Doug Allyn - The Best American Mystery Stories 2015

I said, “My name’s Keith O’Donnell.”

She said, “Mine’s April Ozga.”

I smiled at her and nodded and turned and walked away. I can’t even tell you how glad I felt, knowing her name.

When it was clear he’d finished talking, Barbara said, “Has that ever happened to you before? Getting distracted by a pretty woman while you’re working?”

“No. Never. They train you to focus. But they hardly even had to with me. I’ve gone hunting ever since I was a kid. You learn how to keep your eyes on the target while you’re hunting. You don’t get a second shot most of the time.”

Barbara nodded. That fit with what little she knew about snipers — all of which she’d learned in the last twenty-four hours. When the military looked for soldiers to train as snipers, they liked to pick men who’d been hunting since they were old enough to carry a rifle. In fact they preferred those who’d killed deer, or some other animal that was bigger than a man. Apparently killing something that size required you to cross a critical psychological threshold.

According to Keith’s service record, he had crossed that threshold many times. He joined the Marine Corps at the age of eighteen and after a couple years of service enrolled in their sniper school in Quantico. He passed with flying colors, which was quite an accomplishment, since only the best Marines were allowed in and fewer than 40 percent passed. Keith was subsequently deployed to Iraq, where in two years he tallied twenty-four confirmed kills. Barbara really wasn’t sure what confirmed meant in that context, but she thought it meant Keith had killed considerably more than twenty-four people.

But he hadn’t killed any since he joined the Miami Metro-Dade Special Response Team. He’d never been given “the green light.” Except for once.

She said, “If you had been told to shoot Mr. Guinness that day, could you have done it?”

Keith answered without hesitation. “Yes.”

She could see he believed it.

She said, “So this woman, April Ozga... Did you ever see her again?”

Yes. I went to her house a couple days later. That was as long as I could make myself wait. I knew it was wrong. Maybe not against department policy, technically, since with Guinness dead the case was closed, so I didn’t have to worry about tainting a witness or anything like that. But I knew going to see her was... just wrong. But I couldn’t help myself.

The address she’d given us was in Bay Heights. I went there on a Saturday, figuring she’d be home, but when I found the address I started to worry. It was a house, not an apartment. A nice house too, way nicer than a woman in her mid-twenties should be able to afford. I started to worry that maybe she was married even though she didn’t wear a ring. I realized then I didn’t actually know anything about her. She could be a lesbian, for God’s sake. If she wasn’t, she pretty much had to have a boyfriend, as beautiful as she was. But I got out of my car anyway and walked up to the door. It seemed to take forever for someone to answer when I rang the bell.

The man who did looked old enough to be her father. He said, “Yes?”

I said, “Hi. I’m Officer O’Donnell, Metro-Dade Police. Is April Ozga here?”

“Oh. Sure. Come in. Is everything all right?”

“Yes,” I said, stepping in. The living room was filled with furniture that looked like it was pretty old. That is to say, it wasn’t new and expensive stuff like a young person with money might buy, or really beat-up hand-me-downs like you’d expect for a young person who blew everything they had on the mortgage. I saw some family photos on the walls. They included pictures of this guy who’d let me in, looking younger, and a couple of dark-haired girls. One of them looked like she might have been April at about ten or twelve years old.

The man said, “You’re here about Thursday.”

I said, “Yes.”

“Thank God she’s all right.”

“Yes.”

“Sit down. I’ll go get her.”

I nodded, although I wasn’t going to sit down — I was too nervous. But a woman came in just as the man turned to leave the room. She had to be his wife, April’s mother. He explained to her who I was, then went as far as the bottom of the steps to yell April’s name up them. It was so much like I remembered from when I was a teenager, going to pick up dates, I almost laughed. Her mother came over to me and gripped my hand. She didn’t shake it, she just held it with both of hers and gazed into my eyes with a look that said my being there reminded her of how scared she’d been on Thursday.

She said, “Nothing’s wrong, is it?”

I said, “No. Everything’s fine.”

She offered me something to eat or drink. In between the words I heard footsteps on the stairs. I turned toward them and watched April come into the room. Watched her pause, recognizing me.

Her father said, “This policeman’s here to see you.”

I said, “Keith O’Donnell.”

April said, “Yes, I remember.” She came toward me slowly, stopped a fair distance away.

Her parents turned to look at me then. Everybody stood there, waiting for me to say something.

I said, “How have you been?”

April said, “Fine. All right, I guess.”

“I wanted to... see how you’re doing.”

There was a moment’s pause. Then her mother said, “That’s nice. It’s nice to see the police know she might be, you know, affected by what she went through.”

Her father said, “Sit down. You two can talk.”

April said, “Let’s talk outside. We can go for a walk.”

She headed for the door. Her mother made these cooing noises, encouraging us to stay, but her father said, “No, no. It’s all right. Give her some privacy.”

I nodded and smiled to them both and followed April outside.

She started up the sidewalk and I fell into step beside her, not knowing what to say. After a moment she said, “They mean well but...”

“They’re your parents?”

“Yeah. I had to move back in with them. I had an apartment, but my roommate lost her job. She couldn’t pay the rent, so she moved out. I couldn’t manage on my own, so I had to move back here.”

“Well, maybe it’s for the best. This way you weren’t living alone when Thursday happened. It’s good to be able to go home to someone who cares about you after something like that. Even a boyfriend wouldn’t have been the same if you don’t live with him.”

“I don’t have a boyfriend right now.”

I didn’t say anything, pleased as hell with myself for getting that information out of her so cleverly.

She made a sound. I looked over and saw she was crying.

“Oh!” I said. “I’m sorry. I should have been more sensitive. You know the department has victim’s advocates you could talk to. They could help you work through this.”

She looked over at me, wiping her eyes. “I thought that’s what you were.”

“No, I’m a police sniper. I was there that day. I saw you through my rifle scope.”

At the time I couldn’t read her expression, but now I see that was the moment she realized what I was doing there.

I said, “Does that make you feel any better? To know I was watching over you?”

She didn’t answer for a moment. Finally she said, “That day is the scaredest I’ve ever been. I actually peed myself.”

“I’ve done that lots of times.”

She looked at me again, trying to see if I was kidding.

“Seriously. When I was in the Marines. You get set up on a target and sometimes you can’t move. I mean you can’t move at all or someone will shoot you. If you really gotta go, you just go.”

We walked in silence for a while.

Then she said, “Did you see the whole thing? Thursday?”