Tonight I Said Goodbye

by Michael Koryta

  Joe shook his head. “Nope. Just smarter than we thought. He’s got that Olds parked so he can look straight ahead and still keep an eye on the lot behind him using the side-view mirrors. He figures the cemetery presents more of a threat because it’s darker and less open, so he wants to be able to see it better than the parking lot.”

  We got out of the car and walked toward the picnic table. Hartwick had his head turned slightly, watching our approach. His hands were under the table, out of sight. I kept my own right hand on my hip, edging toward my back slightly. I didn’t like not being able to see his hands.

  We reached the table without incident, and I breathed a little easier. Hartwick nodded for us to sit. He was an average-size guy with a shaved head. His scalp was tan from the South Carolina sun, and the corded muscles of his neck told me that his body was well toned. He was like many of the Marines I’d known—not particularly large or intimidating but with a tightly muscled look that implied speed and power.

  “Perry and Pritchard,” he said with a hollow smile. “Have a seat, gentlemen. And, Perry, do me a favor?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Keep your hand away from the gun at your back.”

  I took the hand away from my hip and placed both palms on the table as I sat. Hartwick was good, all right. He’d read my movements easily, and they hadn’t been overt.

  “Nice to meet you, boys,” he said. “In case you’re wondering how I picked you out, Perry, it wasn’t too hard. Pritchard sounded older on the phone.”

  “He’s pretty ancient,” I said. “Not a tough guess to make.”

  “Uh-huh. You guys made a decent call yourselves, getting my name so quickly. I’ve got to give you credit for that. When you drove by the second time yesterday, I knew you’d noticed me, but I thought I’d bought a few days by putting the stolen plates on the rental car.”

  “That wasn’t a bad trick,” Joe said. “We’re just too damn smart. Now, you want to tell us what you were doing there?”

  “Watching the Russians,” Hartwick said. “Same thing you were doing, only I didn’t feel the need to talk to them in person.” He cocked his head at me. “What was that all about?”

  “That was just bad timing,” I said.

  His eyes left us momentarily and went to the cemetery, scanning the darkness, as if he’d heard or seen something he didn’t like there. I hadn’t heard a thing, but I knew Kinkaid should be up on the hill. Hartwick stared into the shadows for several seconds, then shifted position slightly and looked back at us.

  “So you’re working for John?”

  “That’s right.” Joe leaned forward. “All we care about is giving that man some answers, Hartwick. We don’t give a damn what you’re doing here, but we want those answers.”

  Something seemed to flicker near Hartwick’s shoulder. I squinted and looked closer, but it was gone. He was wearing a black sweatshirt, and his right arm was hidden in shadows. I kept my eyes on the spot where I’d seen the light, wondering if he had a gun or a knife tucked between his arm and the side of his body that had been caught momentarily in the glow of the streetlight.

  “You want some answers,” Hartwick said, and his lips parted in a small smile. “Well, maybe we can do some answer-sharing, Pritchard. That’s something I think we can probably manage. But I’ve come here to settle a score, and I’m not going to let you two, or anyone else, prevent me from doing that.”

  The flicker returned, and this time I saw it clearly. It wasn’t reflected light but a tiny red dot, the kind produced by a laser pointer or a—

  “Get down,” I shouted, rising out of my seat and reaching for my gun as I realized the dot belonged to a laser scope.

  The red dot disappeared as quickly as it had come, and then there was a dull thumping noise, like an uppercut being landed on the soft part of the belly, and a dark hole punched through the center of Randy Hartwick’s chest. Joe and I dived to the pavement as Hartwick fell forward onto the table and slid to the ground, dead, blood seeping from the gaping cavity near his heart.

  I hit the ground hard and rolled onto my side, pushing my body partially under the bench of the picnic table while I drew my gun. I knew Joe was somewhere to my left, but I didn’t bother to look at him. Hartwick’s body lay just in front of me, his mouth half open, his eyes vacant. I stayed on the ground for a few seconds, waiting for another shot. None came. Behind me, Joe was yelling into his cell phone, giving the 911 dispatcher our location. I rolled back to my right and got into a crouch, then slipped the safety off the Glock and lifted my head above the table.

