Blood Ties (25 page)

N
AOMI WELBORNE INTENDED
to one day anchor a major news program, and she intended to do so before she was thirty-five. So she had ten years in which to pay her dues, on top of the three she had already spent at the small eastern Tennessee station where her blond good looks had gotten her on the air only to chirp brightly about the weather.

Naomi was better than that and she knew it. She was tired of being called in to be on air only as the weather girl in a short skirt, or for what amounted to a sixty-second filler if the real news happened to run short that day. She was tired of being assigned, instead of real news stories, story scraps the station manager cheerfully called
human-interest necessities
for the station.

“Because people’ll stop watching if we feed them nothing more than depressing stuff, Naomi.”

Human-interest necessities. Warm and fuzzy stories about little kids and heroic dogs and people who lived to be more than a hundred. She’d gone to so many goddamn birthday parties she suspected confetti was permanently embedded in her hair, and if she saw one more mutt awarded some medal or other for barking when he smelled smoke or learning to turn on a light switch because his owner couldn’t, she was afraid she’d borrow a gun from one of her cop contacts and shoot herself.

Enough was more than enough.

Naomi had been working on the final draft of her resignation letter the day before when the radio scanners at the station suddenly went berserk with activity. Police, fire departments and EMS, emergency electrical crews—all called to Serenade. There had been an explosion of unknown origin… cop down… at least one federal agent critically wounded… one known civilian casualty… deadly sniper still at large…

Naomi looked around the almost-deserted newsroom of the station and realized happily that fate had decided to reward her for her patience by dropping into her lap what looked to be a real career-making story.

The station manager had been obviously and insultingly doubtful about it when she lobbied hard for the assignment, but since all the other reporters were out, she was all he had. Reluctant, he sent her and a cameraman to Serenade.

“Just get some footage and try to get statements from witnesses and maybe a cop if any’ll talk to you. And remember, Naomi, we can’t compete with the cable-news outfits, so don’t try to get fancy. Just get the story and don’t get in the way or step on anybody’s toes doing it. Understand?”

“Sure, Keith.”

“Tell me you understand that I mean what I say.”

“I understand, Keith, okay? You really don’t have to worry about anything at all.”

Oh, she understood, all right. She understood this was her chance, and she was damn well going to take it.

Which was why she stubbornly remained, despite the complaints of her cameraman, with the shrinking group of reporters and camera crews behind the yellow tape long after most of the action—or at least most of the
filmable
action—had ended. And long after they’d heard anything more than a polite but distant “Keep back, please,” from any of the grave-faced deputies on the other side of the tape.

Dawn wasn’t far away, and the cleanup was all but done.

Dammit, I don’t have a thing for the morning news show
.

The body of the young deputy was gone, presumably to be autopsied, although Naomi was baffled as to why; everyone knew the poor kid had been shot, killed by the single bullet fired that day by the sniper. A single bullet that had also critically wounded a federal agent.

Not that any of the cops were willing to confirm that.

What remained of the wreckage of the destroyed SUV had been loaded onto a rollback and taken away, reportedly into the garage of the sheriff’s department—although she had missed that while trying to get a reluctant witness to say something on camera.

Dammit.

Broken glass had been swept from Main Street, the other rubble—made up of wood and brick and concrete and twisted metal—had also been removed, and numerous men had worked through most of the night to board up the shattered windows in the blast radius. One by one, the fire engines had departed, along with several EMS crews from neighboring counties.

The black van labeled
EXPLOSIVES DISPOSAL UNIT,
whose technicians Naomi would have sold her best shoes and possibly her soul to interview on camera, had slipped away early on, though another larger van—some kind of mobile command center, she guessed—remained parked across the street from the sheriff’s office.

Visibly alert men wearing obvious body armor and holding guns were stationed in front and back of the van, not even bothering to try to be casual about it, and both agents and deputies continued to go in and out as they had for hours, all night long. But they had positioned the big work lights in such a way that none of the news crews had been able to get a shot of the van that wasn’t obscured by the glare.

