The Survivors Club by Lisa Gardner

Griffin.
    “Sergeant,” the major said.
    “Yes, sir,” Griffin said. In spite of himself, he could feel his stomach tense, as if steeling for a blow.
    “You look good,” the major said.
    “Thank you, sir.”
    “Assessment?”
    “What?” For a moment, he was confused.
My anxiety is operating within normal parameters. No. Wait. Ah, shit.
    “The situation, Sergeant. Tell me what you think.”
    Griffin’s shoulders came down. His stomach unclenched. Talking about the job, he could finally relax. “Professional hit. Shooter camps out on the courthouse roof. Nails his target, Eddie Como, aka the College Hill Rapist, as he exits the ACI van shortly after eight-thirty this morning. Shooter then returns to his car to make a quick getaway, except his client left him one last payment in the form of a bomb.”
    “Confirmation from the state fire marshal?”
    “No, sir. My understanding is that the scene is too hot to approach. It will probably be another hour or so.”
    “But you’re sure the shooter is DOA?”
    Griffin shrugged. “We know we have one DOA in the RISD parking lot. Given that the parking lot explosion happened within ten minutes of the shooting, I think it’s a safe bet that the two incidents are related. Now, one possibility is that our shooter actually performed two hits—the first being Eddie Como, the second being some unidentified person in the parking lot. But in my opinion, that’s a low probability scenario. For one thing, it’s uncommon to change MO’s—going from sniper to explosives expert. For another, we know the shooter left his assault rifle and a full magazine of two-twenty-threes up on the roof. Why leave the gun if he still had work to do? No, I think it’s more probable that the sniper felt he’d completed his task, abandoned his tools in order to make a clean getaway, then ran into an unexpected complication when he got into his car. Ergo, the shooter is now one extracrispy DOA.”
    The major grunted. Lieutenant Morelli suppressed a smile.
    “Next steps?” Captain Dodge spoke up. Griffin turned his attention toward him, forcing himself to remain patient even though he was being grilled like an FNG, a fucking new guy.
    “Assuming it’s a professional,” Griffin said briskly, “we need to identify the shooter, establish that he did kill Eddie Como—which will be pretty easy thanks to the videotape—then find a connection between the shooter and his client. Identifying the shooter shouldn’t be too hard. We have a visual of his face. The state fire marshal will retrieve the VIN of his car. The ME will get prints. Bada-bing, bada-boom.”
    “But that could take days,” the captain said pointedly. His gaze swept toward the park, where the media churned up the grass and strained against the police barricades.
    “Well then, consider this. The RISD parking lot. It’s permit only, right? And we know the shooter must have been parked there for a while, because he was camped out on the roof. Assuming he didn’t want to call attention to himself by getting a parking ticket, or worse, lose his getaway by being towed, that means he probably had a parking pass. We contact RISD, obtain a list of names, run the names through the system and get a big head start on names to go with the face.”
    “Not bad,” the captain said.
    “Cross-reference the names of people with RISD parking passes, with the rape victims and families,” Griffin added.
    “Even better,” the major concurred.
    Griffin, however, had started to frown.
    “Uh-oh,” Lieutenant Morelli said. “I know that look.”
    “Ah, I don’t know . . .”
    “Humor us, Sergeant. At the rate things are going, we could use a good laugh today.”
    Griffin had to think it through. “We’re getting a long list of assumptions here. Assumption one is that we have a sniper hired to kill alleged College Hill Rapist, Eddie Como. Assumption two is that the obvious motive for hiring the shooter is revenge, meaning the obvious