We looked over at the woman, who lay on her side at an awkward angle.
I noticed the fanny pack, put on gloves, and knelt down to open it.
CHAPTER
4
IN ADDITION TO three hundred dollars in fifties, the fanny pack contained a student ID card from American University’s law school and a District of Columbia driver’s license, both in the name of Edita Kravic. She was three days shy of her thirty-second birthday and didn’t live far from the Whole Foods store.
I also found two business cards emblazoned with the phoenix club—the new normal, whatever that meant; according to the cards, Edita Kravic worked there as a Level 2 Certified Coach, whatever that meant. Below the club’s name was a Virginia phone number and an address in Vienna, near Wolf Trap.
I stood up, thinking, Who were you, Edita Kravic? And what were you to Chief of Detectives McGrath?
Sampson and I went inside the Whole Foods and found the shaken witnesses. Three of them said they’d seen the entire event.
Melanie Winters, a checkout clerk, said the victims had just been in the store, laughing and joking with each other. Winters said they’d seemed good together, Tom and Edita Kravic, like they had chemistry, although McGrath had complained in the checkout line about her not letting him buy beer.
I glanced at Sampson. “What did I say?”
As McGrath and Kravic left, the checker said, she started moving empty produce boxes by the front window. She was looking outside when a dark blue sedan rolled up with the windows down and bullets started flying. Winters dived to the floor and stayed there until the gunfire stopped and the car squealed away.
“How many people in the car?” Sampson said.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I just saw these flashes and heard the shots.”
“Where were the flashes?” I said. “Front seat or back or both?”
She winced. “I’m not sure.”
Lucas Phelps, a senior at Georgetown, had been outside, about half a block south of the store. Phelps had been listening to a podcast over his Beats headphones when the shooting started. The student thought it was part of the program he was listening to until he saw McGrath and Kravic fall.
“What kind of car?” Sampson said.
“I’m not good at that,” Phelps said. “A four-door car? Like, dark-colored?”
“How many people in the car?” I asked.
“Two, I think,” Phelps said. “From my angle, it was kind of hard to say.”
“You see flashes from the shots?”
“Sure, now that you mention it.”
“Where were the flashes coming from? Front seat, back, or both?”
“Front,” he said. “I think. It all happened so fast.”
The third witness, Craig Brooks, proved once again that triangulation is often the best way to the truth. The seventy-two-year-old retired U.S. Treasury agent had been coming down the sidewalk from the north, heading to Whole Foods to get some “gluten-free crap” his wife wanted, when the shooting started.
“There were three people in that car, and one shooting out the window from the front seat, a Remington 1911 S, forty-five caliber.”
“How do you know that?” Sampson asked.
“I saw the gun, and there’s a fresh forty-five casing out there by the curb.”
I followed his gesture and nodded. “You touch it?”
“Not stupid.”
“Appreciate it. Make of the car? Model? License plate?”
“It was a GM of some sort, four-door, dark-colored but flat, no finish, like primer. They’d stripped it of any identifiers and covered the license plate too.”
“Male? Female?”
“They were all wearing ball caps and black masks,” Brooks said. “I got a clear look at the shooter’s cap, though, as they went by me. Red with the Redskins logo on it.”
We took phone numbers for possible follow-up, and I walked back outside. By then a team of criminalists had arrived and were documenting the scene.
I stopped to look at it all again now that we’d been given three versions of how the shooting had gone down. I could see it unfold in my mind.
“The shooter was more than good—he was trained,” I said.
“Gimme that again,” Sampson said.
“He’d have to be a pro to be able to shoot from a vehicle going fifteen to twenty miles an hour and still hit moving targets five out of five times.”
“The difficulty depends on the angle, doesn’t it?” Sampson said. “Where he started shooting and when, but I agree—he practiced for this scenario.”
“And McGrath was the primary target. The shooter put three rounds in him before turning the gun on Edita Kravic.”
One of the crime scene guys was taking photos, a dull aluminum lamp throwing light on the victims. I’d looked at McGrath in death at least six times now. Every time it got a little easier. Every time we grew apart.
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5