No way to shoot the good stuff, and all the rest was boring as hell. Even the electric crews had calmly and methodically—and with a minimum of sparks, dammit—restored power to most of Main Street sometime after midnight and were now working on blown transformers farther out.

And not one of the numerous FBI agents coming and going throughout most of the night had spared even a glance toward the media, no matter how loudly the questions were shouted.

“Give it up,” Rob, her cameraman, advised dryly. “We should go home and get some sleep. They aren’t going to say a damn thing, on or off the record. The deputies might as well have tape over their mouths, and the feds just plain know better.”

“They have to talk to us sooner or later,” Naomi said.

“No, they don’t. They let the sheriff be spokesman because it’s his town, but the truth is they aren’t going to tell us squat until they’re damn good and ready. And if that explosion was caused by a bomb—”

“You know it was.”

“I know witnesses think it was and cops aren’t saying. But if it was a bomb, you can bet it’ll be days—if ever—before anybody official confirms that. With all the terrorist shit going on in the world, people hear the word
bomb
and panic. Nobody wants a panic, especially in a nice little town that depends on tourists for at least some of its livelihood.”

Naomi had stopped listening after the bit about it being days before anybody official would confirm what had happened. She didn’t have days. She was lucky Keith hadn’t already sent another reporter out here and recalled her. And if it
was
a bomb he most surely would.

Unless, of course, she managed to get something really juicy on tape.

“Whatever you’re thinking,” Rob said, “please put it out of your pretty blond head. I’d like to live to a ripe old age and retire with a gold watch, or some shit like that.”

She smiled at him very sweetly. “You just keep the camera ready—and for Christ’s sake keep the shot in focus.”

“Hey, you do your job, Barbie, and I’ll do mine.”

“Oh, I’ll do my job, all right. Shut your mouth and follow me.”

Rob followed her as she began to work her way back from the crime-scene tape and closer to the buildings on one side of Main Street. But he didn’t shut his mouth until he’d muttered, “If I’m staying awake all fucking night, there damn well
better
be something to film.”

That wish would haunt him for a long, long time.

T
here was more room inside the mobile command center than one might expect, even with all the machinery and other equipment, but it was still very crowded, despite the fact that most of the agents and Sheriff Duncan remained standing.

“Unfortunately, we don’t know much more than we did when you left, Miranda.” Special Agent Dean Ramsey, SCU, had arrived with the first wave of agents after the bomb blast and shooting. As one of Bishop’s senior primaries, it had fallen on his shoulders to make order out of the chaos in the temporary absence of Miranda, who had been and still was the lead investigator on this case.

Ramsey, who had recently retired from the military when Bishop recruited him, was older than most of the other agents at forty-five but kept himself in peak physical condition. He was above medium height and slender, an auburn redhead with level brown eyes and a tough look about him that said you’d want him on your side no matter what the fight was about.

And he had retained something of an army crispness in how he relayed or requested information, wasting few words. “But we have managed to determine at least a few facts. Tony?”

“We identified the body on the roof of the old theater,” Tony reported obediently. “Not that it’s going to help us much. He’s a local, and the sheriff confirms he’s a known hunter.”

“Even out of season,” Duncan said with a heavy sigh. “But he follows—followed—the rules otherwise, and he was a careful, safe hunter.”

Tony nodded. “Cal Winston, forty-three. Divorced, father of two kids, who live with his ex in Gatlinburg. Neither of the guns found with him is registered to him; his own guns are still in his home here just outside town—with the exception of his hunting rifle, which is missing. All of his guns were duly and legally registered, and he kept them in a gun safe.”

“His kids,” Duncan murmured. “Didn’t want to take any chances there. He was… a careful man, like I said. He was a good man.”

Gravely, Miranda said to him, “I’m sorry, Des.”

“Yeah, me too. Has anybody called his ex?”

“Not yet,” Tony volunteered.

“I’ll do it, then. I knew them as a couple before Cal had a stupid summer and ran Sheila off.”

Nobody asked him to elaborate.

