Val continued to scour the roof for evidence, looking for DNA and making mental notes about where she’d want the Forensics Unit to test for fingerprints. With the morning’s lessons fresh in her mind, she searched for shell casings, but found none. The shooter had been thorough in cleaning up after himself.
She did, however, establish that he would have had a clear shot from the roof down to the plaza in front of the clinic.
Meanwhile, Travis radioed down to Simpson, requesting a forensics unit. The response was not what they were hoping for.
“Didn’t I tell you bozos to stay the hell away from there?” Simpson snarled over the radio, loud enough for the next county to hear. “If you’ve contaminated that scene, I’ll slap both of your asses in a sling so fast—”
“We’ll wait here until the bones and blood team arrive,” Travis said into the mic. Val recalled some of her workshop classmates using that term for forensic scene inspectors. When Travis released the “talk” button, Simpson was still cursing them out, meaning he hadn’t heard a word Travis said. Which, Val guessed, he had expected.
“Any signs that a weapon was fired here today?” Travis asked Val.
“No shells or obvious gunshot residue,” Val said. “We’ll see what trace elements the weapons guys can scrape up. If they come.”
“They’ll come. Five’ll get you ten if Old Tackle Box doesn’t tag along, too.”
Val refused the bet, and Simpson proved Travis right minutes later when he barged through the roof access door ahead of the forensics team.
“Get the hell out of my crime scene, you bumbling idiots,” he barked at them. “I need you down below on crowd control. See if you can find anyone that spotted the shooter. I want this guy behind bars by nightfall!”
Travis rolled his eyes and waved at Val to follow him down the stairs. She waited behind long enough to point out the footprint to the team and to forward her photos to them. She caught up to Travis in the tenth-floor hallway.
“What a dick,” she said. “Does he want to solve the case, or is it all about control?”
“Three guesses, and solving the case ain’t it,” Travis said. “Best not to press our luck with him. He’s not completely wrong, anyway. We need some eye-wit accounts, and there are far more wits to interview than there are cops to interview them. So, let’s go talk to some wits, and not,” he said, grinning and pointing upstairs, “to the half-wits.”
Val laughed. Travis’s humor had made working at Liberty Heights Precinct fun. She almost regretted leaving it for the WAVE Squad sometimes.
As had happened the day before, the eyewitness accounts varied on key details more than they agreed. One said the shooter was white, while a second said Black. One tall, another short. Each claimed to have spotted him, though in different places. One said they saw him on the tech building, another said atop the bank building. A third said he’d shot from the window of the penthouse suite of the luxury condos up the street. Another suggested there were multiple gunmen, each on a separate rooftop.
Most insistent among the witnesses was an angry white man with a crown of short brown hair surrounding a sunburned scalp. He pushed his large body through the crowd to brush aside a witness Val was interviewing to shout his own version of the events at high volume.
“They were shooting at us!” The man pointed to his T-shirt, which read, “I Choose Life!” He glared at the clinic workers huddled by entrance and sneered at them. “We’re the victims here.”
“You were shot?” Val asked, unable to keep the sarcasm out of her tone.
“Shot at,” the man said, louder. “As was my friend, standing less than ten feet from me. An innocent woman, exercising her first amendment rights, gunned down by the FemiNazi army. Yet all you care about is the people who wanted to murder babies!”
“Excuse me, sir, I didn’t catch your name.” Val mouthed an apology to the woman who she’d been interviewing. She loathed the man’s rudeness, but the woman hadn’t seen anything, and if this man did…
“Mack Zimmerman,” the man said, calmer. “Z-I-M-M—”
“Got it. Did you see the shooter, Mr. Zimmerman?”
“See him?” Zimmerman glanced around. “Well, no. But we were clearly the primary targets.”
“Why do you believe this to be the case?”
Zimmerman’s mouth opened and closed a few times in angry surprise. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? After yesterday? They came back, and this time, they pulled the trigger!”
“You realize that there were three other victims,” Val said, “including a doctor and two patients at the clinic.”
“Patients, my ass!” He spit on the sidewalk. “Women who intended to murder their babies, and an abortionist who kills every day. They were collateral damage, I tell you. Or camouflage to hide the shooter’s true intent. Or accidents, or—”
“Did anyone threaten you personally today?” Val asked, growing irritable with the man.
