Grandma just gazed at her, gave her the tiniest smile, and then whispered, “This is bad. This is really bad.”

  “I don’t understand. What’s bad? Of course I’m not happy about these deaths, but I can be happy about the business.”

  But her grandmother shook her head yet again. “No, you can’t be happy about this. There’s no way. It’s bad news, and you’re in danger because of it.”

  “No, no, I’m not,” she said, gently reaching out a hand.

  But her grandmother’s wispy form slowly dissipated in front of her.

  Tasmin knew that crying out was hopeless but couldn’t resist, and, by the time her grandmother’s spirit form slowly faded, tears were once again dripping from the corners of Tasmin’s eyes. What did Grandma mean, This was bad? Danger? She didn’t understand if her grandmother even realized what Tasmin was doing now, and that was a whole different problem.

  *

  Around noon, the captain called out to Hanson, “Come into my office for a few minutes.”

  With a nod, Hanson got up, grabbed his coffee, and headed toward the captain’s office. Once Hanson sat, the captain frowned at him, but Hanson just stared back at him calmly.

  “I guess it hasn’t been all that easy since somebody found out about your psych eval, huh?”

  Hanson just shrugged. Absolutely no point in worrying about it, and commenting on it now would only give away feelings he would prefer to remain private.

  “I did have an interesting conversation with the rest of the crew, and, so far, nobody has any complaints about your work, though they are a little worried that you tend to be a lone ranger.”

  Hanson just raised an eyebrow at that.

  The captain nodded. “I presume that’s because the rest of the team hasn’t been so welcoming, is that it?”

  “I’m just trying to do my job,” he stated.

  “Right, got it.” The captain tapped his hand on the corner of the desk in irritation. “Look. I’m not trying to make this harder on you,” he said. “I was just hoping the team would gel by now.”

  At that, Hanson shrugged. “It’ll gel when it’s ready to gel.”

  The captain smiled at him. “That’s the truth, isn’t it? I should just stay out of it.”

  “You should,” Hanson agreed. “I’m getting good work done. Just let me go do it.”

  “How is the case going?”

  “Until we got two more drive-by shooting deaths, we were doing better,” Hanson replied, “and now we’re not doing as well.”

  “Yeah. Have you run down the first vehicle?”

  “I have. It was stolen. The second vehicle as of this morning was another silver-gray car, but since the first one was stolen and abandoned, and we already have it in impound, I presume our shooter is looking for a type.”

  “Any similarities in the victims?”

  “Young,” he said. “The ones this morning were female and appeared to be mother and daughter, so I’m not even sure that young applies, as I think about it. … The earlier drive-by killed two young men. Now we have a middle-aged woman and a young woman. Multiple gunshots this time, as if maybe the angles weren’t right or maybe they didn’t drop the way he wanted them to. Or maybe he just wanted to make sure.”

  “That making sure is always a bit of a dodgy thing, isn’t it? Targeted?”

  “Targeted in the sense that they were likely in the wrong place at the wrong time. But targeted in that he knew them and chose them intentionally?” Hanson shook his head. “That much we haven’t confirmed so far.”

  The captain waved at him and said, “Go on and get to it then. And look. If things get ugly around the office, you just let me know.”

  “They won’t,” Hanson replied and then walked out.

  The last thing he would ever do was complain to the captain about the treatment from the other cops. That was a good way to get yourself shut out of everything. He planned on doing his job as he always did, and either the others would come around or they wouldn’t. But, as he thought about it, he was fine either way.

  He also felt a hell of a lot better about being new in town, especially now that he had connected in some way or other with Tasmin. She was fascinating, not just because of the skills that they had in common—or the fact that both of them were relatively untouched by those skills—but also the work that she did, her overall attitude, and the time of life that she was in.

  He wondered about the family dynamic that put her in such a difficult situation, but he was determined to get her up off the damn floor and at least get her moved up into the loft. He presumed it was just confusion and stress that had her sleeping on a bedroll on the floor. Did her mom know? Did her mom even care?

