“Where?” shouted Ralph, pulling out his weapon.
“The walkway. There. Cut him off!” Even as I said the words I was sprinting across the parking lot, barking out orders to the officers standing around us. “Seal off the parking garage. Don’t let anyone out!”
A few officers gawked at me for a moment and then joined me in pursuit. “Cut him off in the mall!” I hollered. The officers split off and raced to the mall entrance.
I burst through the door to the parking garage and scanned the area. Nothing. Then I heard footsteps in the stairwell. I leaned over, looked up, and glimpsed movement on the landing above me. “Stop! I’m a federal agent!”
He didn’t stop but stepped through the doorway and disappeared.
I exploded up the stairwell and pulled out my. 357 SIG P229. I threw open the door and stared at the rows of cars. No one. He had to be behind a car somewhere. Or inside one.
“Step out with your hands in the air!” I swung the gun in front of me, leveling it with both hands, looking for a flicker of shadow, a trace of movement, anything. “I said, step out with your hands up!” My words echoed off the cement walls. No reply. My heart was hammering. He was here. He was close. I didn’t know if he was armed or not, but I had to assume he was.
A car door clicked open three cars down. “Drop your weapon and put your hands in the air,” I yelled. “Now!”
I could hear the whimpering voice of a young woman. And then the voice of a scared man. “Don’t shoot, mister!” A graying, overweight man in his underwear stepped out of a Ford Expedition with his hands in the air. “She told me she was twenty-one. I swear.”
“Get back in the car!” I shouted.
“But you just said-”
He never finished his sentence. Before he could say another word, his neck exploded in a spray of blood as the echo of a gunshot rang against the concrete walls of the parking garage.
18
Confusion swept over the man’s face as his hand involuntarily flew up to his neck. He wobbled for a moment, then careened face-first onto the concrete. A moment later the girl was standing next to the car screaming. The shot had come from somewhere beyond them. I had no visual on the shooter.
“Get down,” I shouted to her. “Back in the car!” I leveled my weapon. She scurried back inside and slammed the door, probably thinking I was the one who’d shot her friend. I could hear her wild shrieks, muffled only slightly by the doors of their SUV.
“Shots fired!” I shouted. I hoped one of the officers had followed me into the parking garage and could hear me. I raced to the victim. “I repeat, shots fired!”
Why did you shoot this man? Why would you kill this man? Still no visual on the shooter.
I leaned over and held my hand against the victim’s gurgling throat. He was shaking slightly, starting to go into shock. The bullet had missed the center of his neck and passed through the side of it. There was a lot of blood, but the wound didn’t look fatal. It was a good thing our suspect wasn’t a great shot.
“Sir, you’re going to be all right,” I whispered, hoping it was true, all the while keeping one eye on the cars in front of me. “Lie still. Don’t move.” With one hand I applied gentle pressure to the man’s neck to slow the bleeding, being careful not to press too hard or I might constrict his breathing. With the other I gripped the SIG and surveyed the parking garage. A pack of cops burst through the door.
“Get down!” they yelled.
“I’m a federal agent!”
“Shut up. Drop your weapon!”
Just then one of the men recognized me. “Wait, he’s one of us.”
“Get me an ambulance,” I called out. “And the shooter is still in the building!” I pointed toward where I thought the suspect had run, the most sensible escape route. “Down there. Sweep down toward the exit.”
The officers fanned out and began to search the parking garage car by car while I stayed with the injured man.
“Hang in there,” I told him. “Help will be here in a minute.”
Why did he shoot this man? Was he aiming at me? Did he miss me?
Maybe our suspect wasn’t a very good shot. Maybe. But as I considered the possibilities, a chilling thought struck me: maybe he was an excellent shot. Maybe he knew that if he killed this man with a shot to the torso or to the head I wouldn’t have had to stop to help him. Or, if he hit him in an extremity, the gunshot wound wouldn’t have been serious enough for me to stop. But if he wounded him just right I’d have to make a choice-I’d have to choose between saving this man’s life or continuing the chase. Somehow, he’d thought of all that in the brief moment after this man stepped out of his car. Was that possible? Could he be that smart?
Or maybe he knew this couple would be here. Maybe he’d planned it all in advance. I made a mental note to find out why this man and this girl were here on this night at this time in that parking spot. But the more I thought about it, the more I started to believe that the killer had planned it all out. He might have even waited on that walkway until I saw him there. He’s in it for the game. He likes to watch.
I started to wonder how I could catch a guy who could plan his moves like this. He was smarter than I was.
I stayed with the man who’d been shot until the ambulance arrived a few minutes later. There was a little confusion about which paramedics were going to take him to the hospital-apparently several vehicles had responded. Finally, two of the men lifted the gunshot victim onto a gurney and wheeled him away. We searched the entire parking garage complex, the mall, the parking lot, the restaurants. Nothing.
The girl from the van was still screaming when they took her away. I wondered if she would ever be able to stop herself from screaming when she thought of this night. Some people can put events like this behind them and move on. Most of us can’t.
Before leaving, I looked through the Ford Expedition they’d been in. A white pawn was sitting on the center of the dashboard.
19
After the search for the shooter came up empty, I realized there wasn’t much more I could do there that night. Local law enforcement didn’t really want us around, and even though we could have fought them for jurisdiction, we were already stretched thin trying to investigate all the other cases. It seemed like the best strategy was to let them take the lead on this and keep us updated. That meant I could get back to Asheville and spend tomorrow morning piecing together the overall pattern of the crime series.
Since my shirt was soaked with the wounded man’s blood, I turned it in as evidence and bought a sweatshirt from one of the mall stores that was getting ready to close. After cleaning the blood off my hands in the bathroom, I went to sign the chain of evidence papers. That’s what I was doing when Ralph walked over to me, shaking his head.
“What is it?” I asked.
“You.”
“Me?”
“Yup, you. I need to brief the officers in charge here, Margaret is back in Asheville, and that puts you in charge.”
I didn’t like where this was going. “In charge of what?”
“Meeting with Governor Taylor.”
“What?”
Ralph shrugged his huge shoulders, trying unsuccessfully to look helpless. “He heard about the girl; wants
