Dying To Play

The usual crowd of spectators and newshounds had gathered on the sidewalk near the street. Some were likely employees from the various other businesses along this block, others were probably early-morning shoppers.

Several patrol cars, lights flashing, were parked strategically around the bank. Elaine climbed out of her Jeep and approached the large two-story building’s entrance. The setup was just like any one of the dozens of other banks in the Atlanta metropolitan area. What made this one the target this morning? That was the million-dollar question.

“Detective Jentzen!”

Elaine slowed as a familiar voice called out from the crowd of onlookers.

“Detective Jentzen! Can you tell us what’s happening inside?”

Turning toward the voice, Elaine manufactured a smile for the Chronicle reporter to cover her impatience. Three more reporters pushed forward in hopes of getting an answer to their questions or at least a usable sound bite. A television crew was already setting up just outside the crime scene perimeter. The circus was in full form, and she wasn’t even in the ring yet.

“I have no comments at this time,” she said calmly. “I haven’t even been inside. I’m sure we’ll have a statement for you by noon.” Ignoring the barrage of demands that followed her response, she resumed her journey toward the bank’s entrance.

“Deputy Elaine!”

Elaine suppressed a groan. Just what she needed. Skip Littles. Reluctantly she glanced over her shoulder without actually slowing down.

“Deputy Elaine! You won’t take even one question this morning?”

Though Skip wore a press pass he wasn’t really a reporter. But he desperately wanted to be one. He grinned at her, the sun glinting off his thick eyeglasses. He worked at the Telegraph, that was true enough, but he was just an assistant. He was one of those people who garnered instant sympathy from her; she just couldn’t help herself. Besides, he had helped her out once or twice when she needed some research ASAP.

Walking backward a few steps so as not to give the impression that she intended to stop long enough to field their questions, she held up a finger. “Just one,” she said placatingly, earning a few glares from the real reporters.

Skip grinned from ear to ear. “Did someone die inside the bank this morning?”

She hesitated but couldn’t see the point in evading the question. “Yes.”

The satisfaction on his face perked up her low mood. Turning her back on the new onslaught of questions, she hurried to her destination. She’d done her good deed for the day.

A couple more uniforms guarded the double-door entry leading to the lobby. Elaine badged her way inside.

About a dozen employees, all clearly shocked into silence, stood huddled together near the long teller counter waiting for their turn to give a statement. In situations like this it was preferable to take the witnesses one at a time, to lessen the likelihood of confusion or agreement based simply on what the other guy said.

A forensics tech was methodically photographing the lifeless body of a security guard who lay on his back in an unnatural sprawl in the middle of the marble-floored lobby. Annoyed that the find-’em-and-bag-’em guys had started without her authorization, but not bothering to make a scene about it at the moment, Elaine crouched down to take a closer look at the victim. One bullet hole marred his brow just above his left eye. His gaze was frozen in a look of surprised horror or something on that order. Blood had leaked from the wound and matted in his blond hair. The guy couldn’t be more than forty. Elaine blew out a heavy breath. Most likely married. One glance at his left hand confirmed her assumption. Kids, too, probably.

Another bout of foolish emotion wreaked havoc with her equilibrium. She had to get a grip here.

A few yards away an EMT was patching up the second security guard. A uniform hovered nearby, waiting to question the wounded man.

Elaine pushed to her feet and moved in the direction of the dense crowd of official personnel, including her partner. Through a glass wall she could see him in one of the offices. Henshaw, Detective Jillette and Walt Damron, Chief Medical Examiner, were deep in discussion. Walt rarely showed up at crime scenes anymore. Elaine wondered briefly if he was shorthanded this morning.

Henshaw saw her coming and met her just outside the office door. “Everything check out all right?” he asked, eyeing her speculatively.

“Fine,” she lied. “You the first on the scene?”

He rolled the cigar stub that served as a permanent accessory to the corner of his mouth. “Yep. I guess that puts you in charge. Jillette just dropped by to watch the show. Flatt’s around here somewhere.”

Elaine resisted the urge to grimace. Flatt was an ass. He’d gone out of his way to make her life miserable since she made DC. She glanced around the chaos of the spacious, Greek-Revival-style lobby. “Looks like you’ve already initiated all the right moves.”

Henshaw angled his head toward the office he’d exited. “Want to see the primary victim and the perp? It’s just like the last one…too weird.”

