Until Judgment Day

by Christine McGuire

  “What’ll happen if I’m a few minutes late?” he asked himself aloud rhetorically. “Nothing, so calm down,” he answered.

  When he sensed his heart rate had slowed, he inserted the key in the door lock of his new Saturn.

  He slipped on latex gloves, then removed the Remington .308 from its case, attached the Leopold tactical scope and jacked a high-velocity M-118 full-metal-jacket cartridge into the chamber.

  The rifle rested on its bipod atop a six-inch-high scupper that confined and channeled rain to down spouts in the flat roof. He pressed his cheek against the matte-black stock, moved his eye close to the lens opening, then, swinging the rifle’s barrel tip left to the right very slowly, found the blue Saturn. He twisted the focus ring until the driver’s door handle was sharp and clear in the reticle, then lowered the rifle, popped a handful of pills, and waited.

  The crosshairs lowered slowly until the intersection centered on the back of Garcia’s head. He adjusted the elevation up one click to compensate for the distance from which he was firing, which he knew was at the outer limit of the weapon’s accuracy range.

  He was ready. He breathed—exhaled—breathed again—held it—and squeezed the trigger. A tiny puff of gray smoke blew out through the unsilenced barrel tip. In the chilly, late-afternoon air the smoke disappeared almost immediately.

  Father Antonio Garcia would have heard the sharp crack of the rifle’s report a few nanoseconds after he felt the massive impact, had he still been alive.

  But he wasn’t—the pointed bullet had slammed into his skull at more than twenty-five hundred feet per second—about twice the speed of sound. It came out through his left eye socket, ripping out hair, skin, bone, brain, blood, and gelatinous eye tissue, splattering them on the side of the car before passing through the window and lodging in the driver’s headrest.

  By the time he hit the ground, the top of his head was gone and great spurts of bright red blood gushed from where it had once been.

  He watched for a moment to be sure his victim was dead. Leaving the spent cartridge brass in the chamber, he flipped shut the end caps and removed the scope, unscrewed the rifle from the bipod, and stowed everything in the Pelican hard case.

  Without looking back he tugged off the gloves and stuck them in his pants pocket, swung over the side of the old warehouse roof, and walked away as casually as a man with no place to go, and plenty of time to get there.

  Chapter 45

  FRIDAY, JANUARY 10, 6:05 P.M.

  HIGHWAY ONE NEAR MOSS LANDING

  “THAT YOUR PHONE CHIRPING, or mine?” Miller asked Escalante, turning the volume down on the Volkswagen’s stereo, which was playing a digitally remastered Ramsey Lewis Trio CD.

  He and Escalante had set their cell phones on the console between their seats when they left San Diego the second time, Saint Sebastian High School Bulldog yearbooks stacked on the backseat.

  “Yours,” she said. “When mine rings, it plays music.”

  “What music?”

  “The first four notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.”

  “Pretty classy.”

  He grabbed his phone and punched the Send button. “Miller.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Moss Landing, Sheriff.”

  “Escalante with you?”

  “Yeah, I was gonna drop her off at her place on my way home.”

  “Don’t,” Granz told him.

  “Lemme guess why.” Miller tossed Escalante a look and mouthed, Son of a bitch! “Another murder, right?”

  “Yeah,” Granz confirmed.

  “Where and who?”

  “Sacred Virgin Church in The Flats—another priest.”

  “God damn! The church should’ve moved outta that dung-heap neighborhood years ago. Yamamoto’s CSI team been called out?”

  “He’s at the scene with Doc Nelson. Kate and I are headed there now.”

  Escalante pulled a portable magnet-based red light from the glove box, handed it to him, and plugged it into the cigarette lighter.

  “We’ll meet you in thirty minutes, boss.” He rolled the window down and dropped it on the roof.

  Two blocks from Judge Keefe’s fortified estate, Sacred Virgin Church sat fifty feet back from the street behind a skinny parking lot sandwiched between a pair of adjacent derelict warehouses—remnants of better days when both they and the Church played vital roles in Santa Rita’s bustling beach, boardwalk, and fishing industries.

