Fatal Reckoning Read online

  The crowd backed away, leaving Sam alone with the dead man until Lindsey showed up a few minutes later.

  “Young and newly married,” Sam told her.

  “Ah, damn. What happened?”

  “Caught a stray bullet.”

  “What the hell are people doing firing a gun in a crowded area in the middle of the day?”

  “If I had the answer to that question, we’d probably be out of business.” Sam looked around at the staggering array of places a bullet could’ve come from. “It’ll be a hell of a job figuring out where the bullet originated.” They would analyze the angle of entry and work backward from there.

  “Crime Scene is on the way, Lieutenant,” the Patrol officer said.

  “Let’s not move him until they get here,” Sam said to Lindsey.

  “Right.” Lindsey raised the jacket to view his face, her eyes softening with emotion. “His poor wife.”

  Sam took a deep breath and released it slowly. “I’ve got to go find her.”

  “I don’t envy you that.”

  “Someone’s got to do it.” Sam tried to be cavalier about what would be a dreadful task, but her heart ached at the thought of destroying the life of a woman who’d thought she had things figured out. In one second, everything changed. “I’ll see you back at the house.”

  She went to find Freddie and Darren, who were standing off to the side of the fray. A nearby shop owner had given Darren a bottle of cold water. Sam had never seen the young reporter look so pale or freaked out. Like her, he saw a lot of crazy shit in the course of a day, and this had clearly rattled him.

  “Can you take me to the wife?”

  Darren nodded. “Yeah.”

  To Freddie, she said, “Start a canvass. Talk to everyone who was on the street and find out everything you can about where the bullet came from. Get the others here to help you.”

  “Will do.”

  “Let’s go, Darren.” She led him to her car.

  Darren got into the passenger seat. “I...I’m not sure I can do this. She’s the nicest person, and she was so happy with him. I went to the wedding.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “It’s Veronica, but we call her Roni.”

  “What does she do at the Star?”

  “She’s our obituary writer.” He blew out a deep breath. “How could this have happened?”

  “I ask myself that question every day as I encounter one tragic death after another.”

  “I don’t know how you do it.”

  “Someone’s gotta do it. May as well be me.”

  They were silent on the ride to the K Street office of the Washington Star. Darren directed her to a guest parking lot and flashed his ID to building security. “She’s with me.” The officer waved her through after Sam showed him her badge. They took the elevator to the third floor.

  Sam had never seen the Star newsroom before and took a quick look around at a beehive of activity as she followed Darren down a long corridor of offices behind glass walls that afforded zero privacy to the people inside. That was probably strategic, so their employer could keep an eye on them. People stopped what they were doing to gawk at her as she went by.

  God, she hated that goldfish feeling and yearned for the days when she’d been able to move freely around the city without attracting attention everywhere she went. She was so proud of her vice president husband, but his higher profile had led to hers being raised as well, and that made things more difficult for her on the job. Not that she’d ever tell him that. He worried enough about her as it was.

  Darren stopped outside an office and used his chin to tell Sam this was the one.

  A dark-haired woman faced away from the door, earbuds in as she worked on a laptop.

  Darren opened the door. “Hey, Roni.” He spoke loudly enough to be heard over the music.

  She turned, tugged out one of the earbuds and smiled. “Hey. What’s up?”

  Sam stepped into view and watched as the woman immediately recognized her.

  “Oh my God! You’re here! In our office!” She got up and came around the desk, hand outstretched to shake Sam’s. “Darren speaks so highly of you. How’d he get you to come in? He says you play hard to get with him.”

  Sam wanted to die over what she had to do to this poor, sweet woman. “Could we talk for a second?”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  RONI GLANCED AT DARREN, her brows furrowing. Perhaps something she saw in his stricken expression alerted her to impending doom. She took a step back and shook her head. “No. Please...”

  “Roni...”

  She began to cry and put her hands over her ears.

  Darren closed the office door behind them.

  “I’m so sorry to have to tell you that Patrick was shot and killed a short time ago.” Sam said the words quickly, the way she’d learned to do at times like this, so as not to drag out the process.

  She would never forget the sound of Roni’s heartbroken scream. It pierced her heart and left her bleeding inside for a woman she’d never met, for a couple whose life together had ended in the most tragic way possible.

  Darren rushed forward to catch Roni when she would’ve collapsed and held her as she cried hysterically.

  “Not my Patrick. He’s got a desk job! He said this would never happen. He promised me...”

  “He was hit by a stray bullet while walking on 12th Street,” Sam said. “We don’t believe he was targeted, but we don’t know that for sure yet.”

  “What am I supposed to do?” She shook with sobs. “I don’t know what to do, Darren.”

  “Is there a family member we could call for you?” Sam asked her.

  “Her sister is local.” Darren helped Roni into her desk chair, where only a few minutes ago she’d sat doing her job, unaware that life as she knew it was over. “I’ll call Rebecca for you, Roni. Would that be okay?”

  She nodded and handed him her phone. “She’s on my favorites.”

