The 20th Victim Read online

  “And in that same moment one of our officers comes out into the lot and starts shooting the Greens we were training. We knew them. Worked with them every day. Oh, my God, the screams, the blood spraying, men climbing out of the truck, running. Our guy was firing and firing and walking over to the fallen and shooting each one in the head.

  “We should have had an investigation. Done the right thing.”

  Randi shook her head, then looked at me and Conklin.

  She said, “I looked at this officer’s face. He felt good. Maybe great. Was he a psycho? Maybe. Or he’d become addicted to killing. I still don’t know. And no, it wasn’t Len. The officer who killed, I don’t know, twenty-five Greens was a US Navy lieutenant name of Tom DeLuca. Don’t bother looking for him. He didn’t come back.”

  No one spoke for a long moment, taking in Randi’s words and the shock on her face.

  And then Conklin said, “We’re looking for a killer, Randi. An expert sniper or sharpshooter, maybe military, maybe not. I’m thinking I might get a bead on the killer, even identify the shooter, if I join Moving Targets.”

  “I can’t help you with that,” said Randi. “I’m ready to go now. Okay?”

  “Sure,” Conklin said. “I’ll get your dog home to you by the end of the day. What’s his name?”

  “Barkley.”

  “His name is Barkley Barkley?”

  Randi said, “Yeah, and he barks. But stop. It only hurts when I laugh.”

  Conklin grinned. “Sure, Randi. I’ll see you later.”

  Chapter 46

  I found Claire in the autopsy suite, still wearing her scrubs.

  “Claire?”

  She looked up, surprised to see me, and said, “Oh, my God.”

  She pulled a sheet over the dead man, patted his hand, then called out to her assistant, “Bunny, can you put Mr. Ryan away? Thanks.”

  Those closest to Claire had made a care plan, each of us with an assigned role. Edmund would be meeting us at the hospital. Cindy and Yuki would be going to see Claire at the end of the day. I would be driving her to Johnson Hughes Cancer Treatment Center and staying with her until she was tucked into her bed at one of the best facilities in the country.

  She said, “I’m sorry, Lindsay. I forgot you were coming. Paging Dr. Freud.”

  “We still have time. How are you feeling?”

  “Never better.”

  “Right,” I said, playing along. “So get dressed.”

  Twenty minutes passed like a snail race, and finally Claire was sitting beside me, buckled into the passenger seat of my car. When I’d parked this morning, I’d found an empty spot on Harriet Street, convenient to the ME’s office and the Hall.

  I switched on the ignition and noticed Claire had kicked off her shoes and folded up her legs, and was hugging her knees to her chest.

  “I need to talk,” she said.

  I turned off the engine and faced her.

  “Here I am, Butterfly.”

  “You never heard me say this before, but I’m scared. Really, truly freaked out of my mind.”

  “Who wouldn’t be? You’ve got surgery in the morning. Talk to me.”

  Claire threw a long sigh and leaned back against the headrest. “I spent some time online looking up imminent death.”

  “Number one,” I said. “Don’t think that way.”

  “You know, I see more dead people in a day than most people see in their entire lives. Not even close. You’d think I’d be fairly blasé by now. I’m thinking I know too much.”

  “You’re not looking at imminent death, Claire. Come on. You’re going to a great surgeon. World class. He’s going to take that tumor out with a piece of lung about this big—”

  “Two tumors this big.”

  “Two? You said…you said one.”

  Claire said, “What happened is, over the years the pictures showed a spot. A little spot. Left lung, right here. Couple weeks ago, had the biopsy. Then yesterday they asked me to come in for a PET scan. And whaddaya know? They saw another little spot. If it’s spread…if it’s spread, I could be looking at a year, more or less.”

  I felt hollow and cold. Claire was telling me this for the first time, and she was mad and scared. As for me, I wasn’t ready to accept it. I said, “I don’t believe that—”

  “No, no, let me talk. I’m a doctor and you’re not.”

  “I don’t have to take your word for it.”

