The Witness (37 page)

Who wanted him dead?

The question rattled around the tired focus of his thoughts as Marsh accepted the scrip the emergency doc wrote him for pain pills and stuffed it in his shirt pocket.

“Your personal doc can take those stitches out in about ten days. Any redness or extra heat in the injury, see him before then.”

“Sure, Doc.”

The ER still bustled with staff coming and going between curtained-off cubicles, and Marsh was left alone again. One of the guys in the squad had brought over the shirt and slacks from his work locker. Marsh buttoned the uniform shirt, relieved to have something clean.

The curtain moved, and where the doctor had disappeared a lady reappeared. “They said you can go now?”

Marsh offered the chief’s sister a partial smile. “Yeah. I don’t think they want to particularly keep me. This hospital and I go way back.” He’d been shot twice in his career, and both times had ended up here with him staring at the ceiling and getting asked inane questions by doctors about hands and toes and names of presidents.

“I remember.” Susan was at his side to help when he shifted off the bedside to stand, but he wasn’t nearly as wobbly on his feet now after they shoved nearly three sports-drink bottles full of some awful sweet stuff into him.

“Your headache is pounding?”

“Like a full-blown parade drum section is camped out in there,” he agreed.

“You would think they could do better than aspirin in a place like this.”

“They could; I passed.” He slipped on his sunglasses to slash the light he had to deal with in half and cover the fact tears were too close to the surface for comfort. “That helps.”

She offered what she had brought with her. “The coat is probably a size too big, but the gloves should be right.”

He accepted the coat. “I appreciate your thinking of it.”

“Connor did. He said—” She bit her lip.

“It’s okay, Susan. I was wearing that other coat. I know what it ended up looking like.”

“Yes, well, it’s not a memory you should have.” She gathered up the papers that had become his admission records and nodded toward the center aisle. “They’ll need you to sign out at the desk.”

“Of course, one more signature on one more form.”

She smiled and with one arm around his waist hugged him. “I’m buying you some good strong coffee before I take you to the station.”

“Connor’s there now?”

“Yes.”

He didn’t ask about Tracey, and she didn’t offer. He knew what had already been done. The medical examiner’s staff had put her in a body bag and taken her to the morgue and started taking X rays so they could take the slug that killed her out of her and into evidence. Tracey was dead, and the evidence needed to convict her killer was still in her.

He took a troubled breath and refused to let himself think about that reality. He needed to work; he needed to do something.

The police-department desks were busy with guys—that was the odd realization Marsh had as he walked through the bull pen of desks toward Connor’s and found guys who were off duty now back on duty. Susan knew the building layout as well as he did, but he still kept a hand on her arm to escort her, not wanting to break that thin line of comfort yet in having her with him.

“I’m sorry, Marsh.”

He nodded at the officer’s condolence, the words repeating over and over as he made his way toward Connor’s desk.

Connor set down his phone and got up to lean against the side of the desk as Marsh pulled out an adjoining chair. “The mayor and the rest of the city council are here. I’ve got the squad union rep running interference to keep them out of your space for at least another half hour so you can hear what we have first.”

“I appreciate it.”

Connor handed Susan his notepad. “Can you—?”

She glanced at the note, at Marsh, and nodded. “I’ll use Beth’s phone.” She headed over to join the unit’s secretary.

“Your extended family heard the news; Susan can handle the initial call.”

“Thanks.” Marsh and his second cousins had ceased to be more than blood relations a long time ago, their opinion of his job vocally expressed at family gatherings, something that had been the final straw. They were a thousand miles away and not likely to come to the funeral.

“We haven’t found either the cab or the driver yet. We’re stopping every vehicle that is seen, but nothing so far. We’ve got a pretty good overview from the company dispatchers where cabs should have been during that slice of time. We’ve also got a list of cabs that were not on duty but where the vehicles were out with their drivers, most parked at home in preparation for weekend shifts.”

“The cab is going to be difficult—an Irish cabdriver, maybe not quite so tough.”

“There are officers going through cab hack licenses looking for possible matches based on the description. Others making sure there isn’t a stolen cab somewhere in the mix. It’s going to speed things up if we are able to get a sketch we can release to the public.”

“Susan hadn’t heard—how’s Caroline doing?”

“Still in surgery. Another two hours minimum before she makes the recovery room. She lost a lot of blood, Marsh. I don’t know.”

She’d be dead and he’d have that on his conscience too. “Anyone else at the scene proving to be a good witness?”

“A lot more general and contradictory information than what Caroline gave us—cabdriver, no it was a cab passenger; middle-age, no kind of young; white hair, no dark; some insist it was a woman driving—”

“That’s probably a glimpse of the red hair getting remembered.”

“Exactly. I’ll trust Caroline’s memory as probably the most accurate description we’ll get from the scene.” Connor ran his hand across his face and shook his head, trying to shake off the fatigue gripping him, then looked over at him.

Marsh understood the inspection going on—his partner was trying to get a read on how he was really doing behind the calm exterior. Tracey was dead, he was bleeding inside, and it felt like a Mack truck had run him over. He wanted the guy who did this. Marsh didn’t bother to say it. “What else do we have?”

