Chapter 2
About twenty minutes earlier, we’d received the call of a shooting outside a local supermarket.
The word was that we had one deceased on scene with no other victims. The suspect had fled and had yet to be apprehended.
Steve pulled into the supermarket parking lot, and we immediately put eyes on our scene.
An ambulance was parked dead center in the farthest left-hand row of the lot.
Patrol cars littered the area—at a glance, eight to ten.
Some yellow crime scene tape kept the gathering crowd at bay.
Even at just a few minutes after ten in the morning, with Christmas rapidly approaching, the supermarket parking lot was packed like it was a weekend morning.
“Just park wherever we can.” I pointed at the only empty spot I could see through the windshield.
Steve gave me a nod and pulled into the free spot, and we left the cruiser. Since we were just a mile or two from our office and the Midwest Patrol station, I imagined that all our local guys were heading up the scene.
“This should be a quickie.” Steve waved a finger toward the cameras on just about every parking lot light pole.
I spotted more cameras affixed to the roof of the grocery store, an anchor business in a large strip mall. “I’d imagine that it would be pretty damn hard for this to have not been captured on video.”
Steve agreed.
As we walked past some parked cars and people gathered at the police tape surrounding the scene, I spotted the red hair of Officer Donaghy, who stood at the rear of a Toyota pickup that was a couple of years old.
The truck, parked to our right as we walked toward the supermarket, sat between a pair of sedans.
The passenger side of the truck was nearest us, and I could see Colt there snapping photos.
I could also see that the front passenger-side window of the vehicle had been shot out.
“Donaghy,” I said as we walked up.
“Morning, guys,” he said.
“What’s shakin’?” Steve asked.
“We rounded up most of the witnesses, I think.” Donaghy motioned toward a group of seven or eight people standing near Officer Rey and some other uniformed guys from Midwest near the police tape to our left.
“We’ve got a couple guys inside working on getting video from the grocery store as we speak.
The suspect was a white male, forties, average height and weight, brown hair.
White T-shirt and blue shorts. Witnesses said that he fled in a gray nineties Honda sedan. We have a BOLO out on the car.”
It was about as detailed of a suspect report that I’d heard in recent memory.
“So this guy came up to the passenger side of the truck and just started shooting, or what?” I asked.
Donaghy nodded. “That’s what it sounds like.
We probably have a dozen or more people that heard the shots and saw the guy running and taking off in the car.
But only one who saw the guy at the truck here.
The witness said he was driving down this aisle looking for a parking spot when he saw our suspect emerge from between the cars an aisle over by the cart return.
” Donaghy jerked his chin toward the cars and that area.
“Then I guess the suspect walked between those two cars there and just started shooting. It looks like most of the shots fired went through the passenger-side window, and we have one round that went through the windshield. The witness said as soon as the guy finished shooting, he ran back in the direction he came.”
“How many shots are we talking?” I asked. “And was this a pistol or…?”
“We got numbers from the witnesses between ten and twenty,” Donaghy said. “The guy driving the truck said it was a pistol, which looked full size.”
“The guy probably just emptied the magazine,” Steve offered.
“I would imagine that’s an accurate statement,” Colt said, looking over at us.
“Just by my quick count of the brass on the ground over here.” He pulled the door handle for the truck and swung it open.
Broken glass fell to Colt’s feet as he did.
“You guys can come over for a look. I’ll get out of your way for a second. ”
I walked toward Colt, with Steve right behind me.
Colt moved around the open truck door to give us some space. “Watch your step for the glass and brass.”
I minded my step and stood in the open doorway of the vehicle. Steve pulled up a spot at my shoulder.
“Damn,” Steve said.
His single word was a fair description. The man inside, about forty, was slumped against the interior of the driver’s-side door, his chin pressed to his chest. His shirt was tattered from the rounds he’d taken.
It also appeared that he’d taken a shot just below his right eye and another smack in the center of his forehead.
The dash, steering wheel, inside windshield, and just about everything in sight had been spattered in blood.
The driver’s-side windows, both front and rear, had also been shot out, which I hadn’t originally seen.
Another thing that I didn’t see was groceries—meaning there was a good chance that our victim had never made it into the store.
“There’s a phone down by his feet,” Colt said. “But it looks like it took a round or two.”
I put eyes on it. From its shattered and mangled state, I doubted it was going to give us anything useful—or anything at all.
“Do we know who this is yet?” Steve asked in Donaghy’s direction.
“The tags on the truck come back to a Robert Mehen. And I’m pretty sure that is who we have here,” Donaghy said. “He looks like the photo on the DL that I pulled up.”
Having seen enough of the victim’s condition, I told Colt to give me a shout if he found anything of immediate interest and left the truck so I could rejoin Donaghy.
“Do we have any thoughts on what happened prior to the actual shots being fired?” I asked. “Because a lack of groceries inside the truck makes me think this guy never had a chance to even get out of his vehicle.”
“Nothing that we got from any of the witnesses leads us to believe that either the victim or suspect were inside the store.”
“So, premeditated?” Steve questioned. “Or some kind of road rage altercation?”
“We could speculate all day or go try to get some answers. Let’s see what these witnesses have to say and then check what we have on the video front,” I said.
“I’ve got to call back to the station,” Donaghy said. “If you need anything, just give me a shout.”
“Yep.” I pointed toward Officer Rey, who stood with a group of people that Donaghy had mentioned as witnesses. Steve and I walked over.
“Rey,” I said.
He’d excused himself from the group as he saw Steve and me heading in his direction.
“Harrington, Walsh,” Rey said.
“Donaghy said that these were our witnesses?” I asked.
“Two with eyes, all the rest just ears,” he said.
I took it as only two out of the group actually seeing anything and the rest just hearing the shots but asked for confirmation, which I received with a nod.
“All right. So who saw what?” I asked. “Donaghy mentioned a guy saw the shooting while he was looking for a parking spot or something?”
“Yeah.” Rey flicked a finger out toward a man nearby.
“That’s him there in the long-sleeve shirt.
Michael something. He saw the most out of anyone.
Then the woman in the yellow shirt there saw the suspect get into his car and peel out.
Same with the pair of thirty-year-old guys next to her.
They’re the guys that gave us the suspect vehicle information. ”
“Did they get a tag on the suspect’s car?” Steve asked. “Donaghy said it was a Honda sedan?”
“Accord,” Rey said. “Or so the witness claimed. Gray, 1990s. Didn’t get a tag, no.”
“All right,” I said. “I’ll have a quick chat with these couple witnesses here.
Steve, why don’t you head inside the grocery store and see what we have in there?
Check out whatever video they have and see what we get.
I gotta think we’ll get some missing pieces of what exactly went down here from whatever the cameras caught. ”
Steve gave me a nod. “I’d hope for a tag number at minimum from all the cameras out here.”
“Hopefully,” I said.
Steve headed for the supermarket entrance, and I followed Rey to our group of witnesses.