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“I have. They’re called snipers.” Brandy walked around the body as she spoke. There were footprints in the blood, and bits of skull lying at the edge of the sheet. The crime scene was a mess.

“You said the shooter left the murder weapon?” Brandy said.

Lee nodded. “Guess she didn’t think she could carry it back out.”

“Where was she?”

“Up there, on the roof.”

“Show me.”

The Inspector led Brandy to the rooftop. She took note of the broken door handle at the top of the stairs. “Have you checked this for prints?”

“There weren’t any,” he said. “But we got plenty from the gun.” He led her across the roof. “She was lying here, up against the wall. The gun was on a bipod, a .308 Caliber with a high power scope.”

Brandy looked the area over. She could see where the woman had stirred up the gravel. “Did she leave any shell casings?”

“No. The area was clean when we got here, except for the weapon.”

“Interesting. She left the gun, which was covered in prints, but took the casings with her?”

     Lee shrugged. “I doubt she was a pro. She probably realized at the last minute that she’d never get out of the building with that gun so she took what she could carry and ran. Killers like this don’t put that much thought into what they do. Just because we’re dealing with a woman doesn’t mean the rules have all changed. She was probably just some nut-job stalker. You ask me, I’m surprised this doesn’t happen more often.”

“What do you mean?”

“Celebrities, guys like Fortress mixing music with politics. It’s like mixing nitroglycerin with gunpowder. It’s just asking for trouble.”

“Very possible,” said Brandy. “What do you know so far about our suspect?”

“No name yet. We’re running the prints. It can take an hour or two. I asked the store about security cameras but our girl didn’t enter through the front doors.”

“What do you mean? You mean she had access to the building? Was she an employee?”

“Ha, I wish it was that easy. No, she didn’t need a key because somebody left the door open.”

He stepped up to the edge of the roof and gazed down at the square. “Witnesses saw her standing here, at the edge of the roof. White female in her late twenties, dark hair. She was dressed professionally, a dark business suit.”

Brandy stood next to him and looked down. “How far would you say it is from here to the body?”

“I don’t know… eighty yards. One hundred at most.”

She made a mental note of the figure, and made some quick calculations in her head. “Did the Plexiglas wall catch the bullet?”

“No, the forensics examiner said it’s probably still inside the skull.”

“There was no exit wound?”

“Nope. The guy was a mess though. It hit him pretty hard. The forehead and top of the skull are mostly gone.”

“That seems strange,” she muttered.

“What’s strange about that?”

“Have you ever shot a .308?” said Brandy.

Lee shrugged. “Not that I can recall.”

“It’s a very popular hunting caliber. It’s the civilian version of a NATO sniper round. Normally, a rifle that powerful would have blown right through his skull and out the back from this distance. It should have hit that Plexiglas partition back there.”

“Depends on the load, I suppose,” Lee said. “It was probably just some cheap ammo. Or hollow points, maybe. Maybe the bullet ricocheted inside his skull, shot up in the air or something.”

“You said the rifle’s at the lab?”

“Yes.”

“I’d like to take a look.”

“Sure, let’s go.”

“In a minute. I’d like to interview some of the witnesses if you don’t mind.”

“No problem. Let me know when you’re ready.”

Brandy started with the rally organizer, a woman named Beth Peters. She was a thin, gangly woman with orangish hair and a visible overbite. She looked like she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

“Did you know Fortress personally?” Brandy said.

“Not until today. Just met him before the show.”

“Had you received any threats?”

“What, about the rally? Just the usual nuts calling us names and stuff. Believe me, I’ve seen much worse. The real psychos don’t come out for stuff like this. Not for a human rights rally.”

“Do you have any idea why someone would have wanted to kill Fortress?”

Beth shrugged. Her shoulders were so bony that Brandy wanted to force feed her a cheeseburger. “Fortress was a rock star. He was mixed up in politics. He was into human rights. As far as I know, the guy didn’t have any real enemies, but people like him get all kinds of attention. Sometimes it’s the bad kind.”

“Thanks, Ms. Peters. If I have any more questions can I call you?”

“Of course.”

