Primary Target: a fast-paced murder mystery (Double Blind Book 2)

by Dan Alatorre

  “That’s just great.”

  Her nose twitched. Slowly, her chest rose and fell with the rhythms of deep sleep.

  Setting down his drink, Sergio went to the bedroom and returned with a Buccaneers blanket, unfolding it and gently draping it over his lawyer as she slept.

  Chapter 23

  Carly lifted the tripod out of the trunk of her rental car as Josephine, the green-haired gas station clerk, recounted her actions to Harriman. Josephine hadn’t seen much on the morning of the shooting, but often what people didn’t see was as important as what they did see.

  She hadn’t seen a white van, but she wouldn’t have been looking across the street to where the shooter was probably located.

  Tarps had been hung around the gas pump areas from the canopy overhead, theoretically shielding wary customers from sniper fire.

  But the yellow police tape had already scared off any customers.

  Scanning her laptop, Carly sat on the rear bumper of her rental car, working to determine the proper place to set the tripod. Crime scene technicians erected a high-tech mannequin that would stand in for Mr. Wallarah during the reenactment. Luis, the lead CST, slid a long, graphite probe through the mannequin.

  Reconstructing the ballistic trajectory of a bullet was as much of a science as it was an art. The technicians scanned the body with 3-D imaging at the lab, with a rod inserted through the wound. The angle of the rod indicated the “short path” projection of the bullet, and its approximate angle of ascent. Erecting the forensics mannequin and placing the rod at the same angle, it would point at roughly the location of the sniper.

  Roughly.

  Because the most common rifles that are capable of firing the caliber of round found at the crime scenes were powerful enough to sit 660 yards away from the target, and possibly as far away as 3,800 yards. At that distance, a one-degree difference in the bullet’s path—left or right, or up and down—would create a range of possible initiation points as wide as a football field and more than ten stories high.

  “What do you think, Detective?” Luis asked.

  Gazing across the street, Carly scanned the distant tree line. Calculating a three- to five-degree range, before accounting for variations in the body’s turning radius, meant the shooter could have been almost anywhere. But the rows of small business buildings across the wide street cut out a lot of that area. The gaps between the buildings were mostly covered by trees. After that—if the killer had positioned himself past the buildings and trees, his possible locations would become innumerable.

  “Let’s go with three zones.” Carly pointed to the gas pumps. “The first one will be the area between us and the buildings across the street. That’s a ridiculous possibility unless the shooter was in a vehicle that was parked, and that’s hard to do in the busy morning traffic on Hillsborough Blvd. A lot of people would have noticed that. No one did.”

  She peered across the busy road. “Our second zone will be the rows of small business buildings, their parking lots, and the trees in between. That seems the most likely location for the precision targeting required for such a distant shot.”

  “And zone three?” Luis asked.

  She winced. The third zone was the area beyond. That was a possibility Carly didn’t want to think about. A one-foot gap in the sight line between an oak tree and the building behind it could create a search triangle three hundred feet wide at the base and nearly a mile long—an area containing houses, swimming pools, fences, cars . . . trailered boats and swing sets . . . power lines and utility poles, ponds, lakes, apartments—there was an infinity of ground to cover for every visible gap across the street, and there were hundreds of visible gaps. It would all be too much to ever search if Carly had a hundred investigators.

  And she didn’t have a hundred investigators. She had a short period of time and a handful of volunteers for each crime scene.

  Carly looked at Luis. “Zone three is everything else. Let’s find something in zone one or two. The killer would have to be a world-class marksman to hit a person from zone three anyway.”

  She scanned the buildings and trees across the street.

  The laws of probability say zone two is where the sniper’s nest was, so we’ll start there.

  “Ready, Detective?” Luis wiped his hands on the legs of his coveralls. Behind him, groups of local volunteers stood with his assistant CSTs, under a tree.

  Harriman held up a red-fluorescent hand flag. “This crime scene is plotting out to be almost three miles wide. We need more people.”