  “So when people hear that they have a death sentence, they either tell themselves, ‘I have only this much time, so I’m going to make the most of it.’ They take a trip around the world or learn to ski black-diamond runs.”

  “Or they accept that sell-by date and just give up,” Lindsay continued. “Like, ‘Why am I doing anything? It’s over.’”

  Claire, who’d been staring out the windshield at nothing, not looking at my stricken face, turned to me.

  “See, neither of those two options apply to me, Lindsay. I can’t quit my job and run off to see the world. I have a husband who is twelve years older than me, and this is killing him. He’s literally getting angina. I have a little girl at home. She needs her mother.”

  I pressed my lips together. I wanted to yell, You’re talking crazy. You’re looking at a worst case that may not exist. But I had to let her talk.

  “So this is why I’m freaking out. They’re going to cut me open, and I know where and how. They’re going to take out something I should have worried about instead of kissing off, and something else, to be determined. Lindsay, you know I’m conscientious. Right?”

  “Absolutely. Totally.”

  “But doctors are notorious for feeling invincible. I mean me. Death is a colleague.”

  I was shaking my head, No, no, no, and wondering why I hadn’t been more vigilant. Why hadn’t I kicked her ass? Because I didn’t know shit about non-small-cell lung cancer.

  Claire was saying, “And then Dr. Terk is going to stamp my forehead with my expiration date, and I’m going to see it in the mirror every morning. And I swear, I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  Tears were running from her eyes, spilling onto her shirt.

  “Claire. Claire, listen to me. You’re afraid. I get that. But you don’t know what the doctors are going to find until they analyze what they take out.”

  She nodded. But I wasn’t getting anywhere.

  “And after the surgery,” I said, “you recuperate. You do what your doctor tells you, and if he says radiation or chemo, you do that. And if he says it’s okay to work, you decide if you’re going to do that. You take care of your family and let them take care of you, and you take some time for yourself. But along with all of that, you fight like hell, Claire. You use all of your contacts and build a team. Check into the latest treatments and alternative treatments. You’ve got to put on your brass knuckles and load your gun and fight like hell. And that’s how you win.”

  My best friend reached out to touch me, but I had to pull away and cry into my shirtsleeve. I grabbed tissues out of the glove box, and when I could speak again, I said, “Hear me?”

  “I haven’t had a cigarette in twenty years. How could my body betray me like this? How could I ignore the symptoms? I’m not ready for this, Lindsay. I’m not ready to die.”

  “Did you hear me?”

  She nodded. Tears were running down both our faces.

  Claire coughed long and hard and painfully.

  Then she said, “Yeah. I hear you. Fight like hell.”

  “I’m glad we got that straight.”

  I hugged her over the console and the gear shift. We rocked within the confines of that front seat, and I told her that I loved her, and she said, “I love you, too.”

  I started up the Explorer and heard Claire say, “Lindsay? Look at me.”

  Posing like a boxer, she showed me her fists. “I hear you.”

  Chapter 47

  I drove back to the Hall on autopilot, using a soft touch on the gas, watching the lights and signs, but
my mind was on Claire.

  When I’d left her private room, she’d been covered in a light cotton blanket, wearing headphones, listening to the San Francisco Symphony, featuring Edmund Washburn on percussion. From the serene look on her face, it appeared that she was in a high-quality, low-stress zone. I suspected there might be some sedative in her IV bag.

  I said to her long-devoted husband, “Edmund, you’ll call me when Claire is out of surgery?”

  “You’re number one, Lindsay. First call goes to you.”

  I leaned down, kissed Claire’s cheek, said, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Tell the girls,” she whispered, but didn’t open her eyes.

  Edmund got to his feet and hugged me tightly. There was nothing to say that hadn’t already been said, all of it cheerleading with stark fear lying just beneath our words. I kissed Edmund’s cheek, too, and after he released me, he squeezed my hand, hard.

  I told him that I’d speak with him soon and fled before emotion took me over.

