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  One Shot

  By B.K. Stevens

  Copyright 2011 by B.K. Stevens

  Cover Copyright 2011 by Dara England and Untreed Reads Publishing

  The author is hereby established as the sole holder of the copyright. Either the publisher (Untreed Reads) or author may enforce copyrights to the fullest extent.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold, reproduced or transmitted by any means in any form or given away to other people without specific permission from the author and/or publisher. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to the living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Also by B.K. Stevens and Untreed Reads Publishing

  Little Dumber Boy

  http://www.untreedreads.com

  One Shot

  By B.K. Stevens

  Of course, Rick Carlson’s metallic green Mustang already sat outside the house, front right tire jammed hard against the curb. Carlson had made detective just three months ago and hadn’t gotten past the glow of it yet—still frantic to score points daily, still always first on the scene if a case promised to inch past ordinary. Pulling up behind a patrol car, I reminded myself that it’s good for young people to feel enthusiastic about their work. Carlson’s work, though, involves sifting through human misery and assigning guilt. That made it vaguely disturbing to see the way he came bounding across the lawn, leaping over hedges, face stretched taut with joy.

  “Glad you’re finally here, Lieutenant,” he said, flinging my car door open. Carlson’s twenty-seven, just good-looking enough to be full of himself, just clever enough to think he’s smarter than everyone else. “Boy, have we got a hot one! Know who the victim is?”

  “No.” I’m still on the downside of forty but felt ancient as I climbed out of my car. Maybe that’s what disapproving of younger colleagues does to you. “Dispatch just said possible homicide.”

  “Possible, hell.” He percolated with excitement. “This is as definite as homicide gets. And the victim? Get this, Lieutenant. You won’t believe it. Karen Dodd. Can you believe it? I bet you can’t believe it.”

  At first, I couldn’t. “Karen Dodd? You don’t mean—”

  “I do mean.” He bounced in place, heel to toe. “How’s that for a homicide?”

  I tried to take it in. Two nights ago, along with almost everyone else in Akron, I’d watched Karen Dodd on the six o’clock news, surrounded by her perfect family, sounding perkily committed as she announced she’d seek her party’s nomination for governor. “Just don’t tell me she was shot,” I said. “Please don’t tell me she was shot.”

  Carlson couldn’t hold back a whoop. “She was shot! How’s that for heavy irony? Karen Dodd was shot to death.”

  *

  The scene inside the house looked ironic, all right. Karen Dodd, the state legislator who had pushed through the toughest gun control law in Ohio’s history, lay dead on her living room floor, shot just once, square in the chest. She wore jeans and a white pullover sweater and cloth bedroom slippers but otherwise looked pretty much like she had at her press conferences—face calm, careful sculpture of short blonde curls only slightly disturbed by death. I paused several feet away, feeling I owed her at least a few seconds of mourning. I probably would’ve voted for you, I thought. I’m sorry.

  Carlson bubbled by my side. “No evidence of burglary, nothing disturbed upstairs. No forced entry. So maybe she opened the door for her killer. Or maybe he opened it himself. With his own key. If you know what I mean.”

  Yes, you twit, I thought. I know what you mean. The husband’s always the first suspect—I don’t need you to tell me that. “Who found the body? When?”

  Carlson checked his notes. “Call came in at 7:27. And—get this—her mother and her kids found her. Pretty damn poignant, huh? Apparently, the old lady freaked when she saw the body, went instant coma or something. The seven-year-old boy called 911. As soon as the paramedics got here, they carted Grandma off to the hospital.”

  I nodded. “And the husband? Any sign? Any word?”

  “Yeah, he called maybe fifteen minutes ago, asking for his wife, all Mr. Innocent Ignorance. I said she’d been shot and he’d better get his ass over here. Anyway, I tried questioning the kid—he was blubbery, but I was making progress. Then that bitch Sullivan snatches all the kids away and takes them upstairs. Some nerve, huh? I didn’t even get to ask the kid about the roses.”

