“You bet.”
She rose quickly and as she crossed to Pam Gardiner’s desk, she heard the crunch of broken glass under her feet.
“Is he going to be all right?” Pam’s voice was hoarse.
“He’ll be fine. Let’s worry about you.”
The Register’s longtime editor was a morbidly obese woman of fine editorial talents, as long as she didn’t have to move from her throne-like chair. Publisher Frank Dayan was peripatetic enough for both of them, concentrating most of his efforts on advertising, but never hesitant to leap into the editorial fray to cover a story.
“I was reaching over there for some papers,” and Pam nodded at the stack on the right-hand wing of her desk. “And all of a sudden, I hear this racket, there’s glass breaking, and as I turn a little, I felt something tug at my arm and kind of a little sting at my throat.”
“Let me,” Estelle said, and gently moved the woman’s clenched left hand and the wad of tissue she held under her chin. The projectile had raked across Pam’s enormous throat wattle, inflicting a gouge that at first had bled profusely but then had quickly clotted to a slight ooze.
Either the woman had been struck by two separate projectiles, or one had done the damage, passing first through her arm and then grazing her neck. The flesh hung from the back of Pam’s arms like great curtains. Moving the towel pad that Pam held with her right hand, Estelle saw the small wounds on the upper left arm, what would be an entry on the outside of her arm, with the exit on the inside of the curtain of fat. It too bled little. Both wounds were far below the line of bone.
“Here’s the ambulance,” Pam said. “I don’t think I can do that.”
“Just let them tend you, young lady,” Estelle said. “They’ll decide what’s what.”
“I can get up,” she heard Rik Chang say across the room.
“Just relax,” Taber instructed.
Pam Gardiner twisted a little in her chair. “Is he hurt badly?”
“I don’t know, Pam. But we’ll take care of him. Francis will be at the hospital already, so no worries.”
Jason Finnegan appeared in the doorway and Estelle pointed toward Rik Chang. “Check him,” she said. Finnegan looped the stethoscope from around his neck and crossed the room even as his partner, Emily Baca, appeared with the wheeled gurney.
Behind Baca, Sergeant Tom Pasquale appeared, followed by his wife, Linda, who served as the department photographer. Her Sony was already unlimbered and quietly snicking away. Moving quickly to stay out of the EMTs’ way, she shot dozens of photos of the two victims and their surroundings.
It was no challenge to position Rik Chang on the first gurney, where his wound was field-dressed and an IV started. By that time, the second ambulance had arrived.
“Oh, just let me waddle on out,” Pam said, trying for a brave smile.
Finnegan put his arm around her shoulders as he draped her with a warm blanket. “You don’t do anything except just sit quietly,” and he patted the edge of the gurney, “and we’ll do the rest.”
The vast woman overflowed the gurney as they coaxed her onto her back. Remarkably, with some adjustment, the restraining belts were long enough, and she was wheeled out to the sidewalk where the two EMTs, along with Tom Pasquale and Jackie Taber, managed to lift the gurney into the ambulance.
“I’ll ride with her,” Taber said. “Taylor?” The captain beckoned to Deputy Taylor Obregón, who had just arrived from prowling the western side of the county. “Take a ride with Unit One there and secure as much of a statement from Mr. Chang as you can.”
Chapter Eight
“A dark sedan.”
“A red SUV.”
“He stopped twice.”
“He never stopped.”
“They fired at least a dozen times.”
“Oh, fifty times, at least.”
“It had to have been a suppressor…I could hardly hear it.”
“Probably a twenty-two.”
“Enough noise to make me jump.”
The witness reports went on and on, contradicting, supporting, weaving a story with a dozen variations. No one had actually witnessed the shooting, but at least four people had heard what they thought was gunfire.
Retired chiropractor and longtime county commissioner Arnie Gray, who lived in one of a dozen stately downtown quasi-Victorians built during an early mining boom in the 1800s, had been in his front yard waiting for his aging Pomeranian to relieve its plumbing.
