A screeching of tires.
Detective Dunn yelled.
Bernadette ran down the sidewalk toward Eddie. He was lying on his back, shaking. Bernadette crouched next to him. A red stain in the shoulder of his overcoat was spreading.
“I—I—” Eddie sputtered, eyes wide. “What happened?”
Lots of blood. The bullet might have hit an artery. Faintly, Bernadette heard Dunn’s shouts fading. She was going after the shooter. Maybe the shot came from the blue van.
“I’m calling for help, Eddie,” Bernadette said. She’d been at CSAB a long time, but no one had ever gotten shot in front of her before.
Call the paramedics. Apply pressure. Bernadette fumbled with her phone and dialed.
“Nine-one-one, what’s your emer—”
“I need an ambulance,” Bernadette said as calmly as she could, but she heard the note of panic in her voice as she put the phone on speaker and set it on the ground next to Eddie. “Eighteenth and Juneau. A man’s been shot. He’s still conscious. I’m with him.”
Bernadette unwound her scarf, catching it on her earring in her haste. She pulled the scarf free and put it on top of Eddie’s wound, under his open overcoat, and leaned on the wound with both hands.
Eddie gave a strangled cry and swore loudly.
Her heart pounded in her ears as she gave the dispatcher her name and federal ID number.
“Sending an ambulance now,” the dispatcher said.
“How long?”
“I’ll get an ETA in a moment.”
“There’s a lot of blood,” Bernadette said. She could feel the blood soak through the scarf.
Ugh. Sophie gave her this scarf last Christmas. It was her favorite.
No. No thinking about that now.
“Less than five minutes, ma’am,” the dispatcher said.
“You’re gonna be okay, Eddie,” Bernadette said, leaning forward to put more weight on the wound. “The ambulance will be here any minute.”
“I got shot?”
“There was a light blue van in front of your apartment building,” Bernadette said.
“Is that who shot me?”
“Maybe.” Was that the same light blue van that almost ran me over? Bernadette shifted her weight, the cold sidewalk digging into her knees. “Do you know someone with a blue van?”
Eddie gave a laugh and then winced. “That bastard.”
“Who? Who do you mean?”
“Only person I know who drives a light blue van.” He wheezed.
No blood in the airway. That was a good sign. “Who, Eddie? Who is it?”
Eddie giggled. He was going into shock.
“Who, Eddie?” A siren around the corner, getting closer.
“Tommy,” Eddie said. “Tommy drives a blue van.”
Detective Kerrigan Dunn plunked herself in the chair next to Bernadette in the hospital waiting room. “Some morning,” she muttered to Bernadette, tapping on her phone.
Bernadette blinked. How long had she been sitting there?
She’d ridden in the ambulance with Eddie, but he couldn’t answer any of her questions. Who’d want to hurt him? Why would anyone would target him? The oxygen mask went on and then Bernadette was useless, only getting in the way as the paramedics had tried to stabilize him.
It was a handful of blocks to Aurora Sinai, and after the ambulance pulled in, two men rushed Eddie through double doors. Bernadette wasn’t permitted to follow. A health care worker had escorted her to the waiting room.
She looked at the phone. Four missed calls from Maura. One from Dunn.
“I missed your call,” she said.
Dunn drummed her fingers on the arm of the chair. “You had a lot on your plate.”
Bernadette shut her eyes. “Eddie told me that Kymer Thompson drives a blue van. He thought Tommy was trying to kill him from beyond the grave.”
“Yeah.” Dunn leaned back in her chair. “Tommy didn’t have a car, though. I’ve already put in a request to see if the Freshie had a blue van.”
“I almost got run over last night by a light blue van,” Bernadette said quietly.
“What?”
Bernadette told Dunn about following Nick LaSalle, then losing him at the arena and the van coming up on the sidewalk.
“You need to put that in your report.”
