The Witness (2 page)

Luke reentered the jewelry store and moved into the small office area; the hallway had begun to fill with forensics people.

Connor looked up from a file. “Your witness?”

“Skipped. And from the sound of it, she saw the shooter. I’ve got a trace running for her car now. Anything here show addresses, phone numbers of the staff?”

“I’ve got customer information—jewelry repair and special orders—but the best I’ve done so far on the staff is an index card taped by the phone. The main store has all the personnel files. I’ve got an officer bringing them over.”

Luke checked the index card. Just first names, but only one Kelly. He touched his radio. “I need a reverse lookup on a phone number.” He read it off and got an address back. “She’s close by; I’m heading over there. You’re good here?”

“The photos and phone numbers give me a place to start, and forensics has a priority to tell me the weapon used. I’ll have preliminary inventory confirmed in twenty minutes. Right now you’re right; it looks like everything is here.”

“Former staff, recent firings—this types as a workplace shooting, not a robbery. Station a patrol car and officer at the other Bressman stores; there’s no reasoning yet for why this branch. Let’s make sure it’s not simply the first.”

“Marsh had the same thought; he’s got officers on the way to the stores now.”

Luke stopped at the restroom to retrieve his jacket and his purchases from an hour ago. He headed toward his sedan. He could send other officers, but Kelly was spooked enough, and what she had seen was their strongest lead right now.

The trip took seven minutes, three of them spent idling at red lights. He turned on Amber Road. He wasn’t sure he would personally like to live this close to where he worked. He slowed as the house numbers counted down to the address he sought and he stopped: an old two-story red brick with a massive front porch and a narrow lot. The oak tree in front towered above the house and shaded the yard. No vehicle was in Kelly Brown’s driveway, and a slow drive past showed the garage had a blown-over trash can rolling back and forth in front of the door, suggesting she hadn’t pulled through into the garage.

“55-14.”

He touched his radio. “10-2.”

“DMV records for Kelly Brown at that address show only one vehicle registered, a Honda Odyssey, plates alpha-bravo-nine-two-five.”

“Alpha-bravo-nine-two-five. 10-4.”

Luke circled the block and saw no sign of her vehicle. He parked on the street. Picking up his jacket, he slipped it on. He lifted the collar closer to his face and caught the faint trace of her perfume. A lady’s scent: welcoming, a touch elegant. He walked up the sidewalk to her front porch. Mail jammed the mailbox, and potted plants lined inside the front window. Lights were off. He rang the doorbell and opened the screen door to also knock. “Ms. Brown, Kelly, please come to the door. It’s Officer Granger.”

He didn’t get an answer.

He walked around the property and knocked on the back door. The house appeared locked and quiet.

He hadn’t seen her purse in that lavatory, and she hadn’t reentered the jewelry store. If she wasn’t home, then where? He touched his radio. “Connor, get the mall security guard Richards on the radio. Check if a Honda Odyssey is still in the mall parking lot. Plates are alpha-bravo-nine-two-five.”

“Hold on.”

Luke checked windows around the property, but what he could see of Kelly Brown’s life were plants, books, one bowl in the draining rack beside the sink, and a jacket lying over the back of a chair. He checked the mail and found it all addressed to
K. Brown
or
Kelly Brown
. She lived alone.

“The vehicle is parked in section G, aisle five.”

“Tell Richards to keep an eye on it. Have you found any purses in the office?”

“No. There’s a locker in the storeroom that may be for coats and such. I’ll check just as soon as forensics gives me access.”

“I’m on my way back to you.”

He had left her at the mall restroom. If she didn’t have her purse, she didn’t have car or house keys, and she would have no cash beyond what she might have slipped into her pocket. But if she’d worked at that mall branch for three years, as the photo indicated, she likely had friends on staff at other stores. Lack of keys or cash wasn’t going to slow her down. And if she was running scared—
come on, honey, the last thing I want to do is go knock on the doors of your friends and leave them worried when I can’t tell them for sure you’re okay
.

She’d seen the shooter well enough to know his eye color. She hadn’t been killed. The two facts were incongruent. Someone she knew? Someone she recognized on sight? Then why hadn’t she just said his name as the person who shot her coworkers?