Next up was Fortress’s manager, a heavy-set black guy named George. He looked in his late forties. He was dressed casually in denim shorts and a white button-up. It hung loose at the waist and he had the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He wore a pair of giant sunglasses that made him look like a fly.

“You’re the FBI?” George said, eyeing her up and down.

“Special Agent Jackson,” she said. “I’d like to ask you some questions about Fortress.”

George scratched his head and scanned the crowd around the square. “Look, I’ve already told the cops everything I know. Can’t you just go over their report?”

“I will, but I need to ask you a few questions.”

“Am I a suspect?”

Brandy cocked an eyebrow. George didn’t parse words. “That depends. Where were you this afternoon?”

“Right here, got hundreds of witnesses.”

“Do you know anyone who would have wanted Fortress dead?”

“Not a soul. Everybody loved Fortress, except for a few nazi-types. We had a couple death threats a couple years ago, nothing unusual.”

“Did the FBI look into those threats?”

George looked defensive. “They were just letters. Anonymous. We showed them to the Dallas Police and they said there was nothing they could do.”

“Had Fortress been involved in anything suspicious lately? Was he doing… business with different people?” That was a not-so-subtle suggestion that Fortress may have been involved with drugs. Brandy would have been shocked to learn he hadn’t, but she knew better than to be too blunt about the subject. A man like George would never openly admit to something like that.

“Not at all. He had a close circle of friends. In fact…” George’s eyebrows went up as he thought of something. “Actually, there was one guy. Michael Turner. They were old friends. Fortress had been working on some sort of secret project with him, but he wouldn’t talk about it.”

“Michael Turner?” Brandy had been taking notes on her smartphone. She looked up. “Michael Turner was killed yesterday. His throat was slit by a cab driver named Bob Clarke.”

George pulled off his sunglasses. His face looked ashen, devastated. “Sweet Jesus,” he muttered. He sat down on the stairs. “Yeah, Michael… him and Fortress go back to college, maybe further.”

“Why would someone have wanted the two of them dead?”

George stared at her. He was shook up, and it took a few seconds for her question to sink in. He turned away, fixed his eyes in the distance. “Fortress and Michael were two peas in a pod. They were always working on something. A lot of Fortress’s songs were based on conspiracies he’d talked about with Michael.”

“Conspiracies? What kind of conspiracies?”

“I don’t know, the usual stuff. ‘The man’ holding us down. The government hiding secret plans for free energy, stuff like that.”

“Did Fortress believe in these conspiracies? Did he think the government was concealing important information?”

George looked at her like she was crazy. “Lady, everybody
knows
the government’s hiding important frickin’ information.”

“I see. Had Fortress and Michael discussed any of these conspiracies lately?”

George raised his head. There was a distant look in his eyes as he spoke. “The two of them had been talking, I don’t know what it was about. Michael headed off to China a few weeks back. Last I heard, he had called Fortress yesterday. They were going to meet.”

“About what?”

“I don’t know,” George said. He shook his head, frustrated. “I’m still in shock. I’m sorry. All I know is that Fortress said he was going to meet Michael last night at the bar. He wanted me to make sure there weren’t any reporters around. Then Michael never showed up.”

“Is there anyone who might know what they were meeting about?”

“I don’t know. Try his girlfriend, her name’s Shari McAlister. Hold on…” he dug out his phone and pulled up her number. Brandy stored it in her cell.

“Thanks for your cooperation. Please, call me if you remember anything else.” She handed him her card, and George stuffed it in his pocket. When she left with Inspector Lee five minutes later, George was still sitting on the stairs.

They took Lee’s car because he was parked closer, which may have been a mistake judging by how long it took to get out of the area. Almost an hour later, Brandy and the Inspector finally arrived at the lab downtown. A specialist named Jacques Kincaid was in charge of examining the weapon. He had the gun disassembled on a table when they arrived. He was leaning over a computer desk, staring down at the screen. He was tall and thin with a mustache and thick brown hair. Jacques pulled himself away from the computer as they entered the room.

Lee made introductions and then asked, “So what do we know so far?”

“Well, we’ve got lots of prints. Looks like all the same person. I ran them through the database. We should have a result any minute. While I waited, I went over the gun and didn’t find anything else.”

“What about the muzzle flash?” said Brandy.