  The roses. For the first time, I focused on the roses. They lay scattered on the floor and furniture, leaves and broken stems and deep red petals, looking like they’d been torn to bits and hurled against the walls. Several leaves clung to Karen Dodd’s sweater; one intact blossom lay inches from her left hand—she seemed to be reaching for it. I wondered what had happened to the vase, then looked up and found my answer. A large framed photograph hung over the mantel, the sort of family portrait photographers display in their lobbies—the mother slim and smiling, seated on a small maroon sofa; the twin five-year-old girls nestled on either side of her, all plump blonde pigtails and thick bangs; the seven-year-old son kneeling in front, grinning, just awkward enough to look natural; the proud young father standing behind them, his longish crew cut swept upwards and carefully moussed, his arms stretched out to rest on the back of the sofa as if scooping his whole family to him. They don’t get much more wholesome than this, I thought. But the glass covering the portrait was shattered, and thick, jagged fragments of pottery littered the bricks surrounding the fireplace. That’s what had happened to the vase.

  Carlson, too, gazed at the photograph. “Looks like an abridged version of the Brady Bunch,” he observed. “Murder Stalks Mr. and Mrs. Middle America. I love it.”

  “Less glee, please, Carlson,” I said. “It isn’t decent. Any sign of the gun?”

  “Nope,” he said. “Naturally.”

  Nodding, I turned away from him and made a circuit of the living room—huge and relentlessly tasteful, spectacular in a careful way, cream carpets and pale woods and shades of off-white, with throw pillows adding cautiously contrasting colors. Not one piece of furniture looked old or worn or particularly comfortable; nothing interfered with the cool harmony of the place. A one-eared stuffed bear lay sprawled on an armchair, but I figured that was a fluke. I’d bet the children weren’t often allowed in this room.

  A few feet from the front door, I saw a large splotch of something on the carpet. Dark, reddish, but not blood. Crouching down, I touched it, found it still damp, sniffed my fingers, decided I wasn’t brave enough to taste it. Smells like barbeque sauce, I thought, but not quite. Well, the lab can take samples.

  Carlson beckoned from the kitchen. “Hey Lieutenant, come see. More rip-your-heart-out stuff.”

  Reluctantly, sorry to let him lead me anywhere, I walked to the kitchen. The children had decorated it with crayoned signs—“Welcome Home, Mommy,” “We Missed You, Mommy.” That’s right—she announced her candidacy at the airport, just before flying to Washington. And yesterday she testified before a Senate committee debating gun control. More heavy irony, I thought, but I wouldn’t give Carlson any satisfaction by commenting on it. I felt ghoulish, just standing around and gawking at fossils of family happiness. I wanted to get started. Where the hell was the husband?

  He arrived moments later, bursting in through the front door, his cherub-like face flushed. “Oh, my God!” he cried. “Karen! It can’t—God, no!”

  A uniformed officer
tried to stop him, but he’d seen his wife. He ran to her and collapsed to his knees, covering his face with his hands. “My poor darling!” he said, sobbing. “I’m sorry, Karen! I’m so, so sorry!”

  Carlson stood nearby, grinning, nudging a policewoman in the ribs and taking notes. Bastard, I thought, and helped Randy Dodd to his feet.

  “Let’s go to the kitchen, Mr. Dodd,” I said. “I’m Lieutenant Dan Ledger, the officer in charge. I’m very sorry about your loss, but I need to ask you some questions.”

  He stared at me. “My children. Are they all right? I have to see my children.”

  Carlson started to object, but I ignored him. “They’re fine. I’ll take you to them.”

  The children were upstairs in the twins’ room, being cuddled and soothed by the policewoman who had rescued them from Carlson. Closing the door behind me, I left her in charge during their reunion with their father. I thought about my own daughter, only a little younger than the twins, about how lost and unhappy she’d looked when I’d moved out last week. These kids were facing something so much worse, so much more terrifying and final. I didn’t want to watch what it must be doing to them, not yet.

