in the face. But Ed Vargas didn’t catch his slip and simply folded his arms across his chest, brooding and looking more exhausted with each second. Then, with a quick burst of energy, he took a few steps forward and turned back toward us.
“Please, have a look around. Although I don’t think there’s much left to see. The cops took everything with them when they left. I’ll be back in a few minutes with a retainer.” Then he turned and walked back through the French doors we’d come through.
Jendrek and I stood quietly for a moment, making sure he was gone. Then Jendrek raised his eyebrows and whispered, “What do you think?”
I smiled back and said, “Why are you whispering?”
Jendrek chuckled, and spoke in a normal voice. “I guess it seemed like the right thing to do. There’s obviously a lot of tension in the air.”
“You can say that again. There’s something odd between the son and the wife.”
Jendrek had a glimmer in his eye. “You think it could be because they’re the same age?”
I smiled back and strolled over to the edge of the deck, peering around the side of the house. There was a narrow set of stairs leading down to the walkway and I started down them before looking back at Jendrek. “You want to check out the side of the house?”
We ducked under a line of yellow police tape as we neared the window. There was a small circle of chalk on the sidewalk that Jendrek pointed to with his toe.
“This must be where they found the empty shell from the shot.”
I grunted at the spot and turned my attention toward the window. Although the glass was nearly floor to ceiling on the inside of the room, from the outside it started at about chin height on me. Looking upward into the room, someone standing outside the window would have to be reasonably tall and very close to the glass before they could see where the floor met the opposite wall of the room.
“Pretty low angle,” Jendrek said from behind me. I turned to see him standing back about four feet from the side of the house, right in the center of the walkway. He couched and held his arms up like he was pointing a gun. It was an unnatural pose for his squat body.
“You figure they had to be coming down the path when they looked in and saw whatever they thought they saw. Given where the bullet hole in the glass is and where the chalk outline is on the floor in there, the cop must have been shooting at a backward angle. Like they’d damned near walked past the window before they saw what was inside.”
I went and stood next to Jendrek to see what he was looking at. I was imagining the position of the chalk outline when I realized, “The shooter would have had a clear view of Vargas from at least the knees up. He would have been looking straight at him.”
Jendrek went up to the glass and peered in at the outline. “I think you’re right, judging by that outline. It looks like he fell backward from a position facing where you’re standing right now.”
I’d assumed the position of the shooter. I studied the surroundings, trying to imagine how it had been at eleven the previous evening. There were no lights along the walkway, so it would have been dark along the path. There would have been music or noise coming from inside; it had been a noise disturbance call, after all.
“It 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