P Deutermann - Nightwalkers

"You've closed on this property?" he asked.

"Not yet. Waiting on the title search and a survey."

"So, technically, you're not the owner."

I nodded again. He sat there for a long minute, staring out at the front lawn. The shepherds were on the porch with us, watching. I felt this cold pool of guilt growing in my belly. I've shot people before, but always in the course of a hot pursuit or a gunfight. There's always a sense of revulsion when you see the results, but it's usually tempered by the knowledge that you're standing and the other guy isn't, which typically isn't what he intended. This was different.

"I can play this a coupla different ways," he said finally, "but, on the face of it, before any forensic reports are made, the county prosecutor is probably going to charge you with reckless endangerment and involuntary manslaughter, for starters."

I couldn't think of anything constructive to say.

"I mean," he said, "you don't own the property. You have been threatened with murder. You were searching the grounds for intruders. There were intruders, at least in the form of two killer Dobes, who attacked one of your helpers in the night. You fired four rounds as a distraction, and one by terrible chance caught the human intruder, who was armed with a long-range rifle, in the head. Serious gray area there."

"Except she's dead with a bullet in the head."

"Yup."

"Anybody recognize her?"

"There was no ID on the body, and the guys are still sifting the scene. Unlike on TV, that's gonna take all day, maybe two. Coroner says time of death corresponds to when you fired those rounds, more or less."

I sighed. "I feel like shit," I said. "Seeing her there, looking so damned surprised. Maybe she was part of this, maybe not, but this was an accident."

"Copy that," he said. "Which is why I'm not hauling your troublesome ass downtown to the hoosegow. Lemme talk to the county ADA after we get that statement transcribed. I'll call you in later today to sign it, and then maybe we'll know more from the scene."

"Seems pretty cut and dried to me," I said.

"I know," he said, "but we have to dot the i 's, cross the t 's. We're a small operation out here, but we do know how to do this."

"Never thought you didn't," I said. "Dammit. All I was trying to do was make some noise, maybe spook one of 'em."

"Worked," he said.

"We'll need that weapon," the deputy called from the front lawn.

Carol Pollard showed up at the cottage at two thirty, sans restoration expert, which was just as well. A deputy at the end of the driveway diverted her to the cottage. She asked what had happened. I gave it to her in highly abbreviated form, and she was clearly taken aback.

"You're saying you shot randomly into the barns to make someone move and hit this woman in the head?"

"Looks that way," I replied. "Nobody else was shooting last night."

She sat down on the couch and rubbed her cheeks. Tony came in then and reported that crime lab people had been called out from Triboro to assist their country brethren. "It'll be a while before they close it up over there."

"Find anything newsworthy?"

He shrugged. "They wouldn't tell me shit, which is as it should be. You have to go in?'

"Just to sign my statement," I said. "At least that's where we stand so far. The sheriff's on my side, but the lawyers may view it differently."

"Lawyers view everything differently," he said. "I'll stick around, get you some bail if it breaks that way."

"Bail?" Carol said.

"I'm an ex-cop, Carol," I said. "They have to be very careful about what they let me do and not do. If you shoot someone in this county, and the routine procedure is to lock up the shooter until they have a clear picture of what happened, they'll have to lock me up."

"Oh, great," she said. "But it was an accident."

"Maybe it was, maybe not. I did aim at those barns. I wasn't trying to hit anyone, but I was trying to hit the barns. It's not like I dropped my SIG and it just went off."

She told me her restoration expert had forgotten the appointment and gone to the beach. "Par for the course in this business," she said. "Plus, he's almost seventy."

"Just as well," I said. "That project may go on indefinite hold."

In fact, I was wrong about that. Tony and I sat around the cottage after Carol left and tried to figure out who the victim was and what she'd been doing there. Tony asked if I wanted something to eat, but I declined. My stomach already had a rock in it. You fire a bullet, be it from a rifle or a pistol, and you're supposed to think about all the possible targets downrange. I knew that.

I went out to the porch to drown my sorrows in some early Scotch. My cell went off. It was Sheriff Walker.

"Need me to come in?" I said, wondering if I was over the limit to drive.

"We have preliminary results," he said, "thanks in part to the forensics crew up from Manceford County. Those guys are pretty good."

"She's dead, right?"

He grunted, not amused. "Yes, she's dead. Single bullet wound to the head. Time of death estimated to be coincident to your little hide-and-seek exercise last night. Plus, we have an ID, from AFIS of all places."

"She was in the system?"

"Yup. One Elizabeth Craney. Know her?"

"Nope."

"Charlotte cops do. Biker connections. One DUI, a couple of drunk and disorderlies, and one conviction for assault with a deadly weapon, namely a Doberman, which resulted in a year in jail and a euthanized Doberman. Apparently some of the meth mobsters are into having savage dogs around, and she was the supplier, as well as the duty punch for a crew over in Charlotte."

"She looked the type," I said. "Dried up and used up."

"Yes, she did. Here's the important part: You didn't do it."

I sat up in my chair. "I didn't?"

"Not unless you went behind the barn, pulled out a silenced Glock nine, tapped her on the shoulder, waited for her to turn around, knelt down, and shot her in the face. You do all that?"

"Nope."

"Right. Your weapon squares with the four holes we found in the buildings, plus one intact round retrieved by the squad from a support pole. Our guys noticed the angle of her wound, couple of other inconsistencies, said you didn't do it. I waited for the Manceford forensics crew to have a second look. They came up with the same thing. She was shot by someone standing behind her, and probably by someone for whom or with whom she was working, in that there were no signs of a struggle or an attempt to avoid the hit."

"Wow."

"Feel better?"

"Much."

"Thought you might. Take the weekend off. Come see me Monday morning, with your sidekicks, human and otherwise."

"Sounds like changed circumstances to me."

"There's good news and bad news," he said. "The good news is you now are going to have some official help with your stalker."

"The bad news?"

"You now are going to have some official help with your stalker."

"Meaning we're gonna do it your way."

"Bingo."

"That actually sounds good to me, Sheriff."

"You don't have a reputation for being much of a team player, Lieutenant."

"That was then. I'm older and wiser now."

"For now, I'll believe half of that. See you Monday."

I put a call in to Carol Pollard and told her my good news. She was very relieved. She'd made it clear before that she didn't have a problem with my shooting someone who was laid up in a back barn with a rifle at night, but she knew that the legal hassle would be onerous. I told her that the restoration project was still on hold until we resolved this problem, and she understood. She invited me to come over to her place later and said she'd burn something in the kitchen for me.

I went over to the shop to look for Cubby. He was, as usual, working on some machinery, this time a riding mower.