Read Online The Consignment by Grant Sutherland - Free Book Online

range. Once the targets were in place, Micky returned with the Springfield rangemaster. When Darren started taking Trevanian through the safety drill, I accompanied Micky and the other guy out of the bunker. I asked the rangemaster how everything finished up with the police.
    “Finished?” He ran a hand over his bald head. “Jesus Christ, I wish it was. I tell ’em fifty fucking times the shot couldn’ta come from the range. You think they’ll listen?”
    I indicated the envelopes he was clutching. “You going to write them?”
    He opened an envelope. Inside was one of the bullets he’d retrieved from the sand traps. Then he showed me the number on the envelope: the serial number, he told me, of the gun from which the bullet was fired. “They ever find the bullet killed the guy, I’ll have my own ballistics ready.”
    “I heard they’d given up searching.” Rossiter had told me that. I wasn’t sure if I believed him.
    “Only the cops,” the rangemaster replied unhappily. “Those goof-offs dropped it in the too-hard basket. Sittin’ on their butts now, doin’ paperwork, blamin’ me.”
    “The FBI are out there too,” Micky informed me.
    “A whole fuckin’ team they got out there,” the rangemaster cut in. “Guys in suits directin’ guys in overalls. They marked out the parkin’ lot in square yards, checkin’ each square to see if maybe the bullet got buried in the tarmac. Take ’em weeks, the way they’re goin’.”
    “What if they get a match with one of those?” I nodded to his envelopes.
    “No fuckin’ chance,” he said. “No way.” He turned and started back to the Haplon offices.
    When Micky Baker went to follow, I grabbed his sleeve. When the guy was out of earshot, I asked Micky, “What’s he doing using our range?”
    “Rossiter’s deal. Rossiter called me in, said I should bring this friend of his down here. Let him blast away at whatever he wanted.”
    “Friend?”
    “Well, they seemed pretty friendly.” Micky drew away from me apologetically, anxious that the guy left in his charge might be found wandering the Haplon plant alone. I watched him jog off in pursuit of the rangemaster. I turned it over. The FBI’s arrival on the scene was no big surprise. Channon would have told the IRS what had happened out at Springfield, and they wouldn’t have hesitated to get the feds involved. But the connection between Rossiter and the Springfield rangemaster was unexpected. Unsettled, I returned to the bunker.
    Darren gave me some ear protection, then we stood behind Trevanian as he took aim with a P23. When he squeezed the trigger, the gun jumped, and a metronomic thump-thump of semiautomatic fire went pounding into the target. Then he paused and switched to automatic. This time when he fired, the barrel juddered upward, the sound through my ear protectors was like a staccato clatter of drums. An odor of hot metal and burnt gunpowder filled the firing bays. From the corner of my eye I saw Lagundi raise a white handkerchief to her nose and mouth.
    When he’d emptied the magazine, Trevanian flicked on the safety and reracked the gun. Pushing back his ear protectors, he went to join Darren, who was peering up the range through tripod-mounted binoculars. Darren stepped aside, and Trevanian bent to inspect the damage. Even with the naked eye you could see the body-target had been raked hip to shoulder.
    “Ever have any trouble with the barrels?” Trevanian asked me, still peering through the binoculars.
    I told him no, never.
    “Fair rate of fire for a thing like that.”
    “We’ve never had any trouble,” I repeated.
    Stepping back, he squinted up the range. Unlike many buyers who came to try out the merchandise, Trevanian knew what he was doing. He wasn’t going to be rushed. He went back to the trolley and selected another gun.
    He handled the bigger guns well, but his touch seemed to desert him when he moved down the scale. I noticed that he fired just the one magazine from