was dark out here, but the light would have been on inside,” I said, thinking out loud. “They would have had a perfect view from out here. A clear line of sight view, right at Vargas.”
“And,” Jendrek interrupted, excitement building in his voice, “because the light was on inside, Vargas wouldn’t have been able to see the cops out here. It would have been too dark. Even if they’d tried to signal him to put the gun down, there’s no way he could have seen them.”
I stood there, mulling it over.
I pictured the events again. Two cops arrived at the house, responding to a noise call on Halloween. They found a house where a party appeared to be going on. They decided to go around the side of the house for some reason. As they came along the dark path, they passed a window of a lit up room. Just before they pass it, they look inside and see a man facing toward them with a gun in his hand. There was another man in the room too. Something about what they saw caused them to react. A gun was drawn, a shot fired, and within seconds, Don Vargas was dead from a clean shot through the chest.
Jendrek and I had always agreed between ourselves that nothing was ever too stupid to say, as long as it was just us. It was a rule he laid down when I started working for him. As I ran through it, I said, “I wonder what order they were walking in.”
Jendrek gave me a curious look.
“The cops, I mean. I wonder if the shooter was in the front or the back.” Jendrek still looked confused. I went on, “Because if the shooter was in the front, then it just doesn’t make any sense at all. But if the shooter was the one in back, then it’s almost like he was waiting for the perfect spot. You know, stopping where he had perfect aim, waiting for his partner to get out of the way. Almost like he meant to kill him.”
A cold expression came over Jendrek. Like the possibility wasn’t something he even wanted to think about. I walked back down toward the front of the house, then turned and started walking back.
“Look,” I said. “They’re coming along here. It’s dark. There’s a bright light spilling out of the window. You don’t think they look inside the second they come to it? Of course they do, it’s the only thing there is to look at, it’s nighttime, it’s pitch black out here. They look inside. They see Vargas and this Pete guy. But they get all the way to here,” I took five long steps and stopped where we figured the shooter had been, “before they shoot? Why? What happens in the two seconds it takes to cover this space that causes the cop to shoot? What happens inside the room to go from a situation that doesn’t require shooting to one that does?”
I could see Jendrek running it through in his head, tracing my story along the path with his eyes.
“At least one explanation,” I went on, “is that nothing changed at all. Vargas and Pete were standing there when the cops first saw them and they were still standing there a couple seconds later. Same positions, Vargas holding the gun the whole time, nothing’s changed except the angle from which to shoot. One explanation is that the cop took his time, lining up his shot, like he knew he was going to shoot the whole time.”
Jendrek cracked a wide smile and said, “I think you’ve snapped, Ollie. Unless you can prove Vargas welched on a huge debt to this cop, I don’t think that theory is going to fly. Isn’t it much more likely that the cop’s just an idiot?”
I said, “Probably.”
Ed Vargas appeared on the path at the foot of the stairs leading down from the deck. “Mr. Jendrek,” he called out, waving something in his hand.
Jendrek turned and walked back toward him. “Please, call me Mark,” he said as he reached Vargas. I followed behind. We went back up the stairs and I noticed the girl in the T-shirt sitting in a lounge chair on the far end of the deck. She turned to watch us as we walked into the house through the French doors.
Vargas handed Jendrek an envelope and collapsed into a chair near a bar at the back of the room, away from the windows and the