Stephanie peered around the rear of the van, to the still form of Tommy Zammit, on the ground, sprawled out, and she saw the pink and white and brown of what was left of his smiling head.
The sniper moved speedily and efficiently, clambering out from the rear of the bushes, rolling up his rifle and silencer and water bottle and equipment bag in the tarpaulin, now holding it to his chest. He went down the far slope of the hill, away from the cops and the jurors and attorneys, to a GMC pickup truck, parked underneath an oak tree. He tossed the tarpaulin in the rear of the truck bed, stripped off his ghillie suit and tossed it back there as well, and then got into the cab, started up the truck, and backed out.
In thirty seconds, he was at one of the cemetery exits.
In another thirty seconds, he was in traffic.
And in ninety seconds, he was on an entrance ramp, getting onto a highway that in a matter of minutes more would take him home to Maine.
There was a shout. Stephanie looked over at a slight rise where there was a small brick building, maybe a storage building for the cemetery’s landscaping crew. A man stepped out, wearing the black uniform of the police force’s Special Response Team, baseball cap on backwards, holding a scoped bolt-action rifle in his hand.
Carl Dixon. And he shouted again.
“It wasn’t me!” he yelled. “It wasn’t me!”
At home, the sniper put the pickup truck in the garage, closed the door, and went inside and had a nice cold glass of water. He let his breathing go back to normal. All in all, a damn fine job. In and out, do what had to be done. And leads for those poor cops? Oh, there would be plenty of suspects: friends or relatives of the women who were either assaulted or murdered... or distant acquaintances... or maybe a rogue citizen, wanting to see a little rough justice done.
The sniper didn’t envy the job of those investigators. But he knew cops. They would do a good job for a week or two — having a criminal defendant get blown away in front of a judge, jury, and attorneys didn’t particularly build confidence in the judicial system — but so long as there wasn’t a blatant clue out there, leading them to him, the cops would thankfully go on to something else once the hubbub died down.
He went back to the garage, retrieved his ghillie suit, unrolled the tarpaulin, looked at the rifle and his gear, and—
Froze.
Damn it to hell. Blatant clues left behind.
He had just done that.
After a while of more shouts, yells, and sirens from responding units, some sort of order was restored to St. Michael’s Cemetery. The jurors, judge, and attorneys had been driven out in their respective vehicles and taken to the police station, where they would be interviewed to see if anybody heard or saw anything unusual before Tommy Zammit got his head blown off.
Now Stephanie and other Porter police officers were carefully searching the grounds of the cemetery, in a deliberate manner, walking away in a wedge shape from where Tommy had been shot. And one of the cops — named Woods — looked around and said, “Good luck with that. High-powered rifle with a silencer? The guy was a pro.”
Stephanie didn’t disagree. But there was a job to be done. She walked up the slight slope of a hill, and then glanced back at the still form of Tommy Zammit, now a brand-new crime scene. Photos were being taken, Porter detectives were taking measurements, and she was thankful that when the burst of violence had taken place before her, she hadn’t panicked, hadn’t collapsed, hadn’t looked around wildly. Nope, she had done her job.
Just like now.
On the top of the hill, she noted a stand of rhododendron bushes. Stephanie walked over, glanced down, saw nothing, and started walking away.
Hold on.
She looked back.
The ground beneath the bushes. Looked... disturbed. Like something had been here, and then was dragged away.
Stephanie got on her knees, peered through the base of the bushes. A good view of Tommy Zammit’s body. Still... didn’t prove anything.
She moved on her knees again, and winced and whispered, “Damn it,” as she knelt on something.
She moved back, looked down. A black tube-shaped piece of plastic. Taking a pen from her uniform shirt pocket, she picked it up and carefully looked at it.
Again and again, the sniper touched the hose from his water bladder. The mouthpiece was gone. He remembered it had been loose, the last time he had taken a drink, back underneath the bushes. Loose. Sure. And when he had dragged everything out and had left the cemetery, the mouthpiece had fallen off.
Would it be found?
Of course. If it was on the ground, it would be found. And any half-smart cop would know what it was. It would be evaluated, tested, his DNA would be carefully extracted, and then the manufacturer would be contacted. The long grinding process of justice would start, and this time, it would be aimed at him.
He closed his eyes. Thought of a special woman from a while ago, and then shook his head.
Justice. He had to have faith that in the end, it would prevail.
Had to.
Stephanie examined the piece of plastic, recognized it right away. The mouthpiece to a water tube, leading to a bladder or little knapsack that a sniper could use, while waiting to take the right shot.
She looked back underneath the bushes. Sure. Made a lot of sense. She looked at the scuff marks, and then put the whole scene into place. And in his hurry to get out, he had left this big fat clue behind.
Stephanie stood up, slipped the piece of plastic into her pants pocket, and then eventually rejoined the other searchers, and met up with her sergeant.
“Well?” Preston asked. “Find anything?”
And instead of answering right away, that memory flashed back to her again, of being in college, of going to her first — and only — frat party, getting hammered, and having a nice young man escort her back to her dorm room, where he had promptly and efficiently tossed her down on her bed, and stripped off her clothes, and then—
And later. Deciding whether to take it public, to go to the cops... what would it gain her? What could she have proven? So she had gone on at school, had gotten her degree, had gotten to Porter and past her rookie period and was now a cop and—
“Stephanie,” Preston repeated. “Did you find anything?”
Justice, she thought silently, justice. That’s what I found.
Aloud, she said, “No. Not a damn thing.”
Showtime
by Marilyn Todd
To be a successful historical mystery writer one must be, above all, a good researcher. British author Marilyn Todd told EQMM that she so enjoyed her research for “Showtime” that it has inspired her to plan a month-long trip through America’s West, visiting San Francisco, Bryce Canyon, and Colorado, then following the Snake and Columbia rivers through Utah, Idaho, and Oregon.
With a crack of the whip, the horses hurtled through the parted curtains into the vast oval arena. In a previous incarnation, when it carried payrolls and mail from El Paso to Fort Yuma, there were at least four horses pulling the stagecoach, usually six. But for thrills and spills, and especially romance, nothing beats two gold palaminos. Emblazoned in gilt lettering above the coach’s scarlet-painted doors were the words BRODIE MCLINTOCK’S WILD WEST EXTRAVAGANZA. Before that, it had read WELLS FARGO. Debonair in fringed buckskins, and every inch the showman with his swirling moustache, goatee beard, and shoulder-length hair, McLintock himself rode shotgun beside the driver.