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Four

It wasn’t often that we were called to investigate a case this close to home. It certainly made it easier than needing to set off across the country on a government jet. But it was still sobering that someone had been killed and we needed to catch the bad guy—and preferably come out the other end alive. That’s where the bulletproof vest came in, but it wouldn’t do much against a knife or a shot to the head. I tried not to dwell on that, but the severity of the situation was never far from mind as the vest added a good thirty pounds to my lean frame.

Paige and I got snagged in traffic on Interstate 95 all because a car broke down on the side of the road and everyone slowed to gawk, making the drive about forty minutes longer than it should have been.

As we approached the scene of the shooting, people were huddled in masses, crying and hugging, pointing, and trying to make sense of what had taken place.

Being here emphasized our shooter had no qualms about making his or her kill in a very public place. Seeking to “make a splash?” With the numerous buildings facing Wilson Place, it would make it rather easy for the sniper to do the deed and get away.

After Paige parked and we cleared the barricade, we found Jack and Kelly standing with a man at the front door of Wilson Place, a corpse at their feet.

The man with them held out his hand to Paige and me and introduced himself as Captain Herrera.

Paige looked up at the building, and I followed the direction of her gaze. Residential, at least fifteen stories tall. People pressed their faces against windowpanes or stood gawking from their balconies.

What is it with people and gawking?

“Do we know what brought the prosecutor down here?” Paige asked.

“We,” Herrera referred to Jack and Kelly, “were just talking about that, matter of fact, but we don’t know yet.”

“I’d say something likely brought Reid here regularly,” I concluded. “Either that or he had this visit planned in advance. The sniper would have needed time to select a perch and plan this out.”

“Running with the assumption that Reid was the mark,” Kelly interjected. “But even if he was, it could just be that the right person—or wrong person, really—knew where he’d be and when to strike.”

“The doorman might be able to help us fill in some blanks.” Jack nudged his head toward a man at the back of an ambulance.

I thought the place looked nice enough to warrant a doorman, but that would mean… I looked down at Reid’s body and its positioning. It wasn’t that far from the entrance, and the way he was lying would suggest he’d just come out of the building. “He was shot upon exiting?”

“That’s right,” Herrera confirmed.

That meant our sniper had the timing fine-tuned. “Was the doorman injured?” He was being tended to by a female paramedic, but I was more interested in the extent of his injuries.

“He’s just shaken up,” Herrera said. “He got some blood on him.”

I let the picture play out in my mind—the doorman holding the door for Reid, Reid walking through, getting shot in the chest. “Our shooter knows what they’re doing,” I drove home again.

“I’d say so. Kill shot through a crowd, and only one person taken down.” Herrera crossed his arms and puffed out a breath of air. “So, what do you think we’re looking at here? Is the threat still active, the first in a series of planned shootings, or a one-off?” Herrera was looking at Jack for answers.

“It’s too soon to know for sure,” Jack said, tapping a hand over his shirt pocket where he kept his pack of cigarettes. I wasn’t a certified shrink, but it was easy to conclude they were his coping mechanism.

I scanned the area, taking in the surrounding buildings, curious where our sniper had built a nest. “Have you been able to figure out where the shot originated?”

Herrera shook his head. “We figure the sniper set up a nest thataway.” He pointed north. “But that’s about it. We’ll need to determine the angle of the shot to figure out any more, and for that, we first need the body examined by the ME.”

And any answers on that front probably wouldn’t come until after the autopsy. From there, it would take a lot of calculations to triangulate the direction of the sniper’s nest—and given the number of buildings in the area, we’d likely have to eliminate a few before we found what we were looking for.

“Anyone recall seeing anything?” Jack asked. “A flicker of metal in the sunlight?”

Jack was reaching, especially if we were dealing with a professional sniper. The gun—lock, stock, and barrel—would be black or covered in flat, black tape for the purpose of concealment.

