Backfire (6 page)

Molly jerked open the front door, saw them, and thought she’d collapse in relief. “A man, he was staring in the window at us! He ran over toward Mr. Sproole’s backyard!”

Eve shouted, “I’ll take care of it. Get back inside, Molly!”

Eve saw a man running, a blur of black. And he was carrying something black—a gun? He had jumped the fence into the neighbor’s backyard. Harry started to yell for her to wait up, but he didn’t waste his breath. He watched her leap the stone fence smooth and high, like a hurdler. He ran after them.

“Federal agents! Stop!” Eve shouted.

But the man didn’t stop. He ran straight for the fence at the back of the neighbor’s yard, vaulted over it, and disappeared.

Eve didn’t hesitate. She jumped that fence, too, right after him.

A scratchy old voice yelled from the yard, “Be careful or you’re dead!” He turned to see Harry running toward the fence after them. “Hey, fellow, there’s a snaking little trail down to the water, but it isn’t safe. Who’s the guy she’s chasing? You’re all federal agents? Is that the guy who shot Judge Hunt?”

Harry waved off the old man and jumped the fence, stumbled on some loose rocks beyond it, and nearly fell on his face. He windmilled his arms, and managed to gain purchase. He looked down—at least sixty feet to the beach—not a beach, only a thin strip of dirty sand covered with a mess of black rocks and huge boulders.

Below him, Eve was tacking back and forth down the side of the cliff, shortcutting the windy little path. She stumbled once, and Harry’s heart seized. She caught herself, but she had to drop her Glock to do it and stopped to pick it up before she started down again. Harry saw the man had reached the beach and looked up to see Eve coming toward him. He scooped up a rock to hurl at her, thought better of it, and ran. Eve yelled back at Harry, “Call it in! I’m going to get him!”

She would catch him, Harry didn’t have a single doubt, even though she was a good twenty yards behind him. Harry dialed 911. The SFPD would get here faster than the FBI.

He watched Eve jump onto the strip of dirty sand and rocks and sprint after the man. Was that a gun in his hand? Then why hadn’t he shot her instead of picking up a rock? Surely the guy could tell, even from this distance, that she was moving way faster, gaining on him quickly. The putz looked like he was going to drop, he was breathing so hard. In that moment, Harry felt kind of sorry for the guy. He had no clue what was in store for him in about twenty seconds.

Eve felt the wind sharp and cold off the water, and was happy to see the guy in front of her was flagging big-time. She shouted, “Stop it right now, or I’ll shoot you in the leg. Do you hear me?”

The guy looked back at her, faltered, slowed, and finally stopped. He bent over, trying to catch his breath.

“Well, now, isn’t this easier?”

“I didn’t do anything!” he managed to say between breaths.

Eve jogged up to him, her Glock pointed at his chest, and threw him to the ground. She went down on her haunches beside him and ripped a camera from his hand. “That was for making me chase you, you brainless moron. Do you realize it looked like you had a gun? And, oh, my, would you look at this—it’s a really expensive camera you’re carrying.”

Harry was grinning when he climbed back over the fence and saw the old man again, a golfer’s cap on his head, a newspaper spread open on his lap, stretched out on a red-and-green striped chaise longue.

Harry said, “She’s trying to prove she’s tougher than I am.”

“I gotta say she proved it, since you’re not screaming she’s dead. That fence is there to keep idiots from flying off the edge, but that first idiot headed to it like a homing pigeon. Didn’t even see me, he was moving so fast. You said you’re federal agents?”

Harry pulled out his creds, introduced himself.

The old man said, “FBI Special Agent Harry Christoff. I think I’ve seen that girl before. Who is she, another FBI agent?”

“She’s a U.S. marshal, and a friend of the Hunt family.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen her over at the Hunts’ house. I’m Decker Sproole. You people are here because of Judge Hunt, aren’t you? Was that guy the one who shot him? Why would he come back? I haven’t ever understood that old saw about a criminal returning to the scene of the crime.”