“We know there were eleven shots fired, and the area hit covers about a quarter of a block. The technicians tracking down the shots are finding all kinds of angles. We’re assuming at this point that the cab tried to come from the center lane over to the lane nearest the restaurant and opened fire as he straightened out, fired while he was driving past, then sped up through the intersection and out of the area.”

Marsh didn’t remember the cab and wished he’d been turned even slightly more toward the street to have been able to see something useful; as it was, there were only the memories. “The first shot—it hit the car behind us, then a display window, then the shot that hit Tracey …”

“Two early ones hit the restaurant window, then the car behind you,” Connor suggested. “Two others shattered the back car window, one hit a pedestrian in the leg, a miss that hit brick, and the last hit Caroline.”

“Do we know yet if the gun was in the system from a prior crime?”

“The lab is still working on it; we’ll have that answer soon. I doubt it was a local piece. He probably brought it with him.”

“I don’t remember an Irish guy in those New York pictures, do you?”

“There was one in the envelope Caroline carried with her. Maybe she comes out of surgery and can give us a positive ID that it was the guy she saw.”

“Marie?”

“The chief told her; Daniel’s with her now.”

“You need to go see her.”

“I’ve got to have something to tell her, Marsh.” Connor’s voice broke. “News that we have this guy at least. Something.”

Marsh nodded, not able to say much to that but to agree. “It looks busy around here.”

“If it can be thought of to try, we’re trying it. The deputy chief is managing things for a while; the chief went to see Amy.”

“This is going to tear her up.”

“I know.”

“Where do you need me most?”

“We’re trying to sort out security cameras in the area and see if any of them caught a snapshot of that cab. The lab just called that they got the bank tapes in-house.”

Marsh pushed himself to his feet. “Let’s go see what they can give us.”

Chapter Twenty-One

LUKE SLOWED as he approached the private farmhouse, the vehicle partly blocking the last stretch of the road enough to tell him the reality. He rolled to a stop and halted beside the truck. “What happened, Jonathan?”

“Amy bolted within minutes of the breaking news flash. By the time my guy got from his truck where he was patrolling the road back to the house she had taken her coat and we think a backpack and disappeared. I’ve got twenty guys searching the area trying to get a clue of the direction she took. I’ve even got a bird in the air, but she’s good at this and she’s gone. My guess she had a vehicle tucked away as a precaution somewhere in the area or else she hot-wired something to borrow. She was smart enough not to take one of the vehicles on the property.”

“You had transmitters planted?”

“On anything that could move, including the tractor. She’s carrying that phone Caroline gave her, so maybe we’ll get a break. She uses it, I’ll know where she’s standing to within a meter. But I’m not hopeful. They got through to Marie; now her sister Tracey is dead; Amy’s not only afraid—she’s angry. She’s not going to make the more obvious mistakes. And unless Caroline took it with her, her backup piece is missing. She had it tucked under the stack of kitchen towels by the back door. Amy would have known that.” Jonathan shook his head. “Bad day all the way around. Anything we can do for you in town?”

“Marie is safe, and I’ve got Daniel with her so he’s covered by proxy. What do you think Amy is going to do?”

“I don’t know the lady. I’ve just read the army personnel file on her. I think she’s going to hunt down the guy that killed her sister and do your job for you.”

“She’s not leaving the area.”

“I’ll put money on the fact she’s heading back into town, not away from it.”

The thought didn’t settle well; none of today did. “I’m going up to the house to look around, then head back to see Sam. I could use a couple guys to watch the gallery tonight so I can leave Bryce with Marie.”

“You’ll have them,” Jonathan promised. “I’m sorry for this, Luke. They seemed like a nice family, the sisters.”

“They are.” Telling Marie about Tracey had been close to the hardest thing he had ever done in his life. He just wished someone had been able to tell Amy the news in person, rather than have it be a media announcement.

He drove toward the house.
Amy, I know you’re hurting, honey. I know you’re grieving. But you have to let me help you. You’ve got to call me
.

The hospital recovery room had lights dimmed to half wattage to make it easier on patients coming out of the drugged coma of surgery. Marsh felt clumsy trying to walk quietly in his work shoes. “Thanks for this.” It was incredibly late, edging toward midnight, for the surgery had lasted six hours and the recovery even longer.

The nurse escorting him smiled as she tied the mask for him. “Five minutes and not a word to her doctor. She’s been asking for you.”

He lifted one eyebrow at that but nodded, and the nurse directed him toward the third curtained cubicle. They still had Caroline on heart monitors and IV lines and what looked like an emergency transfusion line taped in place on her right arm.

He rested a hand on the raised handrail and leaned down to speak softly. “Hey, Caroline. It’s Marsh. How are you doing?”

Her eyes had moved toward him as she realized she had company. She tried her best to smile. “It hurts like you know what.”

He eased down the mask just for a moment so she could see his answering smile. “I’m sorry about that. They should have good drugs here though to help with that.”

“Yeah. Remembered something.”

He moved the mask back in place and carefully slid his hand under her limp one at her side as he waited for her to form her words.

She tried to lick her lips as she breathed in. “The cab—it had these three big white stripes down the side. I forgot to tell you that.”

He made sure he didn’t tighten his hand around hers more than a fraction as the news sank in. It made the cab one of the Speedy Yellow Cab Company’s vehicles. “Thank you. That will help. Do you remember if the shooter was old, young, thin, heavyset?”