  I checked the other rooms upstairs. In the master bedroom, a suitcase, a laptop, and a purse sat next to the bed—apparently, Karen Dodd hadn’t unpacked yet. Possible insight into what she’d been doing, into what might’ve gotten her killed; we’d better take all the bags as evidence. Down the hall in a home office, a word processor, still switched on, displayed what must have been the last words she’d written: “The public must be informed about our primary concerns and objectives in reference to the sale of firearms of various sorts. Despite negative feedback received from some quarters, perseverance is imperative until achievement of satisfactory resolutions of these matters.” So she’d written this, and then she’d been shot. I shook my head. If I didn’t watch myself, I’d be like Carlson, gee-whizzing about the irony of everything in sight. Well, we’d take the word processor, too.

  Carlson stuck his head into the room. “Guess who’s here. Charlene Gorshin—you know, Channel Six. She says she’s friends with the Dodds, wants to comfort the kids. Okay?”

  “Absolutely not,” I said. “I’ll talk to her.”

  Charlene Gorshin is thin, thinner than she needs to be for local news; I’ve always figured she has network ambitions. “Sorry, Ms. Gorshin,” I said. “Press stays on the sidewalk.”

  “I’m not just press,” she said. “I did an in-depth on Karen—I practically lived with the family for a week. I could comfort them. I could—”

  “Sorry,” I began, but got distracted by the sight of Carlson leading the still-sobbing Randy Dodd downstairs, tugging on his arm. “Damn it, Carlson, I didn’t authorize this. He needs time with his kids.”

  “Better to get the unpleasantness over with,” Carlson said. “Then he can be with his kids all he wants. Maybe. Come on, Mr. Dodd. No, don’t look at the stiff. It’ll just upset you. This way. We’ve got coffee. Sounds good, huh?”

  “Randy!” Gorshin cried, trying to slip past me. “My deepest sympathy! How did you feel when you saw—”

  I blocked her path. “That’s it. Wait outside.”

  “No. Please.” It was Randy Dodd, breaking away from Carlson’s grip. “That policewoman’s very nice, but the children love Charlene. Please, let her go to them.”

  I hesitated, then let it happen. In Dodd’s place, I wouldn’t want a reporter anywhere near my daughter, but he seemed sure she’d prove a friend, not a vulture. Maybe he was right.

  Maybe Carlson was right, too. Maybe it was best to get the unpleasantness over with. Already, Dodd had sunk into a kitchen chair, moaning, holding his head in his hands. He looked twelve years old. I poured him coffee and sat across from him. Carlson paced significantly.

  “Mr. Dodd,” I began, “do you know who killed your wife?”

  He shook his head. “No. I mean, she got hate mail, mostly anonymous, from gun nuts. And there were threats, sort of.”

  Carlson snorted. “A ‘sort-of’ threat?” What’s a ‘sort-of’ threat?”

  “They were never in words,” Dodd said, “but for months, we kept finding dead animals outside our door. Animals that had been shot. Squirrels, raccoons, other small animals. It happened nine times. We called the police, but they never caught anybody.”

  “I remember that,” I said. “And there was a big incident, last spring—about a jackrabbit?”

  “That’s right. That made Karen really mad. She took some reporters and confronted the head of the local American Firearms Association office. He denied everything, of course, but the incidents stopped. So he must’ve been behind it.”

  “Possibly,” I agreed. “Any other ideas about who might’ve killed her?”

  “No.” He looked away from me. “No other ideas.”

  Lying, I thought, and nodded. “Then let’s get some times straight. Your wife left town on Wednesday. When did she get back?”

  “This morning.” He touched his mug, warming his hands. “I couldn’t meet her flight because of work—I’m Director of Commercial Real Estate at Gisbourne Companies. So I came home at noon, and I brought her roses, and we had an hour together. A wonderful hour.”

  Carlson spun around. “Yeah? What did you do? Have lunch? Have sex? Have a fight?”

  Dodd paled. “We just talked. I offered to fix lunch, but she’d already eaten. And we certainly didn’t fight, and we didn’t—well, there wasn’t time. I had to get back to work, and she had to write her speech. For tonight. You know.”

  “No, we don’t know,” I said. “She was supposed to give a speech tonight? Would that be the document on the computer upstairs?”

