“I don’t have to like her getting naked with Jackson Brady, do I? I mean, come on. Of all the men in all the world, why him?”
Claire laughed. “A lot of girls would be clicking their heels to get naked with Brady.”
“It messes with the chain of command.”
“Anybody sleeps with anyone you know, it messes with the chain of command.”
I wadded up a paper napkin and threw it at her. “Shut up,” I said.
She batted it back. “You are so crazy,” she said, still laughing.
I downed my Corona and said, “Let’s order. Cindy can just catch up.”
Claire agreed. Cindy had proven that she could start from behind, get down a half pitcher of beer and a steak, have dessert, and still be the first one across the finish line.
I signaled Lorraine to come over. She recited the specials, coconut shrimp and rum-sautéed chicken. We ordered the specials and more beer, and as soon as Lorraine left, Claire said, “You’re not going to believe this one, Linds. It’s right up there with my top ten most unbelievable cases. And it starts with a guy lying dead in the middle of the road.”
“Hit and run?”
“It sure looked like a car accident,” she said, “but there were no tire tracks, no bruising on the victim. A hat was lying a few yards from the body, a black baseball cap with an X on the back of it. And that’s all we had. No witnesses. No surveillance tapes. Nothing except a dead body and a random baseball cap.”
“Heart attack? Aneurysm?”
“Let me tell you, this guy was young, twenty-something. And he looked like he’d been laid out at a wake, only he was on the center line, stopping traffic,” Claire said.
“So now I’m doing the post, looking over this young dude’s perfect body. I do a full-body X-ray and find a twenty-two bullet behind his right eye. That gunshot wound was not visible, Lindsay.”
“I’m not believing in invisible bullets, butterfly.”
“It’s like this. The round goes into the corner of the eye,” Claire said, pointing to where one of her eyes met the bridge of her nose. “Eyeball moves away from the bullet, then closes up behind it so that you cannot see a sign of it.”
“Huh. Interesting. So now you’re saying it’s a homicide.”
“Yeah. Northern Station caught it, asked me to help.”
“Did ballistics get a hit on the round?” I asked.
“Before we could get the bullet to the lab, we got something better. At around the same time the roadkill dude took a slug to the eye, a liquor store owner was gunned down in an armed robbery.
“The liquor store surveillance tape shows the shooter is wearing tight black jeans and a black shirt and the exact same baseball cap as the one we found in the road. Black with an X,” Claire said.
“So local cops know the liquor store shooter and ID him. His street name is Crank, and he’s found at home, sleeping in his bed. Cops roust him and drag him into the station on the liquor store killing. Suddenly, Crank breaks down and then he starts to sing.”
“Oh, yeah? And what was the name of the tune?”
“Called it, ‘I shot the dude by accident, yo. I didn’t mean to do it, yo.’”
“Come on,” I said, laughing, digging into my chicken.
“I know, but this is true. Here’s what happened in the missing middle of the story,” Claire said. “There was a near-miss traffic accident.
“Crank is
fleeing the liquor store homicide and cuts off this guy in a Honda Civic. Crank gets out to apologize to the Civic so the guy doesn’t call the cops, and Civic says to Crank, ‘You drive like a girl and you look like one, too.’ I guess it was the worst thing he can think to say.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Yeah, how’d he know he was going to hit a nerve? So Crank whips his gun out of the back of his jeans and says, ‘Well, this girl’s packin’,’ and he shoots the guy.”