by Scott Blade
She said nothing and holstered her gun and stood up from her ready-to-shoot-me pose.
I approached her, slowly. I didn’t want to see her Glock pointed at me again. Twice in one night was enough for me.
She said, “You should’ve kept going. Should’ve waited for me in the diner. Now is not a good time to talk.”
I said, “Why are you here alone? No other cops in Hope?”
I waited for her to answer, but she just looked away, off into the distance.
A long moment passed between us and finally she said, “They didn’t come because I didn’t call them.”
I said, “You lied to me. Why?”
She said, “I’m the police chief. I don’t need their help for a homicide.
“I don’t have to tell you anything. You’re lucky I let you go.”
I said, “Okay. Do it alone. I get that.
“I like that, but these are two dead cops and it’s the middle of the night. Don’t you think that everyone should be out here too? Probably call the FBI as well?
“You need forensic teams and manpower out here scouring for evidence. Maybe even looking to see if the guy is still around.”
“He’s long gone.”
I said, “How do you know that?”
She said, “No one kills two dead cops and then hangs around.”
I said, “You’re wrong. Maybe he headed toward Hope.”
She said, “No way. The tracks head off in the other direction. Plus, I would’ve seen him.”
I said, “Maybe he turned around down the road. Maybe he ran that direction because he was scared and then turned around somewhere. You can’t track tire tracks on the blacktop. Too many other tracks to account for, even on that deserted road.”
She nodded and then said, “It’s not your concern anyway. I think that you should turn back around and wait for me in the diner like I asked.”
I shrugged and then I said, “Can’t do that. If you aren’t going to call for backup, then I can’t leave you out here alone. Wouldn’t be right. My mother wouldn’t approve of that. Jack wouldn’t either.”
Vaughn dropped her shoulders a bit.
I said, “Besides, you aren’t telling me something. So what is it? What’re you not telling me? Did you know these guys? They your cops?”
She said nothing.
I said, “You didn’t just let me walk away because of Jack? Did you?”
She shrugged and said, “No. That wasn’t the reason.”
I asked, “Who are these guys? They aren’t ordinary cops, are they?”
She shook her head and asked, “What makes you say that?”
Vaughn looked at me with deep blue eyes that were as apparent in the moonless night as they were in the direct sunlight.
I said, “Because. They aren’t your guys. No way. Hope is out here along the empty corner of Colorado and no way does a small town like that have plainclothes detectives and an unmarked car. What would be the need for it?
“I grew up in a small town in the middle of nowhere, so I know. And these two guys are definitely some kind of detectives or higher-ranking cops than just the kind that I’d find in your department.
“Yet, here they are sitting out here. Their car is turned off. Keys are in the ignition, but the engine is off and cold too and they aren’t parked off-road. They’re parked right on the shoulder. They weren’t on a stakeout. Not out here. There’s nothing to stake out.
“No. They were here waiting to meet someone or they already did meet someone. Someone who didn’t like what they had to say and did this to them.”
Vaughn said nothing.
I said, “That’s it. They were here meeting someone and that someone shot the hell out of ‘em. And you know it. Don’t you?”
Vaughn said, “What? You think that I met them and shot them?”
I stayed quiet.
She said, “You think that I lured them out here and murdered them in cold blood?”
I said, “No way. Those bullet wounds are an act of passion. Heat of the moment. The shooter is amateur. No question. He probably never even fired a gun before in his life. You’re a professional, a trained police officer, and now a chief, and probably quite the marksman too. No this wasn’t premeditated at all. No way. This is completely sloppy.”
She asked, “Because of the bullet patterns?”
I said, “Not patterns. But the lack of. There’s no pattern to it. They’re everywhere. The hood. The seats. Their torsos. The backbench. This guy didn’t do any aiming at all. Probably even had his eyes closed and jerked the trigger like a novice, the way he had probably seen in the movies. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if he screamed while firing like he stole it right out of a damn Rambo movie.”
She said, “What’s the other part?”
I asked, “What other part?”
She said, “That look on your face. I’ve seen it before. I know that face. It’s inherited for sure. Your father has that same expression. There’s another part. A second part.”
I nodded slowly while I pictured Jack Reacher giving her the same expression that I wasn’t even aware of. Then I said, “There are two other parts actually.”
She asked, “What’re they?”
I said, “The big one is motive.”
She asked, “You know the motive? How?”
I nodded and then I said, “In a second. First, let’s talk about the other reason that I know you’re innocent. It’s so obvious that a blind man could see it.”
She said, “How?”
I said, “Clean up.”
She said nothing.
I said, “Because right now, you’re calm and collected and that makes you a professional. That makes you smart. You’d have killed them in a place where they could’ve been disposed of without much fuss. Out there in the desert somewhere, but not here in the open, on the side of a road. This is a desolate road, but any car could’ve came cruising along or a nighttime pedestrian. A couple out on the road trying to get some privacy. A group of teenagers out here looking to drink some beer and not get caught, hoping to escape the sheer day-to-day boredom of small-town life.
