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“Where did you get his card?” Madelyn half-yelled, throwing up her arms.
“Your trash can,” Peach admitted without shame. “The card was right there on top, and it seemed such a shame to waste it that way.”
Yeah, like people didn’t throw his cards away all the time. While the older women argued, lowering their voices, Eric caught and held Jaclyn’s gaze. He could tell she was tired and scared, and he almost stepped forward to wrap his arms around her and hold her close, let her lean on him for a while. Yeah, like she’d go along with that. He did ask, “Are you okay?”
She answered with a nod, not that he believed her. She hadn’t been shot, but she was far from okay.
Eric introduced himself to the Atlanta officers, stepped to the side with the senior investigator, and explained that Jaclyn was a witness in a Hopewell murder investigation. The Atlanta detective said, “She’s all yours, buddy. I’ve been trying to find out what she saw, but the witnesses are a tad muddled, to put it lightly. The only two who haven’t been drinking are Ms. Wilde and Ms. Kelley, but they’re the two who were most scared. While you’re talking to them, I’ll interview the others.”
“Muddled” was definitely putting it lightly. Jaclyn and Diedra, occasionally talking over each other, explained what had happened. The explanation didn’t take long, and they agreed on the main points. As Jaclyn had been leaving, someone had pulled alongside her and fired two shots. Diedra and a handful of other witnesses who were also leaving the wedding could confirm what Jaclyn said.
When he thought about her sitting there, a clear target, his heart climbed into his throat.
“Tell me you saw the car,” he said, aware there was a faint hint of pleading in his tone. One of the officers ruefully shook his head, so Eric had a good idea what was coming.
“It was a car,” Diedra said, “not a truck or an SUV. It was black.”
“I think it might’ve been more of a blue,” Jaclyn said.
One of the officers spoke up. “According
to the other witnesses, who were really too far away to be positive about anything other than there was a shooting, the vehicle in question might have been green.”
“Make?” Eric asked hopefully. He knew Jaclyn couldn’t provide the information, but maybe one of the other witnesses—
Again the officer shook his head.
Un-fucking-believable. “Surely you two can come up with some detail about the car,” Eric said, looking from Jaclyn to Diedra and back. How could both of them be so car-blind?
Jaclyn just shrugged her shoulders as Diedra said, “Well, it wasn’t a Mustang. I would’ve recognized a Mustang. I think.”
“That’s it? Not a Mustang?”
“All the midsized cars pretty much look alike,” Jaclyn said. Her voice was a little thin; he could hear a faint tremble in it. “That’s something, isn’t it? It was midsized, not a huge car or a Mini Cooper.”
“We can put out an all-points bulletin,” he muttered. “Not a Mustang or Mini Cooper. We’ll collect everything else, then sort them out. I don’t suppose you got a tag number?”
“There wasn’t one,” Jaclyn said. “I did think to look.”
The implication was chilling. Shooting at her hadn’t been an impulse; the shooter had planned for this, had removed the car tag in case there were any witnesses. “What about the driver?”
Jaclyn shuddered, and her mother put her arm around her shoulder and hugged. After a minute Jaclyn took a deep breath, stood up straighter as if she’d braced herself. “I think he had something over his face, like a ski mask or a hood. I couldn’t see any features at all, just the gun pointing at me. Right-handed. Dark sleeve. Um … gloves, too.”
Diedra nodded. “I think so, too; when he went by me, I couldn’t see a white blob where the face would be, so he had to be wearing a hood. But—” She narrowed her eyes in thought. “Come to think of it, the driver wasn’t all that big. It could be a small man, but it might have been a woman. It’s hard to tell when someone is sitting in a car, but I didn’t get the sense it was a big person.”
Jaclyn thought about that. “You’re right,” she said. “Looking through the window, I think I might be a hair taller than the driver.”
Neither of them recognized any make of car, evidently, other than a Mustang and a Mini Cooper, but when it came to everything else, their sense of detail and proportion kicked in. At least that was something to go on.
“The shooter definitely fired right-handed?”
“Definitely. The car pulled away from the curb behind me, and I was watching it in my rearview mirror, letting it get past before I pulled out. It was weaving back and forth in the lanes, so I thought the driver might be drunk. Then he—or she—stopped beside me, right arm extended like this”—she demonstrated—“and fired twice.”
He left her for a while to check out her car. The driver’s side window was shot out, the interior covered with tiny cubes of safety glass. He also learned that no shell casings had been recovered, which didn’t necessarily mean that the weapon had been a revolver. It could have been an automatic, but the casings had ejected inside the shooter’s car. With luck, they’d find one or both slugs buried in the car’s upholstery.
Her car was drivable, but he had it impounded so it could be searched for evidence. Rather, the Atlanta P.D. impounded it, on his suggestion. None of this happened fast. Crime investigations were, by necessity, extremely painstaking. Time wore on, past one-thirty, then past two. It was rocking on toward three in the morning when things began winding down. Eric kept an eye on Jaclyn, because her face was getting more and more pale.
She wasn’t happy about losing her car, but she didn’t argue, either. Someone had shot at her; it was in her best interest to find out who. “I’ll arrange to rent a car until mine can be repaired,” she said, then gave a rueful little smile. “At least this will stop Jacky from asking if he can borrow it.”