  “Must be. She was getting an award, and she hadn’t written her speech. So her mother picked the kids up after school and took them to her house. Karen was supposed to go see them there, and then she was going to meet me at the Tyler Hotel. You know. The Citizens for Gun Sanity banquet.”

  “Oh, man.” Carlson exhaled deeply. “And meanwhile she was lying here with a bullet in her. Wow. Irony City.”

  “Calm down, Carlson,” I said. “You went to the banquet alone, Mr. Dodd?”

  “No, I drove over with Jim Bixby, the vice-president at Gisbourne. We went to the Tyler and waited for Karen to arrive. We waited and waited.” His voice faltered. “I called her mother’s house. Karen had never shown up. I called our house, I called Karen’s cell—I called again and again. I left messages. Around 7:00, I called her mother again. She said maybe Karen had taken a nap and slept through all the phone calls. She offered to come wake her up.”

  “And she brought the children.”

  “Yes.” His face collapsed in misery. “She’s a widow. She didn’t have anyone to leave them with. And—oh, God. They saw Karen. I’ll never forgive myself. I should’ve—”

  “Yeah, sure,” Carlson cut in. “You’re a devoted daddy, your whole family just stepped off a cereal box. We got that. Look, you know you can’t keep this up much longer. Tell us now. What really happened when you came home today? You catch her with someone? A neighbor, maybe?”

  “No!” Desperately, Dodd turned to face me. “Lieutenant, don’t let him say those things. Karen was a devoted wife and mother. She never even looked at another man. I—I didn’t deserve her. Karen, I’m sorry.” He buried his head in his arms and sobbed.

  “Sounds like a confession to me,” Carlson said cheerfully, but I grabbed him by the arm and pulled him into the living room.

  “Get out,” I said mildly. “I’ll calm him down, you question the neighbors, and tomorrow we’ll drop by the American Firearms Association.”

  “Hell, Dodd told us that just to throw us off,” Carlson protested. “We gotta keep pressing him—now, till he cracks. This thing has domestic shooting written all over it. Don’t you see? He comes home for lunch, but instead of eating, they get into a fight.”

  I shook my head, amused by his confidence. “A fight? What about?”
>
  “Could’ve been anything. Maybe she’d bought chicken for dinner, and he wanted beef. Hell, they were married. Married people can always find reasons to fight with each other, and to kill each other. Anyway, they start heaving vases at each other—”

  “Just one vase,” I corrected. “I don’t think it was heaved in an angry moment during a fight, either. Those roses were shredded. That took time. And look at the leaves on her sweater. I’d say she got shot first, and then the roses got ripped up.”

  “Whatever,” Carlson said. “The point is, the fight got hot, and he went for the gun.”

  “Really? Where did he get this gun?”

  Carlson rolled his eyes. “From wherever they kept it. The lamp table, maybe. That has a drawer.”

  “That’s a good place to keep a loaded gun,” I agreed. “Right within easy reach for the children. Come on, Carlson. She was the biggest gun-control advocate in the state. We’ll check, but you can bet they don’t own a gun. That means if Dodd shot her, he brought the gun with him. That means it was premeditated—and that means I need a better motive than a hypothetical argument about a hypothetical chicken. And I’m surprised he didn’t premeditate something better than shooting her in their own home when he’s the last person known to have seen her alive.”

  “But couldn’t you see? He was hiding something.”

  I nodded. “Most of us are. Would you like to spill all your secrets to strangers? Dodd’s feeling guilty about something, but that doesn’t mean he pulled the trigger. Even if he did, his kids didn’t, and they’ll need him for the next few days. This is a house of mourning, Carlson. Whenever possible, go slow in a house of mourning. Dodd won’t disappear on us, and he won’t grab a machete and wipe out his family. We’ve got no problems here. We’ll leave him alone as much as we can until Monday.”

  After Carlson left, I lingered on the porch. Already, at least thirty reporters had massed outside, shouting questions, brandishing cameras, surging against the yellow plastic tapes strung up to keep them off the lawn. It was a cold March night, the wind was wet and cruel, but they showed no signs of giving up and going home. They’re going to eat this up, I thought. They are absolutely going to eat this up.