“That’s a damn good shot out of a moving car.” She glared at him as he helped her up. “Much better than yours. When was the last time you were on the range? This is unacceptable. Absolutely unacceptable.”
Will knew better than to argue with her, but if he was the arguing type, he might’ve mentioned what a bad idea it’d been to leave their guns on the counter, or how stupid it was to go into this place without backup.
“I swear to God, Will, when this is over—” She didn’t finish her sentence. She paced off, stepping on the plastic compact from her purse. “Goddamn it!”
Will knelt down in front of the dead man. Out of habit, he checked for a pulse. There was a hole in the black warm-up jacket, about two inches from his heart. It was big enough for Will’s finger to poke through. He tugged down the zip, revealing the top of a military-grade tactical assault vest. The bullet’s full metal jacket had expanded on impact, smashing into the shock plate, flattening out like a dog trying to crawl underneath a couch.
K-5, right in the center of the chest.
Amanda was back. She stared down at the dead man without saying a word. She must have been standing downblast when he was shot. Bits of gray matter stuck to her face. There was a piece of bone in the collar of her blouse.
Will stood up. He couldn’t think of anything to do but offer his handkerchief.
“Thank you.” She wiped her face with a steady hand. The blood smeared like clown makeup. “Thank God I have a change of clothes in the car.” She looked up at him. “Your jacket is ripped.”
He looked at his sleeve. There was a small tear where his shoulder had met asphalt.
“You should always keep a change of clothes in your car. You never know what’s going to happen.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Will rested his hand on the butt of his rifle.
“Ling-Ling’s gone.” Amanda wiped her forehead. “She came out of her office with that stupid dog under her arm. Guns blazing. I’m under no impression that she was trying to save me, but it seemed rather obvious that they were trying to kill her, too.”
Will tried to process this new piece of information. “I assumed the shooters were working for Ling-Ling.”
“If Julia wanted us dead, she would’ve taken both of us out in her office. Didn’t you see the sawed-off shotgun under the couch cushion?”
Will nodded, though he hadn’t seen the gun and the thought of it now brought out a cold sweat. “The shooters worked in her shop. I recognized them from when we first went in. They were putting together cabinets. Why would they try to kill Julia? Or us, for that matter?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Amanda finally realized it wasn’t. “They didn’t want her talking to me. They certainly don’t want her talking to Roger. She must know something.”
Will tried to put the pieces together. “Julia said that the young boys were getting ahead of themselves. Trying to be gangsters. I don’t imagine a bunch of twenty-something-year-old, testosterone-filled guys want to be ordered around by a middle-aged woman.”
“And here I was thinking that men loved that.” Amanda looked down at the dead man. “He’s sweating like a pig. No doubt he was on something.”
Something that had made him capable of taking the impact of a .223-caliber 55-grain full metal jacket to the chest and popping up seconds later like a Toaster Strudel.
Amanda prodded the man with the toe of her shoe, pushing him over so she could check for his wallet. “These youngsters certainly don’t like to leave witnesses.” She slid out the driver’s license. “Juan Armand Castillo. Aged twenty-four. Lives on Leather Stocking Lane in Stone Mountain.” She showed Will the license. Castillo looked like a schoolteacher, not the kind of guy who would chase a GBI agent into a parking lot with a machine gun.
She unzipped Castillo’s jacket the rest of the way. Her Glock was tucked into his pants. She took it out, saying, “Well, at least he didn’t shoot at me with my own gun.”
Will helped her unloop the side clasps on the Kevlar vest.
“He smells, too.” Amanda lifted up the shirt, checking his chest. “No tattoos.” She checked his arms. “Nothing.”
“Try the hands.”
Castillo’s fists were clenched. She uncurled the fingers with her bare hand, which was technically against every procedure in the book, but Will was an accomplice already, so it didn’t really matter.
She said, “Nothing.”
Will scanned the parking lot. There were only two cars now, the Bentley and the Mercedes. “Do you think someone else is inside?”