Zimmerman threw up his hands. “Every day! The left is waging war on America, and they’re coming fully armed. We will respond, I promise you.”
Val calmed the man down enough to take his contact information. As Grimes pointed out the day before, they couldn’t discount his claim outright. But the threats to the clinic pointed in the other direction.
Which begged the question…
She called Gil and brought him up to speed, then asked, “Did we get any new threats today? Before the shooting, I mean?”
“Not here in Dispatch,” Gil said, “and nobody else alerted us to any. I’ll keep my ears open, though.”
Simpson returned a few minutes later, still in a foul mood, shouting at everyone in sight. When he spotted Val, he marched over, an angry grimace on his face.
“We found nothing up there. Nothing!” The stench of tobacco emanated from his twisted mouth while he spoke. “A complete waste of time. And it’s all your fault.”
“They’re already done up there?” Val asked. That didn’t square with what she’d learned in the workshop. Forensics teams often spent hours, especially at shooting scenes, combing the environment for trace elements of gunshot residue, shells, human DNA from hair or skin cells or saliva, and so on.
“Not quite.” Confidence faded from Simpson’s voice. “But all they’ve got is a partial footprint from God-knows-when. Not enough to establish it as a shooter’s perch.” Static blared from his radio, and he responded to the sender. “Yeah? You found something?”
“Some fibers and a hair,” the man responded. “We’ll need samples from the two officers that trampled all over the scene up here to rule them out.”
“You hear that, Dawes?” Delight dripped from Simpson’s his voice. “You and your partner need to cough up some skin and hair. And I don’t mean pubes.” He laughed, far too loud. “Go on, grab a couple of evidence bags and give it up. And for God’s sake, stay where I put you. You too, Blake. Bunch of dumb asses!”
Val sighed, plucked a hair from her head, and swabbed her cheek, then put each into labeled baggies. Guys like Simpson were the reason that experienced women like Jan Morgenstern hadn’t yet landed promotions. And why too many murder cases remained unsolved in Clayton.
Given Simpson’s antagonism toward her, she suspected she might have to fight and claw to stay involved in this case. But if that’s what it took, so be it.
Val returned to WAVE Headquarters late that afternoon, having skipped lunch and with a splitting headache. Simpson kept her and Travis on crowd control duty until the gawkers and attention-seekers dispersed and the forensics units pulled out altogether. They’d left the clinic surrounded by uniformed police and wrapped in yellow crime scene tape. So the shooter achieved at least one aim—shutting down Safe Haven for the foreseeable future.
That didn’t absolve her from paperwork, however. Old Tackle Box demanded a detailed accounting of her findings and observations by dinnertime. “And I eat early,” he’d growled when she opened her mouth to ask for a more specific deadline.
Well after 3:00 pm, Grimes showed up at the office looking wrecked and still wearing the same suit from the day before. Unshaven, his eyes bleary, and smelling like a rugby player after a summer doubleheader, he plopped down at his desk facing Val and blew out a frustrated, noisy breath.
“How’s Bobby Junior?” Val pushed her keyboard aside.
Grimes tossed his head to one side, waved a hand as if indifferent to her question. “He’s gonna need intensive chemo.” His eyes welled with tears. He wiped them away with the back of his hand and stared at the ceiling. “The weird thing is, he looks fine. Aside from a chronic headache, he never complains about anything. If you asked him, he’d tell you he feels good. All he wants to do is play football in the backyard.” He blew his nose into a ball of tissue he produced from his jacket pocket. “He gets it from Audrey. She’s been amazing. My rock, that woman. She’s…incredible.” His voice cracked, and he covered his mouth with one hand.
“I’m so sorry. You should be with her, Bobby. We’ve got this. Go take care of your family.”
“I gotta take a break from it all,” he said, his voice growing loud. “Work is about the only thing that can get my mind off of things. And I can’t do anything until…” He spun away from Val, his fingers pressed up against the bridge of his nose.
Val struggled for words, found none. Lucky for her, Sergeant Petroni came to the rescue, appearing in her office doorway, arms folded. “Hey, Bobby,” she said in a soft voice. “Dawes is right. Take whatever time you need and spend it with your family, okay? The murderers and rapists can wait for a few days.”
