The Charleston Assassin by R.H. Johnson

Author:R.H. Johnson [Johnson, R.H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hampton, Westbrook Publishing
Published: 2018-09-13T00:00:00+00:00

29.

Nazareth and Gimble frequently disagreed on key elements of their joint investigations, and that, in their view, made them better at what they did. Certainly no one would argue the point given their enormous success over the years. They had closed more high-profile cases than any other current NYPD detective team and had performed brilliantly during their time as presidential security agents.

Yet their inability to agree on one crucial detail of the Deforest-Crawford case threatened to undermine the effort.

Nazareth was pretty well convinced that whoever had tried to murder his wife had fled the city by now. If that was true, they might as well head home, he argued. Gimble, on the other hand, assumed the shooter was still in the area. The opposing positions were reasonable but irreconcilable.

“Whoever shot at you and missed,” Nazareth reasoned, “feels vulnerable right now. The place was crawling with police within minutes, and it’s highly possible, perhaps even likely, that the shooter assumes he or she was seen driving away. If it were me, I’d be long gone.”

“Unless you were certain you couldn’t be traced to either the bullet or the getaway vehicle,” Gimble countered. “Anyone smart enough to carry out the hits on Deforest and Crawford — and maybe even pass as a woman on the hotel surveillance video — is smart enough to cover his tracks perfectly.”

“And I notice you’re still saying his, not hers.”

“I still can’t make up my mind, Pete. We both assumed we were looking for a male, which naturally was pretty dumb, and the person we saw in the hotel photos didn’t convince me otherwise. The disguise was so bad it was good, if you know what I mean.”

“Tell you what. How about we agree to hang in here for another two days? If we get no additional leads,” he said, “we go home. Whoever wants to kill us knows how to find us in New York, right?”

“Yeah, but he, or maybe she, never tried to get us in New York. For some reason Charleston feels a lot more comfortable.”

The word comfortable struck a chord with Nazareth. All along he had assumed the killer had chosen Charleston simply for the sake of convenience. Advance publicity for the national police conference had provided a firm date and time when Nazareth, and perhaps Gimble, would be at a specific location. That made planning a hit far easier than tracking both of them through the streets of Manhattan and waiting for the right opportunity.

But what if that wasn’t the reason at all? What if the killer just didn’t feel comfortable operating in New York City?

“Comfortable might be the central idea, Tara. Assume for a minute that the killer comes from New York City.”

“Okay.”

“And assume further that he or she doesn’t want to spend life in prison after killing us.”

“Which is usually a fair assumption.”

“And, finally, assume the killer is recognizable for some reason — not by us necessarily, but by whoever might conduct the investigation after we had been murdered. In that case, killing us out of town would make the most sense.

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