The Shooter

were reported during the night before, and Robbie came up to investigate it. What’s the bet we have another security guard with a hero complex? He’s going to be way too helpful and eager.”
“What did he find?” I asked as I surveyed the bookshelf.
“Waltz was found with a giant hole in his neck… Excuse me for a moment,” Casey said, swallowing hard, and holding up her fist to cover her mouth. She glanced over the photos of Waltz’s dead body. “The bullet left quite the hole in his neck.”
I nodded. It was a lot to take in and poor Casey looked like she was going to be sick. She closed the police file, took a moment to calm down, and then came back into the living room.
“Casey.” I called out as I stared at the bookshelf. “Here’s the second bullet hole.”
She walked over and studied the hole in the wall. “Why would he fire one shot into the bookshelf before he turned the gun on himself? Was he testing if the gun worked?”
“Maybe.” My mind was racing at a hundred miles an hour. “If this was a suicide, then the second bullet means nothing, but if this is a murder investigation, then the second bullet becomes a factor.”
“He was trying to shoot the attacker?”
“Possibly, but there’s an old trick the mob used. A hitman would shoot the target while wearing gloves, then once the target is dead, they place the target’s hand around the gun, and fire the gun into another area. The second shot leaves gun residue on the deceased’s hand, and makes it look like he pulled the trigger. And if we look at the angle…” I studied the hole in the wall and pointed to where the dead body once laid. “Yep. It lines up. If Waltz had enemies, then there’s suspicion.”
Casey moved to the bookshelf and began to scan the framed photos, the only piece of personality we’d seen in the penthouse so far. She picked up one of the large, framed photographs. “Hey, Jack, who am I looking at? This photo here, with Anthony Waltz and the fish.”
I leaned over her shoulder and took a quick glance.
“Jeffery Stone. Another big shot attorney. Face used to be all over the papers because of his high-profile clients. Similar to our Mr. Waltz. It’s no surprise they’d go fishing together. They must get around in the same circles.”
Casey squinted her eyes and considered the name, rolling it around in her mind. “Yeah but… there’s something else. This guy died last year.”
I paused for a moment, a thought tracking through my head. “That’s right, he did,” I replied. “All over the news. It was reported that it was too much for him. He shot himself…”
“In the neck.” Casey finished my sentence. “In exactly the same way.”

Chapter 2


The charm of the third largest city in the country attracted all sorts of characters from other areas, including Anthony Waltz. From our preliminary research, we’d found that Waltz had arrived from Idaho twenty-five years earlier and by the looks of it, he’d worked just about every one of the days since. Some people liked to spend their lives surrounded by family, others surrounded by memories, and others liked to have nothing at all. For Anthony Waltz, being surrounded by expensive possessions was clearly his passion. He owned two penthouse apartments, two sports cars, and numerous pieces of ridiculously expensive artwork. He also had quite the collection of Patek Philippe watches, Armani suits, and Salvatore Ferragamo shoes. Just one of those watches would be worth more than the average annual salary.
Casey and I spent an hour in Anthony Waltz’s apartment, taking breaks to step into the hallway when the smell of death became too much. Touches of a life outside of work were minimal—a few photos, only a handful of books, and one jigsaw puzzle box. There wasn’t a diary, a notebook, or even a complete photo album. Apart from the blood stains, there was nothing else out of place.
While we searched, Kenneth Daley went to the coffee shop nearby, waiting for our call, unable to step back into the apartment. Not that I blamed him—the smell was overwhelming. Casey and I took more than a hundred and fifty photos while searching the apartment, and we went through most of Waltz’s belongings, filling our minds with questions. When we were through, we called Daley, and he met us back in the hallway.
“The man who found the body, is he working now?” I asked as I shut the apartment door behind us.
“He’s downstairs in the security room. He works the night shift,” Daley looked at his watch. “So, he still should be working for the next hour or so.”
“We’d like to ask him a number of questions about what he found that morning.” Casey added.
Daley agreed and led us to the elevator.
“He was a good man,” Daley said without conviction. Once inside the spacious elevator, he leaned against the back wall, shaking his head, clearly not sure he believed what he said. “That’s what you should say when someone is dead, isn’t it? The old adage that you shouldn’t speak ill of the deceased. But the truth is… I don’t know if he was a good man. He helped people defeat the system. Changed lives. Got felons out of prison. But he did all that for power, money, and status. He didn’t care about his clients. He only pretended to care until they paid him.”
That wasn’t my idea of a good man, and I wasn’t sure that Daley was convinced either.
“What are your first thoughts?” Daley asked when we didn’t respond. “Is there anything there at all that might indicate that he didn’t kill himself? Anything at all?”
“There are things we can look into.” I replied, keeping my cards close to my chest.