High Noon

step in. “Let’s get started.”
    When Dave gestured to her office, she walked into it ahead of him.
    “You’ve got a lot laid out in a short time, Phoebe. Get any sleep in there?”
    “Some. Truth? It kept coming back when I drifted off. Roy chained on that grave, the explosion. I was better off awake and doing. I’m not so scared when I’m doing as I am when I stop.”
    “Your family?”
    “I don’t know. How long can I keep them shut up in that house? Fine for my mother,” she said with a tired laugh that wanted to turn bitter. “But the rest? I just don’t know. I’m going to go out, start talking to witnesses, connections to those four female victims. Something’s going to break out of it. I know it will.”
    “Take one of the men with you.”
    “I don’t have anyone to spare. We’re already spread thin with the details on my house, the ones taking Josie and Carter to work and sitting on them.”
    It made her sick to think of it, sick in mind, in heart, in the belly. “And I know that can’t go on much longer either. I know we don’t have the manpower or the budget for unlimited babysitting.”
    “They’re there today, so we think about today. How’s Ava…everyone handling it?”
    “Everyone, including Ava, is handling it as best they can. You might call her, or go by. It might ease her mind.”
    “Well. Hmm.” He slipped his hands into his pockets. “About the interviews, I’d go with you myself, but I’ve got a meeting at City Hall. If you could pick someone out of the hat, not just the squad, who would it be?”
    Maybe, maybe either he or Ava would make a move before they were both collecting Social Security, but she wasn’t putting money on it. “Sykes is solid, and that’s why I want him tugging on the tactical team. Liz Alberta. She’s SV, I know, but she’s got a good ear. But I don’t know what her case load is, or—”
    “I’ll find out, see if it can be worked. Take ten minutes, call home. You’ll feel better, clearer in your mind.”
    “You’re right. You take five, call yourself, it would do the same for you.”
     
    They met Sanchez in Forsythe Park, and stood in the shade with his wise-eyed horse. The thick air of the morning had turned oppressive, so the rich brown hide of the horse gleamed damp.
    Close to Mac Namara House, Phoebe thought. Close enough that in uniform, mounted on his pretty horse, he could watch her home without anyone noticing.
    Sanchez stood about five-feet-eight by Phoebe’s gauge, with a tough, scrapper’s build. There was a little hook-shaped scar under the corner of his left eye, and a hard, stubborn line to his jaw.
    Was the man in the ball cap, the whistler, taller? She thought by an inch or two. But had she paid enough attention to be certain?
    “She didn’t care about the car,” Sanchez said, speaking of his sister. “She just wanted to get Marissa out. She fought them because she wouldn’t leave her baby, so they put a knife in her and left her bleeding to death on the street.”
    “You were in Germany when it happened?”
    He nodded at Liz. “They gave me hardship leave, let me come home for her funeral. My mother, I thought it would kill her, too. And my brother-in-law, he was like a dead man for days.”
    “You were only nineteen when it happened. You were training as a weapons specialist.”
    “I thought I’d make the army a career. See the world, fight the fight. But after Philli…I finished my tour and came home.”
    “And joined the mounted unit about two years after.”
    “That’s right.” His eyes narrowed. “What’s this about, Lieutenant Mac Namara? The one who put that knife in her, he’s still in. Have you come to tell me he’s getting out?”
    “No. Can you tell me where you were last night, Officer Sanchez? Between eleven and three?”
    “I could,” he said evenly. “I’d want to know why. I’d want to know why you’re asking me where I was around the time a man was blown up in Bonaventure.”
    “I’m asking you because a man was blown up in Bonaventure.”
    “What does it have to do with me?”
    “Let me ask you this first. You didn’t say how your niece was spared that day while your sister was killed.”
    “I told you, the bastards killed Philli because she fought them. Cops caught up with them at a garage; they’d locked themselves in with Marissa. Cops surrounded the place, got them to let the baby go and surrender.”
    “Who got them to surrender?” Phoebe asked