Kelly Brown, I need to find you or you need to find me, and it has to be soon
.

Luke parked beside responding squad cars at the mall and walked back inside. Marsh had set up shop east of the jewelry-store entrance in a small storefront available for lease, officers streaming in and out with information and new assignments.

Luke handed Marsh Kelly’s photo. “I need a canvas of the mall, staff at the stores, anyone who has seen her or knows her. She’s going to be wound pretty tight, so have me paged rather than approach her if someone spots her. She may have already left with a friend, so also be asking at stores for the names of who got off duty in the last hour and a half.”

“You’ll have it.” Marsh passed the photo to the officer behind him. “Thirty duplicates, color. Tom, get me another stack of mall maps to mark store assignments. What’s the latest count on the mall security tapes?”

“Nine scanned so far,” Tom replied. “They just brought down another six.”

“Your witness is going to turn out to be our best lead on the shooter. The initial interviews of those around the jewelry store are coming up dry, and the security tapes from the store and mall aren’t offering much.”

Luke suspected that too. “She saw enough to give us the shooter—I’m convinced of that. Stress that ‘do not approach’ when she’s spotted; have me paged.”

“Will do.”

Luke stopped beside the mall security guard Parker. “Does the mall have a regular bus stop?”

“One by the movie theater and the other by Sears. The blue bus line stops at both every thirty minutes.”

Luke headed over to the movie-theater entrance. The bus was on time. He stepped aboard, confirmed the driver had been on this route the last two hours, and got a negative when he described Kelly Brown.

Luke stepped back off. It had been a long shot. He flagged down a mall-security patrol car and got in beside Roberts. “Show me the van I tagged.” As they drove the lot, Luke flipped pages in the license-plate list. They’d been recorded by section. “Three hundred cars, give or take?”

“Yes. The lot can hold seven hundred, and we’ve been under half most of today. That’s it.” Roberts came to a stop behind the vehicle.

Luke got out. The windows showed him two white shopping sacks on the passenger seat and an open soda in the cup holder. Nothing suggested she had been back to the vehicle; nothing suggested someone else had carpooled with her to work. “I’ll walk from here.”

Roberts nodded and returned to recording license plates.

Had Kelly headed out into the parking lot only to change where she was going when she realized she didn’t have her keys? Had she tried for a cab ride to a friend’s who could pay the bill for her?

Luke rejoined his officers. “Marsh?”

“Sorry, Boss, so far the canvas is coming up dry. Her friends working at other stores have caucused and can’t come up with a name who might have given her a ride home. She didn’t catch a bus?”

“No.”

Connor joined them and passed over the list of victims’ names and addresses. “She lives nearby; she could have walked home. Or she could have called someone to come get her.”

“She could have. Or the guy who did this was waiting for her to reappear.” Luke didn’t like the time passing on him. Whatever was going through Kelly’s mind right now was going to be dominated by the image of coworkers dead, and that shock wasn’t going to pass easily. Besides the fact he needed her help to move this investigation forward, he personally needed to know she wasn’t sliding into a worse shock reaction than when he’d last seen her. He scanned the list of victims. “Have next of kin been identified for the victims?” Most would have spouses and children; some would have parents and siblings still living; all would have friends. Which one also had an enemy?

“Next of kin have been located for two of the four,” Connor replied. “We’ve set up a secure conference room for family members who feel they need to come to the scene. Riker is five minutes out, and he’s bringing enough staff along to set up for a briefing outside the west entrance.”

Luke nodded at the news. “Profiles on our victims?”

“Not as far along as I would like. Give me another thirty minutes and I should have preliminary workups done. The personnel files gave us five former employees that raised concern, two of them red flags for having made recent threats. Mayfield and St. James are heading out to check them personally, and Marsh has got officers working the rest as priorities. Forensics pulled a slug from the wall and should be able to tell us within an hour if this gun has been used in other shootings.”

“Good. Did you find Kelly’s purse?”

“Yes. Hold on.” Connor went to get it.

