Deadly Aim (39 page)

They started to leave when Nick leaned back in. “Angel, that second shooter theory of yours. Mike did some research for you. He found a guy who’s got some pretty good connections. I’m thinking that if any of the gang members wasted Billy, he’d know. Mike is meeting him down on the docks at 6:30 tonight, said you could show up if you wanted to talk to him.”

“Thanks, Nick, I’ll be there.”

After Nick left, Angel wondered why Mike had extended the invitation. Probably because she had been the one to ask
him, or maybe it was their way of keeping her in the loop. Whatever the reason, she appreciated it.

Brandon came to stand beside her, his gaze roaming across the water. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

“I’ll be fine. Mike will be with me.”

“Can you trust him?”

“Of course.” She leaned down to pick up her handbag, thinking she should break things off with him right then and there. But how could she do that now? He’d just been through a terrible ordeal.

How can I not? His association with me could kill him. Next time he might not be so lucky
.

“Brandon, I...” She stopped when Brandon’s gaze jerked from her to the door and remained fastened there. She turned around to see what had captivated him.

A petite woman with streaked blond hair knocked on the open door. She held on to her black bag with both hands and stepped over the threshold. Angel scrutinized her, recognition finally dawning. Michelle Kelsey looked younger than she remembered, perhaps because she was wearing makeup and not bruises.

“Brandon?” Michelle’s voice wavered as she looked from Brandon to Angel. Brandon beckoned her in and introduced them. The flush on his neck and cheeks indicated much more than a lawyer-client relationship.

“I know Angel,” Michelle said in a soft, feminine voice.

Angel reached out to shake her hand. “You look great, Michelle.”

“Thanks. I hope I’m not interrupting anything.” She glanced at Brandon. “I heard about the explosion on the news.”

No wonder Brandon was so obsessed about handling the Kelsey case and so insistent about her innocence. One look into her sad blue eyes would bring any man to his knees.

“I was just leaving,” Angel said.

Brandon walked with her to the elevator. “It’s not what it looks like.”

Angel laid a hand on his arm. “Yes, it is, but that’s okay. You and I are friends, Brandon. I think we’ve always known that. I just hope she’s as innocent as you seem to think.”

She left Brandon standing in the hallway looking guilty and perplexed.

As she drove back to her apartment, she thought about her meeting with Mike and his informant. Could she trust Mike? He was a police officer, and she’d worked with him for a year. Still, how well did she know him? Or the others for that matter. The brainstorm she’d had about her father backing her up could pertain to any of the guys. Nick, who was like a brother; Eric, her partner; even Bo. She reined in her wild thoughts with a reminder that, like her father, if any of them had fired at Billy, they’d have stayed with her and taken responsibility.

What if one of them was dirty? The evidence had been stolen out of a police locker, so someone with a key had done it. The first one to come to mind was Bo Williams, the sheriff’s deputy. Billy’s mother had said Bo had worked with Billy. He didn’t socialize much with the other law enforcement officers in town. In fact, he pretty much stayed to himself. She’d heard about his work with troubled youth. Was it more than that? Could he be involved with the gang, turning a blind eye on their illegal activities? Could he be the head of the drug operation in Sunset Cove?

And what about Mike? He worked with troubled youths as well.

Angel gripped the steering wheel more tightly, annoyed at where her thoughts had taken her. She shouldn’t be making an assumption like that. Still, she couldn’t help but wonder how the gang seemed able to operate as freely as they did and not get caught.

Angel put her mutinous thoughts aside. The guys she worked with were clean. She’d know if they weren’t. Bo had been on the scene when she’d been attacked at Billy’s funeral. He’d pulled the men off and made arrests like the others had. He’d been professional—more so than Callen.

Of course, Callen was a different matter. He loved her. She flushed at the thought. He’d never actually said that he loved her, and it was far too soon to be thinking about love. But Angel felt something special in the way he talked to her and held her. Her heart skittered just thinking about him.

But then again, Rachael had warned her about him. Maybe he made every woman feel that way.

Callen saw Angel go into the building where the law offices were. Her face was ashen, and he wished he could’ve gone to her. No doubt she’d come to comfort Brandon. Not that it mattered. He’d promised himself he wouldn’t get involved again. With Angel around, it was getting harder and harder to maintain his focus.

He wondered if she knew about Brandon’s relationship with the Kelsey woman. Of course, he may have read it wrong; Michelle seemed the vulnerable sort, and maybe Brandon was just caught up in being the hero. Regardless, Callen was glad she had someone on her side. At first he’d thought her guilty of murdering her husband, but now that Kelsey’s body had been found and the autopsy done, he knew that wasn’t the case. Michelle could not have killed her husband and pushed the car off the cliff—it was not physically possible. On the other hand, she may have had an accomplice. She’d been seeking a divorce at the time, which meant she knew Brandon before her husband’s death. She had a good-sized insurance policy and was attractive and sweet. It wouldn’t be the first time a man fell for a woman and helped her escape a brutal lifestyle.

With the cocaine find, though, Callen was having to rethink the situation. While he mulled over the various aspects of the murders, he decided to go back to the warehouse where Billy had been killed. Angel had described the events in detail, and he had listened to the tape so many times he knew it by heart.

Just as he was getting into his car, he saw Angel leaving. He almost went after her but held back. He couldn’t afford to be anywhere near her right now. What he needed to do was settle matters in the deadly force situation so he could conclude at least one case.

Angel had intimated that Billy’s death might be drug related as well. Callen had at first seen it as a separate entity. Maybe one of the gang members had fired those last two shots; if so, it would have been to silence him.

