Daylight (Atlee Pine #3)(35)

“I’m not sure even a smoking gun would be enough. It’s not that sort of a case, apparently.”

“But we have to get to the truth.”

“Only reason I signed up for the job.”

“Me too.”

“Count me in on that,” chimed in Blum.





CHAPTER





22





THERE IT IS,” said Pine, pointing up at the second-floor fire escape landing where a small camera was attached to one of the support posts. It covered the entire fire escape outside the window and looked like it would also have a sight line to the alley across the street.

They continued on into the building and took the steps up to the third floor, then went down the hall to apartment 311.

Karl Shaffer was in his late forties, balding, grizzled, and tired looking. He seemed a man who had looked at life and life had looked back at him, and neither had been satisfied by what they had seen.

He wore a T-shirt despite the chill in the room. They showed him their official creds and he invited them inside.

“My wife works during the day, office job,” he said as he moved a basket of laundry and some other odds and ends so Blum and the other two could sit down. “So, Dawn called and said you needed to see my camera video?”

“From the shooting the other night.”

Shaffer shook his head. “Damn, that was some crazy shit, wasn’t it? But why not, I guess. Shootings happening all over the place. You’re not safe in your own house or apparently eating spaghetti bolognese at our place.”

“So the camera?” prompted Pine.

“Yeah, burglarized twice in the last ten months. I said enough was enough.” He turned to Pine and Puller and took out his phone. “The camera live-feeds to my phone through an app. It records all the time. It’s on some cloud loop or something that I don’t understand, but I don’t have to; it just has to work.”

“But can you pull up a video feed from the shooting?” asked Puller.

“I think so. The guy who set it up showed me. Give me a sec. It’s easier to do it on the laptop.”

He got up, went out of the room, and returned with the computer. He set it down on his lap, accessed the app, and hit some keys.

“Let’s see, I’m putting in as close to the time as I can. I remember it pretty damn well. I was making a batch of chicken marsala when I heard the shots. I’m not sure I can ever make it again. Okay, here we go.”

He turned the computer around so they could see the screen. He hit a key and the video started to run.

They all watched as Pine and Puller exited the restaurant and met up with Agent McElroy. A few moments later a shot rang out on the video. Though they’d been expecting it, they all flinched. McElroy dropped to the pavement, and Pine and Puller ducked down behind the car as more rounds sailed past.

“Okay, back it up until I tell you to stop,” said Puller.

Shaffer did so.

“Freeze it there.”

They were now watching the mouth of the alley where pops of gunfire were erupting from. And, just as Dawn the waitress had said, there was a blur of something. A sleeve, a leg, a hand. Even with Shaffer zooming in, they couldn’t see any more than that.

“Run it now,” said Puller.

They watched on the screen as first Puller and then Pine ran into the alley and vanished.

A minute went by and Pine visualized herself running down the alley, paralleling Puller’s movement from above. They had reached the end—the dead end, in many ways—of the alley.

Jerome had risen up from behind the trash cans. Pine had talked to him, tried to coax the gun from his hand. He had said what he had.

The next instant she heard the shot. The shot that had ended Jerome’s life. She visualized the surprised look on his face, and then his seemingly slow-motion descent to the alley floor. In reality he had dropped instantly.

But that dramatic vision was instantly overshadowed by something else, something both terrible and inexplicable.

Stunned, she looked over at Puller. His expression was granite, a knot in his jaw was flexing and unflexing.

She leaned over and whispered to Puller, “The cop who shot Jerome never appeared on the camera running into the alley.”

“No, he didn’t,” he replied in an equally low voice.

“Which means he was already in the alley.”

“Which means he was the one who killed Ed McElroy,” replied Puller.





CHAPTER





23





UNLIKE THAT NIGHT, it was quiet in the alley. With death came a stillness unlike any other, thought Pine. You could be in a crowded plaza teeming with the sounds of the masses, and a dead body would suck in all the noise around you and turn it into grim silence.

Puller and Pine bracketed Blum as they entered the space.

“The question is, where was the shooter hiding that we didn’t see him,” said Pine.

They walked to the end of the alley and noted the line of garbage cans, behind which Jerome Blake had been hiding. They glanced down at the bloodstains on the ground where he had been shot and died.

In those splotches Pine saw a young man who could have gone on to make the world a better place. Now he was lying in a morgue accused of a murder he had not committed. Something harsh and deep and unyielding burned in Pine’s gut. The world was filled with enough injustices every day to make you want to pull out your hair and scream at the country’s leaders to do something.