The Inspector gave her a vacant look. “What about it?”

“Have you examined it?”

“Umm, I was just about to get to that.” 

“Good. I want to know everything about that ammo. Check for trace chemicals, temperature and velocity, everything you can think of. I want a complete profile, including comparison ballistics. I want to know if it was a custom or manufactured load, how much powder the shooter was using, even what brand of powder if you can figure it out… And I also want to know how many times the gun has been fired.”

“Is that really necessary?” Jacques said. “I mean, we’ve got fingerprints all over this thing. The killer left the weapon at the crime scene. What more do you want? You could put someone away on half this evidence.”

“I know,” said Brandy. “That’s one of the things that I don’t like about this case already.”

“Look,” Lee said, “I know you’re just trying to pursue all the angles here, but is all this really necessary? Like Jacques said, we’ve got all we need already.”

“I understand that,” said Brandy, “but there are a few questions I’d like to satisfy first. A little extra looking won’t harm anything. In fact, it might help the case later.”

Lee looked exasperated. “Alright, I wasn’t going to mention this. I got a call from the mayor. He wants this case closed ASAP.”

Brandy narrowed her eyes. “Why is the mayor involved in this?”

Lee leaned up against the table. “Says he got a call from the governor.”

“No shit?” said Jacques.

“No shit.”

Brandy glanced back and forth between them. “Gentlemen, I’ll admit I’m new to this, but I have had some experience with law enforcement in Afghanistan. I can tell you that I’ve seen what happens when investigations are taken over by politics. I’m not about to let that happen here. I’m not going to roll over because it’s politically expedient. If I don’t get the answers I want, I can promise you, I’ll keep coming back.”

Lee gave Jacques a reassuring pat on the back. “Do what you can,” he said. “Every little bit of information helps our case.”

     At that moment, Jacques’s computer let out a loud repetitive beep. “We’ve got her!” he said. He plopped down in the chair and opened the file. “Sara Murphy. Her last known address is in Mill Valley.”

Brandy scanned the screen. “Let’s go,” she said. “Forward a screen-grab to my phone, and also to Lee’s department. Let’s see what else your investigators can dig up on her.”

Chapter 16

When Sara saw the police cruiser making a u-turn at the end of the street, she slammed the Roadrunner into reverse and hit the gas. By the time she got out of the driveway, the squad car was already screaming after her with lights flashing and sirens blaring.

The Roadrunner’s tires squealed as Sara drifted around the corner at the edge of the subdivision. She hammered it through a red light and swerved to avoid a slow-moving minivan. The cop stayed right on her tail. Two more squad cars joined the pursuit as she climbed the onramp towards 101. They were city cops, and for a few breathless moments, Sara actually hoped they might abandon the chase instead of pursuing her beyond their jurisdiction. No such luck. They stayed on her tail even as Sara plowed onto the highway.

She darted in and out of traffic, pounding on the horn and flashing her headlights. Despite the lights and the sirens all around them, most of the drivers seemed oblivious to what was going on. They were in “The Bubble.” That’s what Sara called it. It was as if they were in a tunnel that connected point A to point B and nothing in between mattered. Sara had observed that behavior every single day during her commutes into the city. It seemed that as soon as people got in their cars, they checked out of reality and started to daydream.

Those daydreams were rudely interrupted when Sara charged up behind them honking her horn and flashing her headlights, swerving back and forth across the lanes like a maniac. Most of the drivers honked back at her, or flipped her off. One guy held up a gun threateningly. Sara grinned as the man realized he was surrounded by squad cars. One of them abandoned the pursuit to escort him to the side of the road.

The rest of the cops stuck with the chase, and they had no trouble keeping up. Their Dodge Chargers were designed to go up to 150 miles per hour. Sara had never even driven 100. The one advantage she had was in her recklessness. Sara knew the cops had to be extremely careful about endangering civilian lives. She took advantage of that by driving erratically, frightening the people around her. That caused them to slow down and make room, in the process jamming up traffic for the cops. The strategy was effective enough to keep her on the road, but Sara couldn’t gain a lead. And she couldn’t push it too far. She didn’t mind frightening the other drivers, but Sara didn’t want to hurt them.