Detective Sarah Burke is called to a mass shooting in a quiet residential street; it looks like a ‘home invasion’ gone very wrong. There are several dead bodies but the crime scene just doesn’t make sense – until one of the ‘dead’ victims suddenly escapes and another man is seen running from the house . . . Once again, as well as juggling her complicated home life, Sarah Burke is faced with a ballistics mystery to find out exactly what went down – and why.
Detective Sarah Burke is called to a mass shooting in a quiet residential street; it looks like a ‘home invasion’ gone very wrong. There are several dead bodies but the crime scene just doesn’t make sense – until one of the ‘dead’ victims suddenly escapes and another man is seen running from the house . . . Once again, as well as juggling her complicated home life, Sarah Burke is faced with a ballistics mystery to find out exactly what went down – and why.
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Overview
Detective Sarah Burke is called to a mass shooting in a quiet residential street; it looks like a ‘home invasion’ gone very wrong. There are several dead bodies but the crime scene just doesn’t make sense – until one of the ‘dead’ victims suddenly escapes and another man is seen running from the house . . . Once again, as well as juggling her complicated home life, Sarah Burke is faced with a ballistics mystery to find out exactly what went down – and why.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780727896193 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Severn House |
| Publication date: | 07/31/2013 |
| Series: | Sarah Burke Series , #4 |
| Edition description: | Large Print |
| Pages: | 320 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.70(w) x 8.60(h) x 1.00(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
The Magic Line
By Elizabeth Gunn
Severn House Publishers Limited
Copyright © 2012 Elizabeth GunnAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84751-407-3
CHAPTER 1
'Yeah, but it'd be a lot safer after dark,' Zeb said.
'Ah, there goes Mr Yeah-but again.' Robin kept his eyes on the house on Spring Brook Drive. 'Put a sock in it, will you? We settled this.'
'But it's broad daylight, anybody can see —'
'What anybody? It's four o'clock, everybody on this block's at work.'
'That woman on the corner with the babies —'
'She's back in the kitchen fixing supper. We spent two weeks casing this fucker, now you can't remember anything we learned?' They argued in stifled bursts, keeping their voices low, barely audible above the A/C. Zeb was worried about keeping that running, too – conspicuous on the quiet street, he thought – but in Tucson in late May, with no shade, they'd die without air. And they had to sit here in the sun to wait – it was the best spot: close enough to watch the house, far enough not to be noticed.
'Yeah, but all along you said we'd pick the safest time —'
'Which will be fifteen seconds after these clowns are all the way into their garage, with the door rolling down. Just back from deliveries, before they get the money put away.' Robin whipped around on the seat and froze his partner in a pale, bright stare. 'You saying you want to back out now, Zeb-you-lon?'
'No, I don't want to back out, come on.' Robin always drawled his name out like that, taunting, when he wanted to put him down. It worked, too, because Zeb knew people always got major yucks out of his name. 'Zebulon Montgomery Butts, for Chrissake,' he had asked his mother on his last birthday, 'what were you thinking?' Twenty-one at last, time to get a few things straightened out.
His mother said she named him after a great man to inspire him to do great deeds, and she still had high hopes for that. But then last month, as she piled his belongings outside her casita, she'd said, 'If you're ever going to do any of those great deeds it's sure as hell time you got started.' She put a list on top of the pile – things he had to do before she let him back in.
Number One on her Tough Love list was 'Get a job.'
Doing what? Yard care gave him back pain. Construction was in the toilet. He always got fired from resort work – high-paying customers were just too demanding to tolerate. He'd been thinking about applying for a UPS job till three months ago when that stupid DUI charge got his license suspended. Nobody seemed to understand that he was going through a rough patch.
His last girlfriend said she was 'with somebody now.' The second to last let him spend one night on her couch but said her mother was coming the next day, sorry. So Zeb begged his sister till she let him put down his sleeping bag in her utility room, as long as he used his own towel in the shower and didn't take anything out of the refrigerator.
Finally he'd looked up Robin and asked him was he up to any mischief these days; did he need a boost with anything? They used to talk like that when he teamed with Robin before – back when everything was a caper, a little out on the edge maybe but nothing serious. Robin had done a short stretch in juvie and hooked up with a weird kid named Hermie who could boost almost any car super fast, and was willing to teach Robin all he knew.
