John Miller - Smoke and Mirrors

A pair of electronic earphones hung on another peg.

Two reloading presses were mounted on a sturdy table. Stacked red plastic bins at the rear of the table held cartridge brass in various calibers, bullets, powders, and primers. Hard long gun cases stood together under the table along with three pairs of hunting boots. Targets pinned to the walls held groups of interlocking holes from handgun practice.

An aluminum rifle case leaned against the wall. Winter put it on a table and opened it to find a tactical rifle with a camouflage composite stock and a very substantial scope.

Brad lifted the gun to read the markings on the barrel.

“Dakota T-76 Longbow in.338 Lapua Magnum,” Brad said. He opened the bolt and sniffed the chamber. He smiled. “It’s been fired recently. I think we might not be dealing with your Styer after all.”

Winter felt momentary relief that Beals might have fired the round that took Sherry Adams’s life. But the feeling didn’t last but a moment. “Even without my business card, it doesn’t wash. He was a very neat young man,” Winter said as he took the weapon and looked it over. “Why would he put this one away without cleaning it?”

“It’s an expensive rifle,” Brad said. “Five to eight grand. Maybe more. The optics could run four or five.”

“But there’s nothing here that shows he was the kind of marksman who could make a thousand-yard shot. This is the only real sniper rifle he had, and there are no rifle targets here. And,” Winter said, “he wouldn’t have left the brass behind. Aside from a ballistics match, he was a reloader and a neat freak. Doesn’t fit.”

Winter opened a side compartment in the gun case, where he found a dozen clove-scented red toothpicks. There were also four loaded rounds and leather shooting gloves.

“So, it still might not be your Styer,” Brad insisted, his eyes widening. “Looks like the toothpicks and the gun belong to Beals. He could have intended to leave the toothpick we found behind his ear on Scotoni’s corpse.”

“This is a setup,” Winter said firmly.

“You think Styer set Beals up? Think he knew Beals well enough to know about this room? Came here and planted the weapon after he killed him? Happened to have had a key to the house and this room?”

“Maybe or maybe not. I could get past the locks in a couple of minutes.”

“You said Styer always works up close.”

“Only with his primary targets, and I’m sure he was trained in long-range marksmanship,” Winter said as he studied the handgun targets pinned on the walls. He noticed by the holes in the corners that one of them had been unpinned and pinned numerous times, and the others hadn’t. He moved closer and pulled out the pushpins holding the top of the target, letting it fall so it was held to the wall by only the bottom pins. It revealed a metal front to a safe imbedded between the studs.

“Check the keys,” Winter said. “There should be one that fits this.”

One key slid into the lock and turned easily. Winter opened the door and took a deep breath.

“Christ,” Brad said. “We need one of those bill-counting machines.”

A dozen DVD cases sat on top of several neat stacks of currency. Each was carefully labeled with a date.

“Looks like we need some boxes,” Winter said.

After leaving the majority of the evidence they’d gathered from Jack Beals’s house in the sheriff’s vault, the two tired men picked up fast food hamburgers and went to Brad’s house to eat and get Winter settled. Winter had checked out the DVDs so he could watch them away from the prying eyes of the other deputies. Where Styer was involved, the less that people knew, the better.

Brad lived in a two-story brick house on a tree-lined street near downtown with a muscular-and suspicious-Labrador and pit bull mix named Ruger. Brad showed Winter to a guest bedroom on the second floor. A few minutes later, the two men were sitting downstairs in Brad’s den wolfing down the hamburgers they’d brought home. Ruger sat beside Brad’s recliner, his dark eyes glued to the new guy seated in the recliner opposite his master.

“Ruger’s a handsome dog,” Winter said. “Bet he keeps strangers out.”

“He’s actually a she,” Brad said. “She’s just big boned. Aren’t you, baby?”

Despite Brad’s continuing admonitions, Ruger growled at their guest from time to time. Deer heads mounted on the walls stared out through glassy eyes and stuffed ducks on plaques flew imaginary circles around the furniture. Framed family pictures included one of a younger Brad Barnett in Marine fatigues. In the snapshot, he was holding a scoped rifle in the crook of his arm.

“I guess you’re wondering what the friction between me and Leigh is about?”

“None of my business,” Winter said. “But she does remind me of this girl I knew in grade school. Alice Murphy went out of her way to make my life hell. Whenever she saw me, she’d either stick out her tongue, rub my hair the wrong way, or pinch me. At a class reunion years later she told me she’d had a horrible crush on me in the third grade, and when I ignored her, she gave me a hard time to get my attention. Didn’t seem like that to me at the time, of course. I mean, she terrorized me.”

Brad smiled. “I went with Leigh from the sixth grade through high school,” he said. “She was something back then. A finer, better looking, and sweeter girl never drew a breath. All the way up until I joined the Marines. I wasn’t ready to go to college, and she was, and there was no war on then.

“Leigh’s mother died from a heart attack a few weeks after I entered boot camp. No warning. She just closed her eyes while sitting in her chair watching some TV sitcom. Leigh and her father didn’t even notice until the show was over. They thought she’d fallen asleep. That’s the way to go out.”

“I like to imagine I could die in my sleep,” Winter said.

“During my four years in the corps, we drifted apart. Each time I came home, our thing was more strained and since we weren’t together like before, our differences were more obvious to us. And I picked up drinking in the corps out of boredom. Leigh rarely drank and she had no patience for a drunk. We didn’t fit the way we had before and I wasn’t the same person I was when I left. She couldn’t cope. In my defense, I was a cocky jerk with a beer in one hand and a large chip on my shoulder. I was TPP positive then.”

“TPP?”

“Tested pumpkin positive. Means if you’d shined a light in my ear my face would have lit up like a jack-o-lantern.”

Winter laughed, and Ruger growled at him for it.

“When I got back we had one last weekend in a Memphis motel to try and rekindle something. Playing couple was great at first, but we ended up fighting, said terrible things to each other. She left, and I got drunk. I met a woman in a club and she came back to the motel with me. Nothing happened-at least I don’t think it did-because I passed out in a state of undress. Leigh had a change of heart, drove back, and the gal opened the room door wearing her panties and bra. I was out in bed, and Leigh didn’t ever want to speak to me again, and so for a long time, she didn’t.”

“Man, oh man,” Winter said, shaking his head slowly, picturing Leigh standing there looking at the unsteady and scantily clad woman at the door, not to mention a naked Brad passed out across the mattress. “I can imagine that might’ve been hard to explain away.”

“Before I got out, she ran off and married Jacob Gardner, one of those handsome guys who says all the right things to everybody, but once the newness wears off you can see he’s an egotistical, insincere rooster. His family had an old name and not much money left, though nobody knew it until everything collapsed after he married Leigh. He’s the kind of guy who always has a new set of best friends, and he climbs socially, or he did as long as there were fresh rungs available. She got pregnant, they got married, and she played mother hen and ran the place with her father while old Jake played golf and dabbled in dabbling.”