Dee Henderson - The Witness

Connor nodded his thanks. “I told Marsh two hours, and I’d meet him at the station.”

“Keep him moving today, okay? Whatever you have to do. Don’t give him a lot of time to think. You took his sidearm?”

“When I was searching him over for bullet holes of his own. It’s locked in the gun box of the first arriving officer.”

“I’ll handle it from there. And, Connor-I’ll tell Marie about Tracey personally.”

“I appreciate it.” He fought to keep his voice together. “Sorry, Chief. I just can’t do it.”

“I’m sending my sister to step in with Marsh; she can nag him into listening to the doctors. The chaplain is on the way to meet Caroline. Just focus on the task in front of you, and let the thinking about it come later, okay?”

“Yeah.” Connor found the guts to look down the sidewalk at where a white sheet covered Tracey. “They were getting married, Chief.”

Luke squeezed his shoulder. “Go find Mayfield. He was over at the communications van a few minutes ago.”

Connor nodded and took a deep breath as he turned that way. He wished like crazy it was one of the guys under that sheet instead of Tracey; anything would be an easier loss to absorb than losing Tracey.

“Connor.” He followed the shout and found Mayfield waiting for him. “Sorry, man.”

“Yeah. We’re going after that cab.”

“An all points is already out; they’re stopping every cab in the city. You want to put emergency traffic stops on the outbound interstate lanes?”

“There, and a couple patrol cars sitting on the airport entrance and anywhere else we can think of as exit points where he’s going to try and dump the vehicle.” Connor climbed into the van beside Mayfield and tried to focus on remembering the street names he normally knew without thinking about them.

Who wanted him dead?

The question rattled around the tired focus of his thoughts as Marsh accepted the scrip the emergency doc wrote him for pain pills and stuffed it in his shirt pocket.

“Your personal doc can take those stitches out in about ten days. Any redness or extra heat in the injury, see him before then.”

“Sure, Doc.”

The ER still bustled with staff coming and going between curtained-off cubicles, and Marsh was left alone again. One of the guys in the squad had brought over the shirt and slacks from his work locker. Marsh buttoned the uniform shirt, relieved to have something clean.

The curtain moved, and where the doctor had disappeared a lady reappeared. “They said you can go now?”

Marsh offered the chief’s sister a partial smile. “Yeah. I don’t think they want to particularly keep me. This hospital and I go way back.” He’d been shot twice in his career, and both times had ended up here with him staring at the ceiling and getting asked inane questions by doctors about hands and toes and names of presidents.

“I remember.” Susan was at his side to help when he shifted off the bedside to stand, but he wasn’t nearly as wobbly on his feet now after they shoved nearly three sports-drink bottles full of some awful sweet stuff into him.

“Your headache is pounding?”

“Like a full-blown parade drum section is camped out in there,” he agreed.

“You would think they could do better than aspirin in a place like this.”

“They could; I passed.” He slipped on his sunglasses to slash the light he had to deal with in half and cover the fact tears were too close to the surface for comfort. “That helps.”

She offered what she had brought with her. “The coat is probably a size too big, but the gloves should be right.”

He accepted the coat. “I appreciate your thinking of it.”

“Connor did. He said-” She bit her lip.

“It’s okay, Susan. I was wearing that other coat. I know what it ended up looking like.”

“Yes, well, it’s not a memory you should have.” She gathered up the papers that had become his admission records and nodded toward the center aisle. “They’ll need you to sign out at the desk.”

“Of course, one more signature on one more form.”

She smiled and with one arm around his waist hugged him. “I’m buying you some good strong coffee before I take you to the station.”

“Connor’s there now?”

“Yes.”

He didn’t ask about Tracey, and she didn’t offer. He knew what had already been done. The medical examiner’s staff had put her in a body bag and taken her to the morgue and started taking X rays so they could take the slug that killed her out of her and into evidence. Tracey was dead, and the evidence needed to convict her killer was still in her.

He took a troubled breath and refused to let himself think about that reality. He needed to work; he needed to do something.

The police-department desks were busy with guys-that was the odd realization Marsh had as he walked through the bull pen of desks toward Connor’s and found guys who were off duty now back on duty. Susan knew the building layout as well as he did, but he still kept a hand on her arm to escort her, not wanting to break that thin line of comfort yet in having her with him.

“I’m sorry, Marsh.”

He nodded at the officer’s condolence, the words repeating over and over as he made his way toward Connor’s desk.

Connor set down his phone and got up to lean against the side of the desk as Marsh pulled out an adjoining chair. “The mayor and the rest of the city council are here. I’ve got the squad union rep running interference to keep them out of your space for at least another half hour so you can hear what we have first.”

“I appreciate it.”

Connor handed Susan his notepad. “Can you-?”

She glanced at the note, at Marsh, and nodded. “I’ll use Beth’s phone.” She headed over to join the unit’s secretary.

“Your extended family heard the news; Susan can handle the initial call.”

“Thanks.” Marsh and his second cousins had ceased to be more than blood relations a long time ago, their opinion of his job vocally expressed at family gatherings, something that had been the final straw. They were a thousand miles away and not likely to come to the funeral.

“We haven’t found either the cab or the driver yet. We’re stopping every vehicle that is seen, but nothing so far. We’ve got a pretty good overview from the company dispatchers where cabs should have been during that slice of time. We’ve also got a list of cabs that were not on duty but where the vehicles were out with their drivers, most parked at home in preparation for weekend shifts.”

“The cab is going to be difficult-an Irish cabdriver, maybe not quite so tough.”

“There are officers going through cab hack licenses looking for possible matches based on the description. Others making sure there isn’t a stolen cab somewhere in the mix. It’s going to speed things up if we are able to get a sketch we can release to the public.”

“Susan hadn’t heard-how’s Caroline doing?”

“Still in surgery. Another two hours minimum before she makes the recovery room. She lost a lot of blood, Marsh. I don’t know.”

She’d be dead and he’d have that on his conscience too. “Anyone else at the scene proving to be a good witness?”

“A lot more general and contradictory information than what Caroline gave us-cabdriver, no it was a cab passenger; middle-age, no kind of young; white hair, no dark; some insist it was a woman driving-”

“That’s probably a glimpse of the red hair getting remembered.”

“Exactly. I’ll trust Caroline’s memory as probably the most accurate description we’ll get from the scene.” Connor ran his hand across his face and shook his head, trying to shake off the fatigue gripping him, then looked over at him.