Jeff, finds himself in
Chapter 19 of Magic Town ...
Sunday, 3:35 PM: Reluctant Shooter
The team
speculates about what is happening here and at the word “Inside” spoken by
Antonio. As the discussion turns to squabbling Jeff is certain they are missing
something. They figure out that the
victims knew and trusted the shooter! And that the shooter wasn’t a
professional, maybe even reluctant! Finally as the meeting ends Shonna turns to
Jeff and says that it is time for them to turn him into a prick.
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Author contact: Chris Lamela,
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Magic Town, Chapter 19
Sunday, 3:35 PM: Reluctant Shooter
“Inside,” Arnie said slowly, stoking his chin. Everyone around the table stared at Arnie. “Does that mean there’s an inside guy, a double cross?” Arnie frowned. “Jesus, like we don’t have enough problems.”
The same group was sitting around the conference table in the safe house
except for one unfamiliar face who spoke out, “What’s he doing here?” pointing
to Jeff. “Why do we have a civilian here?”
Shonna looked dismissively at the woman who spoke out, “You weren’t here
this morning. This guy is our hero. You would not believe what this poor
bastard has been through.” She scowled at the woman. “His face does look familiar, doesn’t it? You DO KNOW who is at the center of all
this. You DID READ the case data. WE ASSUME!” She rubbed her forehead
looking up again, “The plan we’re working came from him YOU IDIOT! Why don’t
you just SHUT THE HELL UP AND LISTEN!” Jeff felt the ring in his ears return
from Shonna’s screaming next to his right ear. She looked to Arnie, “Arnie help
me!”
He nodded to Shonna turning to the woman, around to everyone at the
table, back to her, his hands raised toward the room, “Look, everyone’s nerves
are really raw here. A hell of a lot has happened in the last couple days. I am
sure Agent White here didn’t mean to yell at you, maybe she did, but seeing all
these dead bodies has really put us on edge, the scale of this whole operation,
having no clue who the shooter is has made us all…well…a little crazy.” He gave
the woman a condescending smile, “So if it’s okay with you, let’s move on.” The
woman nodded sheepishly with her eyes cast down at her hands folded on the big table
in front of her.
The next ten minutes was filled with speculation as the evidence papers and
photographs circulated around the table.
Jeff was sipping a Coke from the can, dearly wishing it was alcohol.
Hell, he’d even take bourbon.
He sat listening to the
conversation leaning, his head back, eyes closed.
They must be missing something.
They had to be missing
something.
Something.
He watched the people sitting in front of him, the discussion turning into
squabbling.
Jeff spoke up, “Take them out all at once, we already have a plan to do
that.” He looked around the faces at the table that became instantly quiet,
“What’s so hard about that?” He frowned, “We don’t really have any new
information since this morning other than more dead people, maybe Antonio who
might come to long enough to give us a name.”
Shonna looked at him, “We need to circle around to make sure we’re not
missing anything.”
Jeff glanced at his watch surprised to see it was almost two o’clock.
Arnie finally spoke up, “Okay, guys, we’re losing daylight. Given what
we knew before, who came out of that house that we weren’t expecting to see?”
Someone said, “Everyone,” there was a small group chuckle.
“Okay, but given this group, who didn’t we expect to see?”
Shonna instantly replied, “Pick.”
Jeff watched Yvonne write down the question and answer, she spoke. “It
seems like we know a lot more now, except what happened in the house and
Antonio’s room and the cash room.”
Arnie spoke, “Okay, let’s figure this out.” He looked at Shonna. “Gun powder
burns at the house?”
“The congressman and the aid were point blank, covered in gun powder, straight
at the entry points, but not the others, they were shot at a distance, don’t
know how far, no powder though,” came a voice.
Shonna looked quickly at Jeff, “Remember I noticed the powder burns on
Antonio’s shirt.” She flipped two pages back on her notebook, “Easy when he was
wearing white. And powder on the counting room guard. No powder on the two in
the back of Antonio’s office, at least that I could see. None on the women
downstairs.”
Shonna looked up to the ceiling in thought. “That means that the shooter
literally walked up to the main victims and shot them point blank.”
Arnie’s and Jeff’s eyes met as they looked at each other, eyes widening exclaiming
in unison, “They knew the shooter!”
“And they trusted him,” Shonna completed their sentence.
Arnie pulled the drawing of the house across the table, studying it in
front of him. “Wait, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s see if we can
figure out the order.”