  Transients, drug dealers, and INS dodgers now called the buildings home, and Hispanic gangbangers scrawled graffiti on them like flea-bitten, mongrel dogs urinate on fence posts to mark their territory. Reverend Garcia couldn’t paint over it as fast as it appeared.

  Miller swung onto Second Street and pulled in behind Granz’s M-class Mercedes between a green coroner wagon and a CSI van. He and Escalante clipped badges on their jackets and ducked under the yellow crime scene tape stretched across the parking lot entry, between the ancient adjacent buildings.

  They spotted Yamamoto supervising a man who was cable-winching a blue Saturn up his tow truck’s tilted bed. The truck’s headlights lit up a group of people huddled together with their backs to the street, kneeling by a man’s body. He wore a priest’s black cassock and lay on his side, legs tucked up in his tummy, bloody head resting on an extended arm as if he’d fallen asleep.

  The group stood and moved aside when two deputy coroners picked up a heavy plastic body bag from a chrome gurney, unrolled it, and laid it out on the asphalt.

  Miller and Escalante walked up behind them and inspected the pool of shiny red, coagulating blood. Miller cleared his throat loudly so he didn’t startle them and touched his boss on the shoulder.

  Nelson, Mackay, and Granz turned.

  “Fill us in,” Miller said.

  “Reverend Antonio Garcia, Sacred Virgin’s parish priest,” Granz told him grimly.

  “Who found the body?”

  “Anonymous passerby called it in.”

  “How long’s he been dead?”

  “No more than an hour,” Nelson told them.

  The deputies slid the corpse into the bag, zipped it, and wrestled it onto the gurney, which they rolled to the van, slid in, then slammed the doors. One of them caught Nelson’s eye, flipped his thumb toward town and raised his eyebrows questioningly.

  Nelson picked up his medical bag and nodded permission to transport the body to the morgue. “You want to observe?” he asked.

  Mackay declined.

  “Me neither,” Granz echoed.

  Nelson shrugged. “I’ll autopsy him tonight, give you a buzz if anything unusual turns up. Don’t bet that I’ll learn much we don’t already know.”

  “Did they recover the slug?” Escalante asked after Nelson and his deputies drove away.

  “Yamamoto dug it out of the headrest.” Granz handed her a sealed clear-plastic evidence bag.

  She held it up toward a streetlight and inspected the bullet inside. “It’s a rifle slug similar to the one that killed Duvoir.”

  “That’s what I thought, too,” Mackay told her.

  “Yamamoto’s having Garcia’s car towed to DOJ,” Granz added. “If the shooter rode in it or ransacked it afterward, maybe he left behind trace evidence—hair, skin, fiber transfers—something—anything.”

  Miller shook his head. “Worth a try but they won’t find anything in the car.”

  “Why not?”

  “The shooter wasn’t within a quarter of a mile of Garcia or his car.”

  “Explain that,” Mackay urged.

  “M-118 metal-jacket rifle bullets hit quiet, hit fast, hit hard, and penetrate deep. An M-118 woulda shattered Garcia’s skull without slowing down, then passed through the window and bottom of the car unless—”

  Escalante finished his thought: “Unless fired from so far away that by the time it reached the target, it lost so much velocity that something soft as a headrest would stop it.”

  “Exactly.”

  �
��How far away?” Mackay asked.

  Miller sucked his lips in and squeezed one eye shut while he thought. “Five hundred yards at the closest, probably a thousand, maybe farther.”

  “Anyone determine the bullet’s trajectory?” Escalante asked.

  “It entered the car window higher than the headrest, Mackay said. “According to Yamamoto, the path in the headrest was definitely downward.”

  Escalante looked around for a rooftop or other vantage point. Behind her, the sun was releasing the day’s final energy into a roiling thick layer of ugly black clouds. “My guess is it was fired from a rooftop, but there are dozens, and if the shooter’s consistent, he didn’t leave anything behind to work with.”

