Chapter 6
Chapter Six
What are the odds?
“Who are they? Or should I say, who were they?” Gary didn’t recall hearing anything about a shooting. Leo’s case was claiming all his attention.
Well, most of it; Dan was claiming the rest.
Del arched his eyebrows. “Didn’t you see the local news last night? Don’t you keep up with events?” He rolled his eyes. “Some detective.”
“Hey, I didn’t come here so you could take a shot at me.”
Dan let out a wry chuckle. “But his aim is amazing.”
Gary fired him a mock glare.
Del cleared his throat. “Okay, to summarize: Guy number one came home to find his house being burgled. He was shot by one of two men, who then fled the scene in his car. Then the driver—we’ll call him Guy number two—was found dead, also shot.”
“How do you know there were two robbers?” Gary asked.
“Because it was all captured on CCTV.” He handed Gary a scalpel. “Here. You can do my next autopsy—I’ll investigate your case.”
Gary was about to come back with a quip of his own, but Dan got in first. “Who were the dead men?”
Del picked up his tablet from the countertop. “The driver was one Eddie Ray. Thirty-eight years old. Identified by his dental records and fingerprints. He was found behind the wheel of a BMW belonging to Guy number one, Jonathon Wilmer.”
“Wilmer?” Gary stilled. “Hey, wait a minute. I know that name.” He turned to Dan. “He’s the journalist who wrote that piece on us about the return of the painting.”
Dear Lord, they’d only been talking about him two days ago.
“Yeah, I believe he was a journalist. I think they said that on the news.” Del pointed to the evidence bags. “I haven’t finished going over their clothes yet. That pile on the left belonged to Wilmer, the other to Ray.”
Dan wandered over and picked up a bag containing a pair of sneakers, turning it over to look at the soles. He replaced it, then picked up another.
Gary left him to it, returning his attention to Del. “I know you don’t like giving details about autopsies before the report is finished, but… can I ask where they were shot?”
Del’s eyes twinkled. “Belmont. At least, Wilmer was shot there. His car was found in Franklin Park.”
Gary narrowed his gaze. “Now you’re being facetious. You know what I meant.”
“Facetious? Moi?” Del put down the tablet. “They were both shot in the back of the head.”
Dan turned slowly to look at him. “You don’t say.”
Gary wagged a finger. “You know what Travers says about coincidences.”
“Yes, I do. I also know we’re going to take a look at this case too, aren’t we?”
“Yeah, we are.”
Gary didn’t believe in coincidences either.
They headed for Homicide to find the detective in charge of the case, Rachel Broome.
Gary hadn’t had many dealings with her, as she hadn’t been with Boston PD all that long.
She was roughly the same age as him. They’d spoken on a few occasions, enough for Gary to know she had a quick wit and an even quicker tongue.
He’d heard on the grapevine that she was a stickler for doing things by the book.
His kind of detective.
She glanced up as they approached her desk. “What brings you two out of the bat cave?” She grinned. “Only kidding. Congratulations, by the way. That was some amazing detection you pulled off last month. My husband has talked about nothing else for weeks.”
“He can’t have much of an interesting life if he finds us exciting,” Dan teased.
She laughed. “He teaches art. And the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is his go-to place.” She bit back a smile.
“I think I can name every exhibit by heart, and the missing ones too, if it comes to that. When he read about the case in the paper, he told me to deliver a message to you two.” Her smile morphed into a grin.
“He said, ‘Great job. Now find the rest.’”
“Tell him we’ll get onto it right away—as soon as we solve our present case. Which is why we’re here. We’d like to know more about yesterday’s double shooting,” Gary told her.
Rachel’s eyebrows went skyward. “So this isn’t you being social?”
“Let’s just say there are initial similarities between the shootings and the cold-case victim we’re investigating.”
“I see.” Rachel tapped on her keyboard. “Okay. Here’s what we’ve got so far. The CCTV footage shows two men entering the front door of Wilmer’s condo at 717 Belmont Street.” She clicked, then turned the monitor toward them.
The image was grainy, but clear enough to show the pale cedar-shakes-covered building, bushes obscuring the first-floor windows.
The light was poor, and Gary guessed it was after sunset.
They watched as two men walked up to the front door.
One was tall, the other shorter, and both wore black.
They stepped onto the front porch, and the shorter man blocked the camera’s view of the door. Then it opened.
Gary glanced at the time stamp. “So this was seven fifteen Tuesday night.”
“Yes. The guy picking the lock is Eddie Ray. We haven’t identified the other guy yet.”