A question arose: Was there only one shooter? Why couldn’t they hear
shots?
Shonna started, “Wait, the bullet!” She pulled out the blood encrusted
bullet from her pocket that she pulled from Antonio, passing it around.
One of the agents held it to the light, “Nine millimeter. That means a
gun that can hold at least thirteen shots.”
“Or more depending on the make and model,” someone interjected.
“This is good,” Arnie smiled. “This means all those shots in the house
could come from one gun without a reload. Probably at the club, too.”
The agent holding the bullet frowned, “Feel the weight, light alloy.
This came from a low velocity round.”
“What does that mean?” Jeff asked.
“It means they used a silencer. A silencer only works with low velocity
bullets. Sub-sonic. It’s the bullet breaking the sound barrier that causes the
bang.” Jeff thought about this, nodding.
“That’s why even at close proximity only one round made it through
Antonio’s vest otherwise there would be no way his vest could stop a
full-charge nine millimeter round at such a close distance. At that close range
the bullet just has way too much force. Would punch right through the plate.
That makes perfect sense that it stopped four and only one got through.”
“Yeah, even then it barely got through, I reached right inside of him
and pulled this out with my bare fingers,” Shonna explained.
Arnie got up heading for the door, “Let me make a phone call, I’ll be
right back.”
The group was mulling together when Arnie came back. “I just got off the
phone and got confirmation that the shooter at the house used the same kind of
bullets. Of course, we don’t have ballistics yet, but my guess is the same gun was
used at the house and the club. Silencer, Shonna. That’s why you didn’t hear
any shots yesterday.”
“Wait!” Shonna flipped through her little notebook. “I forgot to tell
you guys about the counting room when I went through it. First, that door is
guarded twenty-four-seven, the guard is not even allowed to take a pee break.”
Jeff reflected, “I remember seeing him when I was waiting for you on
Friday night. There was a chair there, but he stood the whole time.”
“Right, he can sit only when nobody is in the hall.”
Shonna flipped through her little notebook going on to say that there
were three women in the counting room when they heard a commotion at the door, what
sounded like someone being pushed against the door outside. One of the women,
“Shelly, who is a sweetheart, but a real nervous nelly.” A sad expression
flashed across her eyes, “She ducked down when the door flew open. She didn’t
see anything, said she could hear four what sounded like snaps, she said it was
like those little confetti toys that you pull the string on and confetti shoots
out, you know that little snapping sound.”
“That’s what we thought, right? A silencer.” Arnie looked at Jeff with
an expression like a tutor, “Silencers aren’t completely silent, they still
make a small snapping sound like the girl heard.”
“The other girls were killed.” Shonna paused in quiet.
“What happened next?” the question came.
“Shelly said that they had stacks and stacks of money out, that she
expected it was a robbery. But instead all she heard was the file cabinets
opening, the noise of papers and boxes. There were whispers, men she was pretty
sure, more than one, but she’s not sure how many, said she couldn’t tell the
voices.” She flipped the page. “We don’t know for sure, it looked like no money
was taken, but every single page of the collections and payment records were
gone. Not a single page left behind.” She flipped the notebook closed, “Like
they knew exactly what they were looking for.” She looked around the table.
“They knew too much. This was an inside
job!”
Arnie stroked his chin, “Yes, of course. Inside. Just like Antonio said.
They didn’t care about the money, they only cared about their asses. Jesus, all
those people at Magic
Town
Jeff remembered the drawer that held the records they took last night
laying in the corner of Antonio’s office.
Arnie picked up the drawing of the house, pulling over the layouts of Magic Town Magic Town
Jeff reflected, “Antonio put on body armor. He was going to meet with
someone that he knew. Knew but didn’t trust. The shooter got close to him, we
know, so Antonio knew this person but definitely didn’t trust him or he wouldn’t
be wearing it.” Jeff remembered Antonio’s words from last night, “I remember
last night he said, ‘Why would you go around in body armor unless you thought
that there was going to be trouble?’ He knew the shooter but he thought that
there could be trouble!”
Arnie nodded in deep thought. “Yeah, I need to amend my script with this
important little detail.” He looked at Jeff nodding, “That’s very perceptive.
Good!”
“So Yvonne, can we start a what-we-know column?”
“I’m way ahead of you. I also have entries for what we’ve guessed.”
Jeff smiled, “Guys, this is great.” The whole room smiled at him, for
the first time he realized they were smiling at him without condescension.
