Free The Graving Dock by Gabriel Cohen Page B

not very likely.”
    He looked up at his son. “You ever hear of Occam’s Razor?”
    Ben shook his head.
    “Occam was some old guy, a monk or something. He said that if you’ve got two or more theories, the simplest one that accounts for all the evidence is usually your best bet. To put it another way, if you hear hoofbeats, think horses , not zebras .” He straightened up. “Of course, you’ve still gotta stay open to all possibilities, ’cause believe me, we see the wackiest sh—, er, stuff .”
    Michelle smiled at this self-censorship, as if Jack’s son was still eight years old.
    “Anyhow,” he continued, “I’m thinking there was another shooter.”
    Ben frowned. “But why would he shoot both of them: the jogger and the mugger?”
    Jack grinned. “That’s where the wacky part comes in. The situation reminded me of this case we had over in the Seven-five last year. Two punks tried to jack an Escalade. One stood on the driver’s side, and the other on the passenger’s. The driver tried to get away, so one of the homies reached up and shot at him through the window. Two problems, though: He couldn’t see very well ’cause the window was so high, and he pulled off the shot gangster-style.” Jack pantomimed holding a gun sideways, then shook his head. “It’s the curse of the movies. We get all these thugs imitating the crap they see in some dumb flick.”
    “Why was the sideways thing a problem?” Michelle asked. She wasn’t much impressed by all the talk of guns and violence—not nearly as impressed as Ben seemed to be—but she was happy to help the conversation along.
    Jack snorted. “These kids think it looks good, but try aiming a gun when you hold it like that. And with a semiautomatic with a light trigger pull, there’s even less control.”
    Ben was wide-eyed. “What happened?”
    Michelle pressed her fingertips to her mouth, interested now, despite herself. “Don’t tell me: The shot went out the other window and killed the partner?”
    Jack nodded. “Another criminal genius bites the dust.” He grinned. “It’s what we call a public service homicide.”
    Ben leaned forward. “So you think something like that happened in the park?”
    Jack shrugged. “It’s a theory.” He set down his napkin and stood up. “I’ll go get the coffee and dessert.”
    Ben looked surprised. Perhaps his father had not been so domestic in the old family home, Michelle thought.
    Jack stopped halfway across the room and turned back to his son. “Don’t go talking about this case with your friends. They’ll tell someone else, and then someone else will hear about it, and the next thing you know, it’ll show up in the Daily News . And that would be bad news for your old man, capisce ?”
    Ben nodded solemnly; he seemed impressed by the trust his father was placing in him.
    As soon as Jack was out of earshot, the kid turned to Michelle. “Wow! I think that’s the most he’s told me about his work since… ever . Usually I ask him how it’s going and he never wants to talk about it.” He shook his head, then smiled. “You must be having a good effect on him.”
    Michelle smiled modestly, but she was pleased. Pleased most of all that this rare family dinner was going so well. She liked Jack’s son. Their first meeting had taken place under the most awful circumstances: the night Jack had been shot. There was the usual emergency room craziness, plus panicked cops milling everywhere, and then the commissioner and his entourage showing up. Michelle had just met Ben and was trying to explain why she was there even though she had only known his father for a couple weeks when Jack’s ex-wife showed up, with some kind of boyfriend in tow, and things got even more awkward.
    At first Ben had closed ranks with his mother, given Michelle short shrift, which was understandable, but she had stuck around, and eventually, after the first dicey days in Intensive Care, the ex had seen that someone new was in