Now You See Her

by Merline Lovelace

  “Christ! Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, but the guy with the gun isn’t.”

  Mitch clicked instantly into his law enforcement alter ego. I’d encountered it the first time when he and I were chasing that rogue ex-FBI agent I mentioned. The one who blew up my old Bronco. The bastard also torched my team’s test lab out in the desert, by the way, then proceeded to drive Mitch and me off a cliff before a well-placed shot took him out. I wasn’t real sorry to see him get dead, either.

  “I can hear the sirens,” Mitch rapped out. “Stay behind cover until they secure the scene.”

  I didn’t tell him Sergeant Roth had already secured it. I didn’t have time. Three vehicles careened into the parking lot at that moment. Two more followed mere moments later. Sirens wailing, strobe lights flashing, they cordoned off our end of the parking lot.

  Heavily armed police officers exited the vehicles and took up defensive positions while they assessed the situation. The guy in the blue jogging suit jumped up and started to run toward them. One of the officers bellowed at him to stop, put his hands up, and keep them up.

  Jogging-suit guy did as he was instructed. When the cops approached, he must have given them a quick recap of events because two officers immediately peeled away from the others and rushed over to the Tahoe. One radioed for an EMT team before he and his partner checked out the figure sprawled at the entrance to the alley. The younger of those two pulled on latex gloves and went down on a knee to check for a pulse. I don’t know why I held my breath until he shook his head. It was pretty obvious even from where I stood Ski Mask was mush.

  One of the cops stayed with the body. To preserve the crime scene, I guessed. The other came back to the Tahoe and questioned me while the EMTs worked on Sergeant Roth.

  “I’m Officer Foster, El Paso PD.” Producing the inevitable black notebook, the lanky young cop glanced at my name tag. “Could I have your full name, Lieutenant Spade?”

  “Samantha JoEllen Spade.”

  “You assigned to Fort Bliss?”

  “I’m assigned to a forward unit of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. We’re a tenant on Fort Bliss.”

  “Why don’t you tell me exactly what happened?”

  There it was. The question I’d been dreading. If I could have come up with an explanation of how I’d zeroed in on the shooter that didn’t involve the NLOS system, I would have.

  Unfortunately, I couldn’t think that fast. My brain was still scrambled from the shooting. So I did a mental squirm and launched into what I intended as a layman’s description of atmospheric backlight scatter and omnidirectional transmitters. I had the glasses in hand and was showing them to a very skeptical Officer Foster when a screech of tires on asphalt announced another arrival.

  I turned in time to see Mitch leap out of his dusty gray pickup. He’d just come off shift and was still in his Border Patrol greenies, with the usual fifteen pounds of lethal weaponry attached to his utility belt. He’d shed his floppy brimmed boonie hat, though, and there was just enough late afternoon sun left to bring out a glint of gold in his buzz-cut hair.

  The first time I met Border Patrol Agent Jeff Mitchell I thought he looked a lot like my ex. Same broad shoulders, same impressive set of muscles under his greenies. The resemblance didn’t win him any Brownie points at the time. Just goes to show you can’t judge really hot studs by their appearance. Took me all of five or ten minutes to realize Mitch was as smart as he was buff. Unlike my ex.

  He was stopped at the cordon but flashed his ID, gestured to me, and was waved on. Naturally. It’s a cop thing.

  You think the military is a tight-knit community? True, we’re all brothers and sisters in arms. But that’s only when there are civilians in the vicinity. If it’s just a bunch of uniforms hanging around a bar, our separate branches of service inevitably come into play. Then we’re soldiers or sailors or marines or airmen or coasties.

  Within those separate branches, the circles get even tighter. Army tank drivers hold themselves aloof from infantry grunts. Air Force fighter pilots may make noises about how we’re all part of the same team and everyone’s essential to the mission, but they can barely hold back a smirk when talking about trash haulers. (Their label, not mine, for transport pilots.) Even in DARPA, which is predominantly civilian, you’ll find a distinct pecking order.