  The stoplight at Seventh Street was red. When it turned, I parked at the next empty spot on Bryant and fast-walked to the Hall, where I badged security and took the elevator to four. Instead of turning left to the Homicide squad room, I turned right and headed back to the corner-office war room.

  I hit the light switch, got my computer bag out of the desk drawer, and was stuffing the charger into the outside pocket when there was a knock.

  “Boxer. Got a sec?”

  It was Brady.

  I said, “Sure. What’s happening?”

  “Do you remember Bud Moskowitz?”

  “He was with SWAT. He retired. Wait, Brady. You don’t think Moskowitz had anything to do with the shootings?”

  “No.” He laughed. “Bud saw that news clip this morning with the crime scene photos. He has an idea.”

  “Great. Give me his phone number.”

  “He’s in my office. I’ll send him back.”

  Chapter 48

  I was straightening up the desk, organizing my notes, when Moskowitz said, “Hey. Boxer.”

  “Hey, Bud. Come in, come in.”

  I stretched out my hand. We shook and I offered him a chair. Harold Moskowitz, known as Bud, was more than twenty years older than me. I hadn’t known him well, but I had a good feeling about him.

  “So, you have a tip for us, Bud? Because we could use one.” Moskowitz looked fit, as well as focused and competent.

  “You mind if I take a look at those photos?”

  “Go ahead.”

  He walked over to the wall and looked at the crime scene photos taken of the victims from different angles. He spent time with each one, slowly, methodically examining them, taking a couple off the wall to hold under the light, asking me about the victims and the caliber of the rounds.

  I told him what little I knew, that the shells were of different types, that the casings hadn’t been found, that Forensics hadn’t gotten any hits in the database because of the bullets’ impact with bone or plaster or brick.

  I asked Moskowitz, “What do you see?”

  “All the shots were taken from a good distance. Very professional work.”

  “We all agree.”

  “Boxer, I don’t know if this is worth anything, but when I read in the paper about all these shootings taking place at the same time, it reminded me of this website I used to belong to.”

  “Moving Targets, by chance?”

  “Well,” he said, slapping the desk, “you stole my tip. I’ll be going now.”

  I laughed and told him to stay. “No, really. Our computer tech also came up with Moving Targets, but we’re still in the weeds. Tell me what you know.”

  “My wife is waiting for me downstairs, so let me give you the short version. I used to belong to the site. I played the game as a game. For target practice. But at some point I started to think that some of the guys on the board were highly trained experts, very competitive, and that they were crazy. They talked in the chats about killing like it’s the greatest high in the world.

  “But I didn’t know. Were they talking shit? Or were they for real? The site held virtual events. Competitions. And there were team events; points were awarded for the best shots and for teams shooting multiple targets. The more difficult, the higher the points and the bragging rights. It looked like it was pretend, cartoon murder. But after a while I wasn’t entirely sure.

  “So then the newspaper stories and something I saw on the internet. A picture of two bullet holes through a second-story window, two shots that took out two people—it set off alarm bells.”

  “This is really getting to me, Bud. I’m thinking along the same lines. I’d like to get into this site. Can you give me a password or something? I can pretend to be you.”

  “I opted out ten years ago and my codes have expired. Understand, Boxer, I never matched up guys boasting about kill shots with actual deaths. There were groups within the group. I didn’t belong to any subgroup. I wasn’t working under cover, and I wasn’t a serious player.”

  My mind had been dull with pain just minutes before. Now it crackled like a downed electric wire.

  “Let me make sure I understand. You’re saying that Moving Targets appeared like a sports forum. People who were known only by screen names, shooting off their mouths, playing virtual ball. But instead of making bets on lineups and game outcomes, they’re bragging about killing people? Why did you keep this to yourself?”

  “Boxer. First of all, there were no names or pictures of real bodies, just chatter and cartoon drawings with x’s over the eyes. Bang. You’re dead. And a sound effect.

  “Also, I told Tracchio about it.”