Harry said, “I don’t know who he is yet. We’ve got to wait until she brings him up.” They heard voices from over the fence, and watched Barbieri heft a young man over it, his hands cuffed behind him. He was skinny as a flagpole, a baseball cap pulled low over his forehead, his black clothes bagging off him.

Harry eyed the guy. He didn’t look much like a professional killer. He said to Eve, “Glad you didn’t break your neck.”

“No thanks to this pathetic bozo,” she said, and smacked his shoulder.

Mr. Sproole said, “Is he the man who shot Judge Hunt?”

“I didn’t shoot anybody! She knows it!”

“Yeah, I guess I do. After all my running around, it looks like I didn’t haul in our perp. What I landed was a would-be paparazzo. Imagine this fine upstanding young man wanted to take pictures of the grieving family.”

“I’m not young, I’m older than you are! I’m a professional photographer.”

“Yeah, and a trespasser who resisted arrest.” She pulled the camera from his hand again. “After I remove the memory card and press delete a few times, you’ll be all set to go sneak around someplace else and cause aggravation.”

Harry said, “What’s your name?”

“Robert Bacon. Like I said, I’m a professional, a freelance photographer. These photographs might be worth something, though there aren’t that many, since Emma Hunt saw me and yelled her head off.”

“Well, Robert Bacon, did you know there are laws against doing that on private property?”

Bacon stood tall and proud. “I’m a professional. Have you ever heard of freedom of the press?”

Eve smacked him again on the shoulder. “Quiet, Bobby.” She quirked an eyebrow at Harry. “Bobby Bacon? We got us the real live Bobby Bacon, the photojournalist.”

“I go by Robert. Hey, if you give me back my memory card and take off these cuffs, I’ll shoot a couple photos of you, you know, doing your job,” and he looked at Eve hopefully.

“Thanks, Bobby,” Eve said, “but I don’t think I’d take such a good photo right now, since I’m all sweaty and windblown because of you,” and she slapped him on the back of the head with her open palm.

He staggered, then straightened. “Listen, a photo of Emma Hunt playing the piano, I coulda paid my rent for two months, what with her history.”

Eve put her hand on Bobby’s shoulder. “Bobby, you don’t want to mess with Emma or her family. Don’t you know who her grandfather is?”

Bobby Bacon looked blank, then pointed to Mr. Sproole. “This old guy?”

“Nope. Her grandfather is Mason Lord. Look him up. If you got a photo of Emma published he didn’t like, he’d carve out your pea brain and make you eat it.”

Bobby swallowed. “But I didn’t think—”

“Well, now you know. If you’ve got a brain, you’ll stay away from Emma.”

Harry introduced Eve to Mr. Sproole, who eyed Bobby Bacon. “If I had my daddy’s Remington, I woulda blasted you between the eyes, shooting Ramsey in the back like that.”

“You crazy old duffer, you know I didn’t shoot anybody. I’m a professional photographer.”

“Yeah, well, I would have shot you on spec. Maybe you carry that camera around as camouflage. Maybe you got a gun hid in your shorts.”

“I didn’t wear shorts today. I’m commando.”

Mr. Sproole said, “I got a feeling I don’t wanna know what that means. You trespassed on my private property, too, and for calling me crazy, I’m going to press charges myself, put your skinny butt in the slammer.”

“I was only trying to make a living. I’m sorry I called you crazy. She’s the one who’s crazy. I mean, who would come rocketing down that path like that over some photographs? I practiced climbing that trail twice in case I had to use it.”

“And where did you think you were going to go from there, Bobby? Swim to Marin?” Eve said.

“You’re a wuss, Bobby,” Mr. Sproole said. “This little cutie brought you back, all trussed up.” He eyed Eve. “And look at you, Deputy Barbieri. I’ve got to say, you’re prettier than any of my four granddaughters ever were.”

Harry wrote down Mr. Sproole’s number and address, gave him a salute. They walked through the garden gate and back to the sidewalk with Bobby Bacon, his wrists now uncuffed, clutching his camera, minus the memory card, walking between them.

Harry said, “Prettier than any of his four granddaughters? He must like cheerleader types.”

“Shut up,” Eve said.