Zeb thought of it now as their crazy-teens period, when he was doing capers with Robin and Hermie. He didn't learn any new skills except how to blow a quick blast on Hermie's weird whistle. Luckily he never had to blow it while he was their lookout, but they paid him a little for standing by with it, anyway. Later, after they trusted him a little, he ferried a few of Hermie's boosted cars to chop shops. No big scores but it sure beat bagging groceries at Fry's.
Luckily, Zeb was working for his mother the night Robin and Hermie finally got caught trying to burgle a house in the Sam Hughes Neighborhood. A patrolman spotted the open window they had jimmied, looked in and shined his light on them. He kept them standing there with their hands full of high-end electronics and an antique set of dueling pistols waiting for his backup to arrive. 'Don't move,' he told them several times, but Hermie, who hated taking orders, dropped the guns at the last minute and ran out the front door into heavy traffic on Country Club Road. He got a long sentence after he got out of the hospital. Robin stayed where he was and did twenty-two months at the State Prison on Wilmot Road.
He was different when he came out – his eyes were like polished steel, and constantly scanned any room he was in. He mostly hung with guys who did martial arts and had weird facial hair – they broke into empty stores and abandoned houses and stayed till somebody chased them out, using the empty spaces to plan heists and divvy up what they stole.
Robin wasn't any fun at all to be around for quite a while after Wilmot. He never let you finish a sentence that had more than eight words in it, and some days he just seemed to be trying to start a fight for any reason. Finally Zeb decided he didn't need the grief and made a point of being where Robin wasn't.
But last month, when his mother got all crazy about jobs and put him out, Zeb thought back to the good old days and decided to look up his old pal. He tried for a light note, asking was he doing any capers these days? Robin gave him one of his new ice-blue looks and said capers were yesterday's news. Said he had some jobs from time to time but he needed somebody who was ready to get serious.
'Robin, come on, it's me. How long we known each other?'
'Years and years. And in all that time, you have never shown me one brilliant move.' Robin kicked his metal-clad toe against a curb while Zeb waited. 'I could try you out,' he said finally. 'Kind of on probation.'
Zeb understood probation now – the Department of Motor Vehicles had seen to that. After he'd flunked his sobriety test last winter he got lucky with a judge, who cited and released him with the stern proviso that if she saw him in her courtroom again on a similar charge he was going to spend a long time in County mending his ways. At first he'd congratulated himself on getting a judge who was such a muffin. It took him a couple of months to realize that having no driver's license didn't just keep him from driving a car, it ensured he wouldn't be considered for any job he might conceivably want.
So he put on his humble face and did every job Robin asked him to do. For peanuts. On time and without complaint. Nothing big; he made a few dope deliveries, lifted a set of hex wrenches from a target store.
Stealing tools off a rack didn't feel like starting to do great deeds, but he did it because he could see it was some kind of gate he had to pass through to please Robin. Hard to see what Robin wanted them for – they were still in the bubble wrap on the floor of the empty warehouse where they'd met this month. But Robin seemed pleased when he came back with them and made a weird joke about hexes. He kind of warmed up to Zeb after that, and asked if Zeb was ready for something a little bigger. When Zeb said sure, Robin said he needed help planning a home invasion.
Home invasion was kind of a scary leap into the unknown, but hell, if he wasn't going to flip burgers he had to get started at something else. They were in Robin's car – this week's car, he seemed to go through them like popcorn – headed for the neighborhood to take a look at the house, when Robin explained that the home he was planning to invade was a stash house. Right then, when Zeb's stomach cramped up, was when he should have bailed, he thought later. But he needed the money. And more than that, he wanted the connection to Robin and the feeling he was ready to step up his game a little, be a player. He hadn't slept through one whole night since, and the nightmares that woke him up kept coming back in the daytime, wrecking his digestion. But he was hanging in, determined to go through with this job.
