Don’t Look Twice. Andrew Gross
mom. “Beth, something happened…” he said at the sound of her voice, then stopped, the freeze-frame of his daughter there and all that blood rushing back to him. He moistened his lips. “Listen, Beth,” he said, “Jess is alright. She’s fine, but…” He took her through what had happened, his ex-wife gasping, “Jesus, Ty, oh, my God…”
“Beth, listen, please…” They had spent ten years together. He had been a New York City cop then. A young detective in the 122nd in Queens, fast-tracked to the department’s Office of Information, who acted as a liaison officer during 9/11 with the FBI. That was before the accident with Norah. Before the blame and their marriage fell apart. “She’s alright,” he said, “just a bit scared. They’re going to take her to Greenwich Hospital—just to look over her a bit. You should come. Now. There are people dead here. I’m gonna have to go…”
“Oh, Jesus, Ty, tell Jess I’m on my way.”
“I’ll see you there.” He hung up. The med tech finished taping his neck. Hauck went over and sat beside Jessie in the van. They were running an IV. Hauck put his arm around her and pressed her head to his shoulder, trying to smile away the scared, confused tears welling in her young eyes.
“You okay?”
She nodded, donning the brave veneer. “I think so, Dad.”
“Mom’s on the way. They’re going to take you to the hospital here. They may give you something—just for shock, honey.”
“I’m alright,” she insisted. “You’re the one who’s been shot.”
Hauck winked at her and grinned. “You okay with putting off that boat ride for the rest of the day? I know you weren’t so keen on it.” That made her smile. “Listen, honey, you know I have to go to work now. You know they need me here…”
“I know, Daddy…” Her baby-blue sweatshirt was still damp and matted with someone else’s blood. “How’s that guy?”
Hauck shrugged. “I don’t know, baby doll.”
“He’s dead, isn’t he? I saw him, Dad.”
Hauck bunched his lips and nodded. “Yeah, he’s dead.” He pressed her face into his chest and squeezed. “You know I love you, Jess. I’ll check in on you at the hospital. Mom will be there soon.”
Patrolmen were setting up barriers, cordoning off the scene. Hauck knew this was one you were going to hear about. No avoiding that. This was Greenwich. The people with the big rap sheets here were hedge fund managers and CEOs. Investor fraud and Sarbanes-Oxley violations were the typical crimes of passion.
Drive-bys just didn’t happen here.
Hauck had looked squarely into the shooter’s eyes as he squeezed. He tried to think: Who might want to take this kind of revenge?
Three months ago, he and his team had shut down a meth ring operating out of a bodega in nearby Byron. Word was it was connected to the Vine Street gangs up in Hartford. They were bad people.
He had busted the son of a local real estate magnate for coke; the kid had been bounced out of Brunswick Academy in his senior year. The dad had threatened to ruin Hauck.
But this? Right in front of everybody’s eyes? That would bring the whole goddamn system of justice down on top of their heads. That would be suicide.
It didn’t make a goddamn shred of sense.
Inside, Ed Sweeney was taking a statement from Sunil, who still looked like a ghost, dabbing at his brow.
Freddy Munoz kneeled over the body. The dude had seemed friendly, nice. They’d shared a smile; he was sympathetic to what was going on with Jessie. He probably had a daughter himself.
As Hauck came up to him, Munoz whistled and rolled his eyes. “This ain’t so good, Lieutenant.”
“What?”
The victim looked about forty. Sandy hair, flecks of gray in it, tortoiseshell frames. Two rounds had caught him squarely in the chest, knocked him back into the magazine rack—probably why no one had seen him at first. He’d never had a chance. Must’ve been killed by the opening barrage. A foot or two either way, that could’ve been Jessie or him.
“This, LT.” Munoz handed Hauck the dead man’s wallet.
Hauck’s stomach fell.
This wasn’t just any victim, a bystander who had happened into the line of fire.
They were staring at a Department of Justice ID.
The victim was a federal prosecutor working out of the Hartford, Connecticut, office. David Sanger. His driver’s license indicated he was forty-one years old. The address on it was on Pine Ridge Road off Stanwich, just five minutes out of town.
The headline had just changed.
Once more, Hauck thought back through the chain of events. The red truck screeching to a stop. The darkened window rolling down. The muzzle of the gun extending.
At him.
Sanger had been standing only a few feet away, right behind Jess in line. The bullet pattern seemed to go from right to left. It seemed likely he had been hit in the initial barrage.
“Any chance you’re thinking he was the target?” Munoz questioned. The victim’s ID made anything possible.
Hauck thought back. The attack had continued for a full minute after Sanger would have been struck. The shooter had even reloaded. Bullet marks were everywhere. Glass shattered on the refrigerated unit in back. The type of weapon used, a Tec-9 or a Mac-10, wasn’t exactly the kind of pinpoint weapon one might choose if they were trying to target someone.
“No.” Hauck shook his head. “Just the wrong place at the wrong time, Freddy.”
Still, a federal prosecutor gunned down this way would bring a lot of attention to this. Every media outlet across the country would be on their backs. Not to mention the Feds. They’d have to take a look at everything. What Sanger was doing here. Any personal vendettas against him. What cases he was working on.
“You know what this means, LT?” Munoz said, standing up.
“Yeah, I know what it means…” He slid out a small photo from David Sanger’s wallet. His wife—pretty, blonde, her hair in a ponytail. Smiling. Two kids. Just a few minutes ago that had been his world.
He handed Munoz back the wallet. “It means you can forget about that angel, Freddy.”
The shells were nine-millimeter. Dozens were lodged all over the walls. Judging from what Hauck recalled—the amount of bullets, casings, the fast reload—the gun was probably a Tec-9.
Not the kind of weapon one could expect to make a precision shot with.
A canvas of the witnesses mostly confirmed Hauck’s own recollection of events. No one had been able to get a clear description of the assailants. The truck’s windows were tinted. The shooter faced away from the crowd. Only Hauck had caught a glimpse. Everyone else had ducked or panicked as soon as the initial shots rang out. It had all happened so fast.
Except several people recalled the shooter shouting something prior to driving away.
The woman who had been in front of Hauck at the counter just before it happened said it sounded something like “Tarantino, asshole…”
“Like the director?” Hauck asked.
“That’s what she heard,” Steve Chrisafoulis said. “The guy filling up his Prius on pump two heard it different. More like ‘Porsafina.’”
“Porsafina?”
“Just