Tala! he was shouting at her now. Don’t die, dammit. Don’t you dare die.
Tala’s lips moved on the word Help, but no sound came out. She forced the next word out in an agonized huff. Malaya.
Lynda grabbed the mouse and paused the video. ‘Help and malaya.’ She glanced at Scarlett. ‘What does malaya mean?’
‘According to Google, it means “free” in both Tagalog and Malay,’ Scarlett supplied, once more keeping the original source of the information to herself. She’d double-checked the definition, and determined that Marcus had been correct.
‘She was asking him to free her family,’ Lynda murmured, then lined up the frozen frame of Tala at the edge of the trees with that of the young woman as she lay dying on the asphalt. ‘Same clothes.’
Scarlett nodded. ‘I noticed that. She wears the same exact thing in every video I’ve seen so far. A white polo shirt and faded blue jeans.’
‘A uniform of some kind?’
‘I thought that,’ Scarlett said. ‘I didn’t see any logo on the shirt she was wearing when she was shot, but there was a lot of blood on it. The CSU tech working the crime scene said that Vince would call me if the lab found any identifying marks on her clothes, but I haven’t heard from him yet.’
If there was anything to find, Sergeant Vince Tanaka would find it. The head of CSU ran a tight ship, and his people were well trained and meticulous.
‘There don’t appear to be any visible logos on the shirts she wore to the park, either,’ Scarlett went on, ‘although the video quality is grainy. The lab is checking that too.’ Reaching for the mouse, she rewound the alley video to a point about two thirds through. ‘There are two other things I can tell you. One, Tala knew who shot her.’
She advanced the video frame by frame, stopping at the moment the young woman’s eyes flared wide in terror. And recognition.
Lynda’s sigh was quiet. ‘You’re right. So much for a random shooting.’
‘Or for wondering which of them was the target,’ Scarlett said grimly.
‘You thought O’Bannion was the target?’
A half-shrug. ‘He does make his living digging up news. It stood to reason that he might have pissed off somebody enough to want to shut him down. He was supposed to have already sent me a list of the threats he’s received over the last few years, but I haven’t seen that yet.’
‘I’m sure he viewed this video before he sent it to you. Maybe he assumed the same thing we have and decided you didn’t need the list after all.’
‘Maybe.’ Highly likely, actually. ‘I still want the list, though, just in case.’
‘I agree. If you have to, get a warrant.’
‘I’ll give him another hour before I ask him for it again. If he balks, I’ll get the warrant, but if he doesn’t want me to see the list, he’s probably already deleted it. For now, I’m moving forward with Tala being the target. We’ll canvass the neighbors with photos of her and the dog, and interview all the visitors to the park. Folks in the park may be more likely to remember seeing the fancy dog than the girl, though, so I’ll also work on the dog’s ID.’
‘You’ll canvass the veterinarians, too?’
‘Definitely, but I started thinking that I might have better luck with high-end pet groomers. This dog had a fancy haircut, so I’m assuming it has a regular appointment at the salon.’
‘Do you know any groomers?’
‘As a matter of fact, I do. Do you remember Delores Kaminsky?’
At first Lynda frowned, but then her expression perked up. ‘Of course! The woman who lived? She’s a groomer? I thought she ran an animal shelter.’
‘She did both before the shooting, and her goal is to reopen both.’
Lynda tilted her head, her eyes assessing. ‘I didn’t know you kept up with the victims.’
Scarlett shrugged her embarrassment away. ‘I don’t,’ she lied. The truth was that she kept an eye on all of them from afar. Especially the young ones. They’d already survived one trauma. She hated to see that experience screw up the rest of their lives. She’d made more than one call to area outreaches, giving them a heads-up when one of the victims started down a wrong road. Sometimes they were able to drag the kids back to the straight and narrow. More often they failed, and the kids fell into the black hole of the criminal justice system.
But she’d tried, and she’d keep trying. Not that she wanted anyone to know it.
Lynda said nothing, waiting with a knowing look that made Scarlett’s cheeks burn hotter.
‘I got dragged to the shelter by Dani and Faith,’ Scarlett said with an exasperated huff. Deacon’s sister and his fiancée had pretended to need Scarlett’s Land Cruiser to transport their newly adopted animals, but she knew they were trying to include her in their girl group. Damned if she hadn’t been sucked right in. ‘They visited Delores after she woke up in the hospital. Her friends had been taking care of the animals, placing the ones they could. But there were a lot of dogs.’
‘Faith got two dogs, as I recall,’ Lynda said, her lips starting to twitch. ‘A three-year-old shepherd mix and a golden-mix puppy.’
‘I know. Deacon’s always muttering about his shoes being chewed up.’ Lynda’s gray brows lifted in startled delight. ‘Don’t tell me you got one too.’
Scarlett rolled her eyes. ‘Yeah. They guilted me into it.’
Lynda’s expression softened. ‘You have a good heart. Don’t be ashamed of that.’
‘I’m not.’ Which was a total lie. ‘I just have a reputation to protect.’
‘Well, your secret’s safe with me. What kind of dog did you get?’
Another roll of her eyes. ‘A bulldog. He’s . . . missing a leg. Nobody else wanted him.’
Lynda stared at her for a long moment. ‘And? How has he adapted?’
Scarlett thought of the way Zat had comforted her this morning when her emotions had dragged her under. Despite living through conditions of abuse for most of his life, he was sweet-natured and loving. And if Scarlett had anything to say about it, he’d live like a king for all the years he had left.
‘Okay, I guess,’ she said briskly. ‘He doesn’t eat as much as I thought. Anyway, I’m meeting Delores later to show her a photo of the poodle. See if she can narrow my groomer search at all.’
Lynda turned her attention back to the screen, still frozen on Tala’s frightened eyes. ‘You said there were two things you knew about Tala. What was the second?’
Grateful to be out of the emotional quicksand, Scarlett reached for her mouse. ‘That you can take Marcus O’Bannion off your potential suspect list. He didn’t shoot her.’ She forwarded the video to the point where Marcus was on his knees doing first aid. ‘Here’s the second shot – it came from behind Marcus. It hits him in the back and he’s knocked flat.’ On the screen, the picture pitched as Marcus was thrown forward from the force of the bullet, then the screen went dark.
‘The camera broke?’ Lynda asked.
‘No, it’s pointing at the concrete. He landed across her body. Her blood was soaking his shirt when I got there. The third shot is also fired from behind him.’
Thirty seconds elapsed, then, on a groan of pain, Marcus slowly lifted his head.
Tala, he muttered. Oh God. The lurch of the camera was punctuated by another, quieter groan as he shoved himself back up to kneel beside Tala’s lifeless body, freezing on the bullet hole in her head. And then the picture began to tremble, because Marcus had begun to tremble.
No, he whispered hoarsely. Goddammit, no. Slowly he leaned forward, reaching one hand to grip the girl’s chin with a gentleness that made Scarlett’s eyes sting. He turned Tala’s head with the same slow deliberation, bringing the exit wound into view.
‘Oh no,’ Lynda whispered. ‘That poor girl.’
Scarlett said nothing, her throat too thick for any words to get through, because she knew what was coming.
He rolled Tala’s head back to its original position with the same gentleness. Then his hands clenched into fists and slowly lowered to rest on his thighs. All while his body shook like a leaf.