The Garden of Eden and Other Criminal Delights Part 11

Once again, Cindy recited automatically: Rigor walked up to the coffee machine, put money into the slot, got the coffee. As she turned to face them, something jerked her head back.

Decker interrupted. "Did you hear anything? You've told me what you saw. Did you hear anything?"

"No."

"You were standing above a shooting range, Cindy," Decker said. "You had to have heard the range officer's instructions. You had to have heard gunfire pops."

Cindy bit her lip. "I suppose I did. But at that point, they were just background noise."

"A gun firing close enough to hit her. No gla.s.s to deaden the sound. You should've heard something louder than background noise."

She thought, then shook her head.

"Close your eyes for a moment. Picture yourself back there . . . right before Lynne turns around."

"Okay," she said resignedly.

Decker spoke soothingly. "She's about to turn around. Right as she's doing it, her head jerks back. Do you hear anything that corresponds with Rigor's movement?"

Cindy shook her head. "No . . . no."

"Bullet just comes flying through the window?"

"I suppose. All I hear is that awful crack of her head smas.h.i.+ng against the cement floor. I run over to her and put my hands on the wound, trying to-"

"Which way did she land? Faceup or facedown?"

"Face . . . faceup."

"How would you explain that?"

Cindy stared at him. "What do you mean?"

"If she landed faceup, how do you explain the crack in her forehead?"

A long pause. "I don't know."

Decker said, "Rigor cracked her forehead, but she fell faceup. The people who were questioning you were thinking that you had to have flipped the body over."

"But I didn't! I swear I didn't move her."

"Could be the impact of the bullet spun her around, threw her face against the wall, and smashed her forehead. Then she bounced off the wall and fell backward, faceup. They question you any more, you tell them to take a look at the back of her head. Should be an indentation there as well."

Cindy rubbed her eyes. "You know, they kept asking me if I'd moved the body. I kept telling them no. I didn't understand. I've got a long way to go, don't I?"

"To get where?"

"To get where you are."

"Talk to me after twenty years." Decker paused, then said, "You plan on shooting someone in the head, where do you aim?"

"I've never thought about it." She shrugged. "Between the eyes, maybe the back of the head. Shoot when they're not looking."

"Bigger surface area. Less likely to miss. Rigor was shot in the temple, right?"

"Yes, she was. What's troubling you?"

"I'm not sure." Decker licked his lips. "You didn't see anyone out the window, you didn't hear a corresponding pop when Rigor dropped. She was. .h.i.t in the temple. It's odd-sounds like a stray bullet, almost. But Bootles is one of the safest ranges around. I don't get it." He tapped the steering wheel. "Maybe they'll get a match from someone's gun. Let's hope it's not your friend Angelicas's."

"Impossible!"

But Decker was dubious. He'd seen much weirder things in his life.

Cindy said, "What are you doing tomorrow?"

"Working on the new house. Why?"

"Thought maybe you and I could go back to the firing range."

"It's not my jurisdiction, honey." When Cindy did not respond, Decker gave in. "Okay," he said. "A quick trip."

"Thanks, Dad."

They rode in silence for the next ten minutes. Then Decker said, "I love you. Just wanted to say that."

Cindy didn't speak, longing to cry to release the heavy knot of tension in her throat. Instead, she forced out, "Love you, too. So we're on for tomorrow?"

"It's a deal."

Again Decker jerked the car to the side of the road. "Where are we?"

Fighting off fatigue, Cindy stammered out the location. Decker nodded, then guided the Porsche onto the 110 Freeway North. She glanced at her father's stoic face, then kept her eyes fixed on the roadway, taking in everything, looking at the world from an entirely different perspective: a cop's perspective.

Parked in Bootles' gravel lot, Decker hung up his cell phone and looked at his daughter. "Your friend Angelica is off the hook. The bullet came from Holstetter's gun."

"But he didn't do it," Cindy insisted. With that p.r.o.nouncement, she climbed out of the Porsche and slammed the door.

Decker slowly got out of the driver's seat. "Obviously he did, Cynthia."

"Well, I don't believe it."

"That's another issue entirely." He tightened his jacket collar against the freezing wind. The sky looked as uninviting as the barrel of a gun. He caught up to his daughter. "What is it you expect to find here?" he asked.

"I'll know when I find it." Cindy stopped. "Where is Holstetter now?"

"With the local police. They're talking to him-"

"No one's that stupid! Not even Holstetter."

"Cindy, why are you snapping at me?" Decker rubbed his hands together. "I'm cold, and I'm getting very grumpy. Let's get out of here, get some coffee or something."