  “Sorry, this is all we get for now.” Carly stared at her laptop. “At least for this crime scene. Me, you, three CSTs and some volunteers. The department has 700 officers from every Florida agency deployed, either on the other murder sites or manning the incoming calls from hysterical residents.” She glanced at Harriman. “You worked phone detail with me once. During the Seminole Heights serial killer case. We were logging over three hundred calls an hour at one point. Wanna do it again?”

  Harriman pretended to shudder. “No, I do not.”

  “Then grab a radio and head out, Officer.” Carly handed him a bottle of Coppertone. “And don’t forget the sunscreen. Luis and I will direct the search groups from here.”

  Josephine approached, pointing to the open doors of the CST van. Radios and hand flags were being gathered by the technicians.

  “What’s all that?” she asked.

  Carly stood up to respond to the off-duty clerk.

  “That,” Harriman said, “is a reverse trajectory system. It—”

  Carly stopped walking, looking at Harriman.

  “Oh,” he said. “Go ahead, ma’am.”

  “No, no. You’re doing fine.” Carly waved a hand. “Let’s see what you know. I’ll just sit back and listen.”

  As the technician inserted a probe through the wound holes in the mannequin, the image of the trees and businesses across the street appeared on Carly’s laptop screen.

  Harriman looked at the computer. “How this works is, we know the approximate path of the bullet from angle of the wounds. When we stand the mannequin up, a camera on the end of the probe will show us all the places the sniper could have been.”

  A gas pump appeared on the screen.

  “Then,” Harriman said, “after the computer accounts for all the places the shooter could have been, it subtracts the places he could not have been—places where his line of fire was blocked by gas pumps, trees, houses. That sort of thing.”

  “Wow.” The clerk snapped her bubble gum.

  Harriman pointed to a telephone pole on the far side of the gas station parking lot. “A twelve-inch-wide utility pole can eliminate an area as wide as a hundred feet on the sniper’s end of the trajectory.”

  “Which is why we use these.” Luis grabbed a stack of hand flags and passed them out to his technicians. “All this amazing technology still requires someone to go across the street and mark areas that need to be searched. But between that and our hand-held GPS locators, it’s a lot faster than the old days.”

  “Well,” Josephine said, “anything I can do to help, I want to do it. Kedar was a nice man. He . . .” She fixed her eyes on Harriman. “He talked to me, you know? He always came in and said hi, no matter how busy he was.” Josephine looked away. “You know how many customers do that in a gas station convenience store? None.” She swallowed hard. “But he did.”

  Cars sped along the busy street in front of the gas station. A cool breeze pushed Josephine’s green hair into her eyes.

  Harriman handed her some of the red flags. “Take these and go with the other volunteers.” He turned to the rest of the group. “Everybody, keep your eyes open for anything that looks out of place. That could be a beer bottle or a pile of cigarette butts, maybe a broken stalk of a bush. Anything that looks odd, stop and alert your team leader. They’ll mark that area with you.”

  Luis walked toward the volunteers. “Most importantly, don’t touch anything. If you see somethin
g, stop where you are and call out to the group leader. Extend one of the flag posts like an antenna, and shove the bottom into the ground. When my technician approaches, he or she will ask you to retrace your steps, so try to have that in mind. Their hand-held GPS will allow us to also leave a digital marker in the computer, so we can follow up with a trained team.”

  Various volunteers stretched out their flags’ retractable stands and slid them back into place.

  The lead CST walked back to his van. “Ready, Detective?”

  “Yes.” Carly joined him by the laptop. “Let’s do it, Luis.”

  He raised a hand-held radio to his face, staring at the laptop screen. “Okay, Connie. Go ahead and cross the street, then head east. Stop when you get to that yellow office building that looks like a house. Tajo, take your group right. You won’t enter the front of the potential shooting area until you’re by that large oak tree between the tobacco shop and the bowling alley parking lot.”

  The radio crackled with an assistant’s reply. “Copy that, Luis.”

