The Master Plan (2009) (18 page)

"Hi," Dana said as she passed by them.

"Who are you?" one of the boys who appeared to be
about five years old asked.

She stopped. "I'm a friend of Mr. Hunter's. Do you know
him?"

"Nope," the little boy said. "I don't know nobody with
that name, but another man just asked me the same thing."

"Sounds like Hunter may have company," Sam said.

"Is the other man still up there?"

The boy shrugged and looked at his two playmates. They
were busy with their trucks and didn't seem interested in
their friend or Dana and Sam.

Dana and Sam climbed two more flights to the third floor. The apartment numbers were painted on the brown doors
in yellow fluorescent paint. Number 302 was the second
apartment to the left of the staircase.

As they approached the door, a gunshot rang out from
inside the apartment and something big and heavy fell to
the floor.

Sam banged on the door. His knock was answered by
another gunshot that splintered the thin wood on the door.

"Call 911," Sam whispered as he and Dana braced themselves against the wall of the apartment and moved down
the hallway away from it.

Dana heard the sound of breaking glass inside the apartment as the dispatcher answered her 911 call. She quickly
reported that shots had been fired and gave the address of
the building.

Suddenly other doors on the third floor opened. Sam
shouted at them to stay inside their apartments.

"I'll bet the shooter went out the window to the fire escape," Sam said. "I'll try and catch him."

Sam started for the staircase, but Dana grabbed the sleeve
of his overcoat and hung on. "Don't be crazy," she yelled.
"He's got a gun, you don't."

The other doors opened again, and this time people came
into the hallway. "What's going on?" a big man with tattoos
on his arms yelled as he approached them.

"Someone shot at us from inside this apartment," Sam
told him.

Without a moment's hesitation, the big man slammed into the door of 302 and sent it banging against the inside
wall of the room. He ran inside with Sam and Dana right
behind him.

A man who looked a lot like Tony Hunter was on the
floor bleeding. Sam and Dana stopped in their tracks, but
the neighbor ran over and knelt down next to the man.

"Oh, no," he cried. "Someone shot Johnny. Call the police. Call an ambulance."

"We already did," Sam told him. "They're on their way."

Dana looked at the shattered window and the metal bar
stool that was on its side on the fire escape. It didn't take
much thought to surmise that the shooter had broken the
window in order to flee down the fire escape.

More neighbors were in the hallway crowding the doorway to get a look inside the apartment. The big man stood up
and shook his head. "Too late, baby," he said. "He's dead."

As sirens sounded in the distance, Dana remembered
the boys on the second floor landing. She hurried out of the
apartment and down the stairs.

The little boys were gone, probably scared inside by the
gunshots and the shouting. Dana began knocking on doors.
Finally the last one at the end of the hallway opened and
the little boy she had talked to earlier answered it.

"Hi," Dana said. "Is your mom at home?"

"She's sleeping."

"Where are your friends?"

"They're not my friends, they're my brothers," he said.
"They got scared and ran in the closet"

"That's was smart of them," she said. "I was wondering
if you could tell me about the man you saw going upstairs
just before my friend and I saw you"

"He was old and had a black hat with a red bird on it."

"How old do you think he was?"

The boy shrugged. "I don't know."

"Did you see his hair?"

"I told you he was wearing a hat," the little boy said as if
she were a dunce.

"So you did," Dana replied. "Can you tell me more about
the hat?"

"No," he said just before he slammed the door in her
face.

Dana was about to knock again when two uniformed policemen came running up the stairs.

"You the lady that called?" one of them asked her.

"Yes. It's the third floor, apartment 302," she replied.

"Okay. Come with us, please"

Dana followed the officers up the stairs. By now, Sam had
managed to get the other neighbors away from the door and
grouped together at the far end of the hall. The big man who
was obviously a friend of Hunter's was still in the apartment
kneeling by the body.

Dana heard more feet clamoring up the stairs and within
a few minutes two paramedics appeared dragging a gurney.

One of the policemen who had entered the apartment
came out and told the paramedics to leave, confirming the
neighbor's earlier announcement. John Hunter was dead.

The arrival of the police had caused all the neighbors except for Hunter's big friend to scurry back to their apartments and lock their doors.

Dana and Sam stood in the hallway with him while the
police assessed the situation and called in their report.

"I take it you were a friend of Hunter's?" Dana asked
the man.

"We were in the joint together. I got him this apartment
when he got out last week. Who are you?"

"My name is Dana Sloan and the gray-haired gentleman
talking to the police is Sam McGowan. We work for a newspaper in Crescent Hills."

"What did you want with Johnny?"

"I knew his brother, Tony. I came here to tell him that
Tony was murdered last night."

"His brother was killed?" the big man said incredulously.
"What the hell is going on?"

"I don't know. Did Johnny tell you anything about his
brother?"

"Just that he was mad at him about something and was
going to see him as soon as he got permission from his parole officer."

"Dana? What are you doing here?"

Dana turned around to see Jack O'Brien standing on the
landing behind her. Jack had reddish blond hair and a ruddy
complexion. He was as tall as Bruno, but lean and lankylooking.

"Hi, Jack," Dana said. "What are you doing here?"

"I asked you first," Jack said without any humor in his
voice.

"Sam and I came here to talk to John Hunter. Unfortunately, we arrived too late. Someone shot him"

Jack swore softly under his breath. "He's dead?"

"Yes," Dana replied.

"Bruno sent me here to give him the bad news about his
brother and ask him some questions." Jack looked curiously
at Dana. "Bruno know you're here?"

