in the market. And checks out and
wheels her cart out here … This her car?”
“I assume so.”
“Try her keys,” Jesse said.
Wearing gloves, Perkins picked up the key chain and pointed the
remote at the Volvo and clicked the power lock. The lights flashed and the door locks clicked. He unlocked the doors the same way, then dropped the keys into an evidence bag and made a notation on the label.
“Okay, so she comes out here to her car
…” He looked
around the parking lot. “Which is way out here because the lot is
full.”
“Friday night,” Perkins said.
“It’s always like this on a Friday
night?”
“Yeah. Worse before a holiday.”
“She pops her rear door,” Jesse said,
“to put her stuff away,
and gets two in the chest. She maybe lived five more seconds and turned half away before she died, and fell, and her head jammed up that way against the rear tire.”
Perkins nodded.
“That’s how I’d read
it,” he said.
The mercury floods in the parking lot gave everything a faint bluish tinge. In other parts of the lot cars were looking for spots and waiting for people to load their groceries and pull out so that they could pull in. If they saw the blue lights they didn’t react,
and having places to go, went.
The Paradise emergency response wagon rolled in to a stop and Duke Vincent got out. He knelt beside the woman and felt for a pulse. He knew, as they all knew, that he wouldn’t find one.
But it
was routine. It would be embarrassing to take a living body to the morgue.
“Can we move her yet?” he said to Jesse.
Jesse looked at Perkins. “You all set?” he said.
“Yeah, I’ve chalked the outline.”
“Okay, Dukie,” Jesse said.
“She got a name?” Duke said as they loaded her into the back of
the wagon.
“Driver’s license says Barbara
Carey.”
Vincent nodded. “You noticed she got shot just like the guy on
the beach,” he said.
“I noticed,” Jesse said.
“Just thought I’d mention it,”
Duke said, and got in the wagon
and drove away.
The people gathered to watch began to drift away. Suitcase Simpson came over to stand with Jesse and Peter Perkins.
“Whaddya think,” he said.
He spoke to both of them, but he looked at Jesse.
“Well, there was money still in her
purse,” Perkins said. “She
was still wearing her rings and necklace.”
“Unless it was a random shooting,” Jesse said, “the killer, or
killers, had to follow her here. Even if they knew she was coming here to shop, they’d have no way to know where she’d