A voice came out, “What about the congressman’s staff?”
Shonna gave a noticeable jolt, “They’re all good guys, let’s focus on
what’s at hand.” Jeff noticed the changed pitch of her voice, turning to look
at her, she ignored him.
Shonna looked back at the page. “But who? Who’s the shooter?” Shonna looked
at Jeff, “That means Snake Arm and his buddy probably couldn’t have done it. Nobody
would have let them get that close to them. We saw them come out of the house last,
but there’s no way they were the shooters. They couldn’t have been.” They heard
Yvonne’s pen writing.
Jeff half held up his hand, “But what about Pick––”
“Pizza!” came from the other room as everyone instantly stood up filtering
toward the dining room where they sat to eat, chatting about everything but the
case.
Shonna looked at Yvonne as they sat down again twenty minutes later.
“Okay, Yvonne, tell us what we know.” Looking around the room she continued, “Then
we need to take some votes.”
“Votes?” Jeff laughed.
“Surprised?” Yvonne smiled at Jeff. “You don’t see that on TV, do you? But
that’s how we do it sometimes.” Seeing Jeff’s puzzled look, “It prevents one
person from driving the solution, group think is always better.” She went on to
read her notes which Jeff was surprised at how detailed and well-ordered they
were.
Arnie raised his hand, “Okay people, we need to wrap this up. The way I
see it is we need a snitch, a shooter, the daily operations guy, and the
strategist who could also be our king pin.”
Shonna stood up. “Okay. First vote. Insider. Snitch. I nominate Pick.” A
few hands shot up immediately as people looked around at each other, slowly
other hands came up until they were all raised. Jeff raised his hand uncertain
about Pick as the snitch, not sure if he had a vote in this anyway. Arnie
signaled to him that he should raise his hand if he wanted to vote.
“Noted,” said Yvonne as she scribbled.
“Second, one shooter at each scene, same shooter at both scenes.” All
hands rose immediately.
“Third,” Shonna bent over looking at Yvonne’s notes as Yvonne spun the
page around toward Shonna, “The victims knew and trusted the shooter.” All
hands were raised.
Arnie leaned over to Jeff quipping, “Any more insights from Sherlock
Holmes?”
Jeff turned to him, laughed, “Well there’s always his most famous
saying, do you know it?” Arnie shrugged. “You’ve heard it before, I’m sure, the dog that didn’t bark in the night.”
Someone
leaned across the table, “Yeah, I remember that, what story was it?”
Jeff tried to remember, “You know, I don’t remember, but it was a clue
Holmes got from the fact that for the particular crime scene the dog should
have been barking. As I recall, that led Holmes to realize it was someone the
dog knew, not a stranger who committed the crime.”
“Yeah, well, we’ve already figured that out right?”
“That wasn’t the gist of the Holmes story, though, it was about
something that didn’t happen, it had
nothing to do with knowing the person or not. It was about what didn’t happen.”
Arnie looked to the ceiling, “Something that didn’t happen. Something
that we would expect from the crime,” turning to Jeff, “like something we
should have expected to happen but didn’t happen.”
Jeff nodded. “Exactly. But in this case what would it be?” He stared
blankly out the window at the bright sunshine in the back yard. “There’s maybe
something like that here.”
Shonna looked annoyed at Jeff and Arnie’s chatter, that they weren’t
paying attention to her. “Fourth, the shooter is––”
“Wait!” Jeff stood up. “The dog that that didn’t bark in the night!”
Everyone’s head swung toward Jeff. “I know you guys are sick of hearing about
Sherlock Holmes, but hear me out!” He looked down at Arnie speaking slowly,
“Arnie here made me remember that line from the Holmes stories. Let me see if I
can remember,” he paused looking up in thought. “We’ve been looking at what happened, not at what didn’t happen!” Blank faces around the
table except for Arnie’s expectant gaze. Jeff nodded toward Arnie, “He asked me
a question and suddenly I realized this!” Jeff gave Arnie a thankful smile.
“And then something occurred to me!”
The room was quiet, all eyes on him. “The shots were all torso shots!”
Nods around the table. “Wouldn’t a professional shoot people in the head? I
mean,” he rummaged among the papers on the table, finding a page scanning it,
“what kind of hit man shoots the congressman four times, shoots Antonio five
times, four shots into his aid in the house, I mean I don’t know about the
others,” turning to Shonna.