  He wanted to rattle both the mom and the sister to try and figure out if they were just selfish and looking after their own interests and really didn’t care what happened to Tasmin, or if something else was going on. In the meantime, he needed to figure out what was happening with these shootings.

  *

  Hanson took a quick break to grab something for lunch and just to get outside for a bit. As he sat back down at his desk, he got a call from the front desk, saying somebody was here to see him. Frowning at that, he got up and walked out to the front, and there was a young kid, maybe sixteen, standing there nervously. Hanson looked at him and identified himself.

  The kid studied him and nodded. “I saw you at the scene this morning.”

  He nodded slowly in response. “You want to talk?”

  “Yeah.” But then he looked around. “Is there anywhere private we can go?” he asked in a very low tone.

  Hanson led the way to the nearest interview room, opened it, and asked, “Do you want something to drink?”

  “Pop if you’ve got it, a Coke maybe?” Then he walked over and sat down at the table.

  Rather than giving him a moment to change his mind, Hanson asked the clerk to go grab that for him. She immediately hopped up and walked away, returning a few minutes later to give it to Hanson, while he stood in the doorway. He handed it off to the kid, then sat down across from him. “So, what brings you in?”

  “I might have seen something more,” he began nervously.

  “Tell me.”

  He hesitated, and then the words just couldn’t be contained anymore. “I was hanging with my friends. We were just standing at the corner, with our skateboards, talking, you know, wasting time.”

  “And looking to get into trouble.”

  The kid immediately flushed and glared at him.

  Clearly Hanson had displayed more shrewd intuition than the kid had been expecting. He shrugged. “Go on.”

  “Anyway,” he said, staring at him, “we were just standing there, when this small car drove past, eyed us for a minute, and there was this look, an odd look on the guy’s face, and then he kept on going. When he turned around, I pointed him out to my buddies, and we shifted a bit so we could watch him, and he went past us again and then disappeared. Didn’t think anything of it until I turned around at the noise of the shooting and saw him on the opposite side of the road, and he’s firing at these people, these two women on the street,” he uttered, his voice raw with shock. “I knew the one girl. She was pretty decent. Her mom was too. She worked at the grocery store.” His voice hiccupped. “They didn’t deserve that, man. They didn’t deserve anything like that.”

  Hanson nodded slowly, giving the kid a chance to calm down. “Can you describe him?”

  The kid frowned at him, seemingly considering the question. “Maybe. I mean, I didn’t get a close look at him. He was inside the vehicle,” he added cautiously. “And the silver car, it was just one of those little sedans, four doors, those cheap cars that you can buy everywhere. They all look the same, the same look. Now, if it had been a truck, I might have been able to help ID that,” the kid said. “I do like trucks. But cars?” He shrugged. “They all look like something my grandma would drive.”

  It was all Hanson could do to hold back his smile at that comment. He understood what the kid meant though. “Did you catch a license plate?”

  “Oh, yeah, I did,” he stated, pulling out his phone. “I didn’t get a photo of it. I only caught a few notes as it went by, mostly because I was quite perturbed at what he was doing. I mean, it seemed he was looking for something, and we were kind of close, but we weren’t right there or … I don’t know.” He stopped, looked over at Hanson, and said, “Please tell me that I’m nuts. Tell me that this guy wasn’t just looking for somebody to shoot and thought that we might be the ones.”

  “I’m afraid that’s exactly what he was doing,” Hanson confirmed. “So far, we haven’t found any rhyme or reason for why or how this guy is choosing his victims. Therefore, if you continue to hang around with your buddies on the streets like that, you might not be so lucky next time.”

  He shuddered, picked up the can of Coke, slugged back a big gulp, and started coughing. When he cleared his air passages and sat back, he frowned. “God, it was something awful to see.”

  “I get that,” Hanson noted gently. “I’m sorry, but after witnessing this? There’s no such thing as innocence when it comes to looking at people driving by.”