“The Bentley is Ling-Ling’s. I imagine she keeps another car close by that she’s using right now to go as far underground as possible. The Merc belongs to Perry.” She explained, “The dead man in the front office.”
“You certainly seem to know a lot about these people. Mandy.”
“I’m in no mood for that, Will.”
“Julia Ling is high up in the pecking order. She’s practically the beak.”
“Is there a reason you’re talking like Foghorn Leghorn?”
“I’m just saying that it takes either a large set of balls or an extreme amount of stupidity to try to take out someone with Julia Ling’s kind of juice. Her brother’s not going to just roll over. You told me yourself that he’s practically insane. Shooting at his sister is an open act of war.”
“Finally, a salient point.” She handed back his handkerchief. “Did you get a good look at the men in the van?”
He shook his head. “Young, I guess. Sunglasses. Hats. Jackets. Nothing else I could swear to.”
“I’m not asking you to swear. I’m asking you to—” The air was pierced by the sound of sirens. “Took them long enough.”
Will guessed the first gunshot had been fired less than five minutes ago. By his calculations, that was pretty good response time.
He asked, “Did you get a look at them?”
She shook her head. “I suppose we should be looking for someone with drive-by experience.”
She was right about the shots. Nailing someone in the head, twice, from a moving vehicle, even at a short distance, was not something you got lucky at. It took practice, and obviously Castillo’s killer hadn’t worried about missing.
Will asked, “Why didn’t they shoot you?”
“Are you complaining or asking a question?” Amanda rubbed something off her arm. She looked down at Castillo. “I guess we’re down to two now. At least our odds are getting better.”
She was talking about the fingerprints found at Evelyn’s house. “It’s three.”
She shook her head, still looking down at the corpse.
He counted it out on his fingers. “Evelyn killed Hironobu Kwon. Faith took care of Ricardo Ortiz and Benny Choo. Marcellus Estevez died at Grady, and Juan Castillo here makes five.” She didn’t say anything. He worried about his math. “Eight sets of prints at Evelyn’s house minus five dead guys equals three.”
She watched the squad cars speeding down the road. “Two,” she told him. “One tried to kill Sara Linton an hour ago.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Dale Dugan rushed into the doctors’ lounge. “I came as soon as they let me.”
Sara closed her eyes as she shut her locker. She had spent nearly two hours going over her statement with the Atlanta police. Then the hospital administration had swarmed around her for another hour, ostensibly to help, but Sara had quickly realized that they were more concerned that they would be sued. Once she’d signed a paper absolving them of all responsibility, they left as quickly as they had arrived.
Dale asked, “Can I get you anything?”
“Thank you, but I’m fine.”
“Can I drive you home?”
“Dale, I—” The door slammed open. Will stood there, a panicked look on his face.
For a few suspended seconds, nothing mattered anymore. Sara was blind to everything else in the room. Her peripheral vision was gone. Everything tunneled to Will. She didn’t see Dale leave. She didn’t h
ear the constant throng of ambulance sirens and ringing phones and screaming patients.
She just saw Will.
He let the door close, but didn’t move toward her. There was sweat on his brow. His breath was labored. She didn’t know what to say to him, what to do. She just stood there staring at him as if this was another ordinary day.
He asked, “Is that a new outfit?”
She laughed, the sound getting caught in her throat. She’d changed into scrubs. Her clothes were in police evidence.
The corner of his mouth went up in a forced smile. “It brings out the green in your eyes.”
Sara bit her lip to keep tears from falling. She had wanted to call him as soon as it happened. Her cell phone had been in her hands, his number up on the screen, but she had tucked the phone into her purse because Sara knew if she saw Will before she was ready, she would shatter like a delicate piece of china.
Amanda Wagner knocked as she entered the room. “I hate to interrupt, Dr. Linton, but could we have a word with you?”
Anger flashed across Will’s face. “She doesn’t—”
“It’s all right,” Sara interrupted. “There’s not much that I can tell you.”