  “There’s no such thing as a perfect getaway,” Granz observed. He turned and pointed. “Jazzbo, tomorrow morning get CSI on the roofs to the west. If he left behind so much as a smudged shoe track, crushed cigarette butt, or crusty old lunger, I want it collected, taken to DOJ, analyzed, and traced to a suspect.”

  “Will do.”

  “Maybe he got careless and left a cartridge casing.”

  “Maybe he wrote his name and address in the gravel.”

  Granz shot his detective a dirty look.

  Escalante frowned and poked Miller discreetly. “Why west, Sheriff?”

  “Bullet entered the back of his head, exited the front. His car was parked headed north, key ring still hanging from the driver’s door when Yamamoto got to the scene. Looks like he was shot while unlocking it. If so, he was facing east with his back to the west. The shot had to come from that general direction.”

  He studied the sky. “Weather forecast is for no rain until tomorrow night. There are only three or four roofs the shot could’ve come from. Search them with a fine-toothed comb at first light.”

  “Got it.”

  “Even if we find the roof, there won’t be much left if it rains awhile,” Escalante pointed out. “Let’s hope the weather forecast’s right, at least until morning.”

  “It’s a risk,” Granz conceded. “But in the dark we might miss something or, worse, step on it. Better wait until daylight.”

  “I’ll have Fields send some of his inspectors to help Miller’s crew,” Mackay volunteered.

  “Thanks,” Miller said. “We got one break—a car headrest is soft, so the bullet ought to be in good shape.”

  “Get it to ballistics ASAP,” Granz ordered.

  “Will do. I’ll roust Menendez, have her meet me and Donna at DOJ tonight, put the slug under a comparison scope with the one that killed Duvoir. If it matches, at least we know we’re looking for the same shooter in two murders.”

  “Supervise the unloading of Garcia’s car,” Granz told him. “No need to send Yamamoto if you’re there.”

  “Right. You want me to call out DOJ’s automotive inspection team tonight?”

  “They can get to it tomorrow,” Granz told him. “Speaking of tomorrow, be in my conference room at eight o’clock.”

  “We’ll be there.”

  “You do any good in San Diego?” Granz wanted to know.

  “Don’t know for sure yet.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “We seized all the yearbooks from the early seventies. If our shooter was a Saint Sebastian High School student while Thompson taught there, his name and picture are gonna be there—just a matter of time till we find him.”

  Granz stared at Miller without comment.

  “Whadaya think, boss?” Miller urged.

  “That’ll work. You look through them yet?”

  Miller shook his head. “We came straight here.”

  “Where are the yearbooks?”

  “Backseat of my car, why?”

  “I could look through them to speed things up.”

  “Thanks, Sheriff. But you’ve got plenty on your hands. My investigative aide’s standing by at the SO to pick them up when we’re done here,” Escalante said, referring to the Sheriff’s office. “He gets paid to do grunt work—let him do it.”

  “How long?”

  “Three days—four, max.”

  Granz thought about it. “Get on it. I want answers before every Catholic priest in Santa Rita gets whacked.”

  Chapter 46

  SATURDAY, JANUARY 11, 8:00 A.M.

  SANTA RITA SHERIFF’S CONFERENCE ROOM

  GRANZ ANDMACKAY picked up scones, muffins, bear claws, and dark roast at Surf City Java Shop on their way to the briefing, laid them out on the conference room table with napkins and paper cups, then helped themselves while they waited for everyone else to show.

  When Miller arrived with Escalante, he went straight for the coffee, pumped two paper cups full, plopped into a chair facing the window, and heaved a deep sigh. Escalante put a scone on her napkin, a muffin and frosting-covered bear claw on his, then sat beside him and started eating.

  “Good thing somebody brought food.” Miller’s mouth was full of bran muffin.

  “You look like crap,” Granz told him. “Been awake all night?”

  “Damn straight.”

  “Accomplish anything?”

  “Escalante and I went to the morgue after you left the crime scene to observe Garcia’s autopsy—waste of time, Nelson didn’t turn up anything new. Soon as he finished, we grabbed a bite to eat and—”

  Granz made a face. “Takes a ghoul to eat after watching him hack up a dead body.”

