A Shot to Die For (2 page)

Chapter Two

“Sniper!”

That was the word on everyone’s lips even before the state police showed up. It took me a while to realize it, though. I felt as if I was inside a freeze-frame. There was no sound. Movement halted. Even the air currents stopped.

Except for the blood. I don’t know how long I stood over Daria, watching the crimson design expand. The red kept spreading, eating up the material, blossoming like one of those time-lapse sequences in nature films. I couldn’t tear my eyes away.

Then a face popped up in front of my field of vision. Then another, and another. Mouths opened, lips moved. I saw expressions of concern. Someone took my arm, and guided me away from the wall and the explosion of red. The silence yielded, and I began to hear words.

“I’m all right.” The words were coming from me.

“No, you’re not,” a voice said. “Sit down.” A man took my arm. “Make room,” he ordered sharply.

The crowd parted to let me through. I squatted on the curb. Someone shoved a water bottle into my hand. The crowd regrouped around me. “Not again!” “How is she?” “Did someone call the police?” “Are you getting a pulse?” “Did she see the shooter?”

A man bent over Daria, his back to me. After a moment, he straightened. “She’s gone.”

I heard murmurs, a cry, several intakes of breath. “Are you sure?” someone asked.

The man got to his feet and turned around. “I’m a doctor.” He checked his watch and then came over to me. “What about you? How are you doing?”

I looked at Daria’s body. “I’m alive.”

***

Sniper!

I saw it on the face of the first cop on the scene. The cruiser raced up the ramp and swerved to a stop. The officer jumped out, leaving the engine on and the roof lights flashing. Young and eager, he was wearing a khaki uniform and the wide-brimmed campaign hat Illinois state troopers have worn since World War One. When he saw Daria, his face paled and his body went rigid, and for a minute I thought he was going to throw up. Then he seemed to realize that people were looking to him for guidance. He threw his shoulders back and planted his hands on his hips, an Eagle Scout with a gun on his hip. The only tip-off to his feelings was a muscle in his jaw that kept twitching.

Once he’d determined who I was and that the pickup was gone and no one was in imminent danger, he radioed from the cruiser, nodding several times as he spoke. Then he went to the trunk and fished out a megaphone.

Knots of people had gathered on the tarmac, some around me, others in the parking lot, still others in front of the building’s entrance. “All you folks go inside,” he bellowed through the megaphone. “And don’t touch anything. More troopers are on the way, and they’re gonna want to talk to all of you.”

The crowd started to thin. I got to my feet and started toward the building, but the trooper held up his palm. “Not you. You come with me.”

He led me over to the cruiser. “The detective wants to talk to you.”

“How long do you think that will be? I’d like to go home. My daughter’s—”

He cut me off and opened the rear door. “Hard to say.”

Reluctantly I slid in. I’d been in patrol cars before; this one wasn’t much different. A radio, dash lights, a minicomputer beside the driver’s seat. I settled myself in the back seat, pulled out my cell, and called Rachel.

“Hi, sweetie. How are you?”

“Bored.” Her voice was sullen. “I IM’d everyone, but no one’s around. They’re all at camp. Or Europe. Everybody’s
someplace
. Except me.”

If I didn’t know better, I might think she’d developed a case of “North Shore-itis,” a common affliction of teenagers who’ve been raised in affluence and feel entitled to everything. But Rachel is a level-headed girl. Most of the time. “You were the one who said you were too old for camp.”

“Yeah, well, there’s nothing to do.”

I’d been trying to warn her since March this might happen, but any suggestions about getting a job, starting the community service project she’d committed to last spring, or even—perish the thought—summer school had gone unheeded. Like the grasshopper, my daughter was certain
something
would work out without her having to lift a finger, and she’d done nothing to prepare for summer. Ordinarily I might have let loose with an I-told-you-so, but given where I was and why, being right didn’t seem important.

“Why don’t we talk about it when I get home, okay? I’m calling to say I’m going to be late.”

Silence. Then, “You said we could go to the movies tonight.”

“I’m sorry. Something happened.”

“You’re working late…again,” she groused.

“Not exactly.”

Thankfully, she didn’t pursue it. “When will you be home?”