Amanda smiled as if this was some sort of social gathering. “Anything at all would be appreciated.”
Sara had talked about it so much over the last few hours that she recited the events as if by rote. She gave them the abbreviated version of her statement, not going into a detailed description of the female junkie, which, on paper, had sounded like every junkie Sara had ever seen. Nor did she describe the trash around the Dumpster or the EMTs, or list the procedures she followed. She cut to what mattered: the young man who’d peered at her from behind the curtain. He had punched her in the chest. He had shot her patient twice in the head. He was thin, Caucasian, mid-to-late twenties and wearing a black warm-up jacket and baseball cap. In the short time that elapsed between her first sight of him and his death, he had not uttered one word. The only sound she’d heard was a grunt, and then the air whistling from his neck as his breath seeped out.
She finished, “His hand was gripped around my hand. I couldn’t stop it. He’s dead. They’re both dead.”
Will seemed to have trouble speaking. “He hurt you.”
Sara could only nod, but her mind conjured the image she had seen in the bathroom mirror: an oblong, ugly bruise over her right breast where the man had punched her.
Will cleared his throat. “All right. Thank you for your cooperation, Dr. Linton. I know you probably want to get home.” He turned to leave, but Amanda made no move to follow.
“Dr. Linton, I noticed a soda machine in the waiting room. Would you like something to drink?”
Sara was taken off guard. “I’m—”
“Will, could you get a Diet Sprite for me and—I’m sorry, Dr. Linton. What did you want?”
Will’s jaw tightened like a ratchet. He wasn’t stupid. He knew that Amanda was trying to get her alone, just like Sara knew that Amanda wouldn’t give up until she got what she wanted. She tried to make this easier for Will, saying, “A Coke would be nice.”
He didn’t give in that easy. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. I’m sure.”
He wasn’t happy, but he left the room.
Amanda checked the hallway, making sure Will was gone. She turned back to Sara. “I’m rooting for you, you know.”
Sara didn’t have a clue what she was talking about.
“Will,” she explained. “He’s got one too many bitches in his life, and I’m not going anywhere.”
Sara was in no mood to joke. “What do you want, Amanda?”
She got to the point. “The bodies are still downstairs in the morgue. I need you to examine them and give me your professional opinion.” She added, “A coroner’s opinion.”
Sara felt a cold chill at the thought of seeing the man again. Every time she blinked, she could see his expressionless face hovering over her. She couldn’t grip her hand without feeling his fingers wrapped around her own. “I can’t cut them open.”
“No, but you can answer some questions for me.”
“Such as?”
“Drug use, gang affiliations, and whether or not one of them has a stomach full of heroin.”
“Like Ricardo.”
“Yes, like Ricardo.”
Sara didn’t give herself time to think about the request. “All right. I’ll do it.”
“Do what?” Will was back. He must’ve run the entire way. He was out of breath again. He held two sodas in one hand.
“There you are,” Amanda said, as if she was surprised to see him. “We were about to go down to the morgue.”
Will looked at Sara. “No.”
“I want to do this,” Sara insisted, though she was not sure why. For the last three hours, all she could think about was going home. Now that Will was here, the thought of returning to her empty apartment was unimaginable.
“We don’t need these.” Amanda took the soda cans and dropped them into the trash. “Dr. Linton?”
Sara led them down the corridor toward the elevators, feeling like a lifetime had passed since she’d made the same walk this morning. A loaded gurney rolled by, EMTs shouting stats, doctors giving orders. Sara held out her arm, guiding Will back against the wall so that the patient could get past. Her hand hovered just in front of his tie. She could feel the silk material sway against her fingertips. He was wearing a suit, his normal work attire, but without the usual vest. His jacket was dark blue, the shirt a lighter shade of the same color.
The cop. Sara had forgotten the cop. “I didn’t—”
“Hold that thought,” Amanda said, as if she was afraid the walls had ears.