The bag was basic black, soft sided, and smaller than Luke had expected. The wallet held thirty-two in cash, her driver’s license, two credit cards, and a handful of business cards for the local bank, florist, insurance agent. The checkbook had a few checks remaining on the pad; the check registry went back three years and showed a couple thousand currently in her account. Luke opened an address book and found most pages covered in names and phone numbers with only a few addresses. A number of the entries had been marked through and updated with new phone numbers. Luke had a feeling he was holding most of Kelly Brown’s life for the last several years. “This will help.”

A look through the first page, the last, and the tab marked
B
showed no other Browns listed.
No family, Kelly? Or are they listed here under married names?
He glanced at his watch. “This lady went to somewhere she felt safe, and we need to find it. Keep working the mall canvas: employee lounges, dressing rooms, restrooms, anywhere she might go to get out of view. I’m going to check her place again. If we don’t locate her in the next hour, I’ll want her photo going out to the public. Marsh, you’ve got enough hands to get the former employees tracked down?”

“Yes.”

“Call me if you hit any roadblocks.”

“I’ll do that, Boss.”

Luke took the purse with him and headed back to his car. He drove toward Kelly’s home again. He remembered the look in her eyes—
where do you feel most safe, Kelly? If not home, where?
When traffic paused, he tugged out the address book and flipped pages. If she wasn’t found soon, he’d be calling most of the people she’d listed. If he put her photo out to the public, he risked the shooter finding her first. Time was not an asset right now.

Her driveway remained empty. This time he pulled into the drive and parked there, intentionally blocking the garage. The possibility existed that she’d acquired a rental car or borrowed a friend’s car, and if she didn’t wish to speak to him, leaving was one way to accomplish that. He walked around to her front door.

The frog planter had moved from the top step down a riser since his first visit—a subtle change, but he noticed the brushed-away dirt on the step. A spare house key hidden underneath? She could exit on him out the side door by the kitchen, but her house had no alley and her neighbors’ yards were fenced. She’d have to come within view.

He pressed the buzzer and then opened the screen door and knocked. “Ms. Brown. Kelly. It’s Officer Granger. Please open the door. I know you’re home.”

He waited.

The dead bolt finally slid away. The door opened enough for him to see her. Wary. Haunted. Stressed. But no tears showing.

She was his age, but he had no idea how to relate to this woman. “May I speak with you?”

She stepped back and let him enter her home.

She’d changed from the blouse and slacks to a red sweater and faded jeans. A slender woman, the clothes hung on her. She walked back into a room off the hall. He followed, only to stop at the door to her bedroom. The bed had a rose-print spread neatly tucked under matching pillows and a large open suitcase sitting on the left side.

She picked up a shirt from an open dresser drawer. “It was Paula Grant’s ex. I saw him leaving the store, and I saw the gun. She had a restraining order against him—what good that did her. He came out of the back office and hallway, walked past the ladies’ watches, then turned east in the mall toward RadioShack. I saw the butt of the gun as he closed his jacket.” She stopped moving. “I went to look.” She stood still as the image hit her again, then briskly resumed folding a shirt for the suitcase.

“Why didn’t you stay?”

“Because I’ve got a guy in my life not unlike her ex who is going to love to hear where I’m now living.” She crossed to the closet and pulled out items en masse.

“Ms. Brown—”

“Please, it’s miss or just Kelly.”

“Kelly—you can’t run. You’re a material witness to a multiple murder.”

“My name is going to be in the news soon if it isn’t already. A dead witness isn’t going to do you any good.” She reached over to the dresser and tossed him the area phone book. “You pick the town and hotel. My cab arrives in five minutes.” She shoved aside the mattress and pulled a thick envelope taped to the box spring free. “I’ll stay put for forty-eight hours while you figure something out. That’s all I’m promising. But you give me your word you’re the only one who knows that information.”

“Who’s the guy you’re running from?”

“I give you the name, you’re going to run it, and that curiosity is what got the last cop in my life killed.”

He would have said she was over-blowing conclusions, but watching her pack and the matter-of-fact way she’d delivered the news suggested it was merely the barest of the facts. There hadn’t been a cop killed in his city in twelve years; she’d moved here from where? He’d know before the evening was out. “The Radisson in Park Heights.”