Tracking Shot by Colin Campbell (i can read book club .txt) 📗

enhance the highlights instead of the shadows. The smudge became a figure. Behind the second figure, beyond the glass doors of the main entrance, a slice of the grey van poked into the frame. An indistinct shape sat behind the wheel. The getaway driver. The figure behind the gunman was looking at one of his own hands with his thumb sticking up—standard shape of a man clicking a stopwatch.

McNulty sat back and blew out his cheeks. This wasn’t a lone gunman with a getaway driver; it was a three-man team moving with military precision.

Larry came back in carrying two paper cups from the water cooler. He saw the image on the screen but didn’t understand the significance. McNulty took the offered cup and drank it down. He crushed the cup and tossed it into the wastebasket. Larry pointed at the smudged figure. “Is he one of ours?”

“No.”

McNulty clicked through the next few images until the gun hand was raised and the camera had stopped. The image was sharper. He made the same adjustments and concentrated on the second figure. He was also tall and erect and strong. The hand stayed in the same position, but the thumb pressed down. It was definitely a stopwatch. Larry leaned closer to the screen.

“What’s he doing?”

McNulty was running several scenarios through his head. “Timing it.”

Larry took a sip of water. “Like when they rob a bank and know the police response time?”

McNulty clicked through to the last image. “Exactly like that.”

The flash of the gun threw light onto the face. Not a lot but enough to see the steely look in the eyes. Hard and focused, and completely merciless. McNulty was thinking of John Wayne, not his face but his fighting technique. And misdirection. From one angle it looked like a perfect punch. From another it was something else entirely.

PART THREE

“Easy doesn’t get it done. Getting down and dirty is what you need.”

—Vince McNulty

THIRTY-FIVE

For once McNulty and Larry agreed. They had to tell the police. No matter what else was running through McNulty’s mind, thoughts about what, where and who, he had to go see Harris. Larry nodded for McNulty to go and waited in the production office. This was one discussion best had by one cop to another, even though McNulty wasn’t a cop anymore.

The evening traffic was beginning to ease but there were still plenty of pedestrians walking home. McNulty drove slow and easy, replaying his suspicions all the way and trying not to run anybody over. Too many people had died already. And he was right; it was nothing like the movies.

McNulty’s first thought had been, if the shooting was a distraction what was it a distraction for? Where was John Wayne’s punch really intended to land? He followed the standard inquiry model and started close to home. The shootings had targeted the fake judge in the fake courthouse just down the road from the real judge and real courthouse. Was that far enough to be a distraction? No. All that did was focus police attention on Judge Reynolds and the porn trial, so that wasn’t the real target.

Next, the Arriflex, its footage, and the cameraman had all disappeared. Getting rid of them could have been nothing more than the gunman’s reaction to Severino’s trying to sell the Zapruder film. But there was also another possibility. What if the gunman had himself put that story out there? Knowing that Severino had been filming reverse angles was a good reason to take both him and the film. Starting the rumor would be easy in Waltham. Everyone seemed to know everything about everybody. Finding out about the memory card once they’d killed Severino forced a search of his room. McNulty’s chasing the burglar across the bridge had set up the perfect place to dump the body. All of which focused police attention on the missing film and the murdered cameraman.

Distraction. Everything pointing away from…What?

As likely or unlikely as all that sounded, it was still only speculation. That’s what all police investigations are. During his police service McNulty had learned that the only way to be certain was to catch the villains in the act. Apart from that, it was about piecing together the evidence or asking the bad guys when you caught them. Even then that presumed they’d tell you the truth. Right now McNulty hadn’t caught them in the act or taken them into custody. There was nobody to tell him the truth, so it was all speculation and educated guesswork.

Ninety percent of all crime is theft in one form or another. Burglary, robbery, fraud and shoplifting. Taking cars. Stealing ideas. It was all about taking something that didn’t belong to you. Most of it was petty crime. Some of it was worth millions. Only a small percentage involved killing people, but if you’re going to kill, then the prize had better be worth it. If you mug a little old lady and she falls and bangs her head that’s one thing; if you go onto a movie set and shoot five people, that’s something else entirely.

Robbery. Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. Heat.

McNulty remembered seeing the movie poster in the cabin under the overpass. The Cloverleaf Boys might not have been the sharpest knives in the box but they were dangerous enough to shoot rats in a barrel. Or let the rats kill themselves. What better distraction than to serve up four unwitting patsies when all this was over? The grey van being sprayed red at an off-the-books auto body shop. A family known to the police as being unstable. Lovers of robbery and violence and death, even if it was only rats.

Distraction. Robbery. Misdirection. Get the police looking one way. Strike somewhere else. Set the Cloverleaf Boys up to take the fall. McNulty swung the car into Lexington Street and headed toward Police Headquarters. His head was full of ideas but none of them would coalesce. If the shooting was the distraction,