it would be suicide to go at it this way.
His cell phone rang. Munoz. “Yeah, Freddy?” He snapped it open, heading toward his car.
“Looks like that angel of yours is still on duty, Lieutenant.”
“What angel are we talking about, Freddy?”
“We found the truck!”
“The vehicle’s a file one, LT.” Munoz took Hauck around the red truck’s side. “Stolen. From a Ford dealership up in Wallingford yesterday afternoon. The plates are registered to a Monica Kassel out of Waterbury.”
ADJ-977, the number Hauck had been unable to make out at the station.
“Dollar to a dime they’ve been stolen too.”
The vehicle had been abandoned on the curb of a hilly street just off the Post Road, a little over a mile from where the shooting had occurred. A roving patrol car, alerted to the APB, had spotted it. There was a nail salon and a framing store on the corner, a row of modest middle-class homes rising up the block where the street wound up the hill past St. Roch’s church, where Hauck’s family had belonged as a boy. From there, they could have easily blended into traffic along Railroad Ave. and hooked onto the thruway.
It was definitely the same vehicle. Hauck ran his hand along the dented rear fender. The same spanking-new rims he had seen from the station’s floor. Scratch marks on the rear driver’s-side panel where it had careened off the stanchion. Scrape marks on the rear chrome.
“They clearly had another vehicle waiting. Any chance they left anything inside?”
Munoz shook his head. “They left it pretty clean, Lieutenant.”
Wearing plastic gloves, Freddy opened the front passenger door, careful not to disturb anything. It looked like the damned thing had been driven fresh off the lot.
Hauck looked up the hill. “You check those homes up there? Someone might’ve noticed the second car while it was waiting, or when they switched it. This mother would’ve barreled in here pretty fast.”
“Val and Tim are up there now,” Munoz said, referring to two of Hauck’s detectives who were supposed to be off duty today but were called in, both of them helping out.
“What about the dealership? Maybe there’s a security camera there? Or any of those businesses up on Church Street?”
Munoz looked at him. “I called you as soon as we got here, LT.”
The stress of all he had been through was starting to show. “It’s just that this has to be buttoned up, Freddy—tight! There’s gonna be a lot of eyes all over this.”
“I know.” Munoz nodded. He tapped Hauck on the arm. “We all know, Lieutenant. How’s Jess?”
Hauck had checked in with the ER on the ride down and was planning to head up there after this. “I think she’s doing fine, Freddy. Thanks.”
What wasn’t fine was that they now had no idea in the world what kind of car they were looking for or what the shooter had yelled out as he sped away. And that someone had been shot dead right in his own town—right in the goddamn light of day—and that the victim was guaranteed to bring the nightly news right down their throats, not to mention the FBI.
Other than that, it was just like Freddy said: angels.
As Hauck nodded for Freddy to shut the truck’s door, something caught his eye.
A piece of paper wedged under the driver’s seat. Maybe a dealership sticker.
“What’s that there?”
It was barely visible, caught in the seat adjuster track.
“You do the honors,” Hauck said.
Munoz bent down and carefully pulled it free by the edges.
It was a page from a newspaper. Folded in half. Torn slightly.
Munoz held it up and chuckled. “What do we have here?”
It was from the Bridgeport Sun. Hauck noticed the date, July 11. Almost three months before. On the top of the page was an article about some well-known Connecticut businessman, Richard Scaynes, caught up in an Iraq War corruption scandal. PROSECUTION SETS A DATE FOR SCAYNES’S CORRUPTION TRIAL.
But it was the headline below the fold that got their attention.
TEEN GIRL DIES IN POOL ACCIDENT.
Hauck raised his eyes toward Freddy. “Live and learn.”
The detective read out loud, “Bridgeport’s East End is mourning the tragic loss tonight of a promising high school sophomore who drowned Saturday in a suspicious pool accident…”
Then he stopped. It seemed as if Hauck’s and Freddy’s eyes hit on the same thing all at once.
The victim’s name.
Suddenly it became clear just what the shooter had been shouting.
Her name made a lot of things clear.
It was Josephina. Josephina Ruiz.
“You have any connection to this case, Lieutenant?” Freddy looked toward Hauck, trying to connect the dots.
Hauck shook his head. “No.” In a strange way that made him feel relieved.
They read through the rest of the article, which recounted how the victim, a high school honors student, and a group of her friends had sneaked into the fenced-in community pool at night. They’d been drinking a little, which led to them horsing around in the pool. Apparently, the victim’s bathing suit got entangled on an underwater filter duct that had been left open and she couldn’t tear it free. The rest of the kids scattered, panicked. The body ended up being found by a night security guard. Then one by one, the next day, they started to come forward, identified by the school and local police.
No charges were ever filed.
Por Josephina. Hauck was sure now that this was what the shooter had been shouting. That was what this thing was about. Revenge. The East End was a tough section of Bridgeport. Lots of local gang turf up there. But why here? In Greenwich. At an Exxon station, in the middle of the day?
But it didn’t have to do with him, Hauck realized now, recalling the window rolling down and the barrel pointed in his eyes.
Nor did it connect to David Sanger. That now seemed clear. Simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. The poor guy had no idea what was behind the attack that killed him.
But one person might.
