Michael Wall stirred his third cup of coffee as he looked at a sketch of the criminal he was supposed to be catching.
Nancy Howard’s instructions to the forensic artist had been white male, square jaw, facial hair, dark baseball cap.
It could have been anyone’s face. But it was better than nothing.
Next, Wall took out the folder of photographs taken at the scene of the shooting. The garage door’s still open. In front of Nancy’s parked car—a blue, late-model Buick—there’s an overturned black plastic bin that is covered in Nancy’s blood.
Inside the house, there’s more blood, on the walls, on the floor. It looks like the aftermath of a massacre.
There are photographs, too, of a nearby Dumpster—one that Carrollton PD had discovered after running a trace on Nancy’s cell phone. The shooter had dumped Nancy’s purse there, without taking her wallet, her cell phone, or keys. But, Detective Wall noted, the purse had been rifled through. Nancy’s driver’s license had been removed and discarded separately from the rest of her wallet’s contents.
The detective set a photograph of the license aside, opened his case notes, and underlined a few things that he had learned: “Shooter did not know Nancy Howard personally. Did not take car keys, wallet, or money. But checked against license to make sure of her identity and did this after the shooting.”
Michael Wall had known for a week now that Frank Howard had lied to Nancy about his whereabouts on the night of the shooting. Nancy had thought that Frank had been in Tampa. But then, of course Howard lied. He was having an affair. Like all cheating husbands, he’d have lied to anyone—said anything—to cover his tracks. The fact of that lie was less conclusive than the fact that Frank’s mistress, Suzanne Leontieff, confirmed Frank’s alibi, placing him in Tahoe on the night of the shooting.
Still, it didn’t add up. A cheating husband. A shooter who had to confirm he’d shot the right woman based on her license photo. A professional hit, in that the would-be killer had acted in cold blood, shooting Nancy Howard in the forehead while looking straight into her eyes. But a hit that had been botched, as only an amateur could have botched it?
If not for the surveillance tapes from First Baptist Church, Detective Wall would have been nowhere. But what those tapes had revealed was that a silver car had followed Nancy Howard’s Buick into the church parking lot.
When Nancy had parked, the silver car had parked, too, just a few spots away. When Nancy entered the church, the silver car drove away—only to return one hour later. Then a man had stepped out and walked into the church, where another surveillance camera captured him on his way into and out of a restroom.
None of the surveillance footage was anywhere near the quality Wall would have wished it to be. The detective had scanned it again and again and still couldn’t make out the silver car’s plates. But grainy as the footage was, it did show the man’s hooded sweatshirt, his blue jeans and black sneakers. It showed a dark baseball cap that all but covered his face. And it showed the thing that had cemented Detective Wall’s belief that Nancy Howard had been targeted—singled out—for extermination.
A few minutes after the man in the baseball cap had exited the men’s room, Nancy had exited the church. Outside, she’d walked through the rain back to her car. And when Nancy had pulled her car out of the church parking lot, the silver car had pulled out behind her and followed her into the street.
* * *
In the police department’s kitchen, where Wall had gone for his fourth cup of coffee, the other cops were incredulous.
“A hit man, Detective?”
“That’s what it looks like to me. I don’t have a confirmed suspect, or motive. I don’t have concrete evidence that would tie the victim’s husband in with the case. What I do have is footage that tells me the victim was tailed. I have her driver’s license—a license that the shooter checked and discarded, after performing the hit. I have a screenshot of a man who basically matches the victim’s description, right in the church that he followed her from.”
“Good enough to run through the database?”
“No, not nearly. But with one more lead, we could crack this case open.”
By the time Michael Wall had had his fifth and final cup of coffee for the day, the news had spread through the station: A shooter—a hit man—working right under their noses in Carrollton. The cops could hardly believe it. Nothing like this had ever happened in Carrollton before. But Wall had a good reputation. He was thorough and levelheaded. And on his way out of the office that evening, he finally caught a break.
“Detective?”
Wall turned around and saw Bethany Wright, a Carrollton PD officer who worked night patrol and raised two teenage boys by herself during the day.
“Officer, what can I do for you?”
“Detective, I heard about your break in the Howard case. It was a targeted hit?”
“That’s what it looks like, Bethany. They tossed the victim’s purse but took the driver’s license out of it first.”
“Checking to make sure they’d shot the right woman?”
“Can’t see another reason for someone to do that,” the detective says.
“Maybe I should have mentioned this sooner,” says the officer. “But a few weeks, maybe a few months ago, I booked a kid from East Texas. A meth head. I’ll go find the paperwork for you. But what I remember about him is this: He wouldn’t stop talking. And I’ll check my notes, but the thing that stuck in my mind was he told me he’d come to town to kill somebody.”
“You don’t say,” says the detective. “Well, you’ve got my full attention.”
“Now, most of what he said made no sense at all. He was just rambling and rambling. His brains were fried. A meth head, like I said. But he was just a kid, not much older than my own sons. I didn’t make much of it at the time.”
“And you checked this kid’s record?”
“I did. It was clean. So I let him sleep it off in the cell and we let him go the next morning. But, Detective, there’s one more thing I remember.”
“I’m listening, Bethany.”
“He actually used the word ‘hit man.’”
“Okay. We will certainly be looking into that. And, Bethany?”
“Yes, sir?”
“In the future, please feel free to come to me with anything like this. Anything at all.”
“Of course, sir. I’m sorry I didn’t bring it up earlier.”
“Well, you’re probably right and it’s probably nothing, so there’s nothing for you to feel sorry about. But in the meantime, why don’t you go and get all your paperwork on the kid. I’ll stick around and we’ll look over that report together.”