  Standing next to Darren, Sam saw that Patrick’s name was at the top of Roni’s list of favorites. That small detail broke Sam’s heart all over again.

  He placed the call to her sister and told her the news. The sister screamed so loudly that Darren held the phone away from his ear. Outside the office, Sam noticed a crowd had formed, probably tuning in to the disaster unfolding for one of their colleagues.

  “I want to see him.” Roni turned her shattered gaze toward Sam. “Can I see him?”

  “I’ll arrange for that.” She sent a text to Lindsey asking to be notified when the victim had been moved to the morgue and that the wife wanted to see him.

  Thirty minutes, Lindsey replied.

  “Have the sister meet us at HQ,” Sam said to Darren, who conveyed the information to Roni’s sister. “I can take you to see Patrick now.”

  Roni shook her head. “He can’t be dead. He just can’t be.”

  “I’m so, so sorry.” Sometimes Sam tried to imagine what it would be like to receive this kind of news about her own husband, but even after the conversation they’d had last night, she couldn’t bear to let her mind go there. She just couldn’t. She had no idea how people survived this sort of thing, how they managed to go on, to put shattered lives back together again. People like Roni were the ones she never forgot, the ones she wanted to help with the new support group. “Darren, go tell your colleagues what’s happened and ask for some space so we can get her out of here.”

  He ducked outside to share the news.

  Sam watched as shock rippled through the crowd, which began to disperse after Darren asked them to move along.

  Roni had her arms wrapped around her body as she rocked back and forth, clearly in deep shock. After Sam took her to see Patrick, they would have to determine if Roni was in need of medical attention.

  “Are you able to wa
lk?”

  “I...I think so.”

  God bless her. Sam would have to be carted out on a stretcher.

  Darren helped Roni into her coat and put an arm around her to escort her to the elevator, walking her past stunned coworkers. The formerly buzzing newsroom had gone completely silent.

  Sam grabbed the woman’s purse, phone and keys from the credenza next to her desk and followed them, keeping her head down to avoid eye contact with curious bystanders.

  The three of them rode the elevator to the lobby. Darren guided Roni to Sam’s car and settled her in the passenger seat before belting her in.

  It had been, Sam realized, a full hour since she’d given a thought to her father’s death or the effort to find his killer. Murder had a way of making a day go sideways. The victim of the moment—and their family—took precedence over everything, even her own family at times.

  As they drove to HQ, Roni continued to weep softly, her sniffles the only sound in the car. Traffic made the trip longer than it should’ve been, and by the time they pulled up to the morgue entrance, the ME truck was parked outside, indicating Lindsey had returned with Patrick’s body.

  Sam met Darren’s gaze in the rearview mirror and saw tears in his eyes.

  “Do you want to wait for your sister to arrive?” Sam asked.

  Roni shook her head. “I want to see Patrick.”

  They helped her inside and stepped into the cold, antiseptic-smelling morgue, where Lindsey waited for them with the body on a table, covered by a sheet.

  “Roni, this is Dr. Lindsey McNamara, the medical examiner. Lindsey, this is Roni Connolly.”

  “I’m so very sorry for your loss.” Lindsey’s green eyes brimmed with the compassion that made her so damned good at her dreadful job.

  Roni stared at the body on the table as she trembled uncontrollably.

  Lindsey lifted the sheet.

  Roni screamed, her knees buckled, and only Darren’s arms around her kept her from collapsing. “Patrick! Oh God... No. Patrick.” She sobbed uncontrollably and launched herself at the body, lying on top of him.

  Sam’s heart broke for her.

  Darren wiped away tears.

  Lindsey came around the table to comfort Roni.

  “Patrick.” Roni’s moans echoed through the room.

  Sam’s phone rang, and she ignored it. Only when it rang a second time did she excuse herself to take the call from Freddie. Stepping through the automatic doors, she said, “What’s up?”

  “We got the guys.” He sounded breathless, as if he’d been running. “They were fighting over a woman across the street, one of them pulled a gun on the other. The second one lunged, and the gun discharged with the bullet that killed Patrick Connolly.”

  “Do we know them?” Drained by yet another killing that would ruin multiple lives, sometimes Sam feared becoming numb to it all, of getting to the point where she had no reaction whatsoever to yet another life ended prematurely.

  “The one with the gun has a lengthy sheet.”

  “Somehow, I knew you were going to say that.” She closed her eyes and leaned against the cinder block wall, the sound of Roni’s wails audible through the glass doors.

  A Patrol officer approached with a woman who was almost as hysterical as Roni. The sister, Sam thought. “I gotta go,” Sam said to Freddie. “I’ll see you back here.”

  “We’re on our way in.”

  Sam closed the phone. “Rebecca?”

  The woman nodded.

  “I’m Lieutenant Holland.”

  “I know who you are.”

  “Would you like me to take you in to see your sister?”

  “Is he... Is Patrick...”

  “His body is here, yes.”

