Andrew Gross - 15 Seconds

I heard a commotion. Voices in the background. They were probably coming up with my number at that very moment. Just a matter of seconds, then, to hit on my location. Or maybe they already had it! I was playing with fire.

“Did you do this, Dr. Steadman?” she asked me directly. “I knew Bob Martinez. He had a wife and three kids. I want to hear you say it. Did you kill those people?”

“No. I wish I was in front of you so you could see my eyes. I swear, Carrie. I swear on anything. I swear on what I said to you yesterday… My own daughter.” It hurt to even say it. “No .”

“And all that stuff that came out about you at college…?”

“All totally twisted,” I shot back. “Yes, it happened. That fellow drowned. I was there. But it was an accident. He panicked on the rocks, that’s all. I never killed anyone. I wasn’t even suspended from school. Talk to the people at Amherst. It was an accident. They didn’t find a thing. I was even the one who was arguing on the kid’s behalf.” I turned on the main street, leaving the Wendy’s way behind.

“Then what the hell do you think is going on, Dr. Steadman?” I heard exasperation in her voice. “If it’s not you doing this-who is?”

The words had the feel of an accusation more than a question. And God knows, over the last twenty-four hours I’d asked it myself a hundred times. “I wish I knew, Carrie. But please, just look for that car. That’s all I’m asking. There have to be cameras. I guarantee you’ll spot it at, or near, both crime scenes. Please… ADJ-4. Did you at least write it down?”

She didn’t reply. I didn’t know if she believed me or not. Or if she had been tracing the call all along, and cops were on their way to pick me up right now.

“Did you write it down, Carrie?” was all I could ask.

Suddenly two police cars raced past me the other way, lights flashing, sending shock waves through my heart. Now the answer to whether she’d traced my call was clear. “Thanks…” I said, and cut off the connection, my disappointment morphing into outright panic. There were sirens echoing all around. I fully expected the cars to do a U-ey, realizing they’d just gone past me, and surround me on the street. Cops jumping out of their cars with weapons drawn.

But they just kept going. Maybe to that McDonald’s. Maybe to some other fixed point they had triangulated.

I was still free.

I melded into traffic, getting away from there as fast as I could.

My only hope now was to wait for Marv.

“Great job,” Bill Akers said, ducking his head back in. “We missed him. The initial fix was on a fast-food place out on Cassat. We almost had him.”

“Too bad,” Carrie said. “Bill, you think we ought to check out his story? About that car?”

Akers chuckled, indicating that he didn’t give it much credence. “Just let me know if he calls in again. There’ll be other chances. He won’t get far.” He gave her a thumbs-up sign.

She’d done the right thing. Right? Carrie wondered after he left. She’d put out the trace. She’d gotten the proper people involved.

Still, she felt an anxiousness come over her.

She looked down at the sheet of paper on her desk. At the partial plate number staring up at her.

Yes, there probably were cameras around somewhere. And yes, it all did seem just a bit improbable. Why would Steadman kill Martinez? Over a traffic violation, no less. While he was letting him go. Not to mention killing his friend?

And with what gun?

Her heart beat nervously. She’d be a fool. A fool to get involved. What with Raef. And she wasn’t even a detective.

But, yes… She slid the number under her desk mat, answering him. I wrote it down.

Carrie drove, later that afternoon, out to Lakeview, pretending to be on department business, just to see for herself where Martinez had been killed. Her eyes darted back and forth across the steadily trafficked street as it led toward I-10.

She wasn’t sure why she was doing this, other than because somewhere deep in her gut, a part of what Steadman had said must have made sense to her. Was it the fact that he’d had no reason to kill Martinez, who was in the process of letting him go? She’d checked on that. Or, like he’d said, where would he have gotten a weapon? And why? Or that it made perfect sense for him to go to his friend’s house, the only person he knew in town who could help him turn himself in. And no sense at all to kill him. Or was it the good things he had done, which she had read about on his website? Or was it his kind face, which didn’t look like a killer’s face, and the way he defended himself. Or, lastly, was it what he had said about his daughter? As if he’d known exactly what she had once said about her own son. Then you’ll understand …

Maybe it was that that had hit home the most.

Or maybe it was simply because nothing in Steadman’s story fit the profile of a killer. And everything he had said rang true. He was in town to deliver a speech at a Doctors Without Borders conference. Martinez would have been no more than a random interaction. Not to mention this car, this “blue sedan” he pressed so hard on. What would he possibly have to gain if they couldn’t find such a car? If it didn’t exist. There have to be cameras .

But he was right on one thing-Steadman. That there was no one in the department-not a detective or a patrolman or anyone in the brass; not even the guy who mopped the floors at night-who didn’t want to see him thrown into a cell for Martinez’s murder.

Or who was focused on any other suspect.

No one other than Carrie herself. Carolyn Rose Holmes -she smirked to herself as she slowly drove her way up Lakeview- when did you become the patron saint of lost causes?

Her heart picking up, she passed the turnoff where Martinez had been shot-Westvale, it was called-and stopped for a second to look. It was still cordoned off with police barriers.

To her knowledge, there weren’t cameras on any traffic lights on Lakeview. Which made her task all the more difficult. She’d have to go from business to business and ask around. Kind of like a detective. And do it without drawing attention to herself. At five feet four inches, with shoulder-length strawberry-blond hair, light blue eyes, and a scattering of orange freckles on her cheeks, she didn’t much look like a detective.

And she liked that.

Noting the time, she continued west from the murder site toward the highway. The direction Steadman claimed the blue car with South Carolina plates he so desperately wanted her to find was traveling.

She had taken a glance through the witnesses’ statements. None of the people who saw Steadman exiting Martinez’s car had mentioned the vehicle. Of course the killer would have waited for a gap in traffic before he pounced, and Steadman, rushing back to Martinez to check him out, might have been over him, what, twenty, thirty seconds?

Why do you believe him? Carrie asked herself. Are you in such a state now that you’re a sucker for anyone with a smooth voice who throws on a little charm?

ADJ-4, right…?

She passed a bank, Gold Coast Savings. They must have security cameras. At least, Carrie figured, ones facing in. But obtaining them might be problematic-given that while she had a perfectly valid sheriff’s office ID, it wasn’t exactly a detective’s shield.

Continuing, she passed a row of fast-food outlets and larger malls, all possibilities. But the big stores were all set back well off the street behind large parking lots.