His burly form disappeared inside the police station. Behind me, another car whizzed by. I waited until the street appeared clear, the parking lot empty.
Then I opened my messenger bag. I retrieved my Taurus. 22 semiauto, wrapped it in my scarf, and buried it in a snow mound beneath a prickly bush at the edge of the parking lot.
By firing my twenty-two in Stan’s apartment, I’d tied myself to his death. Meaning if Detective Warren got her hands on my Taurus, I’d be going to jail. Maybe I should just hand it over. Maybe, at this stage of the game, prison would be safer for me.
I remembered Tulip this morning. Instead of being grateful for a warm bedroom, she’d simply been aggravated at being shut up. Some of us just weren’t meant for confinement. We’d rather take our chances out in the open.
Twenty-one hours and counting.
I re-snapped my black leather messenger bag, squared my shoulders, and headed in for my last shift.
Chapter 32
“NO DICE.”
“What do you mean no dice? Check her bag, confiscate her weapon. Done.” It was eleven thirty P.M. D.D. was at home, feeding Jack his bedtime bottle. He was snug against her chest, a warm little bundle approximately the same size and shape as a hot water bottle, and they were rocking together. A cozy domestic scene, so of course, her cell phone had rung.
“I confronted Charlene Grant the moment she walked in the door,” Grovesnor PD Lieutenant Dan Shepherd continued. “Said there’d been reports of her bringing a firearm to work and that was against department policy. She said I was mistaken; she’d brought a dog to work. It wouldn’t happen again.”
“Oh for heaven’s sake!”
“She let me inspect her bag. No sign of a twenty-two, Detective. Game over.”
“And that’s what happens when you fuck up an interview,” D.D. murmured, more to herself than Shepherd. “Overplay your hand, spook the subject, walk away with nothing. I’m going to have ‘I Told You So’ tattooed backwards across Detective O’s forehead, so that in the future, when she’s about to question someone, she can first study herself in the mirror.”
“Excuse me?” Shepherd said.
“Just thinking out loud. Did you pull Charlene’s time cards?” Earlier in the day, when D.D. had called Shepherd about the possibility one of his civilian employees was carrying, she’d also asked him to check Charlene’s work schedule against the first two shootings. Douglas Antiholde had been shot January 9. They were still awaiting exact TOD on the second victim, Stephen Laurent, but probably somewhere around January 11 or 12.
“Charlene pulled graveyard the ninth of January,” Shepherd reported now.
“Eleven P.M. start?”
“Yep. Eleven P.M. start, seven A.M. finish.”
D.D. nodded against the phone receiver, adjusting Jack slightly in her arms for comfort. Antiholde had been shot late afternoon, early evening. Plenty of time for Charlene to have pulled the trigger and still been on time for work.
“She also worked graveyard on Jan eleven, with OT that kept her till noon.”
“She worked a thirteen-hour shift?”
“Sixteen hours is the maximum.”
“Gee, sounds like detective’s hours right there.”
“Police dispatch is not for the faint at heart,” Shepherd commented. “Now Jan twelve was Charlene’s night off, which was another reason she probably worked so late.”
“’Kay.” D.D. would have to follow up with the ME, Ben, to better pinpoint Laurent’s time of death. Given the location of the Grovesnor PD, earliest Charlene could’ve made it to Laurent’s neighborhood would’ve been one P.M., and that’d be pushing things.
Meaning, the way these things went, Charlene had no alibi for the first victim and the third victim, but remained a maybe for victim number two.
D.D. had pursued many suspects with less. She returned to the more pressing matter at hand. “You ever hear Charlene talk about bringing a gun to work?”
“Of course not. I would’ve addressed the situation immediately.”