“Hell, even one of your deputies could’ve come out here, trying to take a nap for an hour. You couldn’t have predicted that. You could’ve guessed, sure, but not with one hundred percent accuracy. Not even with ninety percent or eighty percent accuracy.
“And I doubt that someone like you would’ve settled for less than ninety percent accuracy when it came to something like this.
“You don’t strike me as the type of woman to take risks like that. Not a woman who cruises the desert highways alone and rose all the way to police chief.”
She asked, “And how do you know that? Sounds like a stereotypical guess to me.”
I said, “I told you. My mom was a sheriff in a small town and she had to run for her job. It was a publicly elected position. She had a harder time than you in keeping her job as well as rising through the ranks.
“So I saw firsthand what it was like for a woman to shine in this kind of job.”
Vaughn nodded and said nothing.
I said, “So no way would you have killed them here. You’d have picked a better spot. If you were going to do something like this in the first place, you wouldn’t even have considered this place. It’s too open. Too uncertain. Too great a risk.
“Take me for instance. I’m here and you wouldn’t have known that. If you had killed them then I’d be dead and buried along with them. No question. Because you would’ve had to kill me too.”
Vaughn said nothing.
I said, “Now, the shooter’s motive. That’s clear. Look at the circumstances. The shooting itself. The act. It looks like rage. Right?”
She nodded.
I shifted my weight and looked back down at the well-preserved foot tracks and said, “It was done out of anger. Heat of the moment.
“Perhaps, these guys gave him some bad news. This is clearly a meeting place. A rendezvous. Mayb
e even a drop-off point. My guess is that they were meeting with some lone individual and they said or did something that didn’t hold up to their end of the bargain. This set the shooter off and he went into a rage. After they got back into their car, he started firing his gun at them and they didn’t expect it.
“And I don’t think that he even expected it.
“I think that this guy’s demeanor or background or whatever showed that he was such a pushover, a novice, that the two dead cops never would’ve expected that he was capable of such a thing. They never even stopped to think that this guy would turn on them. It wasn’t even in the cards for them.
“This was the act of a desperate man, a guy pushed beyond his limit.”
Vaughn said, “Like the shooter reacted out of pure desperation?”
I said, “In the world of dogma, you become free the day you decide to go to hell.”
Vaughn twisted from the waist and stared up at me with a look that I haven’t gotten in a while. It was that look that said to me “freak.” People had inadvertently given me this look many, many times and usually it was out of reflex more than anything. I never took it personal.
She said, “What?”
“It’s from Aniekee Tochukwu.”
She asked, “Who?”
I said, “He’s a psychologist, wrote a book I read once. It doesn’t matter. Just think that it applies here.”
She asked, “Why?”
I said, “Because, Vaughn, our shooter is a desperate man.”
Vaughn said nothing.
I said, “These cops trusted the shooter’s inexperience or his weak demeanor or his brittleness or all of it. See, they thought that he was a delicate, gentle guy, not the type of guy who stand up for himself. Ever.
“I’d guess that if you can identify these guys, then you can easily search through their computer’s search histories or cell phone histories and find that they had extensive files on this guy. Maybe even psychological reports and they assumed that he was a predictable weakling, someone that they could easily manipulate. I’d be willing to bet that this wasn’t the first time. Probably not even close. That is the other mistake that they made. They got complacent, overly confident.
“Obviously, they misjudged him and they overestimated their abilities.
“My guess is that they must’ve either had something on him that controlled him to do their every bidding or they were completely stupid.
“But then again, I’d say that it was a little of both. They’re dead after all and he’s not. So they were stupid to underestimate him, but at the same time I think that they had something on him and it was something strong enough that they figured no man would risk not ever getting it back. Probably some kind of evidence. Maybe state’s evidence. Whatever it was, it was serious.”
Vaughn asked, “So you think that they were blackmailing this guy?”
I said, “The wrong guy. That’s for damn sure.”
She asked, “With what? Any specific guesses?”
I shrugged and said, “Lurid pictures to hide from a rich man’s wife. Or a politician trying to keep something from going public. Or from a desperate man’s job. Information that’d get him sent to prison. Proof of a crime that he committed or just old-fashioned embarrassment.
“Who knows?
“Cops are privy to a lot of sensitive information about the general public and the more private citizens.”
Vaughn looked back at the dead cops, at the unmarked cop car, and thought for a moment. I could see on her face that the wheels were turning. Then she turned back to me and asked, “How do you know all of that?”
I said, “Just look around. Isn’t it obvious? Look here.”
She followed me over to the front of her police car’s halogen lights. I pointed at the ground, tried to keep my shoes pulled back away from the tracks.
I asked, “See the footprints?”
She shone her flashlight beam across the dirt and followed the tracks of two men that led from the white unmarked Ford police car back to where we stood.
She said, “The cops.”
I nodded, pointed, and said, “Now look there.”
