Holly smiled sweetly. “Thank you all so much.”
CHAPTER
20
B ack at her desk, Holly called in Hurd Wallace and Bob Hurst. “I want to bring you up to date on something,” she said. “I interviewed Sam Sweeney yesterday, and he eventually admitted that he heard the shot that hit Chief Marley, a single shot.”
Hurst spoke up. “I went over all that very thoroughly with him several times, and he didn’t tell me that.”
“Maybe he felt less threatened after having been released,” Holly said. “He also told me that he heard heated arguing before the shot was fired, from two or three men, and that, after the shot was fired, he heard two car doors slam, indicating two perps. He said the car—not a truck or large vehicle—made a U-turn and drove north on A1A.”
“What else did he say?”
“That was it. I thought you should both have his information for your investigation.”
“Thanks, Chief,” Hurst said, but he was looking embarrassed for not having produced it himself.
“Is anybody getting anything?”
“Not a thing,” Wallace said. “I’ve interviewed every street officer, and there’s just nothing.”
Hurst spoke up. “I think the reason for that is that this was some sort of isolated incident, not connected to any other criminal activitiy that our snitches might know about. Everything points to it being a stopping of a vehicle that went wrong—speeding, drunk driving, broken taillight, suspicious activity—something like that.”
Holly didn’t believe that for a moment, but then she knew a little more than Hurst did. “That would seem to cover the events,” she said. “Except for the fact of Hank Doherty’s murder.”
Neither of the men said anything.
“Whoever shot the chief took his shotgun from his car, went straight to Hank Doherty’s and killed him.”
“We don’t know that,” Wallace said.
“Can you think of any other scenario that works?”
“You’re right, Chief,” Hurst said. “She’s right, Hurd; the two shootings are connected by the shotgun.”
“Anything new on the chief’s condition?” Wallace asked, changing the subject.
Holly quickly decided to tell them. “The chief woke up yesterday and started talking.”
Two sets of eyebrows went up. “Did he say who shot him? Anything at all?” Hurst asked.
“He remembered nothing about the incident or anything that had occurred for a good five weeks before it. His last memory was of meeting with me, on the occasion when he hired me to come here.”
“Any chance he’ll regain some of that memory?” Wallace asked.
“The news gets worse, I’m afraid. He went to sleep while I was there, and this morning, the nurses couldn’t wake him. He’s back in a coma, and the doctor can’t offer any real prognosis.”
Wallace nodded. “For a minute there I thought we’d had a break.”
“So did I,” Holly said, “but we’re going to have to solve this crime without the chief’s help. The odds of his waking up and remembering everything have gotten a lot worse. Although the doctor hasn’t actually said so, my feeling was that he didn’t expect him to recover.” She watched the two men carefully for their reactions, and they were what she would have expected—sadness and worry on the part of Hurst, and the usual lack of emotion on the part of Wallace.
“Where do we go from here?” Hurst asked.
“We start again from the beginning,” Holly said. “I want you to visit the crime scene again and, this time, work both sides of the road. When they made the U-turn, they could have thrown something out. Check out Hank Doherty’s again, too; see if we missed anything.”
“I’ll talk to Sweeney again, too,” Hurst said, sounding annoyed that the man hadn’t given up all his information the first time around.
“I think Mr. Sweeney has left us,” Holly said. “Anyway, he told me that was his intention.”