“Of course.” Bernadette had to get her head in the game. She’d known when she accepted the demotion—and really, what other choice did she have?—that she’d be working homicides, and it could be more dangerous than money laundering. In the last fifteen years, she could count on one hand the number of times she’d drawn her gun—and she’d only fired it at the range. That ping—that was the bullet whizzing right by her ear. Another couple of inches and she’d be dead. If she’d been much taller, it would have hit her shoulder, not Eddie’s. And if she hadn’t jumped out of the way, she’d have been hit by the van—maybe the same van—the night before. “You didn’t get a license plate, did you?”
“Partial,” Dunn said. “Wisconsin plates.” Her phone rang and she answered immediately. “Dunn.” A pause. “Right, I should have thought of that. Anyone in particular?” Another pause. “No, that’s everything I need for now, thanks.” She ended the call and turned to Bernadette. “Guess who the van belongs to.”
“If you say Kymer Thompson—”
“Maybe I should say, ‘Guess what the van belongs to.’”
Bernadette squinted at Dunn. Not the Freshie—she would have said. Then it hit her, and she felt stupid for not thinking of it sooner. “Agios Delphi.”
“Yes. I’d say there’s a lady priest we need to start putting the screws to.” Dunn stood.
“Are they putting an APB out on the van?”
“Yes. You ready to go?”
“All the way out to Whitefish Bay?”
“Maybe. We’ll check the Anne Askew Chapel first. Agios Delphi was supposed to have their weekly service there last night. Maybe Reverend Roundhouse is there cleaning up.”
“I thought their service was cancelled.”
“You’d rather drive all the way to Whitefish Bay and realize she’s back here?”
Bernadette closed her eyes. Only a couple of hours ago, she’d been inches away from leaving Sophie without a mother.
“Bathroom,” Bernadette said, and got to her feet without looking Dunn in the eye. She saw the sign for the ladies room and thirty seconds later she was looking at herself in the mirror above the sink.
I am a badass, she thought, and breathed out, but the air caught in her throat. Even though she wore a dark suit, it wasn’t hard to tell that she was stronger than the average forty-year-old—hell, than the average twenty-year-old. She regularly benched one-sixty-five. She could have lifted Eddie Taysatch into the ambulance by herself if she had to. I am strong. I am strong enough to take this on. She found a hair tie in her purse and put her hair back into a ponytail.
She could take Vivian Roundhouse. She could take both Vivian and her girlfriend if she had to. She closed her eyes and envisioned the last round of training shots she’d taken. It was the most accurate she’d ever been—her instructor said she was in the ninety-fifth percentile of agents.
But accuracy on the shooting range didn’t always translate in practice. She’d read the articles—accuracy dropped to thirty percent in real-world scenarios. And whoever the shooter was had been accurate. There must have been thirty feet between the car and Eddie Taysatch.
Unless the shooter had intended to hit Bernadette instead—
Bernadette opened her eyes, and the room spun for a moment before snapping into place. This wasn’t helping. It wasn’t doing any good to think about it here. She’d go see Vivian Roundhouse, she’d get answers or she’d kick some ass.
Why get rid of Eddie Taysatch? Did he know something? Did he see something?
She looked in the mirror and straightened her blazer, took a deep breath, and walked out the door.
Dunn drove the cruiser, Bernadette in the passenger seat, turning onto Twelfth Street from Highland Avenue.
“There was an open spot back there,” Bernadette said.
“Let’s drive around the campus. The chapel’s up here on the left—let’s see what we can find.”
“What we can find?”
“Any light blue vans that might be parked on the street.”
Bernadette shook her head. “You put out an APB on the van. Do you really think someone shot Eddie Taysatch and left it parked on the street?”
“Stranger things have happened.” They turned into the campus. The snow let up until only a few flakes fluttered to the earth. “Did Eddie say anything else?”
Bernadette turned away from the street—no sign of the van yet. “What?”
“You rode with him to the hospital. Did Eddie say anything else?”
“No. He was going into shock.”
“You didn’t see the driver, did you?”