“Nothing that’s surfaced yet,” Herrera confirmed.

Jack gestured up the side of the building. “We need to get officers knocking on doors, talking to these lookie-loos. Someone might have seen something from their apartments.”

“I was going to get that started when you showed up.” Herrera waved over an officer, instructing him to gather other officers and knock on every door in the building.

The officer scurried off to carry out his captain’s orders.

“It’s time to start getting some answers.” Jack put his attention on Herrera. “You said Reid’s family hasn’t been notified.”

“That’s right.”

“Kelly and I will take care of that.”

Herrera nodded. “Have at it. Not my favorite part of the job, anyway.”

None of us touched that because notification was the dark cloud of law enforcement.

Jack looked at Paige. “You and Brandon go talk to the doorman.” Then he turned to Herrera. “Do we know his name?”

The captain nodded. “Ronald McBride.”

Jack said to Paige, “See if you can get any answers as to why Reid was here. When you’re finished there, I want you to stay on the ground, talk to as many eyewitnesses as you can, and join the officers knocking on doors.”

Somehow I managed to bite my tongue, but canvassing was the job of uniforms, not FBI profilers.

“You got it, Jack,” Paige said.

“We’ll meet back at the Arlington PD at—” Jack consulted his watch “—let’s say two o’clock this afternoon. We’ll have a better idea where we stand by then.”

“I’ll have a conference room ready for you,” Herrera promised.

Paige and I set off in the direction of the doorman, and I saw two men cutting through the street toward the victim. The younger of the two was pushing a gurney and trailing a gray-haired man with a determined stride and carrying a medical bag.

“Looks like the ME and his assistant are here,” I said, and Paige simply nodded.

As we got closer to McBride, I’d put him in his fifties, though he looked older at the moment. His eyes were bloodshot, and his face pale except for the splotches of blood on his cheeks and forehead. He was breathing with an oxygen mask, and a paramedic had a hand on his shoulder. She was advising him to take slow, deep breaths. She scowled at our approach.

“Are you Ronald McBride?” I asked, ignoring the woman’s apparent attitude.

The man nodded, the apparatus bobbing with the movement.

“We have some questions for you,” Paige said with kindness and respect, but it did nothing to soften the paramedic’s grimace.

“Mr. McBride has been through an awful lot. Maybe a little later would be better.” She packaged her request like a suggestion, but I wasn’t fooled for what it really was. But there was no way I’d be going back to Jack and telling him we’d been stonewalled by a paramedic.

I squared my shoulders. “Unfortunately, we don’t have the time to wait around. There was a murder, and it’s imperative that we get the bottom of exactly what transpired here.”

The paramedic met my gaze, and her body stiffened, but she eventually stepped aside. “Keep it brief.”

“Mr. McBride,” I said, “we have just a few questions for you.”

McBride went to pull off the oxygen mask, and the paramedic made a motion to keep it in place, but he shooed her away and removed it.

The paramedic shook her head and wandered off.

“I’ll help in whatever way I can,” McBride said.

“We appreciate that,” I said. “Can you tell us what happened…from your perspective?”

“I…I was just holding the door—” he took a hit of oxygen, lowered the mask again “—the door open for him. It all happened so fast.”

Paige sat on the ambulance’s back step next to McBride. “It must have been terrifying.”

He looked over at her. “Never seen anything like it. Hope to never again.”

“Did you see or hear anything before the man went down?” I asked.

“No, like I said, it all happened so fast.”

“Fair enough.” It was probably too much to hope that he’d been looking in the direction of the sniper and caught a glimpse of something that would expose the nest.

“There was…” McBride licked his lips, “a woman who came out just ahead of him. She’s fine, as far as I know, but don’t quote me. I kind of lost track of everything after…”

“Do you know who she was?” Paige asked.

“Even if I did, I’m not at liberty to say, Miss.”