“All of them?” and Harry laughed.

“Hey, he’s right,” Bobby said. “You are pretty. Your hair is a nice natural blond. So how come you’re such a bitch?”

“That’s Deputy Marshal Bitch to you, Bobby.”

They kept him on the sidewalk until three squad cars, sirens blasting, rolled into the driveway. Six cops jumped out, guns drawn.

“That was fast,” Harry said, his creds raised high over his head.

Molly said, “It’s because everyone knows it’s Ramsey’s address.”

There was pandemonium before everything got sorted out. They watched two officers drag Bobby Bacon to a squad car, Bobby yelling about police brutality and freedom of the press. He was still yelling as one of the officers shoved his head down to get him into the backseat. “I want my memory card back.”

Eve grinned, tossed it to one of the officers.

When Eve and Harry walked to the Hunt home, Molly was standing in the doorway. Behind her stood Mrs. Hicks, the babysitter. She looked ready to kiss them. They heard Gage and Cal talking up a storm, and Emma’s voice over theirs, telling them to be quiet, but they didn’t.

Eve took Molly’s arms in her hands, steadied her.

“He’s a paparazzo. He didn’t get any photos. The cops have taken Mr. Bacon downtown, where he’ll be booked for trespassing and trying to escape a federal marshal.”

Gage shouted, “Was that bad Bacon man here to shoot us?”

Eve went down on her knees in front of Cal and Gage, gathered them to her. “Listen up. That guy was a rude photographer, nothing more. The policemen hauled him off to jail. He wasn’t here to hurt anyone.”

Cal said, “But why’d he want to take our picture, Aunt Eve? Daddy’s not here, he’s in the hospital.”

For the almighty buck.
“You and Cal are so cute, I’ll bet he was going to hawk them in Union Square. I bet he could get a buck each for them, at least. Hey, I’m glad you’re speaking English today.”

They gave her an identical look. Gage said, “We’re not stupid, we have to if we’re talking to you. I think he wanted to see Mama cry, didn’t he, Aunt Eve? He wanted to take a picture of her crying.” Cal shook her sleeve.

“Maybe, but we don’t have to worry about him anymore. Now, this man is Special Agent Harry Christoff. He’s FBI, and he’s going to help me find out who hurt your dad.”

“But he’s a stranger, he could be another Bacon—”

Emma rolled her eyes. “You guys want some ice cream?”

Once Emma herded the twins out of the room, Mrs. Hicks, looking stalwart, following after them, Molly said, “They were terrified the man was here to shoot them.”

“So were we,” Harry said.

Molly blew out a breath. “The jerk. What will happen to him?”

“Probably not much,” Harry said. “A bail hearing. Maybe a plea bargain.”

Eve said, “Now that the excitement’s over, Harry and I can start taking a look around outside. Agents Savich and Sherlock will be here any time now. If you want to go back to the hospital, Molly, go right ahead.”

Harry said, “I think it’d be a good idea for you guys to have some protection right now, not wait until Judge Hunt is home from the hospital. They can keep the Bobby Bacons of the world out of here.”

“The media, too,” Eve said. She’d assumed there’d already be coverage here. She’d been wrong. She pulled out her cell phone.

Sea Cliff

Friday afternoon

It was late afternoon and chilly, with only a few wispy tails of fog coming through the Golden Gate when Savich and Sherlock joined Eve and Harry in the Hunts’ backyard. Sharp gusts of wind blew off the water. It was too cold to think much about the incredible view.

Savich said to Harry, “The SFPD out front aren’t fooling around. They stopped us and looked us over pretty closely since they didn’t know who we were.”

Harry said, “There was a paparazzo here who caused a commotion only a half-hour ago. The police are here to keep everyone else off the property. Deputy Marshal Barbieri here—Eve—will be heading up security.”

Savich said, “Good to know. I can see from that police tape and the height of the stone wall pretty much where Ramsey had to be standing when he was shot. He said he saw a Zodiac anchored off his little slice of beach. He didn’t mention hearing anything, which means the shooter had to have motored in before Ramsey came out, and waited. Ramsey is about my height, and he was shot from the rear under his right shoulder blade, with the exit wound higher.” He looked over the wall and studied the terrain below. “Maybe sixty to seventy feet up from the rocks, with a steep angle down.”