The two men went inside and closed the door behind them. Rachel sped through the footage. “Then at seven thirty….”
An older BMW pulled into the driveway in front of the attached single-car garage, and a man got out, carrying a bag over one shoulder.
“And that’s Wilmer.”
He went into the house, and less than a minute later, the first two men emerged. The taller man had a bag in his hand.
“Freeze it there, will you?” Gary asked. Rachel clicked on her mouse, and he leaned in for a better look. “The picture quality is awful.” Neither of the men’s features were clear. “Okay, let it run.”
Ray got behind the wheel of the BMW, and his accomplice got into the passenger seat. The car reversed into the street and drove off.
“Did you manage to capture it again on any other cameras after it left Belmont Street?” Gary inquired.
“Yes, but we lost contact with it after Jamaica Plain. It turned up in Franklin Park. Ray was sitting at the wheel, shot in the back of the head, just like Wilmer.”
“Same kind of bullet too,” Dan murmured. When Rachel regarded him with interest, he smiled. “We’ve been to see Del Maddox.”
“Ah. I was wondering if you’d learned that by… other means.”
Dan bit his lip. “I see my reputation precedes me.”
“And maybe it’s more the case that you’re a hot topic of conversation right now.”
“No cameras around where the BMW was found?” Gary wanted to know.
“There are cameras, sure, but somehow they picked a blind spot.” Her face was grim. “That was either luck, or they knew exactly where to park.”
“What about a weapon?”
“There was a gun found on the passenger seat. Ballistics have it. We’ll see if it was used to kill Wilmer.”
“And what if you also find it was used to kill Ray?” Dan said quietly.
“Then that will make things nice and neat,” Rachel observed.
Gary didn’t like neat. It was way too convenient.
She leaned back. “So is there a link between your case and mine?”
“Possibly. We might come back and talk to you some more if that’s okay.”
Rachel smiled. “My door is always open.” Her eyes sparkled. “Except I don’t have a door, because unlike you two, I don’t have an office. I have to put up with this henhouse full of cackling roosters.” She gestured to all the desks around her.
Dan chuckled. “Office envy. Very sad.”
“Thanks, Rachel.”
“Two-way street, right? If you guys turn up anything I might find useful—”
“We’ll be sure to pass it on,” Gary promised. They left her desk and returned to their office.
Dan closed the door behind them. “Okay, we looked. Could there be a link between the shootings and Leo’s murder?”
Gary smiled. “I’m glad we’re on the same page.”
Dan gave an emphatic nod. “Good. I know it’s a slim link—the same kind of bullet, and that’s it—but when you couple that with the phone, the drugs found on Leo….” He shrugged. “Yeah, that’s really slim.”
“What are you listening most to, the evidence or your instincts?”
“Instincts. I still feel there’s something wrong about Leo’s death.”
Gary sat at his desk, his chin resting on laced fingers. “And now there’s a shooting that feels wrong too. Eddie Ray was one of the two men captured on CCTV. He went into Wilmer’s house. So it stands to reason either he or his accomplice shot Wilmer.”
“And then Eddie ends up dead. But why? A falling out among thieves? Did Eddie shoot Wilmer in error, so his accomplice rubs him out? Then why go to all the trouble of stealing a car just to leave him in it? None of this makes sense.”
Gary didn’t respond, but he had a feeling their workload had doubled.
Hell, there was no doubt it had.
No such thing as coincidence, right?
“I think we need to look at Rachel’s case,” Dan declared. “She said it was okay.”
“What you mean is, you want to see what your gift tells you.”
Dan nodded. “And if two heads are better than one, then three heads must be better than two.”
“But it isn’t our case. We investigate cold cases, remember? Not ones so fresh the blood hasn’t finished drying yet.” He could already hear Travers’s voice in his head, admonishing them.
But we have to follow our instincts.
Both of them.
“But you know it doesn’t make sense either.”
Gary knew when to capitulate. “Come on, then. Let’s go back to Rachel. What if these two cases are connected—by more than the manner of death? I can’t see what that connection might be, not when they died three years apart.”
“Neither can I at the moment, but this is what we do, isn’t it? We move forward without solid evidence but on a hunch, in the hope of finding an answer.” Dan gave a slight shiver.
“What is it?”
“I’m not sure. It’s as if there’s something obscuring my vision, and if I can remove it, I’ll know everything.”
“But you’ve got a feeling that whatever is hiding behind it…?”
Dan’s gaze locked on to his. “It’s not good.”