12th of Never

Chapter 26

BY THE TIME Conklin and I arrived on 4th Street, the CSIU van and half a dozen squad cars had blocked a lane of traffic and run up on the hundred-foot stretch of sidewalk in front of Whole Foods. Morning commuters beat on their horns and shouted out their car windows, but no amount of yelling moved the stalled traffic.

Conklin double-parked and we exited the car into the wall of bystanders who were packed behind the barrier tape, sending a gale of tweets and snapshots out to the Web.

Officer Tom Forcaretta was at the front door. He was new on the force, but appeared to be coping well with the chaos. I signed the log and asked him to tell me what he knew about the crime.

“The shooting happened between seven thirty and seven thirty-five,” he said. “The vic is Harriet Adams, white female, thirty-eight, looks like she took three bullets—right arm, neck, right chest. She was alive, but barely conscious when I got here. She told me her name. That was all. Ambulance took her to Metropolitan but she was DOA.”

“How many witnesses?” I asked.

“Two semiwitnesses. A stock boy and a customer, but neither of them got a look at the shooter. They heard breaking glass and saw the victim go down. Both of them were interviewed and released.”

“And where are the other customers?”

“The ones we could stop from leaving are in the stock-room. A team from Robbery is interviewing them, then releasing them through the rear door.”

“How many customers are we talking about?”

“Too many to count, Sergeant. Over a hundred, prob’ly.”

“And the people who work here? Could be an employee went postal.”

“Yes, ma’am. Employees are in the manager’s office. Bambi Simmons, that’s the manager, said our vic was a regular customer and maybe a pain in the butt. She returned opened cans and so forth.”

“I take it the weapon hasn’t been recovered.”

“No, ma’am.”

“And the surveillance tape?”

“Yes, ma’am. We’ve got it, such as it is.”

Automatic doors slid open and Conklin and I stepped into the thirty-thousand-square-foot crime scene. It wasn’t Columbine, but it was freaking overwhelming, anyway. Crime techs were all over the place, putting down markers, snapping photos. If they didn’t turn up two million unique fingerprints, it would be amazing.

Conklin and I were directed to the far right-hand side of the store, where Charlie Clapper, head of our crime lab, was shooting pictures. He did a double take when he saw me.

“Good God, Lindsay. Aren’t you on leave?”

“I was. This is my welcome-back party.”

“Good to see you, kiddo,” he said. “And here’s what we’ve got for you: a violent death in a humongous haystack. No idea if there’s a needle in here or even what a needle would look like. Did you hear? No witnesses, no weapon, no robbery. Just ‘bang, bang, bang.’ It’s a real who-freakin’-dunit.”