Ambush (Michael Bennett #11)(52)

The waitress approached with Gorman’s burger and fries and another Michelob. Clyde sat up, thrusting his nose into the hamburger’s scent cone. His nostrils flared. I gestured him back down.

“Sure you don’t want anything to eat?” the waitress asked as she set my seltzer water on the table.

“I’m good.”

Gorman watched her leave, then rolled his eyes at my glass. “Last time I saw you, you were drinking whiskey like it was water. Now you’re just drinking water?”

“Times change.” I pulled my glass toward me, as if protecting it. “An RTD guard named Sadler went after the killer. What did he see?”

Gorman pounded ketchup onto his fries. “I’m telling you, rabbit. Witnesses told Sadler the asshole took off northeast, heading along the tracks. Sadler went in the same direction. Traffic cams tracked the suspect to that construction area along Wewatta Street. Then he just went . . . poof.”

“Not like a slow-moving homeless man to be that good at disappearing.”

“I’ll bet you dollars to donuts these guys have hidey-holes we can’t even guess at.”

I pulled up a mental map of the area around Union Station. “What if someone picked him up? He disappeared near all those office buildings and parking garages. And he wasn’t that far from Commons Park.”

“That’s exactly why I talked to the homeless there. And why I had patrol go door to door. Hell of a lot of doors, too. No one saw anything. For all I know, he might have made it to the Platte River and thrown himself in. I should be so lucky.”

I propped my elbows on the arms of my chair. “Did you look in the trash cans? If the clothes and hair were a disguise, maybe he dumped them.”

“A disguise?” Gorman’s breath wheezed in and out as he laughed. “You think he took a shower and picked up a pair of shoes, too? Maybe stopped for a shave?”

“Or maybe he had a car stashed. Did you look at cameras in the nearby garages?”

Another wheeze. “Now you think this joker had a getaway vehicle?” He leaned back and rubbed at his chest as if he had heartburn. Half his burger and all the fries had disappeared. “No way.”

“Why not?”

“The correct question is why.” He pulled a business card out of his shirt pocket and used a corner to pick at his front teeth. “Let’s take a walk down fantasy avenue and say this nutcase has a hard-on for cops. Let’s even say he’s been eyeballing the security guys and Kane gave him the chance he’d been dreaming of. Okay, maybe. But if you walk a little further out on that limb and say it was so preplanned he had a disguise and a getaway car? That he’s Mr. Sophisticated? Then you’d at least figure the guy had been to Union Station before to scope out the place, right? Am I right? But no.” Gorman looked triumphant. “He’s never been there. Trust me, I checked.”

I ignored that. “Did you run down any vehicles that were nearby when it happened? They’d be on camera, wouldn’t they?”

Something dark slithered into Gorman’s eyes. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were trying to tell me how to do my job.”

Seemed like someone had to. “I’m just throwing out ideas.”

“Genius choo-choo cop, is that it?” He laughed and relaxed. “Look, I’m sure you’re good at what you do. Guarding trains and chasing trespassers and all. But this is a little outside your ball-i-wick.”

“Bail-i-wick,” I enunciated, unable to resist.

“What?”

“Never mind.”

He flushed. “Whatever.” He finished with the business card, started to put it back in his shirt pocket, then glanced at it and changed his mind. He slid it into the inside pocket of his suit coat.

I finished my water.

“My opinion,” Gorman said, “it’s just a tragedy. One of those pointless things. Cases with these fucking religious freaks usually is.”

I perked up at this tiny tidbit. “What makes you say he’s a religious freak?”

“His tattoo. That wasn’t in the paper. Some Muslim shit.”

“You mean the star and crescent?”

His small eyes went smaller. “How’d you know about that?”

“I just came from RTD. So you figure the tat makes him a zealot?”

“How would you interpret it? You see his picture? The guy is a few pubic hairs short of a full snatch.” He winked. “Not that that’s always a bad thing.”

I resisted the urge to ask him if he made his mama proud. “Plenty of people have religious tattoos. Crucifixes. Bible verses. It doesn’t make them zealots.”

“Look, I got nothing against being devout,” he said. “I’m on Team Jesus myself. But these Muslims, they’re a whole different breed. Cop killers.”

I didn’t grab the bait.

Gorman pushed his empty plate aside and wiped his fingers on a napkin. His eyes went past speculative and turned suspicious. “So level with me. What exactly is your interest in this case?”

“He was a cop, Gorman. And a veteran. He deserves the best.”

Gorman’s eyes showed a spark, like an arsonist’s match. “And you don’t think that’s me.”

I swallowed my own anger. “That’s not what I mean. Kane was a Marine. I owe him.”