Steve Martini - Double Tap

“I told you it did. At the range.”

“Pistols, rifles?”

“Both.”

Like pulling teeth.

I enter the fray. “But you weren’t a drill sergeant.”

“No. It was advanced infantry.”

“Rangers?” I have made some phone calls, done a little research.

“Yeah.”

“How many Ranger outfits were at Bragg when you were there?”

“Jeez. I don’t remember. I know they had a jump school.”

“Did you do jump training?”

“No.”

“Did you get that at the shooting range?” Ruiz is wearing a loose tank top this morning. As he leans over the table in the little cubicle, there is a deep scar visible an inch or so from his right nipple.

Ruiz glances down and adjusts his top a little to cover this. “That? That was an accident.”

“Bullet wound, right?” Harry has seen enough of them over the years, mostly on clients, to recognize it.

“Yeah. Standing in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“A training accident?”

“You could call it that.”

“We’ve seen the booking report when they brought you in,” Harry tells him. “You’ve been shot at least four times. There’s enough metal inside of you to set off a magnetometer.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that besides the bullet wounds, you’re carrying shrapnel from explosive rounds. Steel,” says Harry. “Fragments from artillery; mortars, maybe?”

“It was a grenade accident.”

“When?”

“I don’t remember. It was a long time ago. I was doing some training with a recruit. He had the grenade. He was supposed to pop the pin and throw it over a wall. Heave it as far as he could. He got nervous and dropped it. I tried to kick it into the sump. It would have gone down a chute and exploded harmlessly. I was a little late.”

“That’s all there is to it?”

“That’s it.”

“This happen at Bragg?” I ask.

Ruiz looks at me, thinks for a half a beat before he answers, then says: “No.” He knows that if he says yes, it won’t square with the military records on the table in front of him.

“The bullet wounds-those are all accidents too?”

“Some of them.”

“What about the rest?” Harry asks.

“What do you mean?”

“Where did you get ‘em?”

“Different places. One in Panama. You remember that?”

Harry nods.

“Can’t remember the other one.”

“There’s three more.”

“You ever been in the military?” Ruiz looks at him.

“Reserves,” says Harry. “A long time ago.”

“When you been in the infantry for twenty years, you pick up things. You don’t always remember where you got ‘em.”

“I think I’d remember where I got shot,” says Harry.

Ruiz shrugs his shoulders and takes a drag on the cigarette he started when he came in. “By the way, I wanted to thank you,” he says.

“For what?”

“For getting them to dispense with the leg shackles when we meet.”

Harry has gone to bat for him with one of the muni court judges. He got an order two days ago directed to the sheriff that Ruiz is not to be shackled when inside the confines of the jail.

“Trust me,” he says. “None of this, the military stuff, has anything to do with the case.”

“We’re just trying to fill in the blanks. You can bet that if we put you on the stand, the DA’s gonna ask the same questions.”

“And he’s gonna get the same answers,” says Ruiz. “Trust me. You don’t want to know.”

That’s enough to pique Harry’s curiosity. “Is that why Kendal dropped the case?” says Harry.

“I have no idea. You’d have to ask him.”

“We have. He’s not talking.”

I shoot Harry a look. This is a sore point with my partner, the fact that Dale Kendal test-drove the case through the preliminary hearing, kicked the tires, and put his head under the hood, only to walk away. Whatever it was that scared him off, Kendal isn’t telling us.

“You’re gonna have to trust me on this.” Ruiz is adamant, so we leave it for the moment and move on to other issues.

Ruiz has had months to meditate on his fate. Alone without family or friends for support, he has had endless opportunities to make his situation worse by talking to the cops immediately after his arrest or by purging his soul in the jailhouse confessional, passing damaging tidbits of information to other inmates in the lockup in return for camaraderie. He has done none of this.

I switch gears. “Let’s talk about the murder weapon. The handgun.”

“What about it?”

“Where did you get it?”

“The military. It’s in the records.” He points to the pile of papers in front of Harry on the table.

“They issued it to you at Bragg?”

He nods.

“Was it a training weapon?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s not a standard sidearm?”

“No.”

“Did they issue you one of those as well?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean a Beretta. Nine millimeter. That is the standard sidearm for the Army, isn’t it?”

“Yes. They issued me one.”

“And where is that? Did you turn it in when you were discharged?”

“I did.”

“But not the forty-five. Why not?”

“Like I told you. That weapon was heavily modified. We used it at the range all the time for special training. You give it back to them, they’re gonna junk it. It’s had too much wear. Changed out the barrel at least twice. The trigger was set for my pull. Would have been worthless to anybody else.”

“So you used the forty-five for training all the time, but you didn’t use the nine millimeter?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“But you didn’t wear the nine millimeter out?”

He sucks on the cigarette, expels the smoke through his nose. “True.”

“One thing I don’t understand,” I tell him. “Why did you bring the gun to her house in the first place if you never carried it for security work?”

“Huh?”

“Why did you bring the gun to Chapman’s house?”

“If you wanna know, I brought it there because she asked me to.”

“She asked you?” Harry cuts in.

“Yeah. She wanted me to take her to the range, show her how to shoot. She kept pestering me, so finally I agreed. She had a thing for firearms. Handguns. Some women do.”

“Forty-five auto’s a pretty heavy piece for a woman,” says Harry.

“That’s what I told her. I suggested a twenty-two, something light. She said no. She wanted something challenging, a real firearm. So I brought the HK over.”

“Bag and all?” I say.

He nods. “I figured she would fire it once and that would be the end of it. I was wrong. She actually liked it.”

“You let her fire it?”

“It’s what she wanted. And Madelyn always got what she wanted. Tell you the truth, she didn’t even flinch, not even the first shot. It had a laser sight and a silencer. Course we couldn’t bring the silencer to the-”

“What did you say?”

He looks at me, a question mark. “It had a laser sight.”

“Where?”

“In the bag.”

Harry and I look at one another. “Not when the cops found it.”

“What are you talking about? It was there.”

“They found the gun outside in the backyard in some bushes near the back wall. The silencer they found on the rocks out near the water on the other side. The bag, according to the evidence report, was upstairs in the bedroom, on top of a dresser. They found an extra loaded clip with the bag and that was it.”

Ruiz takes the cigarette out of his mouth and looks at the two of us.

“You’re sure the sight was in the bag when you brought the gun to the house?”

“Positive. I was a little nervous about the silencer.”