Hideout by Jack Heath (iphone ebook reader txt) 📕

‘You were panicked,’ I said.

‘No shit. But I bet he blames me for not doing that. I bet he still thinks I’m a terrible mother. It—’ she rubbed her mouth with one hand, as though wiping away an angry word ‘—it drives me crazy.’

There was one more shot, and then nothing. Lynne was in the passenger seat, keeping her head below the windows. She pushed the stick into reverse and grabbed the wheel. She steered blind, trying to get the car out of the firing line, but still not sure where the firing line was. Pretty soon she hit something. A car alarm went off. Horns blasted all around. Sirens in the air. Joey was screaming. Lynne couldn’t hear herself think.

She shifted the stick into drive again. Rolled forwards. Steered the other way. Hit the same kerb. Screamed every swear word she could think of.

Then a cop banged on her window, scaring the shit out of her.

‘Ma’am,’ he said. ‘It’s okay. He’s gone.’

Within an hour, the FBI was there, fighting with the Houston PD for jurisdiction. It was a half-hearted argument, because no one actually wanted the case. I was there, too. No reason for me to be, but my handler, Richmond, had been called in, and he wasn’t supposed to leave me alone, so he brought me with him.

A photographer with a thin moustache took a snap of me behind the police tape. I told him I’d sue his paper if they used the picture. It was an empty threat and he knew it. The photo ended up on the internet anyway.

By the time Richmond and I arrived, Lynne and Joey had already been loaded into an ambulance. They wouldn’t be going far—several medical centres bordered Hermann Park. I watched the ambulance disappear behind the jello mould-shaped spray of the Mecom Fountain.

The beat cops already knew where the shooter had been. A witness had seen him pop out of a manhole, like a prairie dog, at the mouth of an alley next to Lynne’s office. After that fifth shot, he disappeared into the labyrinth of maintenance tunnels under Houston. Now the alley was blocked by a police barricade, and Lynne’s car was being loaded onto a tow truck. There was blood on the ground where she’d gotten out of the car.

While Richmond and locals cops argued, I stared down at the blood, wondering if anyone would object to me touching it. The rain was slowly sweeping it towards lower ground. I shuffled after it, a twisting red snake in the water, until I found myself standing over the manhole. The bloody water trickled over the edge into the blackness.

My hands in my pockets, I listened to the sloshing and shouting of police below. They were unlikely to get anywhere. Sewer tunnels may be unpleasant, but they do a great job of covering tracks. Prints are quickly washed away and sniffer dogs are useless. I could have climbed down to help, but this wasn’t my case.

Still, I found myself wondering why the shooter had picked this spot. It was good for a quick getaway, sure—but not for the actual shooting. The angle was too low. It would have made more sense for him to use the vacant first floor of the building next door. He would have had a perfect view through Lynne’s windshield. After shooting her through the heart, he would have had time to jump down and disappear through the same manhole.

Maybe the point wasn’t to kill her but to scare her. Though if that was the case, why not stop after the first bullet hit the car? Instead, he fired three more shots, reloaded, and then fired once more before vanishing. It didn’t make sense.

I watched the flashing lights on top of the tow truck. Lynne’s car had three bullet holes—two at the bottom of the driver’s-side door, one in a hubcap. Given the grouping, the two shots that missed had probably gone under the car rather than over it or to either side.

I walked closer and confirmed my theory. There was a chip in the asphalt, where a round might have ricocheted off the car, and a bullet hole at the base of a tree in the public park across the street.

Suddenly I realised what the shooter must have been trying to do.

‘Wait,’ I called out.

No one paid any attention to me. The driver couldn’t hear me over the beeping of his tow truck. The other police were still interviewing witnesses.

I ran towards the truck, but one of the local cops stopped me.

‘Move along, sir,’ she said, assuming I was homeless.

I dug a worn lanyard out of my pocket. ‘I’m a civilian consultant with the FBI.’

‘In that case, fuck off.’

‘I need to examine the victim’s car.’

‘Too bad. As I was just explaining to your colleagues, this isn’t your case.’

‘Blake.’ Richmond approached. ‘What are you doing?’

While the cop was looking at him, I darted past her and climbed up onto the back of the tow truck.

‘Hey!’ the driver yelled.

Ignoring him, I lay down on the slowly tilting tray and peered at the undercarriage of the car. A second later, strong hands grabbed me and dragged me off the tray—but not before I saw it: a lump of white-flecked grey powder, wrapped in plastic, taped underneath the car.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ Richmond demanded.

‘The shooter wasn’t trying to hit the victim,’ I said. ‘He was trying to hit the explosives he’d planted under her car.’

The beat cop looked, and her face went grey. After that, they evacuated the block and called in the bomb squad. The FBI got jurisdiction because the bomb made it a case of domestic terrorism.

Richmond was supremely pissed at me. ‘Do you know how many open cases I already have?’

‘Next time I spot a bomb, I’ll ignore it,’