“Nope.”
Dunn rubbed her neck, then put her hand back on the steering wheel. “Even after we talk with Vivian Roundhouse again, we’ve got a bunch of people to interview. There’s the head of the Piscary Association, Douglas Rheinstaller. We can lean on him—he’s the one who punched Eddie, after all.”
“How hard do you want to push?”
“We can bring him into the station and charge him with assault if we need to.”
“Maybe he’s got a light blue van, too. Or maybe someone else at the Piscary Association.”
“I checked. He doesn’t have a van, but we’ll check out the other members of the board, maybe a few of his friends. It’s a common make and model.”
“Where do we interview him?”
“He lives out near the airport. Works as an electrician. Gets home about three. I vote for heading over there after we talk with the reverend.”
Bernadette looked out the window again. Still no blue van.
Dunn braked for a stop sign. “You think your sniffy colleague will turn up any time soon?”
Bernadette tapped the armrest thoughtfully. “Who knows? He has a history of going AWOL on cases.”
“Then why keep him around?”
“He’s impossible to replace.”
Dunn tapped the steering wheel thoughtfully. “Can he really smell when this ibogaine stuff has been in a room?”
“I think so. Obviously, my bosses think so, too.”
Dunn turned a corner and Bernadette recognized the street. They’d made a loop all the way around campus. “I don’t think we’ll find the van.”
“Me neither.” Dunn pulled in front of a parking meter at the curb, and they got out, the passenger door gently scraping a mound of snow.
“What exactly is your plan, Detective?” Bernadette asked.
“Let’s ask the reverend about the van,” Dunn said. “See where that leads us. Maybe she can ask her bestest buddy Anne Askew if she can see the van from the sky.”
Bernadette shot Dunn a look. “You don’t need to be disrespectful.”
Dunn ignored her and quickened her pace to the quad.
Bernadette ran to keep up. “What do you think happened? You have a motive in mind?”
“I have some possible scenarios.”
“Such as?”
“Here’s one possibility. Kymer Thompson was stealing ibogaine from the Freshie to get it for the church’s rituals. Maybe he started blackmailing her.”
“We’ll need to check the logs at the Freshie.”
“Logs can be forged.”
“So how do you think we can prove—”
“I said it’s a possible scenario, Becker. I don’t have the answers. This is all speculation.” Dunn thrust her hands into the pockets of her coat. “Besides, you’re the one who asked.”
“Right. Sorry.”
“If my wild guess is right,” Dunn mused, “Kymer Thompson sees the priest’s nice expensive home, her Mercedes, he figures he’s taking the risk of getting kicked out of the program if he’s found out. Then he ups the price. Maybe negotiations get out of hand.”
“And how does that explain the syringe?”
Dunn shook her head. “I don’t know yet.”
“And how does Eddie Taysatch play into this?”
“He notices the missing ibogaine. He threatens to go to the cops.”
“Does he threaten to blackmail her too?”
“It’s one possibility. I bet after we talk to Roundhouse, we’ll have a better idea where to focus our resources.”
“I shouldn’t have asked,” Bernadette said. “We both need to go into this with an open mind.”
Dunn scoffed. “Now you sound like you’re advocating the use of iboga bark. If I put a little pinch between my cheek and gum, it’ll open my mind, is that it?”
Bernadette barked a laugh. “That’s exactly it, Detective. Me, an investigator with the Controlled Substances Analysis Bureau, encouraging a police detective to get high on a schedule 1 narcotic.”
Dunn grunted.
They found themselves at the front door of the chapel. A sign hung on the door reading No Tours Today. Dunn reached out and knocked.
The chapel docent—the one Bernadette had interviewed—opened the door a crack. “Sorry, ladies,” she said, “we’re not offering any tours—” Then she saw their faces. “Oh. It’s you again.”
Dunn held up her badge. “We’d like to speak with Vivian Roundhouse. Is she in?”
The docent stepped back and pulled the door open.