“You kids are ignorant liars. You’d screw me in less than a heartbeat. No.”
Jack Yocke shrugged and walked past Harrington’s car, looking around the technicians into the bloody interior. The photographer had finished shooting pictures and radioed in to the Post’s photo desk. Now he was standing beside the Post’s car.
Yocke walked eastward, back along the way the victim had come. He could see where the car had impacted the concrete barrier, scarring it and leaving streaks of paint and chrome. Fragments of headlight and the colored glass of blinkers lay on the pavement amid the dirt and gravel and occasional squashed pop can. He kept his head down and his eyes moving.
He walked on up the road another hundred yards, still looking, past the cars and trucks, breathing the fumes.
The motorists regarded him curiously. Several of them surreptitiously eased their door locks down. One guy in the cab of a truck wanted to question him but he moved on without speaking.
Facing eastward, Yocke could just see the crash site. He looked to the right, the south. Nothing was visible but treetops. Where was the rifleman when he pulled the trigger? He walked back toward the curve, carefully inspecting the naked, gray upthrust branches of the trees.
This was crazy. The guy wasn’t up in a tree! Only military snipers did that kind of thing.
Yocke slipped through the standing vehicles to the south side of the road and walked along scanning the terrain which sloped steeply downward to the noise fence. The rifleman could have stood here on the edge of the road, of course, and fired through a gap in traffic. Or — Yocke stopped and looked at the cars — or he could have fired from another vehicle.
Somewhere in this area, then, the Chrysler impacted the median barrier in that curve.
Yocke took a last look around, then trudged back toward the officials around the wreck.
Milk glanced at him. Yocke thanked him, was ignored, motioned to the photographer, then vaulted the barrier.
The photographer got behind the wheel. Looking back over his shoulder, he put the car in motion as Yocke pulled his door closed.
Yocke extracted a small address book from a hip pocket, looked up a number, then dialed the cellular phone.
“Department of Motor Vehicles.”
“Bob Lassiter, please.”
“Just a moment.”
In a few moments the reporter had his man. “Hey Bob. Jack Yocke. Howzit going?”
“Just gimme the number, Jack.”
“Bob, I really appreciate your help. It’s Maryland, GY3-7097.”
Silence. Yocke knew Lassiter was working the computer terminal on his desk. Yocke got his pen ready. In about fifteen seconds Lassiter said, “Okay, plate’s on a 1987 Chrysler New Yorker registered to a Walter P. Harrington of 686 Bo Peep Drive, Laurel.”
“Bo Peep?”
“Yeah. Cutesy shit like that, probably some cheap subdivision full of fat women addicted to soap operas.”
“Spell Harrington.”
Lassiter did so.
“Thanks, Bob.”
“This is the third time this month, Jack. You promised me the Giants game.”
“I know, Bob. I’m working on it.”
“Yeah. And try to get better seats than last time. We were down so low all we could see was the asses of the Redskins standing in front of the bench.”
“Sure.” Yocke broke the connection. Lassiter wouldn’t get tickets to the Redskins-Giants game: Yocke had already promised those to a source in the mayor’s office.
The reporter made another call. He knew the number. It was The Washington Post library where researchers had access to back issues of the paper on microfilm. The indexes were computerized.
“Susan Holley.”
“Susan, Jack Yocke. Helluva accident on the beltway. Guy shot in the head. Can you see if we have anything on a Walter P. Harrington of 686 Bo Peep Drive, Laurel, Maryland.”
“Bo Peep?”
“Yep. Harrington with two r’s. Also, remember that epidemic of freeway shootings out in California a couple years ago? Can you find out if we ever had any of that around Washington?”
“Freeway snipers, you mean?”
“Well, yes, anything we have on motorists blazing away at each other on the freeway.”
“I’ll call you.”
“Thanks.”
Yocke hung up. He had a gut feeling Harrington had not been a sniper victim since the terrain offered no obvious vantage point for sniping. Sitting a long distance away and potting some driver was the whole kick for the sniping freaks, Yocke suspected.
Yet the freeway shootouts, didn’t those people usually use pistols? He tried to imagine someone using a high-powered rifle on another driver while he kept his own vehicle going straight down the road. That didn’t seem too likely, either.
So what was left? The rifleman in another vehicle with a second person driving. An assassination? Just who the hell was the dead man, anyway?
The story for tomorrow morning’s paper would be long on drama but short on facts. Getting your head shot off on the beltway was big news. But the following stories would be the tough ones. The who and the why. He was going to have to try to get hold of Mrs. Harrington, if there was a Mrs., find out where the dead guy had worked, try to sniff out a possible reason someone might have wanted him dead.
“Drugs, you think?” the photographer asked.
“I don’t know,” Jack Yocke replied. “Never heard of a killing like this one. It had to be a rifle, but there’s no vantage point for a rifleman. If it was close range, why didn’t he use a pistol or submachine gun?”
“Those heavy drug hitters like the Uzis and Mac-10s,” the photographer commented.
“If it had been one of those the car would look like Swiss cheese.” Yocke sighed. “It’s weird. I’ve seen quite a few corpses over the last three years. Who did it and why has never been a mystery. Now this.”
The photographer had the car southbound on Connecticut Avenue. Yocke was idly watching the storefronts. “In there,” he demanded, pointing. “Turn in there.”
The photographer, whose name was Harold Dorgan, complied.
“Over there, by that bookstore. I’ll be in and out like a rabbit.”
“Not again,” Dorgan groaned.
“Hey, this won’t take a minute.” When the car stopped, Yocke stepped out and strode for the door.
It was a small, neighborhood bookstore, maybe twelve hundred square feet, and just now empty of customers. The clerk behind the register was in her mid-to-late twenties, tallish, with a nice figure. She watched Yocke’s approach through a pair of large glasses that hung a half inch too far down her nose.
The reporter gave her his nicest smile. “Hi. You the manager?”
“Manager, owner, and stock clerk. May I help you?” She had a rich, clear voice.
“Jack Yocke, Washington Post.” He held out his hand and she shook it. “I was wondering if you had any copies of my book, Politics of Poverty? If you do, I’d be delighted to autograph them.”
“Oh yes. I’ve seen your byline, Mr. Yocke.” She came out from behind the counter. She was wearing flats, so she was even taller than Jack had first thought, only two or three inches shorter than he was. “Over here. I think I have three copies.”
“Only two,” she said picking them up and handing them to him. “One must have sold.”
“Hallelujah.” Jack grinned. He used his pen to write, “Best Wishes, Jack Yocke,” on the flyleaf of each book.
“Thanks, Ms. …?”
“Tish Samuels.”
He handed her the books and watched her put them back on the shelf. No wedding ring.
“How long have you lived in Washington, Mr. Yocke?”
“Little under three years. Came here from a paper in Louisville, Kentucky.”
“Like the city?”