Chapter Seventy
Officer Tim Riesdorfer had been on the job only a little more than a year now, but that was long enough to know he hadn’t been handed the plum assignment that night.
He sat in his patrol car down the block from 609 Division Street, watching the ground floor apartment on the other side of the courtyard.
Maybe he’d pissed off his sarge by being a little overzealous with that tourist in town the other night, catching him making an illegal turn and not liking the guy’s attitude and all—and showing him who was boss by slapping on the cuffs and threatening to throw his ass in jail.
Okay, he knew he got a little jumpy now and then. I mean, he’d spent eighteen months in ’Stan, and if that didn’t make you jumpy, nothing would. But being pulled off his regular assignment and told to sit here all night by the tracks and watch over this rat trap . . . As what? A favor for some coroner’s detective. Not even a real cop.
All he was told to do was watch out for this car—and if he saw it, to radio in.
Not even go for the arrest!
He glanced at the two APBs on the passenger seat. One was for the car: navy Kia wagon with the license plate 657 E4G.
The other was for a woman, Susan Jane Pollack. A photo from DMV. She looked like she was around fifty. Short, light brown hair. Not pretty. So far he hadn’t seen anyone down here but two teenagers, winding their way into the woods, most likely on their way to get high.
By all means, light one up on me!
Suddenly something caught his attention. A vehicle turning into the building, into the carport.
He rolled down the window, focusing on the model and the plates. Nah, it was a Honda. A person stepped out. One motherf*cking, heavyset Latino, not a woman at all, who went around the car and opened the hatch. He watched the dude head into the courtyard with an armful of groceries, climb the outside stairs to his second-floor apartment.
Hot shit, Timmy boy.
He heard Dispatch send out a call for an officer to be sent to 407 Hilltop. A domestic dispute. He was only a couple of blocks away. He could be on the scene in seconds.
Anything was better than this.
He went to ask permission to investigate when suddenly there was a rapping on his passenger window.
It was a woman. Dark glasses and a kind of baseball cap down over her eyes. Her short hair barely peeking through. She was trying to ask him something, indicating for him to lower his window.
He did, just slightly, leaning forward. “Sorry, I’m off duty, ma’am . . .”
She asked, “Do you know where 730 Division would be?”
That was just down the street, in the other direction, which Tim Riesdorfer was about to tell her when his eye went from her face to the photo on the seat, and he felt his whole body jolt like when his convoy was ambushed as he noticed the slightest resemblance in her eyes.
Instinctively he reached for his gun, leaning toward her, but the only thing that came out of his mouth was “Hey . . .”
The initial shot burst through his jaw and out the side of his neck, blood suddenly all over his chest. No pain, no panic, just this sense that he was really, really confused, and he turned toward his lowered window in the direction of the shooter . . .
The second shot was only a bright yellow spark that made his world colorless forever.
Eyes Wide Open
Andrew Gross's books
- Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and Other Lessons from the Crematory
- A Brand New Ending
- A Cast of Killers
- A Change of Heart
- A Christmas Bride
- A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
- A Cruel Bird Came to the Nest and Looked
- A Delicate Truth A Novel
- A Different Blue
- A Firing Offense
- A Killing in China Basin
- A Killing in the Hills
- A Matter of Trust
- A Murder at Rosamund's Gate
- A Nearly Perfect Copy
- A Novel Way to Die
- A Perfect Christmas
- A Perfect Square
- A Pound of Flesh
- A Red Sun Also Rises
- A Rural Affair
- A Spear of Summer Grass
- A Story of God and All of Us
- A Summer to Remember
- A Thousand Pardons
- A Time to Heal
- A Toast to the Good Times
- A Touch Mortal
- A Trick I Learned from Dead Men
- A Vision of Loveliness
- A Whisper of Peace
- A Winter Dream
- Abdication A Novel
- Abigail's New Hope
- Above World
- Accidents Happen A Novel
- Ad Nauseam
- Adrenaline
- Aerogrammes and Other Stories
- Aftershock
- Against the Edge (The Raines of Wind Can)
- All in Good Time (The Gilded Legacy)
- All the Things You Never Knew
- All You Could Ask For A Novel
- Almost Never A Novel
- Already Gone
- American Elsewhere
- American Tropic
- An Order of Coffee and Tears
- Ancient Echoes
- Angels at the Table_ A Shirley, Goodness
- Alien Cradle
- All That Is
- Angora Alibi A Seaside Knitters Mystery
- Arcadia's Gift
- Are You Mine
- Armageddon
- As Sweet as Honey
- As the Pig Turns
- Ascendants of Ancients Sovereign
- Ash Return of the Beast
- Away
- $200 and a Cadillac
- Back to Blood
- Back To U
- Bad Games
- Balancing Act
- Bare It All
- Beach Lane
- Because of You
- Before I Met You
- Before the Scarlet Dawn
- Before You Go
- Being Henry David
- Bella Summer Takes a Chance
- Beneath a Midnight Moon
- Beside Two Rivers
- Best Kept Secret
- Betrayal of the Dove
- Betrayed
- Between Friends
- Between the Land and the Sea
- Binding Agreement
- Bite Me, Your Grace
- Black Flagged Apex
- Black Flagged Redux
- Black Oil, Red Blood
- Blackberry Winter
- Blackjack
- Blackmail Earth
- Blackmailed by the Italian Billionaire
- Blackout
- Blind Man's Bluff
- Blindside
- Blood & Beauty The Borgias
- Blood Gorgons
- Blood of the Assassin
- Blood Prophecy
- Blood Twist (The Erris Coven Series)
- Blood, Ash, and Bone