So now he was sitting next to a peeling wooden fence on Chardonnay Drive with a good view of the house on Spring Brook Drive. Waiting in this beat-up carpet cleaner's van, with two guys named Earl and Homer. He'd only met his new team-mates and fellow home invaders yesterday, and the van he'd never seen before – Robin just showed up in it with no explanation. Zeb was sweating, feeling his heart beat. For the first time ever, Zeb was armed and, he hoped, dangerous.
'We ain't gonna unload any of this rug-cleaning shit, are we?' Earl asked Robin from back in the shady cargo space where he and his brother Homer crouched among the tools. 'You got some fuckin' heavy shit back here.'
'No,' Robin said. 'I told you. Just start the cordless vacuum for the noise, and walk up to the front door with the clipboard. Keep those pens in your pocket, like you're all ready to write up the job. Ring the bell and look polite while Homer steps out from behind you with the elephant gun and blows 'em away.' He took his eyes off the door long enough to turn and smile at Earl. 'You can look polite for just a minute, can't you?'
Homer goosed Earl. 'Yeah, Earl, you be lookin' p'lite while I shoot their fuckin' heads off, huh?' He had a weird laugh, hyaw-hyaw-hyaw, and one of his eyes wandered.
Zeb didn't know their last name. He'd asked Robin, 'Where'd you find Darrell-and-Darrell?'
Robin just chuckled briefly, that dry little half laugh he'd developed lately, and said, 'Don't worry about them, they'll be fine.'
Earl couldn't seem to say one whole sentence without obscenities but usually made a brutal kind of sense. Homer really did seem to be a few cards short of a deck. He was good with his weapons, Zeb would give him that. But it rubbed his nerves raw to share this cramped space with a guy who kept flipping a butterfly knife over and over, in and out of attack mode, catching the handle one-handed every time. Balisong, they called that weapon. Robin carried one too, sometimes, in a holder Velcroed to his leg. Not today, though – he was travelling light today. Stripped down for action, he told Zeb with a wink.
Finally Robin said, 'Homer, you don't quit playing with that knife I'm going to stick it up your ass,' and Homer tucked it into an ankle holster. He showed Zeb another knife he kept in a zippered pocket on the leg of his cargo pants. Then he started moving his big handgun from place to place under his shirt, making a point of telling Zeb it was a .44 Magnum Smith & Wesson revolver. He watched Zeb's face when he said it, wanting to be sure Zeb understood what a kick-ass weapon that was. Zeb didn't know much about guns but he was trying to firm up his place on the team so he looked at it respectfully and said, 'Hey, big time.'
Homer couldn't seem to decide between a shoulder holster and his belt. Then he tried out several cleaning buckets till he found one big enough to conceal the gun. He tied a couple of towels around the handle for cover so he could carry the gun inside the bucket, ready to fire. When he had it arranged to suit himself he poked Earl, chuckling, and said, 'Looky here, what'cha think?'
'Looks OK.' Earl had a pistol of some kind, under his shirt in a shoulder holster, that he seemed at ease with and never took out. As soon as he saw how much of his chest the clipboard would cover, he unbuttoned the top two buttons on his shirt. After that he sat still, looking fierce but relaxed, like a panther after lunch.
Zeb was nervous about his own weapon. Robin had given it to him last week, along with the shirt he was to wear on this job. That was a surprise too, a hiking shirt from Summit Hut with clever, hidden pockets fastened with Velcro. One of the pockets had another, zippered pocket inside. 'You get to carry the money,' Robin said, with more winking; he was making an effort to keep Zeb on his team today. Zeb got a tremor in his chest, thinking about stuffing those pockets with money. How heavy would that shirt get? He could almost feel it on his shoulders – the pull of money.
Robin said the gun was a Lorcin semi-auto, whatever the hell that meant. It fit easily in his hand and was not complicated to fire. It seemed a little small for the task at hand which, he had almost admitted to himself, might include shooting somebody who was trying to shoot him first. He had practiced at a firing range with Robin beside him, talking him through it like a drill master.
'Don't look at the gun, look at the target. Support it with both hands, so you hold it steady, see? Take a deep breath, let it out slowly ... slow-leee ... now squeeze. Good, you actually grazed the edge of the target that time. Can't you stop shaking?'
