12th of Never

weapon is registered to the victim,” Clapper said.
    “What? You’re sure about that?”
    “Yes, I am sure. A hundred percent sure.”
    “Any prints? Please say yes.”
    “Wiped clean.”
    “Okay, thanks.”
    Conklin ended the call, said to the lieutenant, “Perry Judd was shot dead with his own gun. And no, he didn’t shoot himself in the back of the head. The killer was three to five feet behind him. But it still makes no sense. The professor dreams his own death without knowing it. And then someone shoots him with his own gun.
    “What do you make of this, boss?” Conklin said. “Because it seems way off the hook to me.”
    “This just came from the aquarium,” Brady said, putting two disks down on Conklin’s desk. “Let’s go to the video.”

Chapter 80
    CONKLIN SAT AT his computer, screening the surveillance footage from the aquarium.
    He was looking for the moment that the professor was shot, and it was hard to see very much. The surveillance camera was old and its focal point was indeterminate. The dark areas of the aquarium were lit with pin lights that burned hot spots in the video and made the unlit areas seem even darker.
    Conklin skimmed the footage, running it forward and back, looking for the professor. Then he saw him.
    Professor Judd was on the walkway, wearing a herring-bone jacket and khakis—the same outfit Conklin had seen on the DB. Judd was gazing around in all directions, probably looking for a shooter or someone he had seen in his dream. He touched the bulge at the back of his waistband, as though he were assuring himself that his gun was there. In every way, he was doing just what he had told Rich he was planning to do.
    One minute he was walking alone, then a moment later, he was eclipsed by a group of people who were walking faster than he was, and they were closing in on him. As the group encompassed him, Judd suddenly jerked, stiffened, and fell facedown on the walkway.
    Some people in the crowd stopped to see the fallen body, but within a few seconds the walkway was emptied of living people.
    Conklin backed up the video, pushed in on the shooting, added fill light. Then he scrutinized the people who were around Perry Judd when he dropped.
    He printed out fuzzy stills of the bystanders: an elderly man and a young boy who could be his grandson, three teenage girls, hands to their mouths, probably shrieking. And there was a slim guy in jeans, a dark blue Windbreaker, and a baseball cap, walking behind the others.
    Conklin backed the video up another thirty seconds, to the point where the professor entered the field of view, hands in his pants pockets, turning his head from side to side as he glided forward on the walkway. Then the group of tourists that had been moving faster than the professor surrounded him—and Rich saw the guy in the cap join the group.
    Conklin stopped the video and let it feed forward a frame at a time. He watched the ball-cap guy bump into the professor and snake his hand under the back of the professor’s herringbone jacket. It was a classic pickpocket maneuver called dipping. Then the guy in the cap lifted his hand and aimed the gun that he had removed from the back of Judd’s pants.
    Conklin saw the flare as the ball-cap guy fired on Professor Judd.
    The professor jerked, fell. Then the guy in the cap raised the muzzle and fired again. This time the bullet went into the Plexiglas wall.
    It was clearly a diversion.
    Water spouted. People glanced at the body, turned away, sprinted up the walkway.
    Conklin pressed the forward button and watched the jerky image of the man in the cap. The assailant never looked up, never looked at the camera. After he threw his two shots, he disappeared into the shadows at the end of the walk. He had probably wiped and ditched the gun there, but that was a supposition. And while Conklin was sure that the ball-cap guy was the killer, he hadn’t seen the man’s face.
    Conklin ejected the disk from the DVD drawer and slipped in the second disk, which had been shot by a camera at the aquarium’s entrance.
    This time he knew whom he was looking for.
    Another hour went by as Conklin scanned the video and found the images of the guy with the cap, a guy who was starting to look familiar. He watched him go past the security guard, hold out his ticket to be punched, and enter the dark hole that was the entrance to the exhibit.
    The shooter was a pro. He had kept his face hidden at all times. Conklin had no image to