“Have you heard about the rock with a newspaper photo of Judge Hunt tied to it, his face marked through with an X?” Harry said, and pointed.

“We’ve heard,” Savich said, looking over at the bush.

“The conundrum is, do we have two people, the shooter from the beach and someone else who dropped the rock up here? Seems like an awfully risky thing to do just to leave a message. There’s an active neighborhood watch, according to Mrs. Hunt, that she herself helped start five years ago. Even though it was near midnight, there’s a chance one of the neighbors would have seen a second perp.”

Eve said, “You can bet someone in a neighborhood like this one would have gone on alert if they saw a stranger near Ramsey’s property. I’d wager my Sunday hat if the shooter dropped the message, he came up the trail from the beach on Mr. Sproole’s property next door and over his fence into that backyard, since that’s the only trail for a good distance. And if he risked Mr. Sproole seeing him, then why would he bother to shoot him from down below in the first place? Why not right here, then drop the rock and head back down to that Zodiac? It’s a conundrum, like Harry said.”

Sherlock said, “Show me where they found that rock.”

Eve touched the leaves about halfway down the huge hydrangea and pushed them aside. “I wasn’t here, but that flag marks the spot, there.”

Sherlock turned to Harry. “You were here when the rock was found. Tell me how the rock was set under the hydrangea. Did it look carefully placed, or like it was simply tossed there, like an afterthought?”

Harry said, “The note attached to the rock was actually upside down and set partially into that soft soil. It looked freshly placed, not covered by any dirt or leaves. The forensic team didn’t find it until it was full daylight, because the rock was under the hydrangea.”

Sherlock stuck her hand in among the leaves, felt around with her fingers. Then she went down on her haunches and continued to carefully poke around inside the hydrangea.

She looked up and cocked her head to one side, something Savich had seen her do many times, a sure sign she was picturing what had happened. “How did the shooter know Ramsey would be outside, by himself, late Thursday night? Surely he didn’t simply hang around to see if his target happened to come outside? So did Ramsey have a habit of coming out here at night by himself? To look at the Marin Headlands, the Golden Gate?”

Eve pulled her cell out of her pocket and dialed. “Molly? Did Ramsey have a habit of spending a few minutes outside every night, before bed?”

She listened. “Thank you. That helps. I’ll tell you later, I promise. We’re still out here at the house trying to make sense of how this all happened. I’ll see you soon.”

She punched off, slipped the phone back in her red jacket pocket. “Yes, every night. Molly said it was a ritual, that Ramsey came out sometimes even in the rain. She said it made him feel blessed to be able to look out from his own Wuthering Heights, like it was the center of the world.”

Harry said, “That means the shooter, or the people who hired him, knew that. They had to know his family well, or they had to be watching his house long enough to be sure he would be there. Are the Cahills even a possibility? Could they have found out a detail like that about Ramsey’s habits from jail?”

Eve said, “You’re right. How many people could have known about Ramsey’s habits at night, in his own backyard? And Ramsey was shot within twenty-four hours of his closing down the trial. That’s a small window of opportunity for the Cahills.”

“So what is it you’ve been thinking about down there, Sherlock?” Savich asked.

She pulled her arm out of the hydrangea bush. “I’ve been thinking about why the picture, why the message. Someone seeing it sitting handily under the bush, not twenty feet from where Ramsey fell, might conclude we’ve got two people involved, as Harry said. But if the second man’s job was to plant the picture for the police to find, to make some sort of statement, why on the ground under the bush? And what message were they sending?”

“The first impression it leaves,” Eve said, “is that Ramsey was shot because of what he’d done as a judge, because of his reputation and what it means to people. The crossed-out picture is a sort of in-your-face sneer; that’s what Harry thought.”

“I suppose,” Harry said, “that it could be some kind of misdirection, to point us away from the trial or from some personal motive.”

