked as gobsmacked as she felt.
“Wow,” Sam murmured. “They’ve been busy.”
Everyone waved as Baz led them to the whiteboard, Kit’s lips curving in a smile as she began to understand what they’d done. Everything—all the evidence—was listed on the whiteboard, including photos of the two crime scenes and a map of the spent shell casings found in Ella Sherman’s neighborhood.
Kit leaned in to study the photo, taken in front of the house across the street and two doors down from Ella. She counted twenty markers in total. “Twenty shots fired,” she murmured to Sam, and then her breath caught. There were markers of a different color in another photo. “Three more shots.”
She let go of his hand to run her finger down the legend identifying the markers taped to the whiteboard next to the photos. “These are the casings from the gun that fired at us.”
“At you,” he corrected, his jaw tight.
“At me,” she agreed. “The bullets came from an AR-15. He only fired once at me. The other bullets were aimed elsewhere. But these”—she pointed at the second photo—“are from an M40.”
“A sniper rifle?” Sam asked.
“Very good,” she said with a smile. “Yes. Not a very commonly owned firearm in the civilian world. It’ll make tracing it a little more viable than the AR-15.”
“So there were two shooters,” he said.
“So it would seem. I wonder where the second shooter was hiding?”
A throat clearing had her turning to Kevin Marshall, who was pointing to a laptop that was playing the surveillance footage provided by Ella’s neighbors. Everyone seemed to be ignoring their presence while, at the same time, tracking her every move.
Kit was torn between gratitude and mirth. These people wanted to keep her updated without getting her into any more trouble with Navarro.
She stood watching the laptop for a few minutes while Ryland quietly chatted with Alf, and Stacey Ashton refreshed their drinks.
“Ah.” Movement on the screen revealed a man in a hoodie emerging from a brown Ford sedan long enough to brace his rifle on the roof of the car and fire toward Ella’s house.
“That was the shot that hit the doorframe,” Sam said. “He can’t hold the rifle in both hands.”
She nodded. “You’re right. And…look at that.
” A white panel van pulled up alongside the sedan.
The van’s windows were so heavily tinted that they couldn’t see inside.
The van stopped for about five seconds, after which the man in the hoodie opened fire, spraying the van’s windshield, which cracked into a hundred spiderwebs.
“That was the van that was sitting in front of Ella’s house,” Sam said. “It moves up to the sedan right after the shooter shot at you.”
“That was the other gunfire we heard.” Kit watched as the van sped away. “The shooter wasn’t shooting at us that second round. He was shooting at the van. And if the casings belong to the driver of the van, he must have had a suppressor. Ooh, look at that. The first guy was hit.”
The man in the hoodie was clutching his left leg as he threw himself into the sedan and sped after the van.
Kit turned to Sam. “If he wasn’t hurt before, he’s hurt now.”
“Nice shooting yesterday, Alf, hitting that asshole in the right arm,” Marshall said conversationally.
“Thank you,” Ashton replied, looking pleased with himself.
Kit pressed her palms together in a thank you to Ashton. “This also answers why the shooter didn’t come closer to Ella’s house. He needed to brace the rifle on the roof of his car to get his shot and the white van was in the way.”
“Makes sense.” Sam looked at the laptop, which had started to replay the surveillance footage. “Did they get any blood from the shooter’s leg wound?”
Ryland walked by them on his way to the food, pausing to tap another page taped to the whiteboard. He never said a word.
Bless him, Kit thought. Ryland could honestly say he hadn’t told her a thing.
“No blood,” Kit said after reading the report. “Dammit.”
Alicia Batra came to stand on her left side, holding a plate of food. “I just came for lunch,” she said.
Kit chuckled. “That tracks. You okay?”
“Better than you, girl. How’s it going, Sam?”
“Not bad. Worried.”
“I guess you are,” Alicia said sympathetically. “I don’t have anything to tell you that you don’t already know.”
“Mary Sherman died by gunshot wound,” Kit said. “Hmm. I wonder if there were any DNA hits from the skin scraped from under her nails?” She asked the question as if to the universe rather than to the woman standing beside her.