  She covered her mouth as tears flooded her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. “How could this have happened? My God. He was thirty-one and such a good man.”

  “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  “What is she supposed to do now? They were so in love. They just got married.” She looked up at Sam. “I don’t know what to say to her.”

  “Just be there for her. That’s what she needs right now.”

  Nodding, she wiped her tears and tried to pull herself together. When she seemed as ready as she would be, Sam escorted her into the morgue, where she stopped short at the sight of Roni lying over Patrick’s body. Afraid that Rebecca would faint, Sam stayed close to her, just in case.

  Darren stood next to Roni, rubbing her back, trying to offer whatever comfort he could while Lindsey hung back to give Roni the space she needed.

  “Roni,” Sam said. “Rebecca is here.”

  Roni stood upright and launched herself at her sister, the two of them sobbing hysterically.

  Sam tipped her head at Darren, and he came with her to the hallway. “We got the guy with the gun.”

  “Already?”

  Sam filled him in on what Freddie had told her. “Sometimes it’s easy.” Rarely, but it did happen.

  “You gotta be kidding me. So a good and decent man is dead because two idiots were fighting over a woman?”

  “That’s the gist.”

  “How does Roni begin to make sense of this?”

  “It’ll never make sense to her.”

  Darren sighed and leaned back against the wall. That he wasn’t jumping on the exclusive she’d just handed him said a lot about how deeply the day’s events had affected him. “You and me, we see a lot of crazy shit on our jobs.”

  “We do.”

  “This...”

  “I know.” Patrick Connolly’s murder was right up there with the drive-by shootings, orchestrated by a worthless piece of shit with an ax to grind against the city that had fired him from a low-level job.

  “I suppose I should get back to the office to write about this.” He made no move to leave. “Their wedding... One of the best I’ve been to. They were truly happy. That was obvious to everyone who knew them.”

  “I’m really sorry this happened to your friends.”

  “So am I. Will you email me the report?”

  “As soon as I have it.”

  Together, they went back into the morgue to let Roni know that they’d gotten the guy who’d fired the gun. The news barely seemed to register with her. What did it matter? Her beloved husband was still dead. Darren hugged Roni, told her he would check on her later and then left to go write the story of his friend’s murder.

  Sam waited until the sisters departed before she trudged to the pit, which was deserted because her team had been called out to work on the Connolly case. She went into the conference room, where papers and files were spread out on the table. The murder board had been updated, and she took a closer look to see if there was anything she didn’t already know.

  There wasn’t.

  Another day, more delays and distractions, not that she would qualify Patrick Connolly’s murder as a distraction, but it had taken her team off her father’s case yet again.

  “Hey,” Captain Malone said as he stepped into the conference room and closed the door. “What happened on 12th?”

  Sam filled him in on the details she knew thus far.

  He shook his head in disbelief. “Just when I think I’ve heard everything.”

  “By all accounts, a really good guy. Newly married.”

  Malone grimaced. “Taken out by a scumbag who probably should’ve been locked up years ago.”

  “Probably.” Sam glanced at the murder board and then at the captain. “Anything new?”

  “We found proof that your guy Davis called Conklin every year on the anniversary of the shooting.”

  Sam grasped one of the chairs for support. “I don’t understand this.”

  “Neither do we. The chief has an appointment with Tom Forrester tomorrow morning.”

&nbsp
; “I feel sick.”

  “I know that feeling.”

  Sam sat because she wasn’t sure she could remain standing. “He was my dad’s friend. Was it all a big lie?”

  “I don’t know, but we’re going to find out.”

  She thought of the evidence locker that needed to be searched for her dad’s messenger bag. “Faith said something that reminded me of the leather messenger bag that he carried back and forth to work every day. I hadn’t thought of that bag in years, since before the shooting. I can’t find it at the house. I was going to search the evidence locker for it.”

  “Want some help?”

  “You remember the bag?”

  “The man purse?” He smiled. “Of course I do.”

  “Why didn’t I ever think to ask what’d become of it before now?”

  “Sam, come on... Give yourself a break. Don’t you remember what those first weeks were like?”

  “Not really. It’s kind of a blur.” She remembered fear and heartache and stress over the problems she’d encountered with Peter and Stahl at that time, neither of whom had had an ounce of empathy after the trauma of her father’s shooting. When Peter accused her of spending too much time with her recently paralyzed father, that was when she’d moved out of the home she’d shared with him and back into her childhood home to help care for her father. She’d stayed there until right before she married Nick.

  “I remember every chilling, horrifying, agonizing detail, and the last thing on any of our minds was what had become of the man purse.” Malone opened the door. “Let’s go take a look.”

  Sam got up to follow him, but they were waylaid by the arrival of FBI Special Agent in Charge Avery Hill, who was visibly rattled.

  “Is it true? Pat Connolly was killed?”

  “Yes,” Sam said. “By a stray bullet fired by a career criminal arguing with another man over a woman across the street.”

  Hill exhaled and bent at the waist, hands on his knees. “Oh my God.”

  “You knew him?”