  “No, man, no, there sure isn’t,” he agreed, his voice raspy. He swallowed hard several times and then added, “There was something odd about his face.”

  “What about it?”

  “Punched in, a bit of a bruiser, but I don’t know. It could have just been puffy. He might have taken a beating from somebody recently and was looking for payback. But if that was the case”—he stared at Hanson—“why wouldn’t he have beaten that guy up, not those poor women?”

  “It’s possible he did take a beating,” Hanson suggested, looking at the kid. “And it’s also possible that he already took care of this other guy, but he’s still angry at what happened, or maybe this other person who beat him up is not available, and he can’t get to him for payback.”

  The kid just shrugged, but it was obvious that he didn’t like either of those answers. “Man, I don’t even want to go outside anymore.”

  “Considering that this guy might know that you saw something, I would definitely want you to be careful when you’re outside,” Hanson warned. “We don’t have any specific reason to believe he’ll come back after you, but, if he thinks you saw him, I don’t know what he might do if he came across you again.”

  At that, the kid stared at him. “Oh, man, my mom’ll kill me.”

  Hanson chuckled. “If you die or get shot because of this, yeah, she might,” he shared, with a note of humor. “But, if what you’re doing right now keeps you safe, then I’m pretty sure she’ll understand.”

  “Maybe. She keeps telling me to get off the damn street corners as it is, and I just never listened to her. I didn’t see any reason to.”

  “Maybe she has her own good reason for you to do that. Maybe she’s seen something in her life too,” Hanson suggested. “You become quite wary after witnessing this type of violence.”

  He just nodded at that. “Man, I don’t even know what to think now.”

  “And what about your friends? Do you think they saw him?”

  He shook his head at that. “No, they were arguing about an exam we had a few days ago,” he relayed with disinterest. “To me, the exam was over and done, so who gave a crap, but they were still arguing about one of the questions on it.”

  “Right. And what about you? Do you think you can give any description on the shooter?”

  He shook his head. “Honestly, outside of the fact that he looked like he’d taken a beating, not really.” He paused and thought for a moment. “He seemed, maybe he was tall. I couldn’t really see his head because of the sun visor.”

  Hanson contemplated that. “I’ll bring in a police sketch artist anyway. So I’ll need you to spend an hour or so with him and see what we can come up with.”

  The kid frowned at him.

  Hanson gave him a frown right back and then smiled. “Hey, it would be your good deed for the week.”

  The kid snorted. “And I figured coming in here was my good deed.”

  “It is,” Hanson declared. “But, if we can get a description, maybe we can catch this guy, before he decides to drive by and shoot somebody else.”

  That shut up the kid.

  Hanson stood and quickly excused himself.

  *

  Later in the afternoon, Tasmin sighed, as she put down her things in the shop. She would be lucky to set things to rights before she relaxed for a few minutes and headed for the morgue. Exhausted from the whirlwind trip to California and back, she sighed again, then got busy.

  Wishing for a moment to touch base with Hanson—since she hadn’t heard from him since dawn—she realized he must be really busy and didn’t need interruptions from her. Maybe she could sit down for a cup of tea before she called him. Just as she reached for the pot, she heard knocking at the front door. Hoping they would see the Closed sign and come back later, she was disappointed when the knocking continued. She walked to the front and pulled open the door, seeing someone who made her blood run cold.

  Dr. Bellevue from Bellevue’s Sanatorium.

  He stared at her and gave her that very special smile, before he said gently, “I see we need to talk, my dear.”

  *

  Back at his desk, Hanson arranged to get the sketch artist here as soon as he could. When he walked back toward the interrogation room again, the kid was at the open door, looking to sneak out. Hanson stood in the hallway and shook his head at him. “The artist will be here in about twenty minutes,” he told his witness.

  The kid’s shoulders sagged, and he walked back into the interview room.