  “We will green flag at the yellow office building and the oak tree.” The lead CST stood, watching the groups cross the street. When they reached the other side, he held up his radio and pressed the red button. “I’ll give you additional non-search area locations as you go. Connie, your first one is about a hundred yards west of your starting point, by the big sign at the strip mall entrance.” He lowered his radio and faced Carly. “It’s gonna be a long day, Detective. I hope you brought your sunscreen.”

  Carly nodded, viewing the laptop. “It’s in the car.”

  * * * * *

  Two hours later, Connie stood in the center of a parking lot, lining up another green flag as Luis guided its position over the radio.

  A heavyset, middle-aged man with gray hair called out to her, waving his flag. “The officer said to mention anything that looked out of place, right, ma’am?”

  Connie squinted at him in the bright sunlight. “That’s right.”

  “Well . . .” The man stood near the grassy section between the parking lot and the wooden fence separating it from the business next door. “There’s some stuff around the edges of this asphalt. How do we tell what’s trash and what’s evidence?”

  Connie laughed to herself. It was his fifth false alarm of the day, more than all her other volunteers combined. “Trash doesn’t look out of place. Evidence usually does. So, if it’s a paper napkin that appears like it’s been out in the rain for a few weeks, that’s trash. If it’s—”

  “What about a tarot card?” The man stared at the ground near his feet. “One that looks almost new?”

  “That . . . that could be something.” She rushed to the middle-aged volunteer’s side.

  * * * * *

  At the CST van, Connie’s voice came over the radio. “Boss, we may have an identifier here. Mark my twenty.”

  “An identifier. Stand by.” Luis leaned forward, frantically tapping the keyboard of the laptop. A digital pin came down next to Connie’s image on the screen. In the upper right-hand corner of the laptop, the GPS coordinates locked down her location. “Okay. Position marked. What have you got, Connie?”

  On the little screen, a heavyset volunteer staked his flagpole into the ground. Luis zoomed in to see Connie squatting to inspect a shiny card in the weeds. She pulled a tweezers and an evidence bag from her side pouch. Grabbing the card by the edge, she eased it into the plastic bag and held it up. “I think it’s a tarot card. Boss, it looks brand new.”

  Luis licked his lips and opened an internet search engine. “Describe it for me.”

  “It’s . . .” Connie turned her hand sideways, allowing the card to be face-up in front of her. “It’s a medieval man in a vest, sitting under a tree. There’s a little cloud holding a goblet out to him, and there are three other goblets sitting on the grass in front of him.”

  The screen flickered. Beside Connie, the volunteer looked around.

  “So, four goblets? I’m no tarot card expert, but that sounds like the four of cups.” Luis typed the description into the computer. Tarot card . . . four goblets . . . under tree. He hit enter. “Hold on a sec.”

  “Yeah,” Connie said. “There’s a Roman numeral four near the top. What’s the description say?”

  Luis stared at the screen, leaning back to allow Carly a better look.

  As Detective Sanderson moved closer to the laptop, Connie spoke to them over the radio. “Boss, unless some teenagers were playing fortune teller out here last night, this has to be a solid piece of evidence.”

  “Yeah,” Carly said. “I think so, too, Connie.”

  Onscreen, a card like the one Connie described was displayed next to a text box that read, “Four of cups. Dissatisfaction. When you’ve had enough, what can pleasure you next? The question that brings on melancholy.”

  “Pleasure?” Luis frowned. “from shooting people? How sick is that?”

  Carly pushed a strand of hair from her eyes. “It may be sick, but it makes some sense. Who’d kill this many people if they didn’t get pleasure from it?” She stood upright and pulled out her cell phone. “I need to call this in. If the killer’s enjoying this, we need to find him yesterday. And for that, we’re going to need a lot more volunteers.”

  “Yeah.” Luis rubbed his chin, pressing the radio button. “Connie, take a picture of the card and send it to my laptop. I’m going to forward it to Lieutenant Davis so he can let the other teams know, in case there are some on their sites.”

  “Okay, I’ll—hold on a second, boss,” Connie said. “Hold on. There’s writing on the back . . . It—oh, boy.”

