She scanned the crowd and also noted the officers present. She knew two of them well: Barry Kendall and Detective Mario Stancu, both of whom were standing near the body.
A promising sign, Jennifer reasoned.
She turned her back on the crowd, pulled a small micro-recorder out of her pocket and pressed the record button. She then placed it into a specially-made pocket sewn inside her jacket close to the collar. After stating the date and time, she walked toward the crime scene, hoping no one in authority would stop her before she reached her destination.
“And what do you think you’re doing?” a male voice asked.
Jennifer turned and came face to face with Michael Speers, who had exited the building behind her.
“Detective Speers, I thought this looked like your handiwork.”
“You know the rules, Malone,” he said, unsuccessfully trying to convey his disapproval.
Jennifer looked around and pleaded innocence, which both of them knew had been lost many stories ago.
“Do you mean . . . that I’m on the wrong side of the police tape? I don’t know how this could have happened, Detective Speers. As you know, I’m a simple farm girl from a small town where these big-city crimes don’t happen.”
“You’re telling me you’re lost?” Speers asked as a smirk crossed his lips.
“No. I’m telling you that if I don’t find out what happened here today, my big mean boss is going to send me back to Kansas on the first available bus.”
“Carson is right. You do have bigger stones than most men.”
“Well, I don’t like to brag . . .”
“You know, Jennifer, I could stand here and talk all day—”
“Really? I thought you had a murder investigation to run.”
“As I was about to say . . . but I have a murder investigation to run.”
“You know I’d never think of getting in your way while you’re doing your job, right?”
“Enough already, Malone. I’m going to escort you right to the front of the line, where you can have the best view in the house. And do you know why I’m not sending you all the way back to 103rd?”
“Because you respect me as a woman?”
“Hardly,” he laughed. “Because I respect you as a reporter—unlike some of your colleagues.”
Walking beside the swelling masses, both saw Mark Orr pushing his way to the front of the tape, still a hundred feet away from the action.
“Speak of the devil,” Speers said with a smile.
Orr stood in disbelief as he watched Jennifer and Speers pass him.
“I hate to say I told you so . . .” Jennifer said to Orr, letting the sentence trail off, satisfied with the dumb look on his face.
During the next 15 minutes, Jennifer interviewed five shocked eyewitnesses to the shooting. By day’s end, their faces would be familiar to everyone who owned a television set.
None had spoken to the man before he’d stepped up to the microphone, although one elderly woman recalled watching him briefly, as he kept fiddling with the brim of his hat.
“What do you mean fiddling?” Jennifer asked.
“Tugging it a little at the front, as if he were trying to cover his eyes. You know—so no one would recognize him.”
“You think he was hiding from someone?”
“I don’t know. It happened so fast. Maybe he was getting the brim the way he liked it.”
Jennifer wrote down the woman’s account and drew a star beside it. Although it could be nothing, something about the hat had piqued her interest. She turned and scanned the multitude of people behind her. Not a man with a hat in sight.
Was the man trying to hide something? And if so, why do it in front of millions of viewers?
Jennifer also circled the statement to remind her to keep its contents front and centre in her mind. She saw Barry Kendall looking in her direction and flashed him a smile.
“Officer Kendall—any word on the getaway vehicle?”
“I’ve been instructed only to say, ‘No comment,’ Ms. Malone.”
“What fun is that?” she replied.
“It was a grey Volvo,” she heard a man say to her left.
She pivoted in his direction and immediately spotted him. His eyes were wide with electricity and his face was that of a schoolboy who knew the answer to the teacher’s question.
Pick me! Pick me! it conveyed.
“And you are?”
“J.J. Monteleone.”
“And you saw this vehicle?”
“Yeah, it was parked on Elm Avenue.”
Now this was something interesting, Jennifer thought.
“Was there anyone in it at the time you saw it parked?”
“A man. I saw a white man sitting behind the wheel.”
“What about the woman? Was she in the car?”
“No, only the man.”
“Can you give me a description?”
“Not really. He had the visor down and was wearing sunglasses. I really only glimpsed him as I crossed the street,” the man said, almost apologetically.
“And what time was this?” Jennifer asked as she wrote down the information.
“I guess around 6:45 or so.”
“Was there anything about this Volvo you can recall—some distinguishing marks, scrapes, cracked windshield—that kind of thing?”
“There was one thing. I think it was a rental or used to be a rental.”
“Why do you say that?” Jennifer asked, about to jump out of her skin with delirium.
Eat your heart out, Orr.
“Well . . . I worked at a rental place for a while and all the companies put their logos on the front bumper. Extra advertising, you know. Then the vehicles were targeted by carjackers who saw the rental sticker and assumed the occupants were tourists.”
“I remember that,” someone beside him said.
“Anyway, when the Governor changed the law last year, we had to scrape all the stickers off.”
“Are you saying this car still had a sticker on the bumper?”
“A partial one really—you know, a corner piece.”
Please have the answer to this next question. Pretty please with a cherry on top.
“And do you remember what colour?” Jennifer asked calmly.
“A reddish-orange.”
Reddish-orange. Which company had those colours?
Jennifer’s mind began to mentally picture the logos of the well known rental companies, only to draw a blank.
“You wouldn’t possibly know which company used a reddish-orange logo, would you?” Jennifer held her breath as she watched Monteleone begin to roll his eyes, obviously a side-effect brought on by deep thinking.
“Queen City’s logo has a reddish-orange tinge to it.”
Jennifer