  The parking lot to our right was empty, and to our left the brightly illuminated Ford dealership appeared harmless. No one was visible among the rows of cars. Behind us, on the street, traffic moved along as usual and the sidewalk was empty. The gunman had used a suppressor to silence the shot, and no one else even seemed aware of the incident. I dropped back to my knees and looked at Hartwick again. There was no point in wasting time with him. He’d been dead before he hit the ground.

  I’d seen the red dot of the laser scope pass over his right shoulder before coming to bear on his chest. That made the cemetery a possible location for the shooter, but it was more likely the bullet had been fired from somewhere near the Ford dealership. I set off for the rows of cars at a jog.

  “Lincoln, dammit, where are you going?” Joe yelled after me, but I ignored him and kept running, gun in hand. I circled the lot quickly and saw no one. There was a clear exit onto both the avenue and a side street, though. If the shooter had been inside a car, he would have been long gone by the time I got back to my feet. I returned to the picnic table.

  “He’s dead,” Joe said when I came back. He was kneeling over Hartwick’s body.

  “No shit,” I said.

  “Shot probably came from the car lot.”

  “Already checked it. Nobody’s there. It could have been fired from the cemetery, though. Bad angle, but it’s possible.”

  Joe looked up from the body. “Where the hell is Kinkaid?”

  We both looked at the cemetery fence and yelled for him. No one responded.

  “This isn’t good,” Joe said, and I knew he was wondering if Kinkaid was still alive. I headed for the fence as sirens began to wail in the distance. Before I reached the fence, Kinkaid appeared in the darkness, his face pale and confused.

  “What’s going on?” he said, putting both hands on top of the fence and pulling himself up so he could jump over it. He took a few steps toward us before seeing the body.

  “Oh, shit. What the hell happened?”

  “Someone took Hartwick out,” I told him. “Where have you been? You see anything in the cemetery?”

  He shook his head, his wide eyes still locked on the body. “No. I just got in the cemetery a minute ago. You didn’t tell me the gates would be locked. I had to leave my car outside, jump the fence, and run up here. It’s a big cemetery, too.”

  “There was no one else inside?”

  “Not that I saw.” He’d slipped his own gun out now, a gigantic Colt Python that would probably bring a charging elephant to a halt. He looked around the parking lot nervously.

  “Where did the shot come from?”

  “Either the cemetery or someplace near the car dealership. I was hoping you would have seen someone.”

  “No.” He crouched down and stared at the wound in Hartwick’s chest. “That’s a pretty long shot, from either location. Probably was a rifle.”

  “It definitely was a rifle,” I said. “And it was silenced, too. They used a laser scope. I saw the dot a half second before Hartwick got aced.”

  A squad car pulled into the parking lot, lights flashing and siren wailing. The driver cut the siren when he stopped, but he left the lights on, bathing Hartwick’s body in colorful flashes and making me squint. Two officers in uniform approached, guns drawn, and shouted at us to step away from the table and raise our hands. We did as they asked.

  “We all have firearms,” Jo
e said calmly. “Take them from us, but don’t freak out about it.”

  The taller cop, who had a thin, pointed nose like a bird’s beak and a shrunken chest that left his uniform shirt hanging loosely, squinted at Joe.

  “Holy shit,” he said. “Is that Pritchard?”

  “Yeah, it’s Pritchard,” his partner said. He was shorter and rounder, and I recognized him. His last name was Baggerly, but I couldn’t remember his first name. They took our guns and then stepped back, studying the corpse at their feet.

  “Ouch,” the tall cop said. “Put one right through his heart. Who is this guy?” He looked at Joe.

  “His name’s Randy Hartwick,” Joe said. “You’re going to need to get someone from the detectives division out here as quickly as possible.”

  “Looks like that, don’t it?” He looked at the three of us, then spoke in a whisper to Baggerly, who walked a few steps away and spoke into his microphone. After a minute he returned.

  “Detectives are on the way,” he said. “Until then, we’ll sit tight. Medical examiner will be out shortly to deal with the body.”