She said, “Only three sets of footprints. I can see that. There’s also a set of tire tracks over there, but how do you know that there wasn’t one other guy in the shooter’s car? Or three? Or four?”
I said, “Because look at how they were standing.”
I pointed at the three sets of footprints and where they converged.
I said, “This is a meeting place. The cops were waiting for a third person. A third man. A single man. Not two or three or four. They wouldn’t have met with a guy who brought along company.
They waited in their car and then they saw him pull up in his car.”
I looked down at the tracks, followed them backward with my eyes. I imagined where the car must’ve been parked and where it had driven up from the road and then I saw it turn off onto the dirt.
I pointed at the place where his car had been parked and said, “He got out there and walked to them. They made him stand, out in front of their headlights, and wait right here in the middle, between both cars. Right out in the open. And only then, after they were able to get a good look at him, did they get out and walk over to him.
“This was more of an act of intimidation than anything else. I suppose that they wanted him to stand there and feel humiliated and useless.”
Vaughn said, “Sadistic.”
I nodded and said, “Definitely and that in itself tells us something else.”
She said, “What else does it tell us?”
“In a second. Let’s follow their actions. They stopped here and talked. No struggle. At least no physical one. Maybe they exchanged harsh words, but these cops weren’t afraid of him. They gave him some kind of bad news, something that he was fearing. Probably, his biggest fear at the moment.
“The shooter waited for them to get back in their car. He was probably stuck, frozen in place because he didn’t know what to do, maybe he was even temporarily insane. He didn’t know how to react. I’m guessing that this is a guy who has been through a grave ordeal. A hard-edged man. A man with nothing left and nothing to lose.”
She asked, “How on earth do you know that?”
I said, “Because there are no tracks of him running back to the spot where he opened fire from his car. See the tracks where he clearly walks back to his car. It’s a calm pace. No freaking out. Now, if he met them, got angry, and then walked back to his car and then came out, ran at them in a rage, then there would be tracks from him running.”
She nodded as if she understood.
I said, “But there aren’t. No, this guy stood still after they left him. He had been thinking what to do next, letting his anger build. I believe that maybe he was generally a passive guy, but these guys pushed too hard, forced him to go farther, forced him to go over the edge.
“I think they pushed him too far. They bullied him. Rode him for a while. My guess is he had had enough. He literally snapped.
“I’d say that they’ve met with him in the past. Maybe many times. I’d say that normally they’d search him, frisk him for weapons, but they got comfortable with him, lazy and they stopped searching him after a time. Probably trusted their leverage on him. Trusted the fact that he was weak. Probably believed that he’d never be so ballsy. Never. And maybe ninety-nine times out of a hundred, they’d be right, but this time they were wrong. They underestimated him. So he pulled out a gun, probably a Glock 23, and he shot them.”
She asked “How the hell do you know the gun?”
I said, “Because there are thirteen bullet holes and thirteen casings on the ground.”
She said, “But a Glock 23 isn’t the only gun that has a thirteen-round magazine. What about a Heckler and Koch USP? It holds that many.”
I said, “Right, but the Glock is the gun that they both have in their holsters and it’s the one that you’re carrying.”
She said,
“What’re you saying, Cameron? I killed them again? You just got finished telling me that you didn’t believe I did.”
I said, “No. But you aren’t the only cop who is issued a Glock. These guys could’ve been killed by another cop. Maybe.”
Vaughn said, “You just convinced me that this guy is an amateur. How would a cop be an amateur? And a cop who has never fired his gun before? That’s unbelievable. He’d at least have fired it in training and practice.”
I said, “True. But I like to have an alternate theory. You never know when you might be wrong and I’m wrong just as much as the next guy.”
She frowned at me and said, “Guess now you’re going to give me another lesson. Show me up. You are like your old man.”
I said, “That’s not my intention. I’m just good at this. Don’t judge me by my age.”
She nodded and said, “I wasn’t. I get it. You are your father’s son and of course you would be good at this sort of thing. Please continue.”
I said, “It wouldn’t surprise me if the guy had never fired his gun, but when I think about another factor, I think this guy might be a cop.”
Vaughn asked, “What other factor?”
I said, “The meeting itself. Sure it could’ve been a civilian meeting them out here and they squabbled over money or blackmail or whatever. But it makes more sense that it was a cop or someone in law enforcement who met them out here.
“Look around. This is a good meeting place for cops who want to talk about something that’s off the books or illegal, like the exchange of money for a bribe or blackmail.”
Vaughn repeated herself and said, “What about the amateur angle? You said the shooter was an amateur.”
I said, “Amateur doesn’t necessarily mean inexperienced. Amateur means slapdash, unskillful, substandard, or unprofessional, which in my experience some cops are. No offense.
“Two possible cops fit this category and they’re found in every police department in every corner of the world. They aren’t as common as most officers, but yet they’re out there.”
She asked, “And who’s that?”
I said, “Rookies and retirees and desk guys and even public deputies. How many states employ civilian deputies, who ride along with real cops?”