“That little old guy is as bad as a geezer with a blown prostate,” he told officers. Waiting on his dog, he’d heard “a couple dozen rounds, at least, but on the other side of the building so I couldn’t see anything.” The vehicle had sped off to the west, sounding “powerful but quiet.”
Estelle stood in the street, the area now taped off, all the spectators gone except for a handful that included Arnie Gray and County Manager Leona Spears. Jackie Taber had returned from the hospital with word that Pam Gardiner’s wounds were as superficial as they appeared. She’d been cleaned up, bandaged, pumped full of antibiotics, and put to bed for twenty-four hours of observation before they would release her. Had she been twenty years younger and two hundred and fifty pounds lighter, they would have sent her home.
“Rik saw the vehicle,” Taber continued. She kept her voice down, her back to the spectators. “Most likely a Ford Expedition, most likely dark blue or red, maybe black. He said he heard the first rounds hit the glass and turned…he was standing in the doorway to the restroom. He says he was looking back at Pam, who had just asked him a question.
“He heard the shots, just little pops, he said, and he turned to his right. He had time to see five or six rounds actually hit, and says that it was an even cadence. Pop, pop, pop, pop. Not a rapid-fire burst.” Jackie poked an index finger against her own chest. “So when the bullet hit him, it tracked upward and toward his left. The X-ray shows that it’s lodged in the muscle of his left shoulder, just to the median side of his rotator cuff. Rik says that he never felt it hit him.”
“Obregón is staying at the hospital for a bit?” Estelle asked.
Taber nodded. “Until Rik is out of surgery and everything is stable. It shouldn’t be long.”
Sheriff Torrez stood behind Linda Pasquale as she documented each bullet-strike, and he glanced over his shoulder at Estelle, beckoning her with a crook of his finger.
“Everybody is on the road,” Taber added. “We’ll go with Chang’s description of the vehicle until we learn otherwise.”
“Twenty-five,” Torrez said as his undersheriff and chief deputy approached. He held his hands a foot apart. “Spaced pretty even. No up and down, so we ain’t talkin’ much recoil.”
“Like maybe a twenty-two?” Estelle asked.
“Lookin’ like it. Some of ’em didn’t go much of anywhere. We got one stuck in the metal doorframe over there, and it’s lookin’ like we can match up some of the window strikes with the damage to the far wall inside. But it ain’t going to tell us what we don’t already know. Car full of punks havin’ a good time.”
“Kids, you think?”
“Yep.” The sheriff sounded as if he had no shadow of doubt. “When they ran out of window, they just kept shootin’. They hit the building a few times there at the end.” He swung his arm horizontally, indicating the straight line of bullet strikes.
“You know any local kids who drive a dark Expedition?”
Torrez frowned. “Is that what Chang and Pam say?”
“Chang saw it. A dark-colored Expedition. And Arnie Gray claims he heard it driving off to the west. He didn’t see it, but he heard it. That doesn’t sound so much like kids, Bobby. Nobody heard laughter, or shouts, and they didn’t circle back.”
Torrez gazed at the riddled building. He shook his head a couple of times, then asked, “Who’s on the road, then?�
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“Everybody we have. We were lucky to have a couple of state guys concentrating on the interstate east-west. The Border Patrol is covering 56 down toward Regál. We have Obregón at the hospital, with Miller, Vasquez, and Sutherland staying central.”
“Where’s Dayan? He ain’t workin’ tonight?”
“I’ll find him.” Taber slipped her phone out of her pocket.
“He might still be out at NightZone,” Estelle said. “He was there earlier today, and I know that he’s working up a feature on their latest planetarium show. That, and trying to catch the Thompsons. Waddell invited them to stay out there, and there’s a possibility Frank managed to get his interview after all.”
“In the middle of the night?” Torrez muttered.
“That’s the way that place works,” Estelle said. “And if it was a swank dinner meeting, it’d take a while.”