“Did the man who was shot and the woman know each other?” I was trying to feel out if there was any sort of relationship between the victim and this woman.

McBride clamped his mouth shut, and that told me there was a connection between Reid and the woman, but he wasn’t about to confirm it.

“Did you know the victim well?” I kept leaving Reid nameless to aid in objectivity.

“Can’t say as I did. But today was only my fourth day on the job.”

If McBride was being honest, which I had no reason to suspect he wasn’t—his employment record could be easily verified—then maybe his predecessor would be able to provide us with some insight. “Did you know the doorman you replaced?”

“Just his first name. Gerald. He retired. Age sixty-eight. All the standing was getting to his knees.”

I nodded. We could get Gerald’s information through Nadia and building management.

“Is there anything you can tell us about the victim?” Paige asked.

“I know he was some bigwig. Had money.”

“And how do you know that?” The money part was rather easy, given Reid’s wardrobe, which I’d noted upon arriving on scene.

McBride seemed to hesitate, but Paige and I waited him out.

“Roy told me after the man got on the elevator,” he eventually said.

Paige leaned in toward McBride. “And who’s Roy?”

“He mans the front desk, calls up to tenants to clear their visitors.”

I looked around. “Where could we find Roy?”

“Knowing him, he’s probably still at his post. He’s one of those guys who takes his job almost too seriously.”

“When did the man show up?” I inquired.

“Last night about eleven.”

Two things occurred to me. One, if Reid had an interview related to his job as a prosecutor, eleven at night was rather late—and it didn’t explain why he’d be there all night. Two was, “You have a long shift,” I said to McBride.

“Everyone at Wilson Place does, the doormen and the people at the front desk. You’re either on from ten at night to ten in the morning or the opposite. The long hours are probably another reason why all this is affecting me so much.”

“You saw a person shot right in front of you. No matter how tired or alert you are, it makes sense it would affect you.” Paige, ever the empathizer.

McBride took another hit of oxygen. “I suppose you’re right.”

“Do you know why he was here?” If we could get an answer to that, we might have motive, and it could also give us some suspects.

McBride shook his head. “Again, try Roy. Not sure he’ll be able to tell you, though, due to confidentiality issues.”

“We appreciate your help.” Paige took her card out of a pocket and handed it to McBride.

“Not sure how much help I’ve been, but Roy has a sign-in book for visitors. That might get you somewhere.”

Paige pointed to her card in McBride’s hand and stood. “If you think of anything else, call me. Anytime. Day or night. Okay?”

“I will, but I don’t think there will be anything.”

“Thank you for your help,” I reiterated, and once Paige and I were out of earshot, I said to her, “We’ll need a background pulled on McBride, even if it’s just to rule him out.”

“Makes sense to me,” she said. “In the least, I believe McBride knows a lot more than he’s telling us. Not sure how we’re supposed to get it out of him, though. He seems pretty comfortable hiding behind his employment’s confidentiality clause.”

“Me neither. Not sure he’s involved, but we need to consider everyone a suspect until they’re ruled out.” Not that I needed to say as much to Paige. She’d also know that those who appeared innocent were often the guilty ones. What’s to say McBride didn’t have some beef with Reid and fed information to the sniper? He was, according to his own words, a new employ, so that made me wonder what had led him to Wilson Place.

“For sure,” Paige agreed, “and we’ll need a report on the former doorman as well and to have a chat with him.”

“Yep.” I pulled out my phone, called Nadia, and made the requests. As I did, I scanned the area. The initial buzz was dying down, and I could see the medical examiner and his assistant working on Reid. Herrera was towering over the two of them, arms crossed. I thanked Nadia and hung up. “She’s getting us the backgrounds on McBride and Gerald Whoever-he-is.”

“Knowing Nadia, that won’t take too long. Why don’t we go have a word with the ME?” She nudged her head toward him.

If talking to him would delay canvassing, then I was all for it. “Sounds like a plan.”