Sara fumed at herself as they waited for the elevator. How had she forgotten about the cop? What was wrong with her?
The doors opened. The elevator was packed. It took an interminable amount of time for the old pulleys and lifts to groan into action. They went down a floor and most of the people exited. Two young orderlies rode with them to the sub-basement. They got off and headed toward the stairwell, probably for an illicit tryst.
Amanda waited until they were well beyond earshot. “What is it?”
“There was a man when we came in from the Dumpster. I nearly ran him over. I told him to get out of the way, and he flashed a badge. It looked like a badge. I’m not sure anymore. He acted like a cop.”
“In what way?”
“He acted like he had every right to question me, and he was irritated when I didn’t answer immediately.” Sara gave her a meaningful look.
“Sounds like a cop to me,” Amanda wryly admitted. “What did he want?”
“To know whether or not the patient was going to make it. I told him maybe, even though it was obvious …” Sara let her voice trail off, willing herself to remember. “He was wearing a dark suit, charcoal. White shirt. He was very thin, almost gaunt. He reeked of cigarette smoke. I could smell it even after he left.”
“Did you see which way he went?”
She shook her head.
“White? Black?”
“White. Gray hair. He was older. He looked older.” She put her hand to her face. “His cheeks were sunken. His eyes were heavily lidded.” She remembered something else. “He was wearing a hat. A baseball hat.”
“Black?” Will asked.
“Blue,” she said. “Atlanta Braves.”
“We’ll probably get some nice images of the top of it from the security cameras,” Amanda commented. “We’ll have to share this information with the APD. They may want to see if you can work with a sketch artist.”
Sara would do whatever it took. “I’m sorry I didn’t remember earlier. I don’t know what—”
“You were in shock.” Will seemed ready to say more. He glanced at Amanda, then indicated the double doors at the other end of the hallway. He said, “I think it’s this way.”
In the morgue, Junior and Larry were nowhere to be seen. Instead, the
re were two gurneys, each with a body, each with a white sheet covering the dead. Sara assumed one was the man she had found outside by the Dumpster and the other was the man who had shot the first, then tried to kill her.
There was an older woman leaning against the door to the walk-in freezer. She looked up from her BlackBerry as they walked into the room. Her hospital badge was tucked into her pants pocket. No white lab coat, just a well-tailored black pantsuit. She was clearly on the administration side of the hospital. She was older, more gray than black in her hair. She pushed away from the freezer and walked over. Her posture was ramrod straight, her sizable chest out in front of her like the prow of a ship.
She didn’t stop for introductions. She pulled a small spiral-bound notebook out of her jacket pocket and read, “The shooter’s name is Franklin Warren Heeney. APD found his wallet on him. Local boy, lives in Tucker with his parents. Dropped out of Perimeter College his sophomore year. No employment records. No adult arrest history, but at thirteen, he spent six months in juvie for breaking windows. He has one child, a daughter, six years old, who lives with an aunt out in Snellville. The baby mama is in county lockup for shoplifting and a Baggie of meth they found in her purse. That’s all I could get on him.” She indicated the other body. “Marcellus Benedict Estevez. As I said on the phone, his wallet was found in the trash by the Dumpster. I assume you’ve already looked into him?” Amanda nodded, and the woman closed her notebook. “That’s all I have for now. Nothing else has come down on the wire.”
Amanda nodded again. “Thank you.”
“I bought you an hour before the body boys come. Dr. Linton, the films you ordered for Estevez are in the transport packet. I’ve gathered together some tools that might be useful. I’m sorry it can’t be more.”
She had done plenty. Sara looked over the four Mayo trays laid out beside the bodies. Whoever the woman was, she had some medical knowledge and was high enough up the Grady food chain to raid the supply closet without setting off alarms. “Thank you.”
The woman nodded her goodbyes, then left the room.
Will’s tone was sharp when he asked Amanda, “Let me guess, one of your old gals?”
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