I took a quick look at the clock on my cell. “Eight or eight thirty, I hope.”

“Jeez.” She sighed heavily. “Well, I guess I’ll call Daddy and see what he’s doing.”

I forced myself not to react. I’ve been divorced from Barry nearly ten years, and while our relationship wasn’t outright hostile, Rachel was savvy enough to use it as leverage. She’d been playing us against each other for years, and it didn’t help that I was susceptible to guilt trips, especially where she was concerned. More than once I’d wondered whether my child-rearing skills—or the lack of them—were creating a future ax murderer. Or worse, a politician. But I’d deal with that later.

“Just let me know where you end up,” I said evenly.

Not long after that, several cruisers, the paramedics, and an unmarked car arrived in a blaze of lights and sirens. Two troopers herded the remaining gapers back into the building. Another secured the area around Daria’s body with crime-scene tape. Another watched the paramedics as they tried to take vital signs. The doctor hovered over them.

A dark van from the Northern Illinois Crime Lab pulled up. Two evidence technicians got out and retrieved large duffles from the back. At the same time, a few roadway maintenance trucks lumbered through the oasis and parked across the ramps, closing the oasis to traffic. One of the evidence techs snapped pictures, while the other took out paper, plastic bags, and markers. There was a subtle harmony to their work, as if each one knew his part and was performing it well.

Their familiarity was probably the result of experience. This was the second sniper attack—or drive-by, or whatever you chose to call it—in the Chicago area this year. The first had occurred in April at a highway rest stop on the South Side. The victim, a nurse named Pam Blades, had been coming out of the oasis with her teenage son. She was shot twice by someone from a slow-moving pickup. She died immediately. Police mounted an intense investigation, but three months later, the shooter was still at large. They did recover a bullet fragment that indicated the shooter had used a high-powered rifle, but whether he was a psycho, a weirdo bent on revenge, or even a terrorist, no one knew.

Now, an older man got out of an unmarked, moving with such a sleepy gait that I wondered if he’d been napping. Smallish, with thin blond hair, he was dressed in chinos and a navy blue golf shirt, and his gut hung over his belt. Fumbling his car keys into his pocket, he conferred with the paramedics, technicians, and the trooper who’d been first on the scene. Then he stuffed his hands in his pockets and stared at me.

***

Sniper! I thought. That’s what it had to be.

The sun dipped behind the trees along the roadway, streaking the clouds with pink and purple. The photographer packed up his camera; the other tech lit a cigarette. The coroner’s rep, who’d been parked in a white van at the edge of the tarmac, wheeled a gurney with a dark plastic body bag to where Daria lay.

The man in the navy shirt ambled over to the cruiser and blinked. I rolled down the window.

“Miss Foreman? I’m Detective Lieutenant Walter Milanovich.” His voice was surprisingly soft, in contrast to his world-weary appearance. “How ’bout I buy you a cup of coffee.”

As I slipped back inside the building, the elderly woman with the straw hat, who’d been waylaid by the shooting, was inside as well. She pursed her lips again as if it was my fault Daria had died and ruined her day.

Milanovich motioned me to a table in front of the Starbucks booth and a few minutes later brought over two lattes. He had ruddy cheeks and a pink forehead. His eyelashes were even paler than his hair, making his blue eyes appear abnormally large. I had the impression they wouldn’t miss much.

He sat down. “So, tell me what happened.”

I did.

He blinked. “She was having a fight?” He dumped three packs of sugar into his latte.

I nodded. “With her boyfriend, I think. But they made up.”

“How do you know?”

I told him what I remembered of the conversation on the cell.

He blinked again. “She was using a borrowed cell?”

I nodded.

“Can you describe the man who lent her his cell phone?”

I thought back. I’d hardly noticed him at all. “He was—average.”

He looked as if he’d expected me to say that. “Can you be more specific?”

“He had a crew cut, I remember. Maybe a buzz. And horn-rimmed glasses.”

“Hair color?”

“Brown, I think. But it was short.”

“Build?”

I shrugged. “Medium?”

Milanovich shot me a look. “Eyes?”

I thought about it. “I didn’t notice. But he was wearing jeans—oh, wait. When she returned the phone, she said to him, ‘Hope you catch some big ones.’”

