David Handler - The Blood Red Indian Summer

“That’s very sweet of you,” Des said to her. “But I’m liable to be gone for hours and hours. Please enjoy your evening, okay?”

The Deacon had come along for the ride. Sat right there beside her in the cruiser, big hands resting on his thighs, face impassive. The grown-up inside of Des was thrilled that he wanted to be at a crime scene again, be involved. This was a good sign. But her inner child definitely felt funny about him breathing down her neck while she was on the job. Not funny ha-ha. Funny freaked.

A trooper was stationed at the entrance to White Sand Beach’s dimly lit parking lot. Another was posted over at the lot’s exit on Seaside. Traffic in and out of the lot was routed that way so the streets absorbed the beach flow evenly. When Des pulled into the lot, she encountered a hive of activity. The crime scene techies were there with their blue and white cube vans. So was the death investigator. Everyone was crowded around Andrea Halperin’s black Mercedes sedan. Bright camera flashes kept going off as they photographed the bodies, the car, the pavement surrounding the car, it all.

“Your instincts were good,” the Deacon said as she pulled up and parked. “You thought something nasty might go down. You had it right.”

“Daddy, that’s not giving me a whole lot of comfort right now.”

“Wouldn’t expect it to. Sometimes, being smart can be a real curse.”

“Now you tell me.” Des climbed out, giving her big hat a tug against the wind that gusted off the water. A few raindrops were starting to spatter.

Yolie spotted her and came right over, shaking her head in amazement. “Damn, girl, I forgot how whack this town of yours is. It’s so peaceful here that you’d swear everyone’s on Prozac. Except every time I turn around somebody’s getting shot or poisoned or bashed over the head with a-a-a…” She broke off with a sputter, her eyes growing round as she realized who’d just climbed out of the passenger door of Des’s cruiser. “Deputy Superintendent Mitry, it’s great to see you up and around again, sir. How are you feeling?”

“Hungry, Lieutenant. I was just sitting down to dinner when you called.”

“I’m so sorry to break into your evening.”

“You didn’t. Your shooter did. Besides, I’m not on active duty. Merely observing.”

Toni scurried over to them now like an anxious little spaniel. “Good evening, Deputy Superintendent Mitry,” she exclaimed with a big smile. “So pleased to meet you, sir. I’m Sergeant Toni Tedone.”

“Of course you are,” he said to her dismissively.

Toni stood there with her mouth open. No sound came out.

“Would you like me to run it for you, sir?” Yolie asked him.

“Well, I didn’t come down here to inhale the sea air, Lieutenant,” he barked in response.

This was the Deacon who Des knew. The Deacon whose intimidating presence could make even a hardened twenty-year veteran lose his lunch. She hadn’t seen this Deacon in a long while. It made her smile inside, she had to admit.

“Sir, we have two victims in the front seat of the vehicle,” Yolie reported. “The passenger’s Stewart Plotka. The driver’s Andrea Halperin, his attorney. If you’ll come with me…” She started toward the Benz, Des and the Deacon following her. “Guys, could you step back for just one moment, please?” she asked the techies. “Thank you… Her window was rolled down, sir. His wasn’t, as you can see by the shattered glass. The engine was running when we got here, and the air conditioning was on. It would appear that they were idling in comfort while they waited.”

The Deacon stared at her. “Waited for?…”

“I’m surmising that they had a prearranged meeting here with someone.”

“You’re surmising this based upon what, Lieutenant?”

“I’ll get to that in a moment, if you don’t mind. Miss Halperin probably rolled her window down when the shooter arrived. She took two in the forehead from point-blank range, here and here…” Yolie pointed to the wounds with a Bic pen. Andrea’s eyes were open wide. She had a totally shocked expression on her dead face. An expression that Des doubted she’d ever had in life. “Mr. Plotka took two to the left side of the head, as you can see. He was also shot once through his left hand and twice more in the chest. We make seven shots fired altogether. We just dug a nine-mil slug out of the armrest on Mr. Plotka’s side. It’s likely to be the shot that went through his hand.”

“Did you find the weapon?” Des asked, head spinning and spinning.

“No weapon.”

A powerful gust of wind buffeted them. It was a chill wind. The air suddenly felt ten degrees colder. Lightning crackled in the sky over the Sound, followed one, two, three, four seconds later by a clap of thunder.

“We’d better let these people get their work done before the rain comes,” the Deacon said, stepping under the overhang of the covered picnic area. Des, Yolie and Toni joined him there. “When did it go down, Lieutenant?”

“A neighbor one house up on Brighton Road heard shots fired at two minutes past seven and phoned it in. And a young couple out walking on the beach phoned it in three minutes after that when they came upon the scene. The shooter was long gone by then. We took their statements and sent them on their way. The girl was pretty upset. We can reinterview them tomorrow.”

“Did this neighbor hear the shooter drive away?”

“No, sir. But if he exited the lot over there on Seaside, then our Brighton Road caller wouldn’t necessarily have heard him. I have men canvassing the neighbors on Seaside now.”

“How about prior to the shooting? Did your Brighton Road caller observe either car entering the lot?”

Yolie nodded. “The Benz. Not a second vehicle.”

“And what does that tell you?”

“The shooter could have come and gone on foot,” Des suggested. “Parked his car up by Old Shore Road. Approached the Benz nice and quiet in the darkness, let them have it, then hightailed it back to his car.”

Yolie nodded. “I’m with you. We’re asking the neighbors if they saw anybody out walking or running.” She glanced uneasily at the Deacon. “Sir, we sealed off the perimeter ASAP but a couple of tabloid photographers slipped through and ID’ed the victims before we could chase them off. So I’m afraid we’ve got ourselves a real circus.”

“That can’t be helped. Just do your job and accept the fact that they’re doing theirs.”

“Yes, sir.”

There was another crackle of lightning followed almost instantly by a deafening clap of thunder. Rain began to hammer down on the roof over their heads.

“Before I jump to an obvious conclusion I always pause to consider the less obvious,” the Deacon said, thumbing his jaw thoughtfully.

Yolie frowned at him. “As in?…”

“Is there any chance that your victims had become romantically involved? That they were down here admiring the sunset together and were attacked by a jealous lover?”

“Stewart Plotka’s lady friend, Katie O’Brien, presently lives and works down in Boca Raton,” Des said. “I’m not up on Andrea Halperin’s love life but I doubt she’d go there. She was way out of Plotka’s league.”

“There’s no telling who a woman will fall for,” he countered.

“True enough,” Des allowed, wondering if she’d imagined that extra little edge she’d heard in his voice.

“Lieutenant, you were surmising that your victims arrived here for a prearranged meeting with someone. Possibly a seven o’clock meeting given the time of the shooting. Who would that someone be?”

“Well, that’s pretty clear,” Toni the Tiger spoke up. “I mean, isn’t it?”

He turned his frosty gaze on her. “I’ve only been on this job for thirty-two years. Absolutely nothing is clear to me.”