“You could’ve killed someone.”
“I think I did kill someone.”
“There’s easier ways to get time off than going on modified assignment,” Webb growled.
“We had a man down,” Vic said. “If we weren’t supposed to shoot back, why’d the department issue us guns?”
“You’ve already earned an insubordination rip for this,” Webb said. “Want to try for two?”
Vic didn’t say anything. His cheek twitched slightly.
Rolf nosed at Erin’s hand. She stroked his shoulder. The important thing was that they were okay. The fireman who’d been shot had been hit in the calf. It didn’t look like a serious injury. She understood Webb’s anger. With all that smoke in the place, Vic couldn’t possibly have known what was around his target. He could’ve easily hit an innocent victim. Hell, maybe he had; they wouldn’t know until the fire died down.
Erin settled herself to wait, resting a hand on her K-9. The smell of smoke wafted up from the Shepherd’s fur to her nostrils. Rolf had already had a tough day, and now he had a bath to look forward to.
“Lieutenant!”
A uniformed officer was running around the corner. He looked agitated, which wasn’t surprising, considering they were at an unsecured crime scene where shots had been fired and which was still ablaze.
Webb turned to the man. “What is it?”
“We’ve got bodies, sir.”
Webb looked confused. Erin felt the same. This guy’s uniform was clean. He hadn’t been inside the burning building. What could he possibly have to report?
“You looked in there?” Webb asked.
“Not inside,” the officer replied. “Around back. By the service door. Three of ‘em. All dead.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, I counted.”
Webb gave him a look of long-suffering patience. “I mean, are you sure they’re dead?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I guess we’d better take a look,” Webb said. “Neshenko? Can I count on you not to shoot anyone else?”
“As long as they don’t shoot at me,” Vic said.
“O’Reilly? Your K-9 okay?”
Erin looked at her dog. “How you doing, kiddo? You ready to go back to work?”
Rolf wriggled his body to get his feet under him. He kicked at the oxygen mask on his face as if he was scratching an itch.
Erin knew he wasn’t badly damaged. He wasn’t coughing or wheezing anymore, and while his eyes were streaming, they didn’t look too bloodshot. Rolf would be more bothered by being left out of the action than he would be by any physical inconvenience.
“Okay, boy,” she said, helping him out of the mask. “Komm.”
Three detectives and one K-9 followed the uniform around to the back alley.
“I thought all the shooters were out front,” Vic said.
“That was my understanding,” Webb said.
“Maybe they got hit inside,” Erin suggested, “and crawled out to die, trying to get away from the flames.”
“All three?” Vic wondered. “Seems unlikely. Whoa.”
They’d just rounded the corner and seen the bodies, laid out as promised.
“Now there’s something you don’t see every day,” Webb said.
Erin nodded. She’d been at plenty of shooting scenes. Street violence, as a rule, was messy. Even trained shooters tended to fire wildly when the chips were down. Erin knew the numbers. On the firing range, cops could nail their targets over ninety percent of the time. But in gunfights, they hit with about one in six bullets. Untrained street thugs did worse. The victims in a gangland shootout tended to have holes in any number of random body parts, and getting killed in that kind of fight was more about bad luck than enemy skill.
This was different. The three bodies were sprawled just outside the restaurant’s back door, with pools of blood around each man’s head. They’d all gone down to perfect headshots.
“Bang, bang, bang,” Vic said quietly. “That’s some damn good shooting.”
“Steady hands,” Webb agreed. He approached the first body and knelt beside it, peering at the bullet hole in the man’s forehead. “One shot each. We’ll need to get Levine to take a look at these, but I’m not seeing any powder tattooing.”
“Not close enough for execution-style,” Erin said. “Besides, looks like two of these guys were shot from the front.” Even coldblooded killers tended to murder people from behind. Killing a man was hard enough even if you didn’t have to looking him in the eye.
“Looks like this guy took one in the temple,” Vic said, pointing to another victim. “I’m guessing he was the first one to get hit. That must’ve gotten the attention of the other two. They turned toward the shooter and he snuffed ‘em, one, two.”
“Fast shooting,” Erin said. “Fast and accurate.” She was looking at the dead guys’ hands. One of them was holding a pistol, a small revolver. The other’s hands were empty, but he had an automatic stuffed in his waistband. She crouched and peered at the revolver, seeing the blunt tips of bullets in every cylinder.
“They never got the chance to shoot back,” she said. “One poor sap didn’t even get his weapon out.”
“Must’ve been more than one shooter,” Vic said. “No one’s that fast and good.”
“Either that, or we’ve got a trained sniper,” Webb said. He didn’t sound happy about it.
“Whichever it is,” Vic said, “this is more than a homicide.”
“Yeah,” Erin agreed. “It’s a war.”
Chapter 2
Erin and her colleagues had to wait for the fire to die down before they could work the full crime scene. In the meantime, they had the three bodies in the back alley, but they needed to wait on Sarah Levine, the medical examiner, before they could do much with them.
“I should’ve brought a deck of cards,” Vic muttered.
“At least there aren’t any windows in back of the building,” Erin said. “The fire won’t get at these poor bastards.”
Webb was still crouched over the bodies, scanning them carefully. “These guys are Italians,” he said.
“Well, yeah,” Vic said. “We are in Little Italy. That’s not exactly unusual.”
“Two young men, one older one,” Webb continued. “And if you’re right, Neshenko, the old guy got it first.”
“And the two younger ones were carrying guns,” Erin said. “Bodyguards?”
Webb nodded. “That means the old man was the