  Hanson wasn’t sure whether he was trying to leave or was just bored and done with the whole thing. Deciding he needed to check it a little further, he headed back inside the interview room and asked, “So, what’s the big deal with leaving?”

  The kid grimaced. “I really don’t want anybody to know I’m here,” he confessed nervously. “And it’s already past time when I was supposed to meet up with the guys.”

  “Sure, but don’t you think this is a little more important?”

  “Yeah, I do, otherwise I wouldn’t be here,” he snapped, “but the guys don’t know I’m here.”

  “Ah.” Hanson realized how important it was to keep your actions in line with everybody else’s. “And you don’t think they’d agree.”

  “Hell no,” the kid replied, “so I need to get out of here as soon as possible.”

  “Have you got a decent excuse to give them?”

  He shrugged. “Not really.”

  “Can’t you get grounded, or doesn’t your mom need you or something along that line?”

  He just stared at him. “Those lame-ass excuses would never work with my friends.”

  “Right. Well, you’ve got twenty minutes to think up an excuse, and then the artist will be here.”

  “And I suppose you’ll sit here and watch over me.”

  “If you hadn’t been about to sneak off while I was making arrangements, I wouldn’t feel the need to,” Hanson stated, his tone clipped. “But I guess my work doesn’t get done while I get to sit here and babysit you either.”

  The kid just glared at him and then slowly shrugged and sat back down again in the chair. “Whatever. Hopefully I can get it done and get out of here fast.”

  “Let’s not just do fast,” Hanson said. “Let’s do right. I don’t suppose you want to see another two people dropped on the side of the road in front of you.”

  At that, the kid winced and shook his head. “No, I really don’t, but it sucks. I didn’t do anything, and now I feel as if I’m being punished.”

  “By talking to a sketch artist?” Hanson asked.

  The kid shrugged. “Okay, so not so much punished but I’m being forced to do something I’m not real comfortable doing.”

  “You’re not real comfortable coming in here, and this is just pushing it one little bit further. However, in this case, it’s for a good cause,” Hanson reminded the kid gently.

  But it was obvious the kid was struggling with the whole concept. Thankfully the sketch artist arrived faster than expected. Hanson looked up to see Brock walking into the room. “Hey, Brock, this is Roy. Roy, this is the sketch artist.”

  The kid looked up at the sketch artist and said, “You don’t look old enough.”

  Brock laughed. “I’ll take that as a compliment, but I’ve seen the backside of thirty.”

  “Hum,” the kid said, looking at him. “You don’t look it.”

  “No, sometimes I don’t, but sometimes I look twice this old,” Brock stated. “It all depends on how the day goes.” He sat down, opened up his laptop, and said, “Okay, let’s get started.” He looked over at Hanson. “Are you staying?”

  “No, not if you’re good with him. Roy was having second thoughts, thinking about trying to book it out of here. Therefore, I decided to keep him company, while waiting around for you.”

  Brock nodded. “We’ll be fine. I’ll get through this pretty fast.”

  “You’ll do it on a computer?” the kid asked suspiciously.

  “Yeah, I can do it by hand too, but a computer is often faster. I’m working on my skills there.”

  At that, Hanson smiled at the kid’s look of disgust and suggested to Roy, “You might want to keep in mind that Brock’s skills are way better than almost everybody else’s you’ve ever seen before.”

  “I don’t know,” Roy argued. “I’m a pretty good artist myself.”

  “So, in that case,” Brock said, slapping down a piece of paper in front of the kid, “why don’t you give it your best shot, and I’ll work alongside you, asking you questions, and maybe between us we’ll come up with a good sketch.”

  Looking mildly curious at the idea, Roy took the pencil in his hand and looked down at the piece of paper. Then he looked up at Hanson. “You can leave anytime,” Roy said.

  Hanson smiled. “Yeah, I’ll be back in a bit to check on you.” And, with that, he returned to his desk.

  As he got there, Mark looked over at him and asked, “What’s with the kid?”