Extra Kill - Dell Shannon Read Free

it works out in my book. Call it five past nine when
the shots were fired at us and Joe was killed. Say it was the kids,
they've got to get over to Vineyard—which runs the same way as San
Dominguez, it's not a cross street—and be going west there
hell-bent for election when Price and Hopper spotted them two-three
minutes later. Because Price's call in, saying they were on them, was
clocked at seven minutes past nine, and Gonzales and Farber got the
word where to join them a minute later. The ambulance call Price put
in, same time as he reported arresting the kids, came over at eleven
minutes past nine. And at about that time I was calling in about Joe.
I can't figure how it could've been more than four minutes between
Joe's getting shot and Price and Hopper picking up those kids. And
you know, I don't suppose they gave one look at the car and spotted
it, bang, right off—they'd take a closer look to be sure it was
those kids, which cuts down the time a little."
    "Mmh, yes. You've really gone into this, haven't
you?" Mendoza tilted back his chair, regarding the opposite wall
thoughtfully. "That sounds like a very short space of time, but
a lot of things can happen in three or four minutes, and you're not
absolutely sure of the times on your end, are you? Even if you'd just
happened to look at your watch before Bartlett was shot, it could
have been off a bit from the clocks in the radio room here."
    "Yes, sir, I know. But another thing, as I don't
need to tell you, Price and Hopper didn't just slam bracelets on the
kids and rush right back, to report in, there'd be a couple of
minutes there, getting the kids out of their car and so on .... Well,
I don't know, it just seems to me—"
    "Look," said Hackett, rubbing his jaw.
"Leave all this thirty seconds, twenty seconds business out,
what you're saying is, it seems to you that by the time you got sent
to meet that ambulance, the kids had been busy with Price and Hopper
a little too long to have been over on San Dominguez when Bartlett
was killed. Now I've got just this to say. Time's funny—when a
lot's happening, sometimes it seems to go faster and sometimes
slower—you've had that experience?" Walsh nodded silently. "I
agree with you that it all happened damn fast, but we've got no check
on exact times, and nobody can say just on that account it
couldn't've been those kids. And the gun checks—as much
identification as we'll ever get. I don't need to remind you it was a
homemade gun with a smooth bore, so, sure, Ballistics can't say
definitely this bullet came out of that gun—but the market cashier
and Bartlett both had .38 caliber bullets in them, and the kids had a
half a box of 'em left. It looks pretty open and shut."
    "I know," said Walsh helplessly. "All
I can say is, even making every allowance for the way you do lose
track of time in the middle of a thing like that—well, I still feel
it's too tight. And, Sergeant, why did they turn off San Dominguez if
it was them?"
    "Why shouldn't they?"
    "It's the main drag," said Walsh, "the
best road along there. They were all from that section, they'd know
the streets. They must've known that if I was on their tail after
they'd fired at us, their best chance of losing me was to stay on San
Dominguez, because it's a divided highway and not much traffic that
time of night. They could make tracks and still do enough weaving in
and out of what traffic there was to throw me off. They'd know I
couldn't have got their plate number—it's dark as hell along there,
those arc lights are so high—and they'd blacked out their
taillight. Look, you get off the main drag along there, most of the
cross streets are full of potholes and not all of 'em go through to
the next main street, Vineyard. They'd be damn fools to turn off
right away, and take a chance on getting to the next boulevard—they
couldn't be sure I wasn't on them when they'd turned off, the way
they must've if they were going to be spotted where we know Price and
Hopper