Dan O'Shea - Penance

Ishmael Leviticus Fisher, InterGov’s resident sniper — hell, resident genuine USDA-inspected number-one badass — he’d gone off the reservation two months earlier, and InterGov was pretty far off the reservation to begin with. Fisher had been on Weaver’s operations team ever since he put InterGov together. Hell, Fisher and Weaver went back all the way to Saigon. Anyway, InterGov had a leak. A lot of your Al-Qaeda types, the ones that hadn’t got Hellfire missiles up the ass, Fisher’d been the man who put them down, so he had a little rep in Arab circles. Just before Christmas, one of the raghead groups who were looking to put Fisher’s head on a wall got some intel they shouldn’t have and put a bomb in the Fisher family car. Blew up Fisher’s wife and kids, but missed him. For a couple of weeks, Fisher stuck with the program, working with the Intel team trying to get a line on the bombers, letting the PsyOps boys poke around his head looking for blown circuits. No evidence of psychotic break, the white coats had said. No apparent disassociation, they said. Somewhat disturbing lack of arousal, they said. Then Fisher disappeared.

At first, Weaver thought maybe the ragheads had gotten Fisher, too. Then he thought maybe Fisher had gotten some intel on his own and gone hunting. Then forty days of nothing.

On day forty-one, somebody put a 7.62mm hole through a dairy farmer in a church parking lot in Door County, Wisconsin. Lots of people get shot in the United States every day, but not many of them get shot with rifles. So when the Wisconsin thing popped up, Weaver took a sniff and caught a funny odor. So he packed Chen off to Cheesehead country to sniff it out.

Weaver’s phone rang. Chen was back.

Chen wore a plain black pantsuit over a black silk blouse when she walked into Weaver’s office. She stood five feet two inches and weighed, Weaver was guessing, ninety-five pounds. Educated guess, because Chen was a dead ringer for the girl Weaver had stashed in the apartment on Mandalay Road in Hong Kong through most of Vietnam. He’d had to kill that one eventually, though. Still a little twinge when he thought about it. What was it with oriental chicks anyway, Weaver wondered. No tits to speak of, asses like fourteen-year-old boys. Just like chink food, though. Finish with one and fifteen minutes later you’re ready for another serving. Not that Weaver had any carnal designs on Chen. Made a run at her when she first came on board, and the vibe he got was enough to shrivel his sack. Hoped he never had to take out Chen. She could break an oak board with either hand, with either foot, even with her head. And she could get that flat little.25 auto out from wherever she had it stashed and put all eight rounds through your “X” ring while you were still wondering whether you should be scared of her or her cute little gun. Mind like a goddamn Cray computer, too.

“Enjoy your trip, Chen? America’s dairy land, you know. Try the cheese?”

“Too much fat to justify the protein, sir.”

“Of course. So what do we have? It was Fisher?”

“Statistically, Fisher is the logical candidate. The local authorities suspect that the victim was shot from a snowmobile from close to the shore. However, the medical examiner’s findings indicate that the wound channel is on a downward angle, entering just above and to the right of the victim’s heart and exiting through the left side of the sixth thoracic vertebrae. One of the victim’s gloves was on the ground by the body, the other on his right hand. Their theory is that the victim dropped the glove and was shot as he bent over to pick it up. The victim being bent over at the time would explain the wound channel.”

“But that’s not your theory?”

“No, sir. I was able to access the local system and examine the crime scene photographs. Blood spray on the back of the glove the victim supposedly dropped indicates the glove was within six inches of the entry wound at time of impact, which is exactly where it would have been if the victim was putting it on when he was shot. That means the victim was not bent over, which means that the round hit at a descending angle. The shot came from the ice out on the lake, which eliminates the possibility of an elevated shooting position. The downward angle can only be explained by distance. For the round to arrive at an angle matching the wound channel, the shot would have to have been fired from between nine hundred and one thousand meters. With a little more than one hundred meters between the victim and the shore, we must assume that Fisher fired from more than eight hundred meters out on the ice.”

Weaver let out a low whistle. “A thousand meters with a weapon that’s iffy starting around seven hundred and in a twenty plus crosswind? Don’t suppose the locals bothered looking out that far.”

“No, sir. They found fresh snowmobile tracks at one hundred ten meters and some sign that the machine stopped on the right line for the driver to take the shot. They confined their search to the first two hundred meters of ice. At eight hundred meters, the ice was only marginally safe.”

“And they didn’t recover a slug?”

“No, sir. Again, faulty assumptions. They assumed the round was fired from less than two hundred meters, so they assumed a flat trajectory. Therefore, they also assumed the round would have passed through the victim with sufficient velocity to reach the woods beyond the shooting scene. They determined that the round was not recoverable.”

“So no slug?”

Chen pulled a small plastic envelope from her jacket pocket and dropped it on Weaver’s desk. The thing inside looked like a misshapen lead mushroom. “The slug was in the landscaping bordering the parking lot less than twenty meters from where the body was located.”

“And?”

“A cursory examination reveals nothing to dispute the assumption that it was fired by Fisher. It is the appropriate caliber. I could find no evidence of ballistic signature. Fisher is still saboting his rounds.”

“OK, so for now we have to figure Fisher took out this dairy farmer out. You get anything on the victim?”

“White male, fifty-nine years old, five-eleven, two hundred and two pounds. Married with four adult children, none living at home. Operated a successful dairy farm located twelve miles from the church.”

“Any idea why Fisher did it?”

“The victim had no international ties. His farm has significant value, but he had minimal cash or securities holdings and none of those holdings are tied to likely targets. The victim had never traveled outside the country and had only traveled outside the state three times in the last twenty years.”

“So Fisher is wandering the country shooting people for the hell of it?”

“People?”

“Shooting in Chicago this afternoon. Looks like a rifle. Victim was Helen Marslovak, mother to Eddie Marslovak, so big money. Fisher doing private hits, maybe? We need to start looking for money movement?”

Chen shook her head. “It seems unlikely. Fisher made some peculiar tactical choices. The church where the victim was shot was surrounded on three sides by wooded land. Fisher could have taken the shot from wooded cover and from less than one hundred yards. It is almost as though he chose to fire from as far away from the victim as possible. Also, the victim spent long periods of time on his property alone, often before first light and after dark. Yet Fisher chose to take the shot during daylight and in a situation where the shooting would either be witnessed or discovered almost immediately. I would imagine that Fisher had to remain on the ice for several hours after the shot before he could return to shore. Odd choices if he was working for hire.”

“Almost like he was bragging. Anybody else we know of could have taken the shot?”