Sherlock nodded. “Here’s the deal. I agree the Xerox itself could be misdirection, but what about where it was found? It makes it seem like there were two people involved, but the fact is there was only the shooter, and he was on the beach.”

Harry said, “Then how’d the rock get here? Did the guy climb up the cliff to drop it under the bush, then scramble back down to the beach and climb back aboard his Zodiac before the cops got here?”

Sherlock smiled. “There’s a freshly broken branch inside that bush, and I doubt it was one of our forensic team who broke it. Something heavy broke it from behind, from the rear, and it’s maybe two feet directly up from where the flag on the ground marks where they found the rock. That means the rock wasn’t just laid on the ground under the bush, it hit the bush hard.”

Savich said, “So it came from a distance.” He looked down over the wall again. “It’s too far down to throw it up and hit the bush with much force. But a small rock could easily be shot up here with a slingshot, say. One of those leather Trumark models they use to hunt jackrabbits and such. It would reach up here easily, aimed at the hydrangea, a nice big target. Good going, Sherlock.”

Eve stared at her. “How’d you think to even look for that?”

Sherlock said matter-of-factly, “There had to be a solution to Harry’s conundrum, and this was the only one I could think of. The shooter was careful, he studied Ramsey and picked his spot carefully, so it didn’t make sense he’d give up that advantage by climbing up the trail to drop a message.”

“Amazing,” Eve said. “So much for our second perp.” But Harry wasn’t convinced.

Sherlock said, “Answer me this, Agent Christoff. If there was a second man, why didn’t he come out from his hidey-hole to make sure Ramsey was dead? No, what the shooter wanted was to kill Ramsey, and didn’t care too much if he missed with that rock. In the grand scheme of things, that attempt to sneer at us, to misdirect us, or whatever, wouldn’t have worked if we didn’t find the rock. So what?”

Everyone chewed on that. Harry said, “Okay, one shooter, then. I can’t get over the timing—Ramsey postponed the trial and he gets shot. It’s got to be the Cahills behind this, or someone they’re involved with. The timing makes it too coincidental, and I, for one, don’t believe in coincidences.”

“I don’t, either,” Savich said. “But as Sherlock pointed out, a stranger couldn’t predict Ramsey would be standing out here exactly when he needed him to, and so someone’s been studying him for at least a week, I’d say.”

Eve rubbed her hands over her arms. “Someone who followed him around for a week? That’s hard to take in.”

Harry said, “Okay, say it isn’t the Cahills. But the timing is still what it is—even if it was planned for some time, someone may be cashing in on a wonderful opportunity, since the Cahills are hanging over the crime scene like a black cloud.”

“Judge Hunt closing down the trial was mentioned on the local news at noon yesterday,” Eve said. “If someone had already planned to kill him, they moved very fast.”

“There’s another big question with the Cahills,” Savich said. “The way it looks now, there’ll be a mistrial because the federal prosecutor may have been compromised, and now he’s missing. Ramsey’s being shot doesn’t change that. It will all begin again for them, with a different set of players.”

Eve said, “Molly said that was one of the first things out of Ramsey’s mouth when he woke up. Why shoot him? A judge’s job is to be impartial, unlike the prosecutor who’d spent months preparing for the trial. What difference did it make to the Cahills who was sitting up there in the black robe?”

Eve looked over at the crime scene tape that marked where Ramsey had fallen. “Whoever it was made one big fat mistake.”

Everyone looked at her.

“The shooter didn’t manage to kill Ramsey. He failed. Now what’s he going to do? Try again? If it was the Cahills who targeted Ramsey, for whatever reason, they’ve already won, because he’s out of the picture for the near future. What if it was someone else?”

“That’s why we’ve got to protect him, Eve,” Harry said.

“No one will hurt Judge Ramsey Hunt on my watch,” Eve said. “No one.”

Sherlock said, “I’ll be checking on the Zodiac, and Cheney has feelers out for any word about a shooter for hire.”

“We need to talk to the Cahills,” Eve said. “Regardless, they’re certainly people of interest. It’s a place to start.”