Ali’s eyes bugged out at the motorcycle helmet, and Siegel put it down in front of him. “Go ahead, little guy. Try it on if you want to.”
“It’s fine,” I said to Ali.
I took out some glasses and ice, and a couple of SmartWaters for the kids. Nana went to open the cabinet where we keep the chips and crackers, but I shook my head no just enough for her to see.
“You’ve got a nice place here,” Siegel said, looking out the window at the backyard. “Great setup in the middle of the city.”
“Thanks.” I handed him a short pour of the scotch, and then one for Bree and myself, and one with water for Nana.
“So here’s to fresh starts,” Bree said pointedly, and raised her glass.
“Here’s to summer coming!” Ali chimed in.
Siegel smiled down at him and put a hand on his shoulder.
“And here’s to this good family,” he said. “It’s really nice to meet you all.”
Chapter 76
SOMETIMES THE BREAKS in a murder case come out of the blue — like a phone call on a Sunday morning, from somewhere you never expected.
“Detective Cross?”
“Yes?”
“This is Detective Scott Cowen from Brick Township PD, in New Jersey. I think we may have a line on your sniper problem up here.”
MPD had been fielding literally hundreds of tips every week on a newly dedicated sniper hotline. More than 99 percent of those calls were fantasy fiction or dead ends, but whatever Cowen was sitting on, it had gotten him past Dispatch. He now had my attention.
I turned my newspaper sideways and started writing in the margin next to the crossword. Cowen. Brick Township.
“Go ahead,” I said.
“Yesterday afternoon, we pulled a white ninety-two Suburban out of the water over at Turn Mill Pond near here. The plates were already gone, no surprise, but I don’t think whoever put it there expected us to find it, at least not this fast. The thing was, we had an ultralight air show going on at the airport this weekend, and a couple of guys flying over saw something down there and called it in —”
“Yes?” I said. Cowen seemed to talk without taking any breath at all.
“Yeah, so it couldn’t have been in the water more than forty-eight hours, I’m thinking, because we still managed to pull some damn good prints off of it. Six of them had a dozen or more points each, which was great in theory, until none of them came up on my first pass through IAFIS —”
“Detective, I’m sorry, but can you explain to me how this connects to my case?”
“Well, this is the thing. I’m thinking we’ve got a dead end here, too, but then this morning I get a call from the state — apparently one of those six prints is a match for your UNSUB down there.”
Now we were getting somewhere. I stood up off the couch and started toward the attic, double time. I needed my charts and notes right now.
UNSUB stands for Unknown Subject, which was the only designation we had for our phantom gunman. The print he’d left behind on the night of the first sniper hit, and then again at the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial, had been deliberate, like a calling card. This new print sounded a lot more like a mistake to me, and at this point in the game, I loved a good mistake.
I wondered whether all of the remaining prints from the car belonged to the same guy, or if maybe we’d just gotten a line on both members of our sniper team.
That thought, I kept to myself for the time being.
“Detective Cowen from Brick Township, you may have just made my month. Can you send me everything you have?” I asked.
“Give me your e-mail,” he said. “They’re all scanned and ready to go. We’ve got six full prints, like I said, plus another nine partials. It was really just a lucky break that we found that vehicle so fast —”
“Here’s my e-mail,” I said, and spit it out for him. “Sorry to rush you, but I’m a little eager to see what you’ve got.”
“No problem.” I heard typing in the background. “Okay, they’re on the way. If you need anything else, or want to come take a look around, or whatever, you should just let me know.”