Shonna looked at the ceiling doing a tally in her head. “Yes, all
multiple torso shots.” She looked up approvingly at Jeff still standing, “You
are RIGHT! The person doing the shooting wasn’t a real hit man!” She leaned
over, cupped her face in her hands for a few seconds, looked up. “These people
were killed by someone they knew. The shooter couldn’t bring himself to raise
the gun to their faces! We already know that he did it point blank. It’s almost
as though the shooter was apologetic, didn’t really want to do it.” She looked
around the room, “Jeff, this is really good! The shooter wasn’t a pro! But I
mean…does that make sense?”
Arnie stood up slowly in thought, “Yes, apologetic, I like that,”
looking at Shonna, “good, that means we’re dealing with someone who probably
has never killed before otherwise he would know that you don’t have to go
spraying all those bullets around like that. A pro wouldn’t care, it would just
be BOOM! One shot to the head and goodbye!”
Jeff frowned thinking about all the bullet spraying he had done just a
few hours before, filling that door with so many holes. He had done it
reluctantly, in the heat of the moment it just happened. He remembered what
happened today, how hard that first shot was. How difficult it was to pull the
trigger the first time. As soon as that first bullet left the gun how easy it
was to pull it four more times.
“No, he was more than just apologetic,” Jeff said in a low voice as all
eyes turned to him. “Reluctant. Like I was when I was shooting through that
door today.” He felt a chill run down his arms as he remembered, pausing trying
to find the right words, tears welling, “The first bullet was so hard, I mean
so hard, but when I shot that first one the others just kind of kept coming.
The first shot felt like it was impossible to do, but the others just came
streaming out.” He looked around the table at anxious faces, wiping his eyes
with the backs of his hands. “That’s our shooter. Reluctant.”
“Jesus, Jeff, this is good, really good!” Arnie spoke softly stroking
his chin. “This really adds up that it was not a professional, obviously, but
even better, someone who was just following orders. Reluctantly.” There were
approving nods passed around.
“This is really good, congressman, but we’re losing time. This
information makes only makes it even more obvious to me that for the shooter we
should nominate Pick.”
She stood up as though making a formal announcement, “So fourth, I
nominate Pick as the shooter.” Jeff looked around as hands were slowly raised.
He kept his hand down.
He shook his head, “Sorry, I can’t do Pick as the shooter.”
“Why, because you think you know him?” Shonna replied almost angrily.
“I’d like to think I’m a little better judge of character, I mean I know
he’s a felon and all––an unconvicted
felon––but I just don’t buy it. I mean I saw those people coming out of the
house. I know that we said the people needed to know the shooter, but I would
rather pick someone like Snake Arm. Pick just doesn’t strike me as the
follows-orders kind of guy in this situation.” He shrugged, “I know Snake Arm
doesn’t fit the model of people knowing him so he could get close. I just can’t
buy it. Sorry, but I can’t buy Pick as the shooter.”
Yvonne noted one abstention.
Shonna shrugged, “Okay, tactical guy, operations. I nominate Antonio.”
All hands raised.
Jeff smirked, “That was easy, he
told us!” Shonna shot him a
disapproving glower.
“Strategist and maybe our main man.” Shonna finally continued looking
around the room. “I nominate nobody.” She half-grinned, “Or everybody.” All
hands were raised. Yvonne scribbled. “One thing for sure, put this down, this
business was probably mostly conducted at Magic Town
Shonna looked around to everyone. “And last that our Sherlock Holmes
plan still stands for tomorrow as our best strategy.” All hands shot up except
Jeff’s as heads turned to him, he felt a flush. He raised his hand with a timid
smile.
Shonna looked at her watch. “Okay, almost four-thirty. Next, show time
coming up! Do we have all the unit support set up?” Nods from two men at the
table. “I don’t expect surprises tonight, but with this group god knows.” She
turned to Arnie, “Are you good to go for one of our little visits tonight?
Pretty sure we’re going to need you.” He was just standing, turned to her with
a smiling thumbs-up.
She clapped her hands twice loudly, “Okay, let’s go.”
As they were leaving the conference room, Jeff walked into the operations
room which had many fewer people. It was beginning to get dark outside. Jeff
went up to Shonna to ask if he could step outside for some air. She motioned to
the agent who had guarded him before, leaned toward Jeff, “You’ve got ten
minutes.”
“What happens in ten minutes?”
“We have to turn you into a prick.”
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