Read Online At the Scene of the Crime by Dana Stabenow - Free Book Online Page B

ready, Hawkins strained to see into the cars on either side of him as he moved down the middle of the aisle. He wished he had thought to ask Mrs. Triplett where their parking place was. This was slow going, one car at a time, first on the left, then on the right, then back on the left . . .

    Sweat ran down Hawkins’s back; his hair matted to his forehead as he inched forward. The garage was cooler than outside but only a little and the heat pressed in on Hawkins as he searched the Lexus, then the BMW, then the Jaguar.
    Still no sign of Triplett.
    To his left and behind him, Hawkins heard the scraping of a door and it occurred to him that maybe he had beaten Triplett to the garage and the killer was now behind him. Hawkins spun and trained his pistol on the doorway and saw a nine millimeter Glock coming through the door first. He increased the pressure on the trigger. Just as he was about to squeeze off a round, Hawkins saw the burly frame of Yackowski follow his pistol into the garage.
    Then a car roared to life and Hawkins whirled as a gray Lexus lunged out of a parking place, tires squealing as it charged toward him.
    Steadying himself, even as he heard Raines shout behind him, Hawkins took aim and squeezed the trigger, once, twice, three times. The car continued toward him even as the first shot punched through the windshield. The other two bullets followed the leader through the spiderwebbing glass as Hawkins dove for cover between two cars.
    The Lexus heeled to the left, scraping against a concrete pillar, sparks flying as the car smashed into a parked Cadillac. Even before the sound of the crash had fully died away, Hawkins was on his feet, running toward the smashed Lexus, his gun poised to shoot. The air bag had deployed and Triplett was trying to get out from under it as Hawkins aimed his pistol through the shattered passenger-side window.
    Triplett saw Hawkins and the weapon and stopped battling the bag and raised his hands. Yackowski, Stark, and Raines came running up.
    The detectives yanked the suspect out of the car and cuffed him. Raines reached a latex-gloved hand through the window, picked up a white garbage bag, and carefully shook the broken glass off it. She set the bag on the concrete floor. Inside were two lavender bath towels that Hawkins recognized as a match to the ones in the Hoff apartment.

    Two shell casings fell out of the towels.
    Stark read Triplett his rights, but the suspect shouted over them: “Carl shot Caroline! I was just defending myself.”
    Hawkins pointed to the garbage bag. “And this?”
    “I panicked. I didn’t think anybody would believe me.”
    “You’re a smart man,” Yackowski said. “’Cause we don’t.”
    Triplett’s eyes widened.
    “He was running away from you,” Yackowski said. “You didn’t have to shoot him. You had the gun. Why didn’t you just call 911 and bust his ass?”
    Triplett’s gaze fell and he said nothing.
    Hawkins stepped forward. “Because Hoff knew. That’s it, isn’t it, Roger?”
    Triplett kept his eyes on the cement.
    Yackowski asked, “Knew what?”
    Hawkins’s eyes bored into Triplett until the suspect finally met his eyes.
    His voice barely above a whisper, Triplett said, “He knew about Caroline and me.”
    Yackowski, incredulous, said, “You witnessed a man kill your lover, his ex-wife . . . and then you shot him because he found out about your affair?”
    “Our money’s all Angela’s. If she found out about Caroline and me, she’d have divorced me, whether Caroline was alive or dead.”
    Yackowski was shaking his head now. He looked over at his young partner, who shrugged and rolled his eyes.
    Hawkins laid a hand on Triplett’s shoulder. “Why pick up the shell casings, and take them with you?”
    Triplett didn’t answer.
    Hawkins pointed at the burn on the man’s arm. “The ejected shell casing was hot and burned you—you figured we could get DNA from that. You didn’t know which casing burned you, so you took