But the simplest answer was the correct one. In a moment, Taber was breaking the news to the newspaper publisher, who up to that point had been enjoying a peaceful night’s sleep home in his own bed.
“He’ll meet someone at the hospital,” Taber said.
“I’ll go talk with him,” Estelle said. “He’ll want to come down here to see the damage after he checks up on Rik and Pam.”
Estelle guided the Charger into the slot marked in orange as “Official Parking Only,” and when she entered the hospital was greeted by the same aromas that were brought home each day on her husband’s clothing. Betty Dugan, gray-wigged and wrinkled of face, sat behind the desk in the receptionist’s corner, working her way through a thick puzzle book…her defense against a job that most of the time was crushingly boring. She glanced up, saw Estelle, and smiled sympathetically. She lifted a hand and one bent, arthritic finger pointed down the hall to her left.
“The gang’s thataway,” she croaked in a voice scarred by sixty years of smoking. “But I guess you know as well as anybody, better’n most.”
“Thanks, Bets,” the undersheriff replied. “Tough night.”
“Dawn brings a new day.” She smiled the prim, contented smile of someone who knows just how everything works.
Down the wide hallway past dark offices, through an intersection offering myriad choices that included a large red-and-black arrow that pointed toward the emergency room, Estelle rounded a corner and saw Frank Dayan leaning against the tiled wall under the sign for radiology. He looked up, his expression brightening. A small, dapper man, he usually managed a ready smile for everyone.
“They’re going to be all right.” The newspaper publisher looked haggard, his “Nixonian beard,” as he was fond of calling his swarthy complexion, at its grubbiest. “Rik took the worst of it, but your husband said that the surgery went well. They were able to remove the bullet intact. Dr. Guzman said it missed the major brachial artery by just a fraction.” He held two fingers a slight pinch apart. “Also missed the lung. They’re going to keep him for a day or two just to be sure.”
“He’s a fortunate young man,” Estelle said.
“Boy, ain’t that the truth? But I’m worried about Pam, Estelle. The stress of the whole thing is really hard on her. She doesn’t have the constitution for all of this.”
“Maybe she’s tougher than we think.”
“Maybe she is, but I still worry. She’s a med popper, you know.” Dayan held up his hands in frustration. “She’s got a whole damn drawerful at the office. Who knows what she has stashed at home? Diet root beer and popcorn. That’s her idea of a balanced meal.”
“I’ll mention your concerns to my husband, but I’m sure he’s talking to her already.”
“And to me.” Dayan shrugged helplessly. “She’s been with me for a lot of years, Estelle.”
“And a lot more to come.”
“Let’s hope so.” He took a deep breath. “God knows, she can be exasperating. But a shrewd mind. A shrewd mind. She keeps me on the straight and narrow.” He heaved a mighty sigh, and his right hand patted his shirt pocket. “It’s at times like this that I wish I still smoked.”
“A stiff shot of brandy might be more productive.”
Dayan laughed weakly. “I’m thinking there will be a lot of that. Look, nobody tells me much, and as soon as it looks clear to break away here, I’ll go over to the office to see for myself. This looks like just a drive-by? How many shots were fired?”
“Twenty-five. Despite that, we think it was a single gunman. There were several people who heard the shots, but their statements are varied.”
“I know how that goes. But a single shooter, with twenty-five rounds fired? How do you know that?”
“It’s looking that way. The holes are spaced in a neat line. Not just a spray effort, not like multiple shooters going at it.” She poked imaginary dots in the air from left to right. “The sheriff is over at the newspaper office. When you get the chance to run over there, he’ll want to talk with you.”
Dayan ran a hand through his thick thatch of curly black hair, now liberally flecked with gray. “Well, of course. But I heard Rik and Pam were hurt, so I wanted to be here. I mean, hell. We’re the newspaper, Pam and Rik and I, not some old musty building. A few windows and some holes in Sheetrock are easily fixed.” He glanced over at Estelle again. “Besides, I don’t do blood well. Tell Bobby that if he gets in a swivet to talk to me, he knows where I am.”
