11th hour

Chapter 57

Brady’s car braked with a squeal only yards from the barrier tape. Lieutenants Brady and Meile boiled out of the vehicle, both of them agitated and demanding to be briefed.

Brady said, “What have we got?”

“Raoul Fernandez,” I said, pointing to the deceased. “Meth dealer, former convict. He was dead before he hit the ground.”

“Witnesses?”

“One so far. He maybe saw our shooter, a generic white male driving a black SUV. Our witness asked the driver to call nine-one-one, and he apparently did it. Dispatch is pulling the tape now.”

I went on to say that uniforms were taking down the name and number of everyone who’d been in the lot when the police showed up. Other uniforms were canvassing the shops.

“Plate readers have been down the rows,” I said, “and it was a decent sweep. Two stolen cars, two other drivers with outstanding warrants, but none stand out as our shooter.

“I asked the ME to give us an hour with the scene. Meanwhile, we’ve got surveillance tapes on the way from the security chief.”

“Let’s hope we got that black SUV on tape…”

Brady let his words trail off but I knew where he was going. Digital forensics was getting so refined that even a partial shot of the vehicle’s fender could yield enough information to identify the make and type of car.

I stood with Brady and Conklin and watched the light trucks come in. CSU was working fast and well, photographing scrapes on car doors, marking blood spatter, bagging found objects on the asphalt.

Soon the ME would remove the body, and CSU would take the car back to the lab on a flatbed truck. By tomorrow morning, the shopping center would be open again, like the shooting had never even happened.

But it had happened.

A spree killer was running the table.

I told Conklin I’d be back in a couple of minutes. I ducked under the tape, turned my back to the crime scene, and called Jacobi.

His voice sounded so real to me that I actually said, “Jacobi, it’s me, Lindsay.”

The voice kept talking, said, “Leave me a message.”

I told my old partner’s voicemail that I missed him, wanted to get together with him, asked him to call me.

I really did miss him.

I wanted to tell him about this spree killer, hear what he had to say. Maybe he had an idea we hadn’t thought of and maybe in the course of the conversation, he’d tell me something that would establish his innocence. I was sure that Brady was delusional. My old friend wasn’t the killer.

It just couldn’t be Jacobi.