“This is a good sandwich,” Alicia said, shaking her head. “Takes a long time to make a sandwich this good.”
Kit sighed. “Got it.” So…nothing. Yet, anyway. “But were someone to find that brown sedan he was driving, there might be blood traces on the seat or in the carpet. I’m betting the team has already thought of that, though, and has BOLOs out on the sedan.”
Ryland walked past them again, giving her a smug look.
Of course he’d thought of that already.
Kit chuckled. “All right, then.”
“I need to be getting back,” Alicia said. “My lunch hour is over. I’ll see you soon. You take care of yourself now, okay?”
“She will,” Sam said. “I’ll make her take care of herself.”
“You’ve got the hardest job of all, Sammy.” Alicia gathered her things, said goodbye to Stacey, and left for work.
Kit moved to the second of the two laptops. It was running more surveillance footage, this time from the university’s campus security cameras.
She only had to watch for a minute when a man wearing a hoodie walked into the frame. He had the same body type as the man who’d shot at them.
“Dahlia’s stalker,” Kit said. “I wonder what he planned to do with her. He didn’t shoot her and never came close enough to grab her.”
“Psychological terror?” Sam guessed. “He’s not trying to hide that he’s there. He’s hiding his face, but not his presence. He wanted her to be afraid.”
“And why only Dahlia?” Kit wondered. “Why not Raisa, too?”
“You’ll figure it out,” Sam said with a confidence Kit wasn’t certain she shared.
“Navarro can stop me from interviewing people,” Kit said, “but he can’t stop me from thinking.”
“Exactly,” Baz said, coming to stand where Alicia had been. He was eating a giant piece of chocolate cake. “And what happens at Alf’s house stays at Alf’s house.”
Kit snorted. “So no telling Marian that you’re cheating on your heart-healthy diet. Your secret is safe with me. Just don’t go having any more heart attacks. Please.”
“I’ll do my best. I really miss lunches with you, kid,” he said, taking a big bite of cake.
“I bet you do.” Kit took one last look at all the papers Ryland had posted to the whiteboard, then sought the man out. He was packing up his laptops. “Thank you for coming to have lunch with us.”
“I figured you could use a little morale boost,” Ryland said. “We all heard what Navarro did.”
“How?” Then she knew. “Duh. Baz.”
Ryland didn’t confirm or deny. “And while Navarro’s technically right, it’s not the best thing for the case. You’re the best thing for the case.”
Kit was touched. “I owe you several.”
“No, you don’t. But you only saw me here visiting with Alf and Kevin. Nothing more.”
She mimed zipping her lips. “Drive safely back to the station. This guy is gunning for detectives for sure, but he might go after any cop on the case.”
“Thought of that,” Ryland said grimly. “I’m wearing a vest and I’ll wear a tactical helmet until I’m back in the parking garage.”
“I wish I’d thought to warn Alicia,” Kit said with a frown.
“She knows,” Ryland said. “Navarro’s got a squad car parked outside the parking garage and one patrolling inside the garage at all times.
He sent an email to the teams last night with the warnings and there were department meetings this morning to drive the point home. I think everyone’s fully aware.”
Kit tried not to be hurt that she’d been excluded from Navarro’s communications, but it stung. “Good. I’m glad you all are being careful.”
Ryland eyed her shrewdly. “Navarro isn’t maliciously excluding you. Like I said, he’s right. It is a conflict of interest. But you’re the best detective he’s got.” He winced and glanced over his shoulder at Marshall and Ashton, who were glaring at him. “In the top four,” he amended.
“Too late,” Ashton said. “Don’t even try, Ry.”
Ryland shrugged. “I got fed. I don’t need you anymore today, Alf. Later, guys.”
Linda Vista, San Diego, California
Monday, January 30, 11:45 a.m.
Kit and Sam took the now-empty sofa in Alf Ashton’s living room, both of them studying the other two detectives.
“How bad is it?” Kit asked. “Your injuries?”