Blue Monday. The most depressing day of the year. According to the early morning radio report the shooter heard on his drive into the city, it falls every year on the Monday of the last full week in January. It derived from a formula that considered such things as the weather, personal debt levels, time elapsed since Christmas, the realization that New Year’s resolutions would be scrapped again, a lack of motivation, and yet a need for action. He knew it was pseudoscience, but to the shooter, it felt right. The other thing that made this day worth noting was that it was January 22nd, the anniversary of Roe v. Wade.
The shooter shivered despite the four thermal layers he wore beneath his tan overalls and jacket. He’d been in place on the rooftop since six a.m., and it was now nearing seven-thirty a.m. The day dawned a dreary gray, with sunrise a barely perceptible change from night. Even more of a constant was the bitter cold with the thermometer stuck at minus ten. The shooter’s nose hairs froze soon after he took his first couple of breaths after jimmying the lock and stepping out onto the roof.
It was quiet when he started his watch, with only the occasional car trudging down a nearby street, causing a muffled break in the silence. Now, however, cars were nose to tail. Honking. Beeping. Doors clunking open and shut added to the din. The wail of a police siren pierced the gloom, as the city threw off its covers and awoke on the bitterly cold morning.
The shooter perked up each time a car turned into the employee lot of the clinic he surveilled. Five cars already, but so far only women he assumed were nurses or office staff had scurried inside. He knew for sure they were women, because he watched each of them through his scope as they emerged from their vehicles. He could make out part of the patient and visitor lot that ran along the side of the building, and he held his crosshairs on a woman with long, dark hair as she got out of her car and walked out of view toward the main entrance. In the employee lot, a small white sign with “Physician Parking Only” in red lettering stood sentry over the vacant space nearest the back door.
The warm, wholesome smell of fresh-baked bread and shnecks wafted up from the industrial bakery that took up the two floors below and supplied loaves and pastry under different brands to the grocery chains that served the Milwaukee area.
The shooter shook violently from the cold again and looked at the naked barrel of the 30/30 Marlin lever-action rifle he was half holding, half resting on the roof’s edge. Perched in the same spot for an hour and a half, waiting for his target, he was miserable and started second guessing his preparation. He’d thought of lashing an empty plastic bottle to the business end of his rifle with electrical tape. He read somewhere it would serve as a poor man’s silencer, dampening the rifle’s crack without knocking the bullet off line.
But he didn’t know for sure if the bottle trick would muffle the sound of the blast. And he didn’t want to take the chance that it would nudge the bullet even a fraction of an inch astray. At one hundred and fifty yards a small error would result in a miss and eliminate any chance he’d have for a clean kill. Besides, he figured, when and if he took the shot, the report could be confused with any number of other city sounds.
The shooter also knew the origin of the sound would be difficult or even impossible to place. With concrete all around, a maze of man-made canyons, the gunshot would echo wildly before it died.
He steeled himself as a black Lexus pulled into the rear parking lot across the street. He didn’t want to get caught, but he would accept it if it happened. This wasn’t about him.