The Shooter

buy him another one.
“I’ve got it.” Casey said, and picked up the glass, unable to stand his presence any longer.
McMillian’s eyes lingered on Casey’s behind as she walked away, and he made a small whistle sound. He looked back at me with a sleazy grin. I responded with a deathly stare. He understood my expression and put his hands in the air.
“What can you tell me about Kenneth Daley?” I pressed. “Why would he ask us to look into the death of Anthony Waltz?”
“Daley? Well, who knows? The guy could be suspicious or maybe he got a tip-off somewhere. Daley’s got a lot of connections around the city. And some of these connections might be a little bit dangerous.” McMillian drew a long breath. “Daley didn’t get along with Waltz, but they were fellow alumni from the Chicago Law School, I think. I’d met Waltz a few times, and he wasn’t a good guy. Super arrogant and a bit of a sleaze. Just the same as a lot of those guys.”
“If you suspected Waltz was murdered, would you think Daley was involved?”
“Daley? Maybe.” He shrugged. “But if any lawyer was murdered, I’d look at Jonathon DiMarco first.” He chewed harder on his gum. “DiMarco’s a dangerous man. We didn’t have anything that looked like a connection to Jeffery Stone’s death. Not at the time anyway. I mean, yeah, there was—what d’ya call them things? A Vlog? —on his freak show website, where he totally ran Stone’s reputation into the ground. That was only a week before Jeffery Stone shot himself.”
“What’s the website called?”
“D-TAL. It means ‘Death to All Lawyers.’ Look it up. DiMarco doesn’t run it, I’m not even sure if he’s a part of it, but his face is all over it. Every time DiMarco makes a video about defense lawyers, it’s on that website.”
Casey returned with one pint of ale and placed it down. She stood at the end of the table. She’d had enough.
I stood up, shutting the folders and tucking them under my arm. “We’ll be in contact with you if we need you again.”
“You’re not joining me for another one?” he pleaded. “Come on. At least the pretty girl should stay. Keep me company. We could have a great evening together, sweetheart.”
McMillian grinned and winked at Casey, before he looked her up and down, and licked his lips. Casey raised her eyebrows, and her fists clenched.
“We’re busy today,” I said and ushered Casey out the door of the bar.
We walked to the parking lot, leaving the stink of McMillian behind us. Casey was silent until we reached the truck, where she leaned against the door and looked at me. “Tell me we don’t have to deal with him for long? I hate guys like that. They think that women are their property to use.”
“Good luck if he tried to use you.” I smiled. A number of men had tried to take advantage of Casey, but she was tougher than most. She was a brown-belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and had spent time as a mixed martial arts fighter. The size of her opponent never mattered. She could choke most people out in a matter of seconds.
“So, what did the sexist pig tell you?” Casey asked.
“When you went to buy the beer, he said that Jonathon DiMarco has a website with videos where he talks about defense lawyers.”
“Whoa. That’s big. What’s the website called?”
“D-TAL. Stands for ‘Death to All Lawyers.’”
“There’s no mixed message there.” Casey began typing on her phone. Her eyes almost popped out of her head as she brought up the website and began reading. “And it looks like we’ve got a prime suspect.”

Chapter 11


Our office was quiet. The darkness outside was kept at bay by the yellow bulbs and flickering fluorescents, and desk lamps boosted the light over our desks. I could feel Casey’s energy levels begin to ebb as the second day of the case refused to end. In the midst of an investigation, long days were to be expected. It was part of the territory—some days were slow, some days were lazy, but when the pressure was on, the days never seemed to end.
Casey and I were both searching through the website that uploaded all of Jonathon DiMarco’s rants about defense lawyers. None of it was pretty. I hated even being on the site, but it was what the investigation called for. For hours, I read through pages of information about how DiMarco wanted to hang defense lawyers. All the information was suspicious, but nothing that pointed to his guilt.
“Look what we have here.” Casey swung her computer monitor around to face me. “Jonathon DiMarco in all his glory. He doesn’t have his name on the site, that’s why it didn’t come up in our earlier searches, but there’s no doubt it’s him. Look at his picture.” She shifted in her seat and turned the computer screen slightly so that I could get a better look. The home page had a huge head shot of DiMarco, staring sternly down the lens of a camera with the title of the page splashed across the top in large black lettering with a patriotic American flag waving at the end. His dark eyes seemed cold, almost as lifeless as the marbled gaze of the deer above his fireplace. “‘Justice for all, and not just the rich.’ What a catchphrase, albeit a bit somber. I like how he’s underlined the ‘all,’ a lovely touch that is,” Casey mused as she reached over and dragged the website page upwards to see more of the information. She clicked on a link to Testimonies of Truth and the page filled with thumbnails of short video clips.
“What’s this?” Casey asked, selecting one of the frozen frames and clicking the play button. A woman’s face we hadn’t seen before, elderly and