Tony said, “Appears he was very well liked. No enemies we’ve found yet, and everybody seems honestly stunned that he’s dead. Apparently wasn’t the type to get anybody stirred up against him, and definitely wasn’t the type to commit suicide.”

Miranda was silent for a moment, then frowned. “The guns found with him—anything?”

Tony shook his head. “Not much. Serial numbers filed off both guns, but the handgun’s probably the gun that killed him. No gunpowder residue on his hand; plus he was a lefty but shot in the right temple, so it’s a safe bet he didn’t off himself. It was a close-contact wound, though, so whoever it was all but pressed the barrel against his head before pulling the trigger.”

“Up close and personal,” Jaylene murmured.

“Yeah. So I’m guessing either the sniper practically fell over him and had to kill him, planned to make this kill different just to mix things up, or else needed him on his feet right up until he got him on that rooftop.”

“What about the rifle?” Miranda asked.

“Could be the weapon used on Tuesday and yesterday—it’s the right caliber—but we won’t know for sure until the ballistics report is in. Probably later today.” Tony paused, then added, “Hell of an expensive gun to waste. The real killer must have known that leaving it on a roof with a fake sniper-slash-bomber wouldn’t fool us for more than five minutes. That bugs me. I don’t know why, though.”

There was another brief silence.

“We inventoried the backpack found with him,” Dean said, picking up the report in his methodical way. “Nothing unusual for a hunter expecting to spend a few days in the woods, and looks like everything belonged to him. Only his own prints were found.”

Miranda looked at Jaylene with a lifted brow, and the other woman nodded, saying, “There was… no sign it wasn’t his stuff.”

Returning her gaze to Dean, Miranda waited.

“The explosives experts say there was nothing special about the bomb, certainly no signature they recognized. It was some of the newer plastic explosive, but the stuff is fairly easy to come by if you know who to ask. The remote detonator was ready-made and could have been purchased from just about any well-equipped gun or munitions dealer.”

“Which we have a lot of around here,” Duncan offered.

Tony nodded. “I’ll say. And a few of them on the watch list, Miranda. But nothing jumps out.”

“Okay. Still, we’ll run the usual checks and see if we can chase down the dealer. It’s an assumption but a fair one that our sniper was here Tuesday evening, left, and apparently returned by early yesterday morning with the explosives. I’d like very much to know where he got them.”

Dean said, “The time span gives us a rough radius for our search, since he couldn’t have gone all that far—and back—in only a few hours. We’ll have some extra personnel to search: The Bureau field office in Knoxville is happy to help. They’ll send out agents as early as possible this morning and start canvassing gun and munitions dealers, army surplus, weapons experts, and anybody else the sniper might have dealt with. It is, as the sheriff said, a pretty long list, and it’ll probably take several days to cover all the ground, but we’ll go through it as fast as we possibly can.”

“Good. Did Dr. Edwards confirm time of death for Mr. Winston?”

Without the need to consult his notebook, Dean said, “Eighteen to twenty hours before he was found.”

She drew a breath and let it out slowly. “So there’s no way he was our shooter on Tuesday. No big surprise, I think.”

Sheriff Duncan said, “What I don’t get is why the shooter went to all that trouble. Maybe Cal being in his way was just happenstance; that was probably his deer blind your people found on Tuesday, and maybe he was in it when the sniper needed it. Or maybe he came along later and was a serious problem for the sniper. So killing him I get. But then to transport a sizable man a considerable distance—whether he was on his feet and protesting or literally dead weight—only to haul him to a rooftop and prop him up for window dressing? What would be the point?”

“A distraction,” Miranda said. “For us. And we’ve been distracted. We’ve had to use resources to identify Mr. Winston and eliminate him as a suspect. Had to take time. Trouble.”

Duncan was frowning. “So—what? The whole point was to slow you—us—down? Stall for time? Why?”

“I don’t know,” Miranda said.

“But you believe that was why?”

She hesitated, then said, “I believe that was part of the reason. I also believe the shooter was mocking us. Taunting us. He believes he’s smarter than we are. More clever. And he wants us to know that.”