  Luis zoomed in on her. “What’s it say, Connie?”

  Lowering her phone, Carly stared at the card on the screen. The technician’s hand was shaking.

  Connie cleared her throat. “It says, ‘Dear Police, he was number six. I am god.’”

  Chapter 24

  A soft moan came from Sergio’s living room. After shutting down his laptop, he got up from the kitchen table and stuck his head around the corner. Abbie was sitting up on the couch.

  “Hey, Sleeping Beaut—uh, Rip Van Winkle. Feel better?”

  Abbie yawned. “I do, actually. How long was I asleep?”

  “A few hours. I told you, that adrenaline crash is a real thing.” He folded his arms and leaned against the wall. “Hungry? I was thinking about ordering a pizza.”

  “Oh, I’m starving.” Abbie pushed the blanket off her legs. “Get me a Greek salad.”

  “Uh . . .”

  She glared at him. “Let me guess. You’ve never ordered a salad from the place before.”

  “Not when Antonio’s delivers perfectly good pizza. They could probably put some vegetables on it. On your half.”

  She shook her head. “It’s amazing you’ve lived to be as old as you are.”

  “Funny. Earlier, I was thinking the same thing about you.” He crossed to the chair and sat down. “So—pizza?”

  “I’ll pass on that. But if Armando will make me a Greek salad, I’m up for it. Dressing on the side, please.”

  “It’s Antonio, and—never mind.”

  He walked to the tiny kitchen table, retrieved his phone, and placed the order—Antonio’s made salads—and then sat down across from Abbie again.

  “All set,” he said. “In about forty minutes we’ll be enjoying the height of Italian delivery cuisine. Or I will. You’ll be having a salad.”

  “I can’t wait.” Abbie massaged the sides of her head. “Meanwhile, I thought about what you said—about a friend with an out-of-town place where I could stay. My ex has a condo in Miami that he rents out, so I can check to see if that’s available. No one will be looking for me there, I can tell you that. And I also have a friend from law school who lives in Naples.”

  “Good. Both of those are good options.”

  “But I’m not going to either place because we need to prepare for your case.”

  Sergio slouched down in the chair. “If
you get killed, you won’t be able to defend me very well. Go on and get out of town. The department will assign me another lawyer.”

  “I can’t do that,” Abbie said.

  “It’s fine.” He sat up, holding his hands out. “I’m sure attorneys get switched off these types of cases all the time. Besides, getting assigned a pro bono case like this can’t be the best thing for your career.”

  “I wasn’t assigned your case.” She stretched again. “I asked for it.”

  “What? Why?”

  Abbie placed her elbows on her knees and rested her chin in her hand. “Because, Detective Martin, I have a certain type of . . . situation that could use some help. The type of help you might currently be in a unique position to assist with.”

  Sergio narrowed his eyes. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

  “We, uh, never finished our prep interview for your hearing. Let’s do that first, and then I’ll tell you what you want to know.” Standing, Abbie smoothed the wrinkles from the front of her blouse and paced back and forth by the couch. “I knew your first partner,” she said. “Franklin. He was a good man.”

  “He sure was.” Sergio put his hands behind his head and leaned back in the chair. “Taught me a lot. I miss him.”

  “What about your new partner?”

  “Carly? She’s great.” He nodded. “Smart, funny, hard-working. Great cop, great mom. She’s everything I could want in a woman.”

  Abbie raised her eyebrows. “Excuse me?”

  “In a partner.” Sergio bolted upright. “Everything a guy could want in a partner. She’s—she’s a good detective.” He flashed a wide grin. “Almost as good as I am.”

  “Which is why she’s on Dawn Across America and you’re on suspension.”

  “Ouch.” Sergio winced. “You don’t mess around, do you, counselor? Right for the jugular.”

  “Sorry. Occupational hazard.” Pacing the room again, Abbie looked at Sergio. “You and Carly have worked together pretty long.”

  “Yep,” he said. “Four years.”

  “That’s a long time for a man and woman to work so closely.”