When he saw that he was no longer needed at the scene of the car bombing, Callen headed out to the warehouse to have another
look around. He parked in front of the cannery and ducked under the crime scene tape. Inside, his stomach rebelled at the stench. Light filtered in through the filthy windows. He found the staircase and began to climb. Angel had suggested the possibility that Billy had seen something on the second floor that frightened him. His head cleared the floor, and he looked around. The floor was bare wood planking and looked solid.

There were windows on this level as well. At the west end was the viewing window where, as a kid, he’d watched the boats being unloaded. From the window he had a clear view of the dock where he had discovered J.J.’s body. The body would have been there when Billy came in. Had he seen the body? Was that what had frightened him and caused him to run back down the stairs? Near the window was another set of stairs that went down to the docking area. Why wouldn’t he have come down this way? He’d have been home free. Unless someone was there.

Callen descended the stairs and found that there was a wall separating this part of the warehouse from the front area where the fish used to be stored. He was in the cannery itself. He tried shoving back a large sliding door that would access the area where Angel had been, but it wouldn’t budge. On inspection he realized it had been nailed shut. He tried another door and found that it opened readily and led from there to a small room. That space used to be an office, and it led him straight back to where he’d started.

Callen wandered around to where he thought the second shooter might have been. Light glinted off an object about thirty feet away, and he went to check it out. Bending down, he shined his flashlight on a .40-caliber shell casing.

He wished now he’d had the crime scene investigators comb the entire area instead of just the area around the shooting. At the time he thought the case was isolated and there was no need to scour the entire building. He’d have to put a call in and get someone out first thing in the morning.

Callen thought he heard a soft shuffle, but before he could turn around, something hit him on the back of the head.

A
t 6:20 Angel parked the Blazer at the south end of the parking lot near the wharf, next to Mike’s white Bonneville. The streetlights in the parking lot were dull from the shrouds of mist. The businesses lining the street were all closed now. Like a lot of beach towns, most of Sunset Cove folded up the sidewalks by 5:00
P.M.

Mike nodded at her. “Are you ready?”

She nodded and zipped up her jacket. The wind had shifted, bringing a sharp, cold wind from the north.

“Let me handle the questions, okay? This guy’s still squeamish. He just came forward, and I have a feeling he’ll be a good contact for us. J.J. was a friend of his, and he’s eager to find the guy who shot him.” Mike blew on his cupped hands, his breath coming out in white puffs and flying into the wind.

Angel tucked her hands in her pockets. “Ask him if Billy was involved with the gang members—or even a wannabe. I want to know if one of them killed Billy to keep him from talking.”

“You still claiming you didn’t pull the trigger more than once?”

“I’ve been over and over it in my mind, Mike. I’m sure.”

He shrugged. “If you say so.”

As they approached the docks, Angel could see a bulky figure, probably one of the boat owners, standing near a sailboat. Down the pier from the boat owner, three ships
away, a yacht sparkled with bright white lights. A song from a Kenny G album drifted up to them. The area looked like something out of a scary movie, the fog creeping in and out and settling in the places where the wind didn’t whip it away. She burrowed deeper into her coat. Several boats docked in the marina were lighted. A number of people lived aboard their crafts, moving from port to port. There weren’t many here right now; it was just too cold. Come summer the marina would be full.

Instead of going down the dock where she’d seen the man a few seconds earlier, Mike led her down the one running parallel to it. As they came closer, Angel could make out the contact’s features, even though he stood in the shadow of one of the large pilings. He looked to be about five-eight with spiked black hair that had been bleached at the ends. They were about ten feet away when he stepped on to the center of the dock. His hands were in his pockets, and the right side of the jacket sagged.

From the weight of a gun
? Angel’s heart raced, and she could hardly breathe. Had she walked into a trap? Had Mike brought her out here to have her killed? She made a sudden turn and started to run back up the dock when she heard the distinctive click of a gun being cocked.

The world stopped, and Angel waited for the inevitable. She heard the gun go off just as she dropped to the deck, fully expecting a bullet to catch her in the back. Two shots along with a
thunk thunk
as they hit their target. She heard a groan and scurried to the nearest piling about five feet away.

Her heart hammered as she peered around the piling. Mike was sprawled on the dock. At first she thought he’d been hurt, but he scrambled to his feet. Their contact, blood covering his face, staggered across the dock and plunged into the water.

“Call it in!” Mike yelled then tore back down the dock to where the contact had fallen in. Angel went after him, putting in a call to the dispatch operator and asking for backup. They fished the contact out but there was nothing they could do. Half of his skull had been blown away.

Angel covered her mouth to suppress an anguished cry. The kid couldn’t have been more than sixteen. Mike swore loudly, berating himself for arranging the meeting. She waited for the nausea to pass and got off her knees. Mike swore again and wiped blood from the corner of his mouth.

Angel touched his arm. “Did you get hit?”

“No. I bit my tongue when I went down.” He spat a mixture of blood and saliva into the water. “We’d better get these people back on their boats.”

She and Mike spent the next few minutes talking to the curious onlookers who had left the safety of their boats to see what was going on. It didn’t take much to convince them to go back to their boats.

All too soon the adrenaline rush dissipated, leaving Angel shaking and cold. Nick had responded to her call, and she and Mike filled him in on the shooting.

“The shooter,” Mike said, “was on the dock parallel to the one we were on.”

Angel remembered seeing the shadowy figure there and told Nick. “I wish I’d paid more attention.”