  Miller stuck a hunk of bear claw into his mouth and washed it down with a swig of coffee. “No different than watching a butcher slice up a—”

  Granz held his hands out in a “stop” signal and interrupted again. “Sorry I mentioned it. Go on.”

  “After we left the morgue we tried to get Menendez on the horn.”

  “Tried?”

  “It was Friday night. She had a date, finally answered her cell phone at about one A.M. as she was drivin’ home.”

  “From where?”

  Miller kept his face pointed toward his boss, but checked Escalante out of the corner of his eye. She frowned. “We didn’t ask where she was, what she was doin’, who she was doin’ it with, or what position they used. We didn’t figure it was any of our business.”

  “It is when she’s on call.”

  “But she wasn’t, some new kid had the duty. I sweet-talked Menendez into driving down to the lab in the middle of the night on her weekend off, as a favor.”

  “Actually,” Escalante corrected, “I promised I’d fix her up with a great-looking guy I know.”

  Granz set his coffee cup down harder than necessary, slopped coffee on the table, and tossed a handful of napkins onto the brown puddle. “I don’t care why she did it—what’d she come up with?”

  Escalante dug a stack of black-and-white glossies out of her handbag and laid them on the table just as James Fields rushed in.

  “Sorry I’m late.” He grabbed a blueberry muffin and a cup of coffee and pulled a chair up to the table beside Mackay, across the table from Miller and Escalante.

  Fields picked up the photos, studied them, and dropped them on the table. “A match.”

  He bit a hunk off the muffin. “I assume one of these slugs was dug out of Garcia’s car headrest last night. What’s the other?”

  Escalante walked to the pot, pumped herself and Miller more coffee, then sat back down. “The slug that killed Father Duvoir.”

  Granz rocked his chair back on the rear legs and clasped his hands behind his head. “What else?”

  “We drove around The Flats, checked out which buildings west of Second Street have accessible roofs and direct lines of sight to Sacred Virgin’s parking lot. Then Fields and I rounded up cops for the search teams,” Miller told him.

  “How many teams?”

  “Twelve—six roofs, two teams per roof, each with one CSI criminalist, one SO dick, and one DA Inspector.”

  “Why two teams per roof?”

  Miller pointed at the window. Thick black rain-pregnant clouds hung ominously over the western se
ction of Santa Rita, threatening to dump a deluge any minute. “Check outside.”

  “Jesus Christ, just tell me, will you?”

  Miller’s eyebrows flicked up and his jaws clamped momentarily, rippling his jaw muscles. “Sure. National Weather Service moved their rain forecast up to midmorning. We need those roofs searched before it starts raining.”

  “Good.” Granz’ eyes shot toward the window, then back. “Excellent.”

  “Gonna cost a shitload of overtime.”

  Mackay flipped her hand. “Let the bean counters worry about it.”

  Everyone was dressed in weekend casuals except Fields, who wore a suit, right sleeve tucked neatly back into itself.

  “About an hour before daybreak,” Fields said, “Yamamoto, Miller, Escalante, and I set up teams and had them standing by when the sun came up at seven twenty-six. They’re on the roofs as we speak.”

  Escalante shook her head. “I won’t hold my breath.”

  “Me neither,” Miller agreed. “The shooter hasn’t made a mistake yet.”

  “Everybody makes mistakes, Lieutenant,” Granz reprimanded, “you just haven’t spotted his yet. You’re paid to be Chief of Detectives—start detecting.”

  Granz dropped his chair back on all fours and drained his coffee. “I’m going to the restroom.”

  “I need to use the ladies’ room,” Mackay said and followed him out.

  Miller started to draw his third cup of coffee. The stainless steel insulated pump pot was almost empty, and he was tilting it to drain the last few drops when the conference room phone rang.

  He pulled his eyebrows together. “I thought we told the search team leaders to call my cell phone.”

  “We did,” Fields confirmed.

  “Lieutenant Miller,” he said, punching the phone’s Speaker button.

  “I have a message for Sheriff Granz and District Attorney Mackay.”

  The caller spoke in a slow, high-pitched, electronically altered monotone female voice.