  I mention this because however tight we think we are in the military, we’re loose as a goose compared to law enforcement types. The minute two or more cops get together, everyone else ends up on the outside looking in. That’s exactly where I found myself, like, thirty seconds after Mitch assured himself I was still in one piece.

  “That the shooter?” he asked Officer Foster.

  “What’s left of him.”

  “Mind if I take a look?”

  Foster decided a Border Patrol agent would know his way around a crime scene and nodded. While he and Mitch went to inspect the body, I went to check on Sergeant Roth. She had exited her Tahoe and was sitting at the open back end of an ambulance. The EMT techs had picked the glass from her face and were cleaning the cuts.

  Now that they’d swabbed away most of the blood I could see she was a few years older than me. Twenty-eight or -nine, I guessed, with her pale blond hair cut in a bob tapered high in back and slightly longer in front, so the ends just brushed her jaw. Some of her color had returned, and I was relieved to see the glazed look had left her amber eyes.

  “How are you doing?”

  I directed the question at the sergeant, but one of the EMT techs answered for her.

  “She’ll be okay. The safety glass they install in vehicles these days comes with a laminated liner. The glass breaks up into big chunks instead of the jagged shards that used to cause such deep lacerations. We’ll transport her to the hospital once the police finish with her and let the docs give her a once-over.”

  “I don’t need to go to the hospital,” Roth countered.

  “Let’s see how you’re doing after you talk to the investigators.”

  When the techs finished with their patient and gathered the tools of their trade, I sank down beside her.

  “Might not hurt to let the docs check you out.”

  “I’m okay,” she insisted and threw a grim look at Mitch and the others. “Who’s the guy in Border Patrol greens?”

  “His name is Jeff Mitchell. We were meeting at Perry’s for dinner.”

  She forced her attention back to me. “I haven’t thanked you, Lieutenant. When you shouted that warning . . .” She stopped and swallowed hard. “You saved my life.”

  “You saved a lot more. No telling how many people might have been killed or wounded if you hadn’t taken such decisive action.”

  “Well, thanks anyway. My name’s Diane, by the way. Diane Roth.”

  “Samantha Spade.”

  She held out her hand. I took it, noting that her grip was firm and sure. No limp fingered, girly-girl handshake for her. I’m still working on mine.

  Officer Foster returned then. Mitch stood aside with me while the patrolman took Roth’s statement. The MP patch on her arm brought the cop thing into play immediately. Foster treated her with the courtesy one professional gives another. Especially after he elicited the fact that Roth had served in Afghanistan.

  “What unit?”

  “Five-forty-sixth MP Company, out of Fort Stewart.”

  “I was with the Seventy-second ANG in Iraq,” Foster told her. “Rotated back to my civilian job last year.”

  “You guys saw some heavy action.”

  “Yeah, we did. So what’s the story here? Where were you when the suspect started firing?”

  “I’d just pulled into a parking space by the health food store. Annette, the woman who takes care of my kids when I’m on swings or mids, asked me to stop by on my way home and pick up this special brand of low-sodium tomato sauce she uses in her lasagna.”

  Frowning, Roth lifted a hand to her cheek while she related the details with a cop’s p
recision.

  “I was reaching for the keys to cut the ignition when I saw everyone hit the sidewalk. I guess I just froze, wondering what the hell was going on, because the engine was still running when my side window shattered. That’s when I heard the lieutenant shout. I twisted around, saw her, and . . .”

  She broke off and chewed on the inside of her lower lip for a moment or two. I did a little chewing myself. It’s one thing to hear shots and react instinctively. Something else entirely to go through the whole terrifying sequence second by lethal second.

  “I twisted around,” Roth repeated in a low voice.

  “Saw the lieutenant. When I looked past her to the alleyway, I spotted the shooter at almost the same instant he fired again. I threw myself sideways on the seat, then just . . . just acted on instinct.”

  “Your Tahoe took several hits,” Foster commented.

  “Do you think the guy was aiming at you?”

  “Yes. Maybe. I’m not sure.” Frowning, she sorted through the possibilities. “I was in my seat, elevated, a perfect target. Everyone else was flat on the ground or behind cover.”

