dotted with blood. A wisp of bloody fingerprint marked the mirror glass of the cabinet door. A disposable Bic razor lay in the bottom of the sink.
The garbage can overflowed in the kitchen; dirty dishes piled the sink. The refrigerator contained nine bottles of Pabst, a piece of cheese green with mold, and three slices of pepperoni pizza on a plate.
Harry’s contradictory patterns were evident in the littered house; underneath the surface debris the fundamentals—the carpets, counters, bathroom tile—were scrupulously clean.
The bedroom had rumpled sheets, an overflowing ashtray, an empty Scotch bottle. . . . His eyes stopped at the framed wedding picture on the bureau. Diane. Harry. And Broker. Another woman whose name he did not remember. The maid of honor.
He turned away from the bedroom and went down the stairwell to the basement, which looked like the nuts-and-bolts aisle in Home Depot. Shelves went from floor to ceiling and were thick with a variety of cardboard and plastic containers. Except these boxes weren’t for nuts and bolts; they held primers, powder, bullets,casings, and reloading dies. There had to be thousands of rounds of ammo here, in every conceivable caliber.
In the old days in St. Paul, Harry was famous for experimenting with pistol loads and trying them out on stray dogs.
A broad workbench spanned the area, with four reloading presses bolted to it. Two gun safes sat along the wall next to the shelves. Perhaps as a clue to Harry’s current state of mind, the heavy doors on both safes were ajar.
Broker did not profess to know a whole lot about firearms. But he knew there were reloaders and there were serious shooters, and then there were wildcatters like Harry. And he knew that the small orange press on the right side of the bench was for sizing lead bullets and that the RCBS reloader next to it was for precision loading. These devices identified Harry as ultra-hard-core.
Broker walked up and perused the stacked boxes of reloading dies on the shelves. His eyes stopped on a box that read 338/378 K T. He vaguely understood this was a maverick caliber that was not commercially produced.
Curious, he went to the gun safes and looked in the first one. It contained all shotguns. He went to the second and saw a dozen rifles in the rack. His eyes immediately sought out the longest one; sleek and black with a distinctive muzzle brake perforating the end of the barrel.
This had to be the .338. Harry would have painstakingly assembled this rifle himself.
One look at the target knobs on top of the big Leupold field scope, and he was sure. The range finder was dotted in increments of 100 yards out to 1,200.
Broker lifted the big rifle and ran his palm along the custom fiberglass stock. He saw the Can Jar trigger with the two-ounce let-off and the bulky safety switch from a 1917 Enfield, the highly modified Enfield action.
This was Harry’s idea of a good time. Go out on a calm day and punch holes in a pie plate at 1,000 yards. He’d always filled the sniper slot in the SWAT team. That’s what the Marine Corps had trained him to be. And that’s how he’d spent his time in the war.
Broker eased the rifle back in the safe and pushed both the doors until they clicked shut.
He went back up the stairs and returned to the living room, stooped, and inspected the pizza box. A yellow VISA receipt lay among a debris of chewed crusts. He recognized Harry’s scrawled signature. It was dated 18:04 yesterday afternoon. Three empty bottles of Pabst were strewn at the foot of the couch along with a TV remote.
If the clock in the Acura had indeed jammed upon impact, that gave Harry thirty-eight minutes to make it from Broadway Pizza in downtown Stillwater to his driveway. Entertaining Lymon Greene’s suspicions for a moment, Broker speculated that Harry could have driven to St. Martin’s on the way home, parked his car, climbed into some kind of disguise, gone into the church, shot the priest, got back in
The garbage can overflowed in the kitchen; dirty dishes piled the sink. The refrigerator contained nine bottles of Pabst, a piece of cheese green with mold, and three slices of pepperoni pizza on a plate.
Harry’s contradictory patterns were evident in the littered house; underneath the surface debris the fundamentals—the carpets, counters, bathroom tile—were scrupulously clean.
The bedroom had rumpled sheets, an overflowing ashtray, an empty Scotch bottle. . . . His eyes stopped at the framed wedding picture on the bureau. Diane. Harry. And Broker. Another woman whose name he did not remember. The maid of honor.
He turned away from the bedroom and went down the stairwell to the basement, which looked like the nuts-and-bolts aisle in Home Depot. Shelves went from floor to ceiling and were thick with a variety of cardboard and plastic containers. Except these boxes weren’t for nuts and bolts; they held primers, powder, bullets,casings, and reloading dies. There had to be thousands of rounds of ammo here, in every conceivable caliber.
In the old days in St. Paul, Harry was famous for experimenting with pistol loads and trying them out on stray dogs.
A broad workbench spanned the area, with four reloading presses bolted to it. Two gun safes sat along the wall next to the shelves. Perhaps as a clue to Harry’s current state of mind, the heavy doors on both safes were ajar.
Broker did not profess to know a whole lot about firearms. But he knew there were reloaders and there were serious shooters, and then there were wildcatters like Harry. And he knew that the small orange press on the right side of the bench was for sizing lead bullets and that the RCBS reloader next to it was for precision loading. These devices identified Harry as ultra-hard-core.
Broker walked up and perused the stacked boxes of reloading dies on the shelves. His eyes stopped on a box that read 338/378 K T. He vaguely understood this was a maverick caliber that was not commercially produced.
Curious, he went to the gun safes and looked in the first one. It contained all shotguns. He went to the second and saw a dozen rifles in the rack. His eyes immediately sought out the longest one; sleek and black with a distinctive muzzle brake perforating the end of the barrel.
This had to be the .338. Harry would have painstakingly assembled this rifle himself.
One look at the target knobs on top of the big Leupold field scope, and he was sure. The range finder was dotted in increments of 100 yards out to 1,200.
Broker lifted the big rifle and ran his palm along the custom fiberglass stock. He saw the Can Jar trigger with the two-ounce let-off and the bulky safety switch from a 1917 Enfield, the highly modified Enfield action.
This was Harry’s idea of a good time. Go out on a calm day and punch holes in a pie plate at 1,000 yards. He’d always filled the sniper slot in the SWAT team. That’s what the Marine Corps had trained him to be. And that’s how he’d spent his time in the war.
Broker eased the rifle back in the safe and pushed both the doors until they clicked shut.
He went back up the stairs and returned to the living room, stooped, and inspected the pizza box. A yellow VISA receipt lay among a debris of chewed crusts. He recognized Harry’s scrawled signature. It was dated 18:04 yesterday afternoon. Three empty bottles of Pabst were strewn at the foot of the couch along with a TV remote.
If the clock in the Acura had indeed jammed upon impact, that gave Harry thirty-eight minutes to make it from Broadway Pizza in downtown Stillwater to his driveway. Entertaining Lymon Greene’s suspicions for a moment, Broker speculated that Harry could have driven to St. Martin’s on the way home, parked his car, climbed into some kind of disguise, gone into the church, shot the priest, got back in
Similar Books
