stop was
lined up against the sash, there wasn't room to use a
power drill. But hammering a nail in was almost certain
to split the old wood, and the old nail holes were
too chewed up to use a second time.
So, placing the window in its channel and snugging
the exterior stop up in front of it, I pressed the sharp
tip of the gimlet into the wooden strip, grasped the
gimlet handle between my thumb and forefinger, and
gave it a twist.
Presto: a new hole, called a pilot hole, just smaller
than the nail I intended to drive, so the nail would hold
snug. And the hole was already made for it so the old
wood could not become damaged. Pleased, I surveyed
the bright window again, the wavery old glass turning
the view to an impressionistic smear.
Without warning, the remembered sight of Reuben
rose in it like a nightmare, his flaxen hair bloodstained,
his eyes gazing from behind a red shroud. His hands
had been scrabbling in his last moments, but in death
they dangled, his unkempt nails maroon crescents.
In other words, they hadn't been tied. Yet he had
been alive when somebody hung him on the cemetery
gate. Alive and kicking ...
I blinked the memory away, gazing determinedly at
the boats in the harbor, the white clapboard houses
etched sharp as ink sketches in the sunshine. But I
couldn't so easily get rid of the questions lining up one
after another, like the old nails on the windowsill.
Reuben was a fighter. Even Teddy Armstrong, who
tossed guys out of La Sardina with monotonous regularity,
had hesitated to eject Eastport's bad boy. And
though he was a very small man, Reuben still must
have weighed 130 pounds or so.
Which would have made getting him up on that
gate alive an interesting project. Almost, perhaps, as
interesting as finding out who'd done it and why.
But first, I had a decision to make.
Well, two decisions, actually.
I
Wade Sorenson is not a protective man in the
usual sense. His idea of looking out for a
woman, for instance, is to take her to the
firing range and teach her to put six shots
into a two-inch target circle at fifty yards. As he'd done
with me, and when he was finished I could handle a
wide variety of weapons.
And then I'd killed a man with one of them. That
the fellow had been trying to kill Sam at the time was
some consolation, as was my own nonlethal intention;
the bullet was a dummy and the guy's death was a
freak occurrence. I'd meant to stop him, not end his
life. But none of that changed the fact that the guy had
not survived the episode. Since then, the weapons I
owned--a .25-caliber semiautomatic and an Uberti-made
Bisley .45-caliber 6-shot revolver, the sort of gun you
might see the good guys blasting at the bad guys, in the
old Western shoot-'em-ups--had remained securely stored with
their trigger locks, cartridges, and ammunition clips in
the lockbox in my cellar.
On the other hand, if someone was going around
slitting throats I did not want mine to be one of them.
So I descended to the cellar, opened the lockbox with
the only key, which I wore on a chain around my neck,
and removed the handguns.
The semiauto was metallic gray, only a little larger
than my hand, and very light. The Bisley, by contrast,
was a whopper with a blued-steel barrel, checkered
grip, and weight enough to make you think twice
about carrying it around; also, it's got stopping power
enough to drop an elk.
Experimentally, I slid a clip into the semiauto.
Then I just sat there on the cellar steps, holding it for a
while. It was the Bisley I'd killed the man with, not the
pistol. But that didn't matter. What mattered was that
in the same situation, I knew that I would do the same
again. And, after months of silently thinking it over, I
knew that I could.
It's an interesting thing to learn about yourself.
When I was sure of it, I put the handguns back in the
lockbox and turned the key,
lined up against the sash, there wasn't room to use a
power drill. But hammering a nail in was almost certain
to split the old wood, and the old nail holes were
too chewed up to use a second time.
So, placing the window in its channel and snugging
the exterior stop up in front of it, I pressed the sharp
tip of the gimlet into the wooden strip, grasped the
gimlet handle between my thumb and forefinger, and
gave it a twist.
Presto: a new hole, called a pilot hole, just smaller
than the nail I intended to drive, so the nail would hold
snug. And the hole was already made for it so the old
wood could not become damaged. Pleased, I surveyed
the bright window again, the wavery old glass turning
the view to an impressionistic smear.
Without warning, the remembered sight of Reuben
rose in it like a nightmare, his flaxen hair bloodstained,
his eyes gazing from behind a red shroud. His hands
had been scrabbling in his last moments, but in death
they dangled, his unkempt nails maroon crescents.
In other words, they hadn't been tied. Yet he had
been alive when somebody hung him on the cemetery
gate. Alive and kicking ...
I blinked the memory away, gazing determinedly at
the boats in the harbor, the white clapboard houses
etched sharp as ink sketches in the sunshine. But I
couldn't so easily get rid of the questions lining up one
after another, like the old nails on the windowsill.
Reuben was a fighter. Even Teddy Armstrong, who
tossed guys out of La Sardina with monotonous regularity,
had hesitated to eject Eastport's bad boy. And
though he was a very small man, Reuben still must
have weighed 130 pounds or so.
Which would have made getting him up on that
gate alive an interesting project. Almost, perhaps, as
interesting as finding out who'd done it and why.
But first, I had a decision to make.
Well, two decisions, actually.
I
Wade Sorenson is not a protective man in the
usual sense. His idea of looking out for a
woman, for instance, is to take her to the
firing range and teach her to put six shots
into a two-inch target circle at fifty yards. As he'd done
with me, and when he was finished I could handle a
wide variety of weapons.
And then I'd killed a man with one of them. That
the fellow had been trying to kill Sam at the time was
some consolation, as was my own nonlethal intention;
the bullet was a dummy and the guy's death was a
freak occurrence. I'd meant to stop him, not end his
life. But none of that changed the fact that the guy had
not survived the episode. Since then, the weapons I
owned--a .25-caliber semiautomatic and an Uberti-made
Bisley .45-caliber 6-shot revolver, the sort of gun you
might see the good guys blasting at the bad guys, in the
old Western shoot-'em-ups--had remained securely stored with
their trigger locks, cartridges, and ammunition clips in
the lockbox in my cellar.
On the other hand, if someone was going around
slitting throats I did not want mine to be one of them.
So I descended to the cellar, opened the lockbox with
the only key, which I wore on a chain around my neck,
and removed the handguns.
The semiauto was metallic gray, only a little larger
than my hand, and very light. The Bisley, by contrast,
was a whopper with a blued-steel barrel, checkered
grip, and weight enough to make you think twice
about carrying it around; also, it's got stopping power
enough to drop an elk.
Experimentally, I slid a clip into the semiauto.
Then I just sat there on the cellar steps, holding it for a
while. It was the Bisley I'd killed the man with, not the
pistol. But that didn't matter. What mattered was that
in the same situation, I knew that I would do the same
again. And, after months of silently thinking it over, I
knew that I could.
It's an interesting thing to learn about yourself.
When I was sure of it, I put the handguns back in the
lockbox and turned the key,
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