  “Why didn’t you just put metal to the pedal and drive away? Out of danger?”

  “I wanted to! Believe me, that was my first inclination. But there were all those people . . .”

  Foster nodded and made a few more notes. “That should do it for me. The homicide unit is on the way. The detectives will want to talk to both of you. They’ll also probably need to impound your vehicle as evidence.”

  “Yeah, I figured.” Roth seemed resigned to the loss of her wheels but gave her watch a worried glance. “I’m supposed to pick up my kids at six.”

  “Anyone you can call to handle that for you?” the patrolman asked.

  My glance dropped to her left hand. No ring, I noticed, and understood why she worried her lower lip between her teeth again.

  “I can try to reach my neighbor. But when she called to ask me to pick up the tomato sauce, she mentioned she was all the way across town at a meeting of the Red Hat Society.”

  “Before we do anything else,” Officer Foster said with a nod toward the alleyway, “I need you and the lieutenant to take a look at the deceased. He doesn’t have any identification on him. Maybe you can ID him.”

  Whoa! That brought me up short. I hadn’t really reached the point of speculating on Ski Mask’s identity yet. Subconsciously I’d sort of assumed this was just another random act of violence. The disturbed action of some psycho determined to leave his twisted mark on history.

  Officer Foster’s comment raised all sorts of possibilities. Including the not-so-far-fetched idea that one of the inventors whose baby I had rejected might be out for vengeance. It wouldn’t be the first time! Remind me to tell you sometime about how Pen and I had to dodge a jellylike blob of protoplasm flung at us by an irate professor.

  With that experience in mind, I approached the corpse. Slowly. Very slowly. The thing is, I don’t do real well with dead people. I learned that after stumbling across two decomposing bodies out in the West Texas desert. They were pretty ripe when I found them. This guy wasn’t—yet—but you can understand my reluctance to get too close.

  Foster rolled him over just enough for us to see his face. His features were still more or less intact. Enough for me to assert with some certainty that I’d never seen him before.

  Not so for Sergeant Roth. She sucked in air, big time, and went as white as her bandages.

  “Oh, God! I . . . I . . .”

  She swayed, her eyes huge with dismay.

  “I know him,” she got out in a ragged whisper. “We were . . . We were stationed together in Afghanistan.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  ROTH’S startling admission hung in the air for several seconds. Then Officer Foster whipped out his black notebook again while I spun around to take another gander at the dead guy.

  He wasn’t a pretty sight, but there was enough left to guess he was in his early to mid-thirties and had been pretty buff before a three-and-a-half-ton SUV flattened him.

  “His name . . . His name is Austin,” Roth said unsteadily. “Oliver Austin.”

  Foster scribbled furiously in his little black book. “And you say you were in the same unit in Afghanistan?”

  “The same base, not the same unit. We . . . We hung out together between shifts sometimes.”

  “So you were friends?”

  “For a while.”

  “Only awhile?”

  “Ollie was . . .”

  She stopped. Wet her lips. Turned wide, dismayed eyes on the corpse. A dozen emotions seemed to flit across her face, none of them particularly pleasant.

  “Ollie was intense. Too intense for me. I was relieved when he rotated back to the States.”

  She paused again, obviously struggling with the brutal fact that a former comrade in arms had just taken aim at her. Foster waited a few moments before giving her a nudge.

  “Did you stay in touch with Austin after he rotated back to the States?”

  “He emailed me a few times. I . . . Uh . . .”

  She raised a hand to her cheek again and fingered the bandages. Pulling in a ragged breath, she made a heroic effort to compose herself.

  “I didn’t reply. Before he left, I told him that I needed to focus on my kids when I got home and get reacquainted with them after being gone so long. I thought he’d taken the hint when the emails stopped.”

  She looked up then, and her eyes flooded with a guilt so raw it seemed to take over her face.

  “After I reported in to Fort Bliss,” she said on a note of pure anguish, “I heard Ollie had been diagnosed with PTSD and medically separated from the Army.”

