He tucked his gun away. He noted a family—husband, wife, two teenage boys—packing up their SUV. He asked if they’d seen a white Transit leave the parking lot. He was prepared to say the driver left his phone in the office and he wanted to get it to him—leaving it to the family to work on the improbabilities of that.
No fiction was necessary. The husband said they’d like to help but they hadn’t seen the vehicle. The wife nodded a confirmation. Shaw believed them.
Then, looking for other guests, his eyes strayed to his camper. He walked toward it, mouth tightening as he got to the rear.
No high-speed pursuits after all.
Both tires of the motorbike had been slashed.
And, for good measure, so was one of the Winnebago’s.
45
Ah. Here we go.
Detective Jon Merritt is crouching beside some unfinished sewer drains in a construction site—half built out and abandoned, as there are no supplies and equipment anywhere near. The sky is clear on this late autumn afternoon, the temperature unusually warm. The scent of mud and decaying leaves is strong.
He has just leveraged a cinder block aside with a piece of rebar and is training a flashlight into the twelve-inch pipe that would have gone to the city sewer system but now goes nowhere.
Looking around. He doesn’t see anyone. But there are kids on skateboards nearby. He knows this from the rushing clatter of the wheels on concrete. Hannah tried it for a while. Broke her wrist and that was that.
Merritt’s partner, Danny Avery, is canvassing nearby buildings to see if they can describe the workers who were here, any names on pickups, bulldozers or cement trucks, if any limousines were parked in front of the site.
Merritt has records that show that pouring this foundation and putting in a few pipes—the going-nowhere kind—cost the city two point seven million dollars. For a job that was worth thirty thousand. Tops.
The detective peers into the sewer pipe, his tactical flashlight turning the dark visible. He sees rubble.
Where there’s no reason for rubble to be.
He pulls on latex gloves and digs through the muck and stone and dirt.
His radio, on his hip, clatters, startling him.
“Detective 244, come in.”
He turns the volume of the Motorola down with his left hand, the one that is unmucky.
“This is 244, Central.”
“You’re in Beacon Hill?”
“Affirmative.”
What was this?
“Reports of shots fired, 8248 Homewood.”
It’s a block away, less. He wonders why he didn’t hear the gunfire. But much of the construction in Beacon Hill is early twentieth-century stone and brick. Built to survive winters here, built to last.
“History of domestics. Owner is Harvey Trimble, convictions for possession. Held on suspicion of battery, released.”
I’m busy, he thinks. But he mutters, “Copy. Where’s Tac?”
“Fifteen out.”
The Ferrington SWAT team was good but spread out like a half pat of butter on a whole piece of toast, a captain had once said—to groans in the watch room.
“There’re kids in the house, Jon. Neighbor heard screaming.”