Nantucket Five-Spot by Steven Axelrod

introductions.
    Tornovitch was examining the building. “Very nice. But all the new construction in the world can’t replace real police work. That’s what controls criminal activity—old fashioned leg work. Knocking on doors.”
    As if he had ever done any of that.
    â€œWe have the criminal activity pretty well under control—sir,” Haden answered. The gap before the ‘sir’ drew Tornovitch’s attention. He had a heightened sensitivity to insubordination, the faint crackle of disrespect, like Billy Delavane’s pug bounding into the kitchen when I peeled the plastic wrapping off the cheddar cheese.
    â€œExcept for the bomber.” He turned to Haden. “This is a little more serious than your usual island drug busts and two-bit DUIs.”
    â€œLet’s not get ahead of ourselves,” I said.” We don’t have a bomber. We have a crank call.”
    â€œReally? You also have the biggest drunk driving problem in New England. And remember—you’re all suspect. One of the 9/11 hijackers was wearing a Nantucket t-shirt. All right? Someone sold it to him. Or maybe it was a gift. We’re still investigating that. There’s no statute of limitations on treason, Kennis. Now let’s get inside, get oriented, and get busy. The clock is ticking, people.”
    Tornovitch strode into the station. Lonnie Fraker hurried after him. Haden shook his head. “Clock? What clock? There’s a clock? Is it going to be ticking until the Pops concert? Because that could really get annoying.”
    â€œGet in there,” I said. “Play nice.”
    I hung back with Franny. “Has he gotten worse or is it just my imagination?”
    She pushed a hand through her hair. “The worse he gets, the faster they promote him. Maybe he knows something we don’t.”
    â€œHe knows you. That’s all he needs.”
    I first met Franny on a case in Los Angeles. A twenty-five hundred-dollar-a-night hooker had been killed. The crime scene looked like a robbery. But the girl had been involved with some prominent drug dealers, and the FBI wound up big-footing the investigation. Franny and Jack Tornovitch were new partners then, long before their transfer to DHS. This was one of their first assignments. Franny was clearly the junior member of the team. He used to send her out for coffee. But she broke the case. She never bought the robbery angle and started poking around into the alibis.
    Detective Sergeant Roy Elkins was lead investigator on the case, out of the Robbery-Homicide Division. He had been my mentor in the LAPD. He knew the girl. He had used her as a drug informant from time to time. Franny had a bad feeling about Roy from the start, but he had a solid alibi for the murder. He had been in line at the Silver Lake post office that Friday, express-mailing a package to his mother for Mother’s Day. Friday was always the worst day for that PO, because all the Mexicans showed up to send home their week’s wages. Long lines, no air-conditioning. A postal clerk verified Elkins’ story. An ambitious, high-ranking officer with no motivation for the killing, the LAPD barely looked at him.
    Canvassing the girl’s neighborhood, several people told Franny that they could place the time of death exactly because of the daytime television shows they were watching when they heard the gunshots. It seemed an ostentatious way to murder someone in broad daylight, but it set the time of the murder with unique precision. Franny tracked the killer’s escape route down through the brush below the house to the next street on the hill. One of the residents there mentioned seeing an unfamiliar Toyota pickup truck parked on the street that day. She thought it might be a workman’s truck, but it was gone after she came back from some errands in the early afternoon.
    Franny ran everyone involved with the case for their car registrations and got a hit with