14th Deadly Sin

CHAPTER 97

AMBULANCES WERE COMING in, taking away the injured. The ME’s van had arrived, and Claire was talking to Clapper. CSU had barricaded all but one slim lane of the road. Techs were setting up lights and an evidence tent, and investigators were working the scene as best they could under the circumstances.

According to Brady, the body count was four, and all of the dead were unidentified shooters. One car had gotten away, and the number and identities of the people inside were unknown.

I sat in my car, and after I’d checked in with Joe and with Conklin, I called Nancy Swanson.

“I have to see you,” I said when she answered.

“What happened? Did something happen to Ted?”

“He’s hurt, but he’s alive.”

“What happened? Tell me—now.”

“I’ll be at your house in fifteen minutes. I’m driving you to the hospital. Get someone to watch your kids.”

Her phone clunked to the floor. I called her name, but she was screaming and calling to her children.

I took the quickest, fastest route to the Swanson house, thinking that now, maybe, Nancy would tell me what she knew.

She was standing at the curb in a man’s white shirt, jeans, and bedroom slippers when I pulled up.

“Which hospital?” she asked me, getting into the passenger seat. “What’s his condition? Is it serious?”

“Buckle up,” I said.

The car shot off the curb and I set my course for Metropolitan Hospital. Nancy clenched her fists and beat her thighs as I told her about the standoff at Oswaldo Vasquez’s house.

I told her Vasquez had called her husband in a panic, saying that a number of cars had driven up to his house and that he perceived them to be a threat. I said that by the time Ted and I arrived, a full-scale shootout between the police and the men in those cars was in progress.

“He was safe in the car with me,” I told Nancy. “Then—he jumped out of the car and ran toward Vasquez’s house.”

“Oh, my God. That’s when he got shot?”

I nodded. “He was down but not out when the EMTs arrived.”

“This is all your fault,” she hissed at me. “Damn you, Sergeant.”

“I understand what you’re going through, Nancy, and I feel terrible for you.”

“I don’t care how you spin it. You’ve been crowding Ted for weeks now and he’s never done anything wrong. Anything he did, he did it for us. His family.”

“Do you understand the truth? Your husband is a criminal.”

She scoffed and said, “The real criminal is Kingfisher.”

“I don’t understand what you mean.”

“He’s the one who had the Calhoun family killed, or didn’t you know?”

“Do you know this for a fact?” I asked her.

Nancy Swanson covered her face with her hands. Her neck and arms were red with welts. She sobbed, “I don’t know. I don’t know. I have three kids. We can’t lose Ted. He has to live, do you understand?”

I said, “Nancy, can you tell me anything that might help us get the shooters?”

She turned her burning eyes to me and said, “Are you out of your mind? I’m a cop’s wife. Don’t you think I know what you’re trying to do?”

I stopped the car outside the emergency room and Nancy unbuckled her seat belt, opened the door, and took off at a run.

My phone began buzzing before I could close the door.

It was Brady.

“Vasquez is missing,” Brady said. “He doesn’t answer his phone. His house is empty, Boxer. He’s just gone.”