Andrew Gross - 15 Seconds

She knew she had no greater supporter in the department than Bill. Truth was the community outreach effort had been one of his own personal initiatives. She also knew she’d need every bit of that support when it came to the budgetary cutbacks she’d heard were coming. She’d worn her most flattering suit, black pants and jacket, and a light blue tee. She wanted to look as proper and businesslike as she could for when the shit would hit the fan later.

“How about I go first?” Carrie said. She took in a breath. “I have an admission to make, Bill. I want to show you something…” She put the folder on his desk.

She had struggled all night over showing this to him. She knew what she had done would get her into a lot of hot water: withholding key evidence from the investigation, a murder investigation; and going around on her own obtaining confidential security tapes using a JSO ID.

Not to mention, how she was probably the only person here who harbored any doubts about Steadman’s guilt, which she knew, politically, wasn’t exactly a home run. She’d pretty much tossed and turned the whole night.

But in the morning, she’d awoken, sure in her heart that she was doing the right thing.

Carrie swallowed. “Look, Bill…” she began, trying to ignore the photo of Akers with the new Chief Hall directly in her line of sight, “I’ve had some thoughts… about what Steadman was saying the other day… How certain things just weren’t adding up. Like why would he have shot Martinez in the first place? I know the others said he was being belligerent and argumentative, but by the time they all left, things had calmed down considerably, and Martinez was only writing up a warning and about to let him go…”

Akers nodded obligingly. Carrie judged his gaze as disappointed.

“Not to mention where any possible weapon would have come from. I mean, he’d just come off a plane, right? And how there’s nothing in the guy’s past to suggest he had these kinds of tendencies…”

Akers took off his reading glasses. “Carrie…”

A look of skepticism came over her boss’s face, and she found herself suddenly rushing things, not giving him the chance to interrupt. “Then it kind of seemed crazy Steadman would kill his own friend? Who he knew from college. More likely he was going there because he had nowhere else to go-he told us he only ran from the scene in the first place because the police fired on him. I mean, he did place a call to 911… So I asked around… He’d also placed two calls to Dinofrio, minutes after he ran from the crime scene, so it seems possible, doesn’t it, Bill, that he only headed there because Dinofrio was the only person he knew in town, not to mention an attorney, which kind of backs up his assertion that he only went there in the first place to turn himself in. And the second murder scene showed no sign of any struggle or altercation-”

“I didn’t realize he had said he was only going there to turn himself in.” Akers looked at her inquisitively. “You certainly sound like you’ve been following this case closely, Carrie.”

“I’m only pointing out that there are inconsistencies, Bill. You know how Steadman kept going on and on the other day about us looking for that blue car? With South Carolina plates?” She opened up the file. “I started thinking-”

“Look, Carrie.” Akers pushed himself back in his chair. “I appreciate all your thought on this, but have you given any thought to the possibility that maybe Steadman intended all along to kill his friend?”

“What? Why in the world would he want to do that ?”

“I don’t know. Maybe there was some history between them that will come out. And given what has come out, the other night, about his time in college, you may well be wrong about any predating ‘violent tendencies.’ And it’s entirely possibly he could have planted the gun somewhere. Off the airport grounds. Maybe on a previous visit.”

“A previous visit?”

“Why not? That would give him a perfect alibi, right? To come up here to play golf with him… Then he stashed the gun somewhere when he ran from the scene. Or left it near Dinofrio’s house. People are searching the areas now. And what if Martinez somehow found something? What if Steadman somehow felt Martinez was interfering with his plan?”

“He was up here to give a speech at a doctors’ conference, Bill! Look, there’s something you need to see.” Carrie blew out a breath, knowing there was no holding back now, and took out the first photo, the one of the blue Mazda racing from Martinez’s murder scene. Here goes the career, she thought.

Akers put up his hand. “No, Carrie, I think you’re the one who needs to see something…” He reached to the side of his desk and pushed a piece of paper across to her. “This came in just an hour ago.”

Carrie picked it up. It was an invoice of some kind. From something called Bud’s Guns in Mount Holly, North Carolina.

An invoice for a Heckler & Koch 9mm handgun.

She saw whom the bill was made out to, and her stomach fell like a ten-ton weight hurled off a cliff.

Henry Steadman

3110 Palmetto Way

Palm Beach, Florida

Steadman’s address.

An H &K 9mm, the same kind of gun that had killed both Dinofrio and Martinez. It was bought at a gun show, in Tracy, which made it perfectly legal to avoid providing certain IDs and background checks.

The invoice was dated March 2. Just three weeks ago!

Steadman had lied. He said he’d never even owned a gun. Her breath felt cut in half. Carrie was afraid to lift her eyes.

“So what exactly do you have in there that’s so important for me to see?” Akers asked her with a sharpness in his voice. Acting more like a superior officer than a colleague.

“Nothing…” Carrie swallowed, her mouth completely dry. She closed the file. “This makes it all pretty clear.”

Ihad just about made it through Georgia when I heard the news.

I’d spent the night in Hinesville, a few miles south of Savannah. I pulled off the highway in need of a night’s sleep and, even more, a shower, and drove until I found a motel that looked even sleepier than me. The woman who checked me in seemed as anxious to get back to the tea she was brewing as I was to avoid her direct sight. Ten minutes later I was bathed and gone to the world, a King of Queens rerun on the TV. Glad to just be in a bed after two nights. When I woke up, the housekeeper was knocking on the door. It was close to ten. The news was on, Libyan Rebels Advancing on the Capital of Tripoli . I closed my eyes again, wondering if I’d hear an update about me.

What came on almost sent me into cardiac arrest.

“Florida double homicide suspect purchased a nine-millimeter murder handgun at North Carolina gun show.”

I shot up in bed, as a pretty, down-home anchorwoman told the world how on March 2, only three weeks ago, I had bought a Heckler & Koch 9mm handgun, apparently the same gun that killed both Martinez and Mike, from a local dealer at a gun show in North Carolina.

I leaped out of the bed and put my face close to the screen.

What I saw was a supposed bill of sale from an outfit called Bud’s Guns, in Mount Holly. The report claimed that the weapon had been paid for in cash at the Mid-Carolina Gun Fair almost three weeks earlier, which, it explained, avoided the requirement for a more detailed background check and ID.

My heart almost came up my throat. I’d never been to a gun show in my life! And I’d only been to North Carolina once in the past several years, to Duke University, for a conference on rebuilding facial bone structure.