Milanovich raised his eyebrows. “Big ones?”

“Yeah. Big ones. Like fish. I had the impression he was going fishing.”

“Peachy.” Milanovich looked down and made a note. “There’s only about a thousand lakes in Wisconsin.” He looked over. “You happen to notice what kind of car he was driving?”

I shook my head.

“You didn’t see him drive away?”

“No. He walked around a corner. I didn’t see his car.”

He blinked again. “Now, you say she lived in Lake Geneva?”

“That’s what she said.”

He gazed at me with those sharp, oversized eyes. I couldn’t help thinking of a large fish. “Did she say where?”

“No.”

He took another sip. “What direction was she traveling?”

“I assume she was heading into Chicago.”

“Why did you assume that?”

I went over it in my mind. Now that I was thinking about it, I realized I didn’t know. We were on the southern side of the rest stop, but Daria hadn’t indicated where she was going or what she was doing. “Well, now that you mention it, I guess she could have been heading back to Lake Geneva.”

“She never told you where she was going? What she’d be doing when she got there?”

“No.”

“Didn’t you ask?”

“It wasn’t that kind of conversation.”

Milanovich blinked.

I ran my tongue around my lips. “But she did say she’d lost the entire day. I got the idea that whatever she’d planned didn’t happen.”

He blinked. “And you say you didn’t know the woman.”

“That’s right.”

“But you overheard her fighting with her boyfriend. And then you talked to her at the brick wall.”

“Yes.”

An edge had crept into his voice. Where was he going with this? He was about to say something but was cut off by the arrival of the coroner’s rep, a middle-aged man with a thick gut, beady eyes, and a five o’clock shadow. “I’m done here, Lieutenant,” he announced.

Milanovich rose from the table and motioned the man to follow him. They regrouped a few feet away from me. “What have you got?” He lowered his voice, but I could still hear him.

“Not much.” The man reminded me of a three-dimensional Homer Simpson. “The entrance wound wasn’t that big, but the exit wound more than made up for it.”

“Consistent with a high-powered rifle?”

Homer nodded. “It’s a safe bet.”

“Chest wound?”

“Straight through the heart, ribs, backbone, and out the other side.”

Milanovich blinked. “No one’s found any shell casings or fragments yet, but we have dogs on the way.”

“The night is still young.”

Milanovich ignored him. “Anything else?”

“Just the obvious.”

“What’s that?”

“The guy’s a hell of a shot.”

The detective shifted. “You’re doing her tomorrow?”

Homer nodded.

“I’ll call you.”

The coroner retreated, rubbing his hand across his chin. Milanovich came back and sat down. “So. You never saw her before.”

“That’s right.” I said, for the third—or was it tenth—time.

“But you heard her fighting with her boyfriend.”

“Yes.”

“And then they made up.”

“Yes.”

“And he said he was coming to pick her up.”

“I assumed that from what she said.”

“Which was?”

“Which was something like, ‘Thanks. I’ll be waiting. Please come quickly.’”

“Anything else?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did she say anything else?”

I was quiet for a moment, trying to remember. “Yes. She did. She said her cell was out of juice.”

“Again? Didn’t you say she’d said that before you went inside the oasis?”

“Yes. She said it twice.”

“So she repeated herself?”

I nodded. “The man whose cell she was using was a few feet away. I figured she wanted to get off so she could give it back.”

“So she repeated that her cell was out of juice.”

I sat straighter. Something about him was different.

He set his cup down on the edge of the table and folded his hands. “Let’s back up. You were here…what…getting a cold drink on your way home. The woman…Daria…” He paused. “…a woman you’d never seen before seemed to be in distress, and you stopped to chat.”

He’d stopped blinking. That’s what was different.

“Then she goes inside, comes back out, and five minutes later is shot dead. Not even three feet from you.”

He watched me as if I was some kind of mildly curious lab specimen. I started to miss the blinking fish.

“Look, Detective Milanovich. I didn’t know the woman, but she was clearly upset. At least at first. Then she calmed down. I was just trying to be pleasant. That’s all.”

He settled back in his seat, still appraising me. Then he blinked. “Okay. Tell me about the pickup.” His burst of energy had vanished; the world-weary fish was back.