“You’ll be fine.”
A trace of a smile tugged at the crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes. “For years I’ve always kidded you guys, trying to get you to break your big news on Mondays or Tuesdays so we can scoop the metro papers. And here we go, on a Friday night.” He shook his head. “Some long nights ahead just to get the paper out.”
“Pam will be up and around by tomorrow, Frank.”
“God, I hope so. You know…” He hesitated, looking off down the hall. “The Register is her life.”
“I understand that. She’s been with the paper for as long as I can remember. You have a jewel there.”
He nodded vigorously. “I do. I do.”
“Now the challenge is to figure out who you pissed off, Frank. To do this kind of damage, we’ve got somebody with a serious vendetta. Give some thought about that.”
“Would the shooter have known that Pam and Rik were both there, working late? Did the shooter even know someone was in the office? Or is this just a random violence sort of thing? Some damn drive-by doofus stoned high on marijuana.”
“The office lights were on…”
“They’re always on,” Dayan interrupted.
“I know they are, Frank. What I was going to say was that Rik would have been in clear view. Although he was in the back of the room, so maybe they didn’t see him. Pam was sitting down, obscured by the window’s tint line. It’s possible, I suppose, that the shooter just didn’t notice, caught up in the excitement of the moment. Late at night like that, he might have thought he was leaving a message for all to see come morning. Like painting with graffiti. But unlike graffiti, he can’t linger. Even late as it was, the gunshots are going to attract attention. ”
“Machine gun, you think?”
“I doubt that. Bobby would be the one to talk to, though. His first guess was a semi-auto twenty-two. The damage is pretty limited.”
“Yeah,” Dayan snorted. “Tell Pam and Rik that.”
“Of course. And as far as that goes, it may well be lucky for them that it was small caliber.”
Dayan frowned. “If the shooter knew that my guys were working late, if they knew Pam and Rik were there, if they could see ’em, if they were shooting at them intentionally, then it’s a whole different ball game, am I right?”
“Yes. That is absolutely correct.”
He waited a moment for Estelle to amplify, and when she didn’t, he nodded abruptly. “I gotta get in to see the guys.”
“We’ll
keep you posted, Frank.”
“I hope so.” His smile was determined as he sought to lighten the mood. “And you know…I appreciate anything you can do, especially if it’s before our last deadline at Wednesday noon.”
Chapter Nine
Pam Gardiner was lying flat on her back, and from the concentration of her expression, it appeared to Estelle that the newspaper editor was counting rows of ceiling tiles. Her various monitors hummed and clicked, amplified by the hushed quiet of the hospital in the middle of the night.
Her eyes flicked down past the rise of her vast body and brightened at the sight of Estelle Reyes-Guzman. “You know,” she said, her voice husky, “regardless of what they say, this is not the least bit restful. I just hate trying to sleep on my back. But who can move with all this junk?” She lifted the IV tube in one hand and the EKG wiring in the other. “Have you had a minute to talk with Frank?”
“I did, just now out in the hall.”
“He’s a worrywart.”
“Maybe with good cause, Pam. He’s headed over to the office right now, probably after he looks in on Rik.”
“Oh, my. I’m so upset about that poor boy.”
“He’ll be all right. The surgery went well.”
“You’re sure? They won’t talk to me, you know.” She closed her eyes. “I’m just supposed to lie here and relax and rest and…oh, my, how can I do that? I looked across the newsroom and saw him sitting there, with the blood and all…”
“He’s lucky,” Estelle said. “The way he was turned? The bullet hit him here,” and she touched high on her left chest, “and angled off to the left, stopping just shy of his rotator cuff. They removed the bullet, patched him up, and got him flooded with antibiotics. He’ll be out in a day or so.”
“That’s what Frank told me. But still…” She shifted position a little, grimacing with the effort. “Any leads?” Her amazing violet eyes locked on Estelle’s.
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