  Oh, Christ! Post-traumatic stress disorder. I haven’t served in a combat zone but even non’ers like me know the grim statistics impacting those who have. One estimate put the PTSD rate among Iraq and Afghanistan veterans at 15 to 20 percent. The suicide rate was way up there, too.

  “I made some calls,” Roth continued in a broken voice. “I tracked Ollie to a VA hospital in North Carolina, but . . .”

  “But?” Foster prompted when she faltered.

  “He was gone. He’d checked himself out and disappeared.”

  “So you haven’t had any contact with him at all since his return?”

  “No.”

  “Did you know he was here, in El Paso?”

  “No.”

  “Have you received any suspicious calls or hang-ups?”

  “No.”

  Her voice steadied a little more with each response. The cop in her had obviously reasserted itself. Foster was jotting down notes when the arrival of several vehicles drew his attention.

  “Good, here’s the CSI unit. Our homicide unit should be right behind them. If you and the lieutenant will just wait here . . .”

  A cell phone jangled inside the Tahoe. Diane took a quick glance at the watch strapped to her wrist and made an urgent request.

  “That’s probably my daughter. Or the director of her day-care center. Can I retrieve my phone from the car?”

  Foster nodded. “Go ahead. I’ll coordinate with CSI.”

  Roth grabbed the phone, checked caller ID, and had it to her ear on the fourth ring. “Hi, Trish. Yes, baby, I know what time it is. I’m, uh, running late.”

  She listened a moment, her lower lip caught between her teeth.

  “No, I can’t come right now to take you to Brownies. I’ll try to reach Mrs. Hall and ask her to swing by. What? Okay, put her on.”

  A resigned expression came over the sergeant’s face as she waited.

  “Hello, Mrs. Gonzales. I know, I know. I’m really racking up the late charges. It’s not my job this time, though. There’s been an incident. No, I can’t pick them up right now. Yes, I read the notice saying you needed to close early tonight. I’m sorry, you’ll just have to . . .”

  I made a side-to-side hand movement to catch her attention. Brows raised in query, Roth put her caller on hold.
>
  “Hang on a sec, Mrs. Gonzales.”

  “Someone from my office could pick the kids up,” I suggested. “Or maybe you, Mitch.”

  He blinked at being volunteered for chauffeur duties but gave a shrug. “Sure.”

  Roth looked him over from head to toe, assessing his trustworthiness. With his wide shoulders and rugged, Marlboro Man features he certainly didn’t fit the stereotypical image of a child predator.

  Not that I’m an expert on that particular brand of scum. The closest I’ve come to one is a cousin in Idaho who reportedly got hot and heavy with a very precocious sixteen-year-old. Until her father discovered who she was slipping out to meet at night, that is. Eddie is now minus one testicle and hoping for parole next year.

  I have become pretty well acquainted with Special Agent Jeff Mitchell over the past six months, however. I was about to assure Diane Roth of his honesty, integrity, and occasionally warped sense of humor when she reached her own conclusions about his character. Raising her gaze from the badge clipped to his waist, she met his steady look.

  “Are you sure you don’t mind?”

  “I don’t mind,” he replied in his easy West Texas drawl.

  “Thanks.” She put her phone to her ear again. “Okay, Mrs. Gonzales. Border Patrol Agent Mitchell will be there in a few minutes to pick up Trisha and Joey.”

  Had to be tough being a single mom and a military cop, I thought as Roth flipped her phone shut.

  “I really appreciate this,” she said with obvious relief. “I’m on the waiting list for the twenty-four-hour day-care center on post. Until I get the kids in there, it’s tough finding sitters and day-care staff willing to work around my shifts. Thank God for my neighbor. I don’t know what I would have done without her.”

  I could sympathize with Sergeant Roth. I’d worked some squirrelly shifts myself during my days as a cocktail waitress in ’round-the-clock Vegas. All I had to factor into my disturbed sleep cycle, though, was a horny spouse. I couldn’t imagine having to juggle the needs of two children, then dragging my tail in to work at three a.m.

  “They’re at the Red Robin Learning Center, only a few blocks from here,” Roth told Mitch. “Our apartment is close to the center. If you have a pen, I’ll write both addresses for you.”