“Yeah, if only,” he said with a bitter laugh. He straightened and drew an audible breath. “Come on, I need the distraction. Give me something to do.”
Petroni locked eyes with Val, shrugged, and tapped her chin with one finger. “Okay. You’re pretty good with weapons and ammo. The ballistics report on the fatality came in. Take a quick read and see what it gives us.” She ducked into her office and returned with a folder, set it on his desk. “Dawes, I already emailed it to you. Back him up on this after he’s taken a moment to digest it.” She threw Val an intense, questioning gaze.
Val read her expression as: Humor me.
She read her copy of the report at her desk, glancing back at Grimes from time to time. He leaned back in his chair and studied the thick document in front of him for several minutes, never once turning the page. She gave him some more time, filling out more paperwork for Simpson, finishing about an hour later. Grimes still hadn’t budged. He’d barely even blinked.
“Well, what do you think?” she asked him.
He started, almost falling out of his chair. “Uh, yeah, it looks pretty complete. I can’t poke any holes in it.”
Val bit her tongue. Petroni hadn’t asked them to critique the report. She’d asked them to find leads. “I’m no expert, but it seems to suggest we’re looking for a long-barreled semi-automatic rifle,” she said, “one that shoots .22 LR caliber rounds. Rimfire cartridges. Unfortunately, far too common and used by a wide variety of weapons. Do you agree?”
He blinked at her, uncomprehending.
She suppressed a sigh. She’d essentially recited the summary on the second page of the report.
“Uh, yeah, that sounds about right,” he said. “Copper-plated, 30-gram rounds, right?”
“Right.” His recall of those details made her feel better. “So, pretty good range for a semi. Would you agree with the analyst’s conclusion that it’s probably a sportsman’s rifle?”
He paused, another blank look crossing his face. “I’d hate to contradict the experts.”
Her concern heightened again. She’d made that part up to test him. “Good, good. Thanks for the insight.” She stood and stretched, faked a yawn. “Well, it’s late on a Friday. Maybe we should call it a day. I can get back on this tomorrow morning, get a head start on Monday.”
“What? It’s only four—” He glared at her with accusing eyes, and she felt caught. She must have shown that on her face, too, because he slammed the report on his desk. “Dammit, Dawes. You’re trying to get rid of me, aren’t you?”
She sat on the edge of her desk. “Sorry, Bobby. I just think you might not be at the top of your game, and don’t Audrey and the kids need you at home right now?”
He started to object, then threw his hands up in the air. “Dammit, Dawes. Yes, of course. You and Petroni are right. I’m as useless as tits on a bull. I should take some time off. It’s just that, when I’m home, all I can think is…the worst.” His voice grew hoarse and he inhaled loud breaths through his mouth. “God, this sucks.”
“Big time,” Val said. “I don’t know what’s best. However, I’m guessing it sucks worse for Bobby Junior, no matter how brave a face he’s putting on. If I were him, I can’t imagine anything I’d want more than my mom and dad spending as much time with me as possible, telling me everything’s going to be all right.”
He stared at her for a long moment, then stood and rested his hand on her shoulder. “I know you’re not the hugging type. But damn, you’re smart sometimes, you know that?”
She smiled, stood, and pulled him in for a quick hug, patting his back to keep it from going on too long. “Now go home and give Audrey a hug for me.”
He broke the embrace, smiled at her, and trudged out the door.
Stafford completed his deliveries, despite his mind wandering constantly to the morning’s activities, and returned after his shift to the Safe House. He half-expected to find it ringed by police vehicles flashing their blue-and-red lights, sirens blaring. After all, if tar stuck to his shoe, then he must have left a footprint. The FBI would track him in some sort of National Footprint Database and link it to Army records. Or—worse: could DNA leak through the soles of boots? Had he shed hair, skin, saliva, anything?
No! He’d taken the precaution, worn the oversized boots and extra socks, all now incinerated. Every other trace, removed or obliterated. Everything was in impeccable order. Immaculate.