Later, in front of his sister's mirror while she was at work, he had watched himself pulling the handgun out of his belt and aiming. He told himself over and over, Just pull it out, aim it and shoot. He tried to stifle the voice in his head that kept saying, Yeah, but the mirror's not shooting back.
'Heads up,' Robin said now. 'Here they come.' Zeb felt hot blood rush into his head and neck; now felt way too soon. He could see two men in the front seat of the approaching Chevy Malibu, the bald one driving and the dark-haired one with the brush cut, in the passenger seat where he always sat, scanning the street with laser eyes. Zeb held his breath and craned forward, trying to see. Was there a third man in the back?
It was the question they'd never settled: were there two men in the house, or three? During two weeks of watching, they had only ever identified two men going in and out of the house. But whenever they watched the runs in the SUV, they thought they saw a third man sitting very straight in the middle of the back seat. Hard to be sure with those darkened windows, but it sure looked like there was a third guy in there again today.
Uncertainty about the third man was the reason, Robin said, why he'd added Earl and Homer.
'You think we need more firepower, huh?' Zeb said, after he met them.
'Well, yes,' Robin said. 'I probably wouldn't be counting on them for more brainpower, hmm?' Zeb snickered, Robin winked and chuckled, and for a few seconds they were buddies like old times. But then Zeb went ahead and asked what was their split going to be? Because he had already put in two weeks on this job with no cash flow, and now these two mean, pushy thugs were acting like they owned the thing.
'No split. Three hundred apiece for an hour's work, that's all they get.'
'Oh. Well, then. OK.'
'Of course OK. I know how to set up jobs, Zebby. So why don't you just chill and let me handle things?' Which Zeb did, of course, because without Robin there was no job. But something about the way these crazy, dangerous brothers cleared out space for themselves made Zeb suspect they'd been in on the deal from the beginning.
Robin didn't put the van in gear until the Malibu was in the driveway, the garage door beginning to rise. Watching that door go up, Robin had said, the stash house guys would be thinking about getting inside and wouldn't even notice the utility van rolling toward them in the street. A cargo van with a sign on the side that said 'Bestway Carpet Cleaning' was as good as invisible.
The Bestway van was still two doors away when the garage door began to roll back down. It was closed by the time Robin pulled up at the foot of the driveway and parked. Earl hit the switch on the big vacuum and they swung the rear doors open so the sound of air roaring through the hose filled the street. They got out, Earl with his clipboard up in front of his chest and Homer with the towels hiding the revolver in the bucket, and walked sedately up the driveway.
Robin and Zeb had already trotted up the driveway and along the side of the house to the backyard. That was the plan, for the two of them to get around in the back while the men inside were still in the garage. Zeb carried the glass cutter in his fist, so it didn't show. Robin had the suction cup under his big shirt, on a cord around his neck.
'That lady on the corner's coming outside,' Zeb said.
'She's just getting the mail,' Robin said. 'She'll go right back in to the babies, forget about her.'
Earl and Homer were almost at the front door. Earl had his pens on a pocket protector, his brutal face screwed into a weird little smile above the clipboard. The heavy-duty metal door, double locked, the only really secure door on this working-class street of cheap, ageing bungalows, had pulled Robin to this stash house like a magnet.
Back of the house, on the cement slab that passed for a patio, they saw the blinds were closed like always inside the sliding glass door. That's what Robin liked so much about this job: the way the men running this stash house kept everything in the back closed up tight. The door and the double window overlooking the yard were always shut and locked, blinds down, drapes closed.
For two weeks Zeb had biked and driven around this house and hidden in the empty house with the 'For Sale' sign three doors away. He had never seen anyone look out the back window or walk out the sliding door and sit on the cement by the dying cactus.
'Dumb shits think it keeps them safe to keep the blinds closed,' Robin had said, grinning at the weed-choked backyard the last time they watched it. 'Just makes our job easier.'
Watching the window now, smiling the odd, humorless smile Zeb had noticed on him lately, Robin pulled on surgical gloves. Why don't I have some of those? Zeb wanted to ask but didn't dare start an argument now.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Magic Line by Elizabeth Gunn. Copyright © 2012 Elizabeth Gunn. Excerpted by permission of Severn House Publishers Limited.
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