One False Move (10 page)

That was the summer Grace turned six. She was spending that night, just three blocks away, at her grandma Wenny’s. She didn’t remember much about the rest of that summer, the summer she went to live with her grandmother. The summer Jimmy Lee Parker killed Omaha police officer Fritz Wenninghoff and his wife, Emily.

Yes, Jimmy Lee Parker was the reason Grace had become a prosecutor. She doubted that Max Kramer had any Jimmy Lees who had inspired him or surely he never would have believed freeing Jared Barnett to be justice.

Grace ripped open another box using a bit more force than necessary. She didn’t like thinking about that summer her father and mother were murdered in their own home, in their own bed. Although she couldn’t remember much about it. She dug into the box, shoving aside the flaps. Finally, the bathroom towels. She needed to get her mind back to the present. She loaded up an armful and headed for the bathroom, but this time when she passed Emily’s room she heard her daughter say, “You saw the shadow man?”

Grace stopped and listened.

“He was here inside our house?”

“Emily,” Grace interrupted, “what shadow man are you talking about?”

“The one Daddy talked about.”

Grace remembered Vince telling her to not look for Barnett in the shadows. That had to be what Emily was referring to. “You mean at the airport?” Emily nodded. She was sitting on the edge of her bed, facing the antique dresser and mirror. “He was only joking, sweetie. There is no shadow man.”

“Bitsy says he was here today,” Emily said, looking over Grace’s shoulder as if her friend was standing there. Only when Grace turned, there was just the dresser and mirror.

“Now, how would Bitsy know?”

“She saw him sneaking around. He took Mr. McDuff.”

Grace didn’t want to get angry with Emily, but she wasn’t sure why she was making all this up. Maybe the idea of a shadow man had really frightened her.

“Are you sure you didn’t misplace him?”

Emily shook her head. “He was on my bed where I always leave him.”

Grace looked around the room. The rest of the house was a mess but Emily had organized her room. Definitely not a trait she inherited from her mother. The stuffed white dog was nowhere in sight.

“I’m sure he’s here somewhere.”

“Bitsy said the shadow man took him.”

Grace rubbed at the ever-present knot in the back of her neck. She was beginning to get impatient, but kept her voice calm. “Sweetie, you know Daddy and I would never let anyone hurt you. You know that, right?”

Emily nodded again, but she seemed distracted. She glanced over Grace’s shoulder again. Maybe it was nothing all. Maybe she really was just playing, just talking.

“Why don’t you look around and see if McDuff is downstairs?”

“Okay.”

Grace started out the door but Emily said, “Mommy, Bitsy says we should lock the door from the house to the garage whenever we leave from now on.”

Grace stared at her daughter, and for a brief second she felt a chill, like a draft from an open door. How in the world did Emily know they didn’t lock that door?

Before getting back to the boxes she stopped to check all the locks on the doors and windows. Then she realized how silly she was being. She couldn’t let Emily’s fear and confusion cloud her judgment or frighten her. And she wouldn’t let Jared Barnett make her jump at shadows.

She had unpacked only one box when the phone interrupted her.

“Hello,” she answered, distracted and thinking it would be easier to go out and buy new things.

“Grace, glad I found you.”

It was Pakula and only then did she remember she hadn’t called him back after they’d been disconnected.

“I’m okay. I know I should have called you back after we got cut off.”

“What?”

“My damsel-in-distress call.”

“Oh, yeah. No, that’s okay. That’s not why I’m calling. I’ve got something you’re gonna wanna see.”

Grace looked around for a pen. She knew if Tommy didn’t have time to joke around this was serious.

“What’s going on?”

“I’m at the Nebraska Bank of Commerce, that little branch off Highway 50. You know the one? Back behind Sapp Brothers, off I-80.”

“You’re actually at the bank?” She found a pen and looked for paper, settling instead for the top of a packing box to jot down the directions.

“Yeah, it’s a fucking mess.”

“Pakula, you’re the last one I need to remind, bank robberies are the feds’ mess.”

“Not when there’s a homicide.”

She figured as much. “You think it’s the convenience-store robber moving up and getting trigger-happy?” There had been three robberies across the city at different convenience stores. It wasn’t unusual for a robber to get cocky and think he was ready for a bigger hit.