  Tracchio had been police chief before Jacobi. Many years had passed, and Tracchio was long retired.

  Moskowitz went on.

  “Tracchio gave me a direct order. He said if I didn’t have real names, bodies, facts, to get the hell off Moving Targets. I did what he said. I was with SWAT. I had plenty of shooting in real life. I quit the site and never went back.”

  It was more than I’d known ten minutes before, but I still had nothing actionable. Not yet. I thanked Bud and invited him to be part of our team.

  “Thanks, no, I’m going to the Bahamas tomorrow with Bev. Our nephew is getting married. So look, I left my contact information with Brenda.”

  I wished him a good flight, and after he was gone, I headed down the corridor to debrief Brady. A half hour later, keys in hand, I left the building focused on facts.

  Drug dealers had been killed. Mostly nickel-bag nobodies, except for the Barons, celebrities who’d bought massive inventory but hadn’t yet launched their drug business. Shooting them through the windows had been much harder than killing the others on the street. Were those executions extra points for a video sniper?

  Brady had agreed with me that it appeared to be a military operation, and Stempien, too, had said that he thought Moving Targets was heavy on military.

  Had the drug dealer hits been organized by the members of Moving Targets? Was Leonard Barkley one of those hitters?

  The answers were just out of reach.

  The lights were out. And I couldn’t see a thing.

  Chapter 49

  I was startled awake by a shout or a shot or a dream—but I couldn’t remember a bit of it.

  My heart was hammering and my eyes were wide open. A hint of sunrise was backlighting the gray sky as I reached across Martha to better see the clock.

  Its luminescent hands pointed to half past five.

  That’s when it hit me.

  Claire was in the hospital and would be having surgery in a few hours. Going under the knife. Was she awake, too? I stared at the ceiling, finally clapping a pillow over my face, and when I woke up again, Martha was licking my ear and the sun was rising over the windowsill.

  I tousled Martha’s coat and put my feet on the floor.

  It was still too early to call Edmund, but I had things to do. I fed Martha, made coffee, and caught up o
n TV news while unloading the dishwasher. I peeked in on Julie, then showered, dressed, and checked my text messages while I took sweet Martha for a quick walk. Joe had written to let me know he was going to stay longer with Dave.

  Julie-Bug was still sleeping when we returned from our rounds, and I made up a wake-up song on the spot. My voice was a little rusty but not bad for an impromptu performance.

  “Bumblebees, bumblebees.

  Time to wake up the banana trees.

  Bzzzzz, bzzz, bzzzz.”

  Julie’s eyelids flew open, and she laughed at my singing, then told me that I was wrong.

  “Bees don’t wake up banana trees.”

  I challenged her on that point, saying, “Well then, who wakes them, smarty?”

  “Bees wake the flowers, Mommy.”

  “Okay. But rhyming counts.”

  She giggled, I kissed her head, and she gave in.

  “We both win, Mommy. I’m hungry.”

  I made oatmeal, and using a magic trick I’d swiped from the back of a cereal box when I was a kid, I pierced the banana skin with a needle near the stem. Using the needle as a little knife, I sliced the fruit crosswise every quarter of an inch from stem to stern, leaving the skin whole. The pinpricks were almost invisible, and I didn’t give anything away.

  I watched Julie peel the banana, and her look of disbelief and amazement as perfect banana slices fell onto her cereal.

  “Mommy. Look at this!”

  “Bumblebees did that,” I said, very pleased with myself.

  “Noooooo. Really?”

  The doorbell rang at eight on the nose, and Mrs. Rose came into the kitchen and, clapping her hands, said, “Children wait for school buses. But school buses don’t wait for children.”

  Julie ran to the doorway and I was right behind her. I gave her the pink-and-silver backpack and received kisses and hugs in return. And once the door was closed, the worry I’d been stifling crashed in on me.

  I called Edmund, got a wrong number, tried again.

  “Hang on, Lindsay. I’m outside the hospital looking for a quiet spot. Can you hear me?”