He parked a block away and walked the short distance to his building. Quiet as a church on Monday. No cops, not even a random pedestrian. Too quiet. Maybe the FBI had already come, warned the neighbors of their impending raid, ordered them off the streets—
He shook himself out of his paranoid gloom. Took slow breaths, repeated his calming mantra: I am free. In control and in command of my life. Doing the work of God. He will protect me.
Stafford entered the building, took the stairs two at a time, excitement growing. His compatriots-at-arms would greet him, praise his courageous act, reward him with honors and higher stature within the organization. He would accept their congratulations with outward humility and inner pride and accept whatever additional responsibility they asked of him.
He stopped at the door, listened. Voices inside, unlike earlier in the day. He knocked using the pattern unique to their group: Tat, tat, tat-a-tat-tat, tat. Waited, with his face down. He wanted to look up and see the joy in the face of his superiors all at once, hear their exclamations of Job Well Done, Our Hero.
The voices went silent. The door slid open. He raised his head—
Rough hands grabbed him by the shoulders, yanking him off his feet, and he fell face-first on the floor of the hallway inside the apartment. The door slammed shut behind him.
“Don’t fucking move!”
The angry, raspy voice sounded familiar. He lifted his head—
The sole of a boot landed hard in the crack of his ass, pointy toes slamming into his testicles. He howled in pain and crawled away from the punishing blows, flipping onto his back and then sat against the wall, hands protecting his crotch.
“What the—”
“Shut the fuck up!” His Cell Captain stood over him, glaring, fist raised. His menacing physique and booming voice squished him to the floor as if he’d sat on Stafford’s head. “What the holy fuck are you doing here? Are you crazy?”
Stafford’s mouth opened, fear and confusion flowing, no words forming.
“Get off the God-damned floor,” the Captain said, walking past him into the living room. “Freak.”
Stafford rolled into a sitting position, regaining his breath, and glanced at the silent TV. News coverage of the shooting, from what he could tell. “I…don’t…understand, Cap,” he said between gasps. “What…did I…do wrong?”
“Do wrong? Do wrong?” Cap laughed. “What didn’t you do wrong, you manlet? What the hell were you thinking?” He found a remote and flipped through the channels, each showing a different version of the same scene: the carnage at Safe Haven. Cap snarled and threw the remote into the sofa cushions. “Going apeshit like that, shooting at any warm body that moved, killing a pregnant woman, for fuck’s sake! Do you know what a disaster this was? What kind of mess you’ve made?”
Stafford dragged his butt across the carpeted floor, the friction from the rug warming his buttocks through his pants. The TV’s silent talking heads gave him no clues. “I needed to do something,” he said in a weak voice. “Those women, that doctor—they were going to kill those babies.”
The Cell Captain lunged toward him, stopped a foot away, his fists clenched. “And what the hell do you think happens to those first- and second-trimester infants when their mother’s body is no longer there to nurture them through birth?”
“I-I thought the doctors would…I dunno, put them in an incubator?” Tears welled in his eyes. A caption on the TV screen showed “Four dead—doctors fighting for lives of infants.” Nothing about how many abortions he’d prevented. “I don’t know. I didn’t realize…I thought they’d die if I didn’t do something. At least I gave them a chance.”
“A chance? You soyboy.”
Stafford winced at the insult. There could be no lower life form. And his leader, his mentor, had just lumped him in with the tofu-eating Bluepill crowd.
Cap made another fist, but refrained from striking Stafford again. For now. “And what about the protester? A forty-five-year-old woman. One of our allies, you moron. You shot one of ours.”
“Wh-wha?” Stafford’s stomach turned somersaults inside his gut. The TV captions didn’t mention that part. “Who…which one…I didn’t realize…”
“Yeah, you didn’t realize.” Cap shook his head. “Because you didn’t think. You went rogue, and way off schedule. So you created this circus.” He found the remote and turned up the sound on the TV, flicked the channel.
Ground-level images of the scene, surrounded by cops and onlookers, filled the screen. In front of the chaos stood a pair of reporters, one male and one female, both impossibly good-looking and each wearing affected expressions of deep concern. The male reporter intoned something about the “Friday the Thirteenth Shootings,” the act of a “lone wolf,” or so the police were claiming.
One word stood out. Shootings. Did that refer to the multiple victims at his scene, or multiple events?