“A black and white got a good look. We’re running the plate number. Hold on,” he said and she could hear a muffled conversation. She recognized Pakula’s “Holy crap,” followed by a “fuck.” Then he was back on the line. “This is one fucking mess. You think you can come take a look?”

“I need to take Emily over to my grandmother’s. I should be there in about fifteen to twenty.”

“I have to warn you, Grace—”

“I know, it’s a fucking mess.”

“I don’t think I’ve seen this much blood in one place since the Jepperson drug bust in ’97.”

“So there’s more than one homicide?”

“Last count there might be five.”

“Christ, Pakula! Why didn’t you say that in the beginning?”

“I thought I did. I better go. See you in fifteen.”

5:38 p.m.

Melanie laid on the horn but the SUV in front of them didn’t budge, adhering to the sixty-five-mile-an-hour speed limit. In the rearview mirror, she could see cars and trucks pulling to the roadside, like waters parting, for the flashing cruiser. He’d be on her tail in seconds. There were hills, inclines, not enough room for passing zones. Yet when Jared yelled,
“Go around the motherfucker,”
Melanie didn’t hesitate.

Sure enough, on the other side of the hill was a truck headed straight for them. She’d never make it. In front of the SUV was a blue compact she hadn’t anticipated. She jerked back to the right, scraping against the SUV, shocking the driver into pulling to the side of the road. Now in her side mirror she could see him driving through the ditches before smashing into a fence.

“Serves him right,” Jared said. “Maybe the others will know to get out of our way.”

But even as he said it, Melanie had to weave around the blue compact. A pickup truck with a trailer was up ahead, and Melanie knew she’d never make it around him before the curve. And from what she could see, it looked as if they were coming to another bridge and another town.

“Don’t slow down,” Jared warned her. “Use the shoulder.”

“Are you nuts? It’s not wide enough.”

“Sure it is. Just do it.” He was turned in his seat again with the gun aimed at the back window.
“Do it now, damn it.”

She wanted to close her eyes. The curve was impossible at this speed—eighty-five at her last glance—and she might not be able to keep control.

“You can do it, Mel.” His tone was somewhere between soothing and a yell.

She held her breath and twisted the steering wheel to the right. She heard the tire hit the edge and felt the pull. The car bounced, the steering wheel jerking out of her grasp. Before she could maneuver the car back onto the pavement, her hands were slick with sweat. So was her back, the T-shirt fabric stuck to her like a second skin. Her heart pounded loud enough to keep her from hearing Jared’s continued instructions. She barely pulled the car back onto the highway before the bridge. A few more yards and they would have been flying into the water.

The bridge slowed down the cruiser. With no place on the sides for cars to pull over, the flashing blue and red lights stayed behind the pickup and trailer. Melanie floored it despite the REDUCE SPEED signs and despite entering the outskirts of Louisville.

More curves. More inclines.

“Turn up ahead,” Jared instructed her, and she wouldn’t have noticed the turnoff except for a sign with an arrow for Platte River State Park.

She followed his directions, only seeing his wisdom after she took another curve going seventy-five. With all the inclines and curves, the cruiser hadn’t been in sight when she turned. He couldn’t see her now, either. He would automatically think they’d continued on Highway 50.

“Did we lose him?” She almost didn’t want to know.

“Keep going.”

“I am. But is he still coming?”

“Up ahead. Off to your right is the state park. Pull in there.” He was already pointing but she couldn’t see it. “It’s a long road into the park. There should be a sign.”

“I can’t see him.” She watched the rearview mirror, her eyes trying to take in all angles. She was tempted to turn around, just for a second or two, to look.

“It’s there. It’s right there,” Jared yelled.

But it was too late. She was going too fast. She saw the park entrance. Perhaps she felt cocky after all the stunts she had pulled off. She thought she could make it despite not slowing enough. She thought she had judged the distance, the angle. She twisted the steering wheel too much, too quickly, and suddenly the car was airborne, flying over the deep ditch, scraping through the barbed-wire fence—the screech of wire against metal—before slamming hard, the chassis rocking. They skidded through the tall cornstalks, a sound like wind whipping against the glass. The smell of antifreeze and gasoline filled her nostrils along with hot, stale air.

When they finally came to a complete stop all Melanie could see through the windshield were cornstalks and bulging gray thunderheads.

