A Killing in China Basin - Kirk Russell [61]
‘How do you know he was male?’
‘I think he started to say something as he shot me. His arm, size of his head.’
‘Stoltz?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Heilbron.’
She didn’t answer. She faded on him, then said, ‘Maybe Heilbron. Something about his build.’
‘Or neither?’
‘I don’t know.’
She closed her eyes again. Raveneau waited several minutes.
‘Ben?’
‘I’m here.’
Her eyes still closed, she said, ‘He roared up and hit the brakes hard.’
Which was probably why he missed.
‘What about the gun?’
‘You’re telling me we haven’t caught him.’
‘That’s right. It’s gone statewide.’ It went statewide and became a bad night locally for Volvo drivers. ‘Remember anything more about the car? Cracked windshield, faded paint, a rack on top, anything.’
She kept her eyes closed but spoke more clearly.
‘Definitely Volvo, wagon type I rode in as a kid, kind of square looking, a black bumper, chrome wheels.’
Raveneau booted up his laptop to find images of older model Volvo wagons. As the screen came up, la Rosa opened her eyes.
‘Put the laptop on my stomach when you find something.’
He rested it on her and held it steady as she scrolled between two photos and then said, ‘That’s it, that’s the car, a Volvo 240 with the bumper wrapping around in back.’
‘One idea floating is that it’s Stoltz and he went after you because you’re the spokesperson for the task force. But that seems unlikely to me because the task force just happened and you’ve only had one press conference. How often do you run that same route?’
Slower answering again and closing her eyes, saying, ‘Vary the runs, but generally the same direction.’
‘At about the same time of night?’
‘Erratic since I started at homicide, but, yeah, I like that route.’ She smiled with her eyes closed, adding, ‘Or used to.’
She was religious about her exercise. Raveneau’s guess was she ran the route often enough for someone to get a sense of her pattern. He didn’t go there now. He didn’t push her on it, except to ask, ‘Have you run it since joining this cobbled together task force?’
‘Excuse me,’ a woman said from behind Raveneau. He turned. He’d missed Deputy-chief Grainer walking in.
‘What did you just say?’
‘We’re talking about the shooter,’ he said, but Grainer ignored him now. She took la Rosa’s hand and said, ‘I’m so relieved you’re OK.’
Then she turned to Raveneau and asked, ‘Is that your laptop, Inspector?’
‘It is.’
‘Please take it off Elizabeth.’
She touched la Rosa’s face, withdrew her hand, and stood looking down at her as Raveneau turned the computer off.
‘Have you got your phone, Elizabeth?’ Raveneau asked.
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll call you.’
In the hallway he ran into Captain Ramirez.
‘How is she?’
‘She’s OK. I talked to the doctor who stitched her up and he said the bullet grazed her. It tapped the back of her skull as it passed by. He told me it made the faintest groove on the bone right here.’
Raveneau touched his skull where the stitches were.
‘Did you learn any more from her?’
‘Not really. She believes he was male and of fairly sturdy build.’
‘Which fits Stoltz.’
‘It could. Or someone else we’ve been questioning. Carl Heilbron.’
‘I’m guessing it wasn’t coincidence.’
Raveneau didn’t respond to that. It was an inane statement. He left Ramirez and rode the elevator down. Several reporters hustled toward him as he walked out.
‘Can you confirm the shooter was Cody Stoltz?’
Someone in TV who ought to know once told him that national news was purely an entertainment business driven by constant market research polling, and to complain about endless nights of repetitive coverage of whatever current story they were selling was just naïve. He’d bragged that most of the time his national network decided what was news. Celebrities with brand names were easy to market, so significant lasting stories got built around them. Raveneau knew there was a higher plane of cynicism he had only glimpsed at, but he was pretty sure how the media would play this one.
It would be a more immediately saleable story if the wounded homicide inspector had died here in the hospital with her last words