The TV answered his silent query moments later. The screen shifted to another location—Tulsa, Oklahoma. There a young man had shot up a local Baptist college campus, killing two and wounding seven before taking his own life.
“The only saving grace,” Cap said, his voice calmer now, “is that other shooting is garnering more headlines.”
“Why is that good?” Stafford rubbed the sore spot on his head.
Cap sneered at him, hands on his hips. “This is why we didn’t want you going off on your own, half-cocked. Do you think this is about one clinic, one city, one baby? No! It’s about what kind of message we can send. It’s about shutting down these murder wards, once and for all.”
“That’s what I was trying—”
“You failed,” Cap said, his voice heated again. “Because you went rogue. Couldn’t accept your role, your place, your job. I expected more out of you. More loyalty, more faith.”
“Wait, that’s not f—”
“Oh, that’s not fay-er,” Cap said in a mocking tone. “You idiot. What’s the most we can expect out of this? Huh? What?”
Stafford shook his head in silence.
“I’ll tell you what. One weekend, tops, where one clinic in one small city pauses for a moment in serving the demands of ‘empowered women’—no matter what their men want. One weekend. But wait—they’re closed on Saturdays and Sundays anyway, so really we’re talking one day. Part of one day. They’ll be back in business Monday morning, and all the appointments they missed today will be wrapped up by Tuesday. So, how many lives did you save? How many men regained control of their lives and the safety of their families? Count ’em, I’ll wait.”
Stafford stared at the floor, saying nothing.
“I can’t hear you.”
Stafford glanced up at him, staring down with that condescending sneer. Still said nothing.
“Nothing to say? Well, that’s perfect, because nothing sums up the full extent of what you accomplished today. Actually, that’s an overestimate, because if anything, you set us back ten years.”
Guilt crept into Stafford’s heart, a pang of fear. “H-how? I don’t understand.”
“Because now we have to regroup, start over. Jesus! All you were supposed to do is case the clinics and report back. That’s it. Now you’ve got reporters climbing all over the backs of our allies, and you know what they’re going to say? ‘We abhor this violence and we’re confident none of our supporters had anything to do with it.’ Where does that leave you, then? Huh? Where?”
Stafford shrugged. Alone, he wanted to say. But he couldn’t bring himself to say it. Couldn’t bear to acknowledge that it might be true.
“So, what should we do?” The Captain paced the room, arms folded across his chest, stepping over Stafford’s outstretched legs as he passed. “Should I take the same tack? Disavow it all? Turn my back on you? Huh? What do you think? Should I call 9-1-1, turn you in?”
Stafford blanched, fear paralyzing him. “Y-you wouldn’t…would you? That would implicate you, the whole org—”
“I’ve never seen you before in my life,” Cap intoned, as if quoting someone. He faced Stafford again. “How was that? Pretty convincing?”
Sweat broke out on Stafford’s brow. “Please don’t. I’m sorry I fucked up. It won’t happen again.”
Cap crossed the room in two strides, his angry face inches from Stafford’s. “Damn straight it won’t,” he said between clenched teeth. Spittle sprayed Stafford’s cheeks, even got into his own mouth. His body suddenly lifted off the ground, rough hands lifting him by the armpits onto his feet. “Now go get ready for practice. We have a big event tomorrow and I want you focused. Oh, and by the way,” Cap continued, a cruel smile crossing his face. “Tomorrow? You’re going to lose.”
“What? I haven’t lost since—”
“I know.” His smile hardened. “It’s all part of a bigger plan. You need to learn the hard way, it seems, how to follow bigger plans.” He shoved Stafford against the wall, and he bounced off of it onto the floor. When Stafford picked himself up again, he had the room to himself.
Stafford stumbled to the sofa. His phone buzzed. He’d received a text. From Nora.
S —
Brave work today. So proud of U.
— N
He made sure the Captain couldn’t see the message. On top of everything else, he would see fraternizing with—worse, seeking approval of—a woman as tantamount to treason. A beautiful, Stacy-level woman, of all things.
For the first time in hours, Stafford smiled. After all the anxiety he’d carried on his shoulders all day long, after all the abuse he suffered when he’d hoped for praise and recognition, finally he had proof that somebody appreciated him.
Not someone he could ever tell his Captain about. But someone special.
It made everything worthwhile.