5:51 p.m.

An Omaha police officer waved Grace through the maze of rescue vehicles, cruisers and media vans. She didn’t know all the younger officers, including this one, but most of them knew her or at least knew who she was. It wasn’t unusual for the police and the district attorney’s office to work together, starting at the crime scene. However, it had taken a while—certainly not an overnight victory—for the Omaha Police Department and the Douglas County Sheriff’s Department to treat the only woman county prosecutor like an asset instead of a pain in the ass.

At a side door to the brick bank building another officer handed Grace a pair of latex gloves, shoe covers and a face mask. She declined the mask, slipped the paper shoe covers over her leather flats and tugged on the gloves. She followed the narrow hallway past two closed doors, one with a nameplate. Hopefully, Mr. Avery Harmon had taken the day off or left early.

Even before she reached the lobby, she could smell it. It filled her nostrils: sour and rancid, so strong she could almost taste it. She stopped at the doorway, but only because she wanted to examine the scene. She wanted to take it all in, memorize it for later, imagining the lobby without the detectives, without the coroner, without the Douglas County lab technicians.

She counted three bodies. Pakula had said there might be five. One, a woman, lay facedown close to the bank’s double glass doors that led to a small entrance. Was she a customer on her way out when the shooting began? From where she stood, Grace couldn’t tell where the bullet had entered, though it looked like a back head shot. That’s where the blood had pooled. A man in a shirt and tie lay crumpled in the doorway to a side office, his crisply starched white shirt now stained red. At the teller counter lay an old man, flat on his back. He was the closest to Grace, so close she could see his blue eyes staring up at the ceiling, one lens of his wire-rimmed glasses crushed.

“There’s another behind the counter,” Tommy Pakula said, appearing suddenly beside Grace.

“Tell me,” she said, ready to hear his version.

By now the two of them skipped formalities, grateful for the other’s direct method or what Tommy liked to call their “no-bullshit approach.”

“They left the cameras intact.” He pointed out the three various angles. “They’re the cheap son-of-a-bitching ones. Three-second delay. That one takes a picture of its piece of the bank, then that one, then the last one. One of the feds took the tapes. We’ll take a look in a little bit, but don’t expect much.”

She glanced at Pakula. He was in jeans and a yellow golf shirt. He always dressed sharp, shirts tucked in, even the jeans creased, but today there were uncharacteristic rings of sweat under his armpits and his head and forehead glistened. It was only then that Grace realized how warm it was inside the lobby. Something must have gone wrong with the A/C. No way would any of these guys have shut it off.

“Not quite sure how this went down.” Pakula always said this before he told her exactly how it went down. In the early days she thought he was just another cocky, macho cop until she realized that nine out of ten times he could get it all right: the caliber, the direction and the sequence.

“We think there were two of them. The beat cop who got a look at the car before he crashed his own said there were two of them. Makes sense inside here that there were two. I’m figuring they come in the front. One stays close to the door. The other heads for the counter. The receptionist gets it first.” He pointed to the bloody spot under the desk where there was no body. “The guy in the office hears the shot. Comes out to see what’s going on, but either he or the teller trips the silent alarm. He gets blasted. Both customers probably get it next. I’m guessing the teller behind the counter was last.”

“Did the receptionist make it?”

“We’re crossing our fingers, but she’s in bad shape. She slid under the desk after she was hit. May have saved her life. They couldn’t see her good enough to know if they’d killed her. It’s a head shot, so don’t go getting your hopes up for a witness.”

“You said the teller was last. Why?”

“Oh, yeah. This you gotta see. Don’t have a fucking hemorrhage, though, okay?”

“Why would I have a fucking hemorrhage?”

He led her around the counter, both of them stepping carefully over the old man. Grace noticed his tweed suit, shirt collar buttoned, the tie in a perfect knot. It had to be a hundred degrees out today when you figured in the humidity, and yet this guy had probably dressed up for his regular weekly trip to the bank. She was still thinking about the old man when Pakula knelt down beside the teller, gently lifting her head, the blond hair matted with blood sticking to her face, almost making it impossible for Grace to see the entrance wound. Until Pakula lifted the chin. Then she could see it, a small smudged black hole at the lower left jawline. The shooter would have had to have taken time to shove the gun up under her chin.