"No, he doesn't"

Jack nodded and pulled a cell phone out of his pocket
and dialed a number. "Hey, buddy. I'm here at Hunter's apartment in Chicago and guess what? Someone shot the
guy." He listened for a few seconds, then continued, "Yeah.
Damn shame isn't it? But listen, guess who I found standing
in the hallway outside Hunter's apartment, your pretty little
girlfriend." Jack smiled as he listened to whatever Bruno
was saying, then held out the phone to Dana. "He wants to
talk to you"

Dana stared at the phone for a few seconds then finally
took it from Jack. "Hello," she said casually as if she had run
into Jack at the shopping mall, rather than a murder scene.

"What are you doing there?" Bruno asked in a menacing
tone.

"Sam and I came here to talk to Hunter, but someone got
here before us. He's dead"

"Are you and Sam okay?"

"Yes"

"Good, now get yourselves back to Crescent Hills. I
want to talk to both of you"

"I don't think we'll be allowed to leave real soon," Dana
told him.

"Why not?"

"We're witnesses."

"Oh, great," Bruno said loudly. "You saw the shooter?"

"Not exactly. When we got to Hunter's door we heard a
shot. Sam pounded on the door and the shooter fired the gun
at us. Then he threw a metal bar stool through the window
and ran down the fire escape"

"You just can't stay out of trouble, can you?" Those were
the words Bruno used when he was about to lecture her on
her job and the dangers of it.

Dana was in no mood to hear it again. "I've got to go. The
police want to question me" Dana pushed the button that
ended the call. She handed the phone back to Jack O'Brien.

"I'll bet he's steamed, huh?" Jack asked.

"Of course not," Dana said. "Bruno understands that I'm
just doing my job and he supports me."

"You wish," Jack replied with a big smile. "Well, I guess
I'll go and introduce myself to the local cops" He walked
into the apartment with his detective shield held out in front
of him.

Dana turned around to find that Hunter's prison mate
had vanished, but Sam was standing in the hallway now.
"Bad luck to have O'Brien show up," Sam said.

Dana nodded. "Bruno is fuming"

"He'll get over it," Sam assured her.

"I told him we were witnesses and we'd probably be here
awhile."

"Right. The uniforms reported in. The homicide detectives should be showing up any minute."

"I'm starving. I haven't eaten since breakfast this morning," Dana said absently.

"Maybe they'll have doughnuts at the police station,"
Sam told her.

Dana nodded. "What happened to the big guy?"

"When no one was looking he went back to his apartment,
got a jacket and hat, and left the building."

"He's not really a witness," Dana said. "But he did tell me
that he and Hunter were in prison together and he got him
this apartment"

"Interesting"

"He also said that John was angry with Tony for some
reason and wanted to go to Crescent Hills to see him, but
was waiting for permission from his parole officer."

"Very interesting," Sam said.

it was well after midnight when Sam dropped Dana off at
her apartment. They had been interrogated separately by a
pair of Chicago homicide detectives and signed statements
for them.

Dana told them about the little boys on the second floor
who claimed to see the man who was in Hunter's apartment
when she and Sam arrived. One of the detectives promised
they would check it out.

There were no doughnuts at the Chicago station and the
coffee they brought Dana was so strong she feared drinking
it would keep her awake for a week.

Before they left the station, Sam called the newsroom at
the Globe and dictated a story about John Hunter's murder
in Chicago.

On the way home, Sam made a stop at a fast-food place
and they ate their dinner in the car.

Dana was exhausted. She had turned off her cell phone at the police station and had not bothered to turn it on again.
Whatever messages were on it could wait until morning. She
also decided not to check her messages on her home line either. Both phones probably contained messages from Bruno
and she was not up to arguing with him tonight.

"If Bruno's car is in my lot," she had told Sam when they
arrived at her building, "don't stop. Just take me to the
nearest hotel."

Sam laughed. "You've got to talk to him sometime."

"I'll see him tomorrow in court. That will be soon enough
to face his wrath."

"You can say it was all my idea," Sam offered.

Dana brightened. "I just might do that"

Dana's head was swirling from all the questions the police
had thrown at her. She was grateful that Jack O'Brien had decided to return to Crescent Hills and had not insisted on being
present when she and Sam were giving their statements.

Dana didn't like Jack much, maybe because he obviously disapproved of her relationship with Bruno. Jack was
one of those cops who thought reporters were people who
only got in the way and made his job more difficult. Dana
thought that Jack got in the way of his own investigations
because he made snap judgments about people and situations that often took him off in the wrong direction.

In her bedroom, Dana stripped off her clothes and decided to take a long hot shower. She was uptight from the
unsettling events of the night and felt grimy from her time
in the run-down apartment building and the noisy chaos of
the Chicago police station in the same neighborhood.

The shower helped and Dana fell asleep immediately. However, her dreams contained images of little boys, red
birds, and John Hunter's dead body. She was relieved when
her alarm clock roused her from sleep the next morning.

After completing her morning rituals that included two
cups of freshly brewed coffee, Dana braced herself and listened to the messages on her cell phone.

The first one was from Casey. "Hi, Dana. Bruno had more
questions for me, but he seemed satisfied with my answers.
He also questioned Carmen and Cathy, who verified the time
they spent with me. I guess the coroner's report came in, but
Bruno wouldn't tell us what it said. He did say that my fingerprints were on the golf club on the living room floor. I
told him Tony and I often shared the same putter when we
practiced. I'm really grateful to have Troy Kimball at my
side. He is a very good lawyer and that may be why Bruno
went easy on me again today. I'm coming to the office tomorrow. I need to work and stay busy."