  We sat tight. Another squad car arrived, and Baggerly instructed those officers to establish a perimeter and keep away the curious bystanders who had gathered, attracted by the police car. A few minutes later, the detectives arrived. I watched them get out of the car and stifled a groan. It was Janet Scott and her partner, Tim Eggers. Eggers was a decent guy, but Scott was a colossal bitch. We’d never gotten along in my days on the force, and I knew she wasn’t Joe’s favorite person, either.

  Janet Scott was dressed in jeans and a leather jacket, and she had her badge hanging around her neck on a nylon cord. Her short blond hair was cut in jagged ends that I supposed were stylish. She’d probably paid fifty bucks for the haircut, but I could have given her the same look with a weed whacker. Scott was a small, trim woman, and I knew plenty of the male cops thought she was dead sexy. I’d never been able to see past the abrasive personality and poor judgment, though. The few times I’d had to work with her, she’d been a tremendous pain in the ass. Her investigative skill was limited, to say the least, but her confidence in her ability was not. It was a disastrous combination. Eggers had been her partner for a few years now, and, although his meek personality kept him in the background, it was no secret that he was the brains of the duo.

  “Lincoln Perry and Joe Pritchard,” Scott said as she strode toward us. “I’ll be damned. I remember when you used to be with the good guys.” She eyed the corpse. “Now it doesn’t look that way, does it?”

  “Unfortunately, we didn’t kill him,” Joe said.

  “That’s what all the murderers say.” She dropped into a crouch beside the body as I had done and studied Hartwick carefully, shaking her head and making a soft clucking noise with her tongue, like a scolding mother. Eventually, she got back to her feet and looked at me.

  “Long time, eh, Perry?”

  “Too long,” I said with mock sincerity. “I’ve missed you, Janet.”

  “I’ll bet. Let’s see, when was the last time I saw you?” She frowned and looked at the sky as if she were trying to recall something. “Oh, right, shortly before you beat up one of the city’s most prominent lawyers and got axed for your stupidity.” She smiled sweetly. “How could I have forgotten?”

  “It’s funny how easily things can slip your mind,” I said. The lawyer had been involved with my fiancée, and I’d been drunk at the time, but basically she had the facts right.

  “So what have you been doing since then, Perry?”

  “Working as a massage therapist in Belgium. I just got back to the States today.”

  She gazed at me with unfriendly eyes. “Don’t get too cute, Perry. I’ve got all night to deal with you. And, thanks to your pal on the pavement, it looks like it’ll be a long time before you get to sleep.”

  She turned away then and went to consult with Eggers. The medical examiner had arrived now to deal with the corpse. I looked back down at Hartwick and swore softly. He’d been ready to talk. Ready to do some answer-sharing, as he’d put it. Now he’d never share any answers with anyone. Someone had been awfully afraid of what Hartwick knew. It was up to us to find out what that had been.

  CHAPTER 12

  IT TOOK Scott ten hours to turn us loose. She held us at the scene for a while, and then she had some of the uniforms take us to the station to wait for questioning. We were there the rest of the night. Scott pressed us for details about Hartwick, but we didn’t have much to provide. Kinkaid told her he knew Hartwick only as Wayne Weston’s friend, and he didn’t mention Hartwick’s involvement with weapons smuggling. Joe and I admitted we’d come across Hartwick while working on the Weston matter. Scott’s eyes lit up at that news, and I knew she was dreaming of the headlines and prestige that would come with the case. I also knew she wasn’t going to see any of it. The FBI was calling the shots on it now. Even though the Hartwick murder was under CPD jurisdiction, they’d keep Scott out of the loop and away from the Weston case, no matter how intertwined the two seemed.

  For a while Scott tried to bluff as if we were suspects in the murder. Probably she thought she could scare us into giving up more details about Hartwick. It was a stupid ploy, considering Hartwick had been taken out at long range with a rifle. They questioned us separately and then brought us together for more rehashing. After that session, Kinkaid left to go to the restroom, and Scott left to make a phone call, leaving Joe and me alone with Eggers.

  “Hey, Tim,” I said, “you might want to check out Kinkaid.”

  He frowned. “You think he shot the guy?”

  Joe looked at me, too, eyebrows raised. I shook my head. “I don’t think he shot Hartwick, but I do think it would be worth taking a look at him. Kinkaid was in position for the shot, and we don’t really know much about him yet. He lied to Joe originally, or he says he did, then showed up in our office offering to help. It was a nice gesture, but we haven’t had time to check him out yet. For all we know, he could have been scared of what Hartwick was going to tell us. Maybe scared enough to kill him.”