"Has he admitted to anything?"

"I don't know."

She pointed ahead. "How about a hike?"

Decker stared at her. "And what do you possibly hope to find?"

She stared back. "Dad, I've been reliving that moment over and over. It's plaguing me. My eyes weren't more than inches away from the window when Rigor fell. I didn't see anyone."

"You weren't looking. You were focused on Rigor."

"I didn't hear a shot. You thought that was very odd, remember? Can we take a short walk? I just want to see if it's possible to shoot from up there in the mountains into the commissary window."

Decker looked at the hillside. "More than a short walk. I'd say about a half, maybe three-quarters, of a mile."

"It'll warm us up."

"Cindy, it's hard to hit something half a mile away."

"Typical bullet range for a nine-millimeter is close to a mile."

"I know the statistics. I'm talking reality."

"Please?"

G.o.d, Decker thought, she's worse than I am. "C'mon," he said.

They groaned as they trudged up the rocky hillside. The cold was seeping through Decker's shoes, into his feet. But Cindy wasn't complaining, and he'd be d.a.m.ned if he'd be out-stoicized by his own daughter.

Panting hard, they reached the top, the frigid wind cutting them to the bone. A few minutes later, they were standing above the firing range.

"You can see the commissary window from here," Decker said, pointing. "But you can't see in it." He paused for a moment. "Holstetter was angry with Rigor, wasn't he?"

"Very much so, but-"

"Where was he when the shooting went down?"

"He said he was just walking around."

"Around the range?"

"Yeah. He was waiting for a lane to open up."

"Someone should have seen him, then. At least right after Lynne was shot. But he wasn't seen for at least ten minutes afterward. So what does that say, Cin?"

"That Holstetter was far away. Like, off the grounds."

"Like, possibly up here. And he didn't want to tell anybody that he'd left the grounds without permission, giving Rigor a legitimate reason to kick him out of the academy."

"But Dad, even if he was up here, it doesn't mean he shot her-through a window-half a mile away."

Decker frowned. "Guys usually don't cool off by walking around and ruminating," he said. "They do things. They act. If I were really ticked off at Rigor, I'd have gone straight into target practice and pumped out a few rounds."

"The range was crowded yesterday," Cindy pointed out. "We had to wait for booths . . ." Her eyes widened. "Target practice," she echoed, and turned to her father. "If he couldn't work off his frustration that way, because the booths were full, why not come up here and shoot at trees?"

She was excited now. "A stray bullet, Dad-you said that yesterday."

"Cindy-"

"The wind could have deflected the bullet, carried it through the window!"

"Not if he was shooting in the opposite direction, toward the mountains. Even this wind isn't strong enough to do that."

"Or maybe the bullet was deflected by a tree and then carried by the wind," Cindy said. "And Holstetter didn't say anything about it because he didn't want anyone to find out he was shooting. First thing we were taught is never, ever discharge your weapon without a reason! Doing so is grounds for expulsion. Rigor was real big on that rule. Make sense?"

Grudgingly, Decker admitted it made some sense.

"If he was doing target practice, he had to be aiming at something," Cindy reasoned. "Maybe the building; hence the bullet. Although that would be pretty stupid."

"More than likely, if he was up here, he was aiming at trees," Decker said.

"So let's start looking for bullet holes in tree trunks."

Decker stared at her.

"Dad, even if Holstetter tells the truth now, they aren't going to believe him, because he didn't come clean yesterday. He's going to be accused of murder. We're here already. What's another hour or so?"

"An hour or so of freezing weather is called torture," Decker said, but he started looking. Because the kid was right.

Sipping coffee in a drab, windowless room, the buzz of cops surrounding her, Cindy prayed that someday she would be a part of all this. She was waiting for her father to finish making his statement to the officers in charge. He was taking a lot longer than she had, she thought-but then his observations carried a lot more weight than hers.

A half hour later, her father emerged. She stood, her eyes questioning. He put an arm around her shoulders and said, "Let's go."

"What are they-"

"When we're in the car."

They walked quickly to the Porsche. As soon as she was buckled in, Decker gunned it out of the parking lot. He put the heater on.

"Did Holstetter admit to discharging his weapon?" Cindy asked.

"With a murder charge thrown in his face, it was the first thing he did admit," Decker said. "But at that point, he had a credibility problem. No one was listening to his story."

He paused and appraised his daughter. "He owes you big, Cindy. You saved him jail time. On the basis of our statements and the physical evidence we recovered, the DA's going to plea-bargain down to involuntary manslaughter. Holstetter will probably just get probation and community service. But his career as a cop is dead."

Cindy nodded without speaking.