She nodded, her mind automatically sifting through the images from last week’s mass murder. A customer had walked into a beauty salon and opened fire with a 9mm Beretta. No apparent motive, no nothing. A twenty-four-year-old college graduate in her first year of medical school, home for the weekend, had killed three people, then turned the weapon on herself. No family problems, no financial woes, no love-life theatrics.

Nothing.

Except four dead women, one being the shop owner.

Drawing back to the here and now, Elaine followed Henshaw through the group crowded outside the office. A brass plaque on the open door proclaimed the space as belonging to the bank’s president, Harold Tate. Mr. Tate sat crumpled in his leather executive’s chair, his starched shirt now gruesomely bloodied by the round bullet holes in his chest. Oddly, his navy-and-gray pin-striped tie lay unsoiled against the red-stained white cotton blend of his shirt.

“Brad Matthews,” Henshaw announced, staring down at the dead man on the floor in front of the president’s desk. “Financial consultant and newest full partner at Wylie, Brooks, Renzetti and Matthews just down the street. Wife, two kids, no record.” Henshaw shrugged. “Just like the lady last week.”

“Anyone here know him?” She glanced back at the employees in the lobby.

“All of ’em. They said he was a nice guy. He’s done business here, personal and professional, for years. He was quiet, polite and extremely intelligent, according to the first uniform on the scene. He said none of the employees can believe Matthews did this.”

Elaine squatted down and took a closer look at the shooter. Thirty-five maybe, fit, handsome. Two kids. She shook her head. What a terrible waste. “No problems between these two?” She looked from Matthews to the older man behind the desk, then at her partner.

“None that anyone knows of,” Henshaw said.

Elaine stood, uneasiness poking its way through her usual objectivity. Nothing about this felt right. “There has to be something,” she insisted. “Dig until you find it. Having two unmotivated mass killings this close together is simply too bizarre. There has to be a reason. We’re just missing it somehow.”

“If there’s any chance these two can be related,” Jillette offered, abruptly reminding Elaine of his presence, “I think we should work on it as a team.”

Unreasonably annoyed, Elaine looked at the man who’d spoken. He was only a couple years older than her, but he already had that male-chauvinist mentality down to a science. His dark hair was slicked back and, as usual, he was over-dressed. He looked ready to attend Sunday church service rather than investigate the scene of a multiple homicide. Jillette and Flatt did the GQ look like no one else in the division, earning themselves the nickname Ivy Leaguers.

How could she have forgotten Jillette was here? He and Flatt were working the beauty salon case. The similarity of the MO of this one had no doubt drawn them to the scene. As much as Elaine hated Flatt, she supposed Jillette’s suggestion made sense. “If we find a connection,” she qualified, “we’ll do just that.”

“Any reason we can’t get started now?” Walt wanted to know, another presence that had slipped her mind while she studied the dead man…husband…father. A parent—something she might not ever be. A pang of hurt sliced through her before she could evict the ugly reminder from her head.

Elaine surveyed the fairly undisturbed scene once more. The gray suit jacket hanging neatly in the corner where Mr. Tate had left it only minutes before his life abruptly ended. The overturned chair where Brad Matthews had fallen. The .38 Smith & Wesson Special clutched in his cold, unyielding fingers. He could have gotten that weapon anywhere. They were a dime a dozen on the street.

“Go ahead,” Elaine told Walt. “I’d like his drug tox and anything on that weapon as soon as possible.”

Walt cocked an eyebrow and feigned the offended bit a little too well. “Everything I do is done as soon as possible. Or didn’t you know that, Deputy Chief Jentzen?”

Elaine rolled her eyes. “Of course, what was I thinking?” He was right. Walt was as efficient as he was meticulous. She frowned then, remembering the oddness of his presence. “What’re you doing down here, anyway? I didn’t think Kathleen allowed you out of the morgue.”

Kathleen was Walt’s secretary. She was widowed, had been for years, just as he had. It was rumored that those two were secretly in love with each other but refrained from a relationship because of the job.

The job. God, what a pathetic existence they all lived in this line of work. No wonder there were so many divorces among criminal-investigation and law-enforcement personnel.

“I’m training a couple new techs,” Walt said firmly, ignoring her comment about Kathleen.

Elaine nodded. She’d known he would do just that. “Yeah, I noticed the one in the lobby was a little trigger happy.”

Irritation wrinkled Walt’s brow as he leaned to his right to peer through the glass wall behind Elaine. She resisted the urge to turn around and see what the tech was up to now. The look on Walt’s face said it all.

Walt muttered a curse. “Can’t get decent help these days,” he complained as he stomped out of the office.