  “Why does he care what Hartwick tells us?” Joe asked. “The guy hasn’t worked with Weston in years. Hell, he hasn’t even been in the city in years.”

  “I’m not saying it’s likely, I’m just saying he deserves a careful look.”

  Eggers shook his head. “I’m sure we’re going to find the dead guy was killed by a rifle bullet. Kinkaid’s carrying a Colt Python revolver. It’s a damn big gun, but it’s not going to be the gun used in this killing.”

  “He’s carrying a Colt Python,” I said. “Doesn’t mean he didn’t have another gun with him.”

  “You’re saying he might have used a rifle from the cemetery, dumped it back in his car, and then ran out to meet you?” He shrugged. “We’re going to check all the cars, don’t worry, but I doubt that’s possible. It’s a hell of a run across that cemetery.”

  Joe nodded. “Kinkaid didn’t do it,” he said. “To make that run and show up right after the shooting would have been impressive, and he wasn’t even out of breath. Besides, if he dumped the rifle anywhere in the cemetery, they’ll find it.”

  Kinkaid stepped back into the room, his face clouded with anger. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Pritchard,” he said, then pointed at me. “And, you, Perry, are an asshole.”

  I felt a flush creep into my neck and face. “I’m sorry, Kinkaid. I’m not saying I think you killed him, okay? But the fact is, we don’t know much about you, and you were in a position to make the shot.”

  He shook his head at me, his lip curled up in distaste. “Whatever, Perry.” He turned to Eggers. “Where’s the men’s room? I couldn’t find it the first time. Good thing, too, or I might have missed out on that conversation.”

  They finally cut us loose around five in the morning. By then we were all exhausted, and we had to call a cab because the police had impounded Joe’s Taurus and Kinkaid’s car.

  “Look, Aaron, I apologi
ze,” I said as we stood outside waiting on the cab. “It wasn’t anything personal. It’s just an old detective’s reaction of trying to consider who might have been in position to do the crime.”

  He nodded without looking at me. “It’s all right, Perry. I understand. I’m not going to lie and say I don’t care, because it pissed me off, but I’m also not going to let it get in our way. I want to find Julie Weston, and we’re going to need to work together to get that done.”

  “You’re already booked into a hotel?” Joe asked.

  “Yeah, I made reservations before I came in today. I was planning on staying in town for a few days.”

  “Go get some sleep, then. When you wake up, come down to the office, and we’ll get started. Someone killed Hartwick because they didn’t want him talking to us, and we need to find out who that person is.”

  “We’ll hear from Cody tomorrow,” I predicted. “He’ll be full of questions when he finds out about this.”

  “I’d imagine,” Joe said.

  “We’re stirring things up now. That’s obvious. Someone’s concerned by our investigation.”

  “So why didn’t the shooter take you out, too?” Kinkaid said. “Or at least try?”

  Joe shook his head. “I don’t know. But let’s not complain.”

  Kinkaid took the first cab that arrived, and Joe and I remained on the sidewalk, waiting for another. I watched the taillights of Kinkaid’s cab disappear down the street and then turned away as they grew smaller. I’d seen enough glowing red dots for one day.

  When I woke later that morning, the ache that had crept into my neck and shoulders the day before had intensified, and I groaned as soon as I moved. My back muscles felt like guitar strings after a Jimi Hendrix solo. A glance at the clock told me it was almost eleven, which meant I’d had four hours of sleep. I needed a long, hot shower, but I knew Joe would already be at the office, and I didn’t want to delay. I got dressed, splashed some cold water on my face, brushed my teeth, combed my hair, and headed out.

  Joe was at the office, of course. He was sitting behind the desk and talking on the phone, dressed in khakis and a shirt and tie, looking like a man who’d just returned to work after a week’s vacation, refreshed and invigorated. I shook my head. Joe was amazing. When I’d worked with him as a narcotics detective, I’d learned just how long he could go without much sleep, or any sleep. And, somehow, he never seemed to lose his mental edge. His ability to avoid—or ignore—physical fatigue was incredible.