Robie nodded. “Did you notice anyone suspicious around?”
“I’m inside most of the time working on the buses. Guard might have seen something, but probably not.”
“Why’s that?”
“He does more eating in his little guard shack than walking, you get my drift. Why he’
s so fat.”
“Okay.”
“Can I get back to work now?”
“Thanks for the information.”
Willie left him and walked back into the building.
Robie stood there in the dark and eyeballed the spot the 112 bus had been in. Bomber did the bus. Robie got on the bus. Robie got off the bus. Bus blew up. They sent a shooter into the alley to finish the job. Someone really wanted him bad.
Another thought occurred to him. But maybe not that bad.
“Doing some private sleuthing on your off time?”
He turned and looked through the chain-link fence.
Nicole Vance was staring back at him.
CHAPTER
52
ROBIE WALKED THROUGH the open gate.
“Where have you been all this time?” asked Vance.
“Let’s go back to Donnelly’s,” said Robie.
“Why?”
“I want to check something I should have already checked.”
Fifteen minutes later Robie stood in the same spot he had on the night an MP-5 had tried to rip his life away. He eyed where the SUV had been, then his defensive position behind the trash cans, and then over his shoulder at the shattered plate glass window. He walked back and forth and framed, in his mind’s eye, the shot pattern of the attackers.
“Total number of dead and wounded as of right now?” he asked Vance, who was watching him.
“Six dead, five wounded. One’s still in the hospital but looks like he’ll make it.”
“But not us,” said Robie.
“What?”
“We’re not dead.”
“A somewhat obvious deduction,” Vance said dryly.
“Eleven people shot, six fatally, and yet the shooter misses us? We were the closest target, right out in the open. Aluminum trash cans the only thing between us, thirty-round clips, and a cooler bed at the D.C. morgue.”
“You’re saying the shooter missed us on purpose?”
He looked over to find Vance staring at him, a perplexed look on her face.
“How does that make sense?” she asked.
“How does it make sense that the guy missed us at basically point-blank range with a weapon that is designed for mass destruction in narrow fields of fire? There should be at least eight dead, including you and me. Look at the shot pattern. He was firing around us.”
“Then are you saying they killed all those people for what? A warning? Something to do with the Wind case? The bus bombing?”
Robie didn’t answer her. His thoughts were racing ahead, taking him in a direction he had never expected to go.
“Robie?”
He turned to her.
Vance said slowly, “I guess looking at it that way, what you’re saying makes sense. I guess we should be dead. Then it has to relate to the Winds, or the bus, or maybe both.”
“No it doesn’t.”
“But Robie—”
He turned back away from her to stare at the spot on the street again from where the SUV had launched its attack.
Someone has tagged me. Someone is playing mind games with me. Someone close is trying to get to me, screw with me.
“Robie, do you have any other enemies?” asked Vance.
“How?”
“Petechial hemorrhaging was the main clue. But he wasn’t initially sure how it was accomplished. No pillow over the face, nothing like that.”
“Why hide the manner of the killing?” asked Robie as he drew in a long breath.
“Harder to find out who did it.”
“Maybe, maybe not.”