Lisa Gardner - Alone

Down at the far end, the MRA's gun pro, J.T. Dillon, was firing away. After a moment, Bobby stepped away from the shooting line and, receding into the shadows, watched the older man work.

This afternoon, Dillon was firing a.22-caliber target pistol that didn't even resemble a real gun. The handle was a huge wooden grip that appeared less like a handle and more like a rough-hewn slab of tree. The barrel was squared off and edged in silver. The capping scope was bright red. All in all, the piece looked like something out of a Star Wars movie.

In fact, the custom-fit, superlight Italian-made target pistol cost upwards of fifteen hundred dollars. Only the big boys used these kinds of guns, and in the world of competitive shooting, Dillon was considered a very big boy.

Dillon was an IPSC competitor-International Practical Shooting Confederation. These guys were considered the martial artists of combat shooting. They were ranked on time and accuracy as they performed various bizarre drills, say, for example, shooting from the saddle, or running through an urban landscape with a briefcase handcuffed to their dominant hand, or shooting their way out of a jungle with an ankle in a splint. The tougher and nastier the drill, the more the competitors liked it.

IPSC shooters always said that bull's-eye shooting, the kind of sniper drills Bobby performed, was like watching grass grow. Combat shooting was where the real action was.

Now Bobby watched as J.T. Dillon loaded the clip of his custom pistol, placed it in his weaker, left hand, and fired off a quick six rounds. Smooth. Controlled. Never blinking an eye.

Bobby didn't have to look at the target to know all six shots were good. Dillon didn't have to look either. He was already reloading his piece.

By now, Bobby had heard all the rumors-that Dillon was a former Marine, dishonorably discharged. That once he used to live in Arizona, where he'd supposedly killed a man. Maybe it was the jagged scar sometimes glimpsed across his sternum. Or the lean, rangy build the years did nothing to diminish. Or the fact that nearing the age of fifty, he could still cut down any man with his dark, forbidding stare.

Bobby didn't know about those rumors, but being a Massachusetts State Police officer, he knew something about J.T. Dillon very few others did: a decade ago, a former police officer and serial killer named Jim Beckett had broken out of the maximum-security Walpole prison. In his brief few months of freedom, Beckett had sliced a long, bloody swath through various law enforcement agencies, murdering a number of state policemen, including a sniper, as well as an FBI agent.

Bobby didn't know all the details, but the way he heard it, the Police weren't the ones who caught Jim Beckett in the end. Dillon did. After Beckett murdered his sister. Now Dillon looked up from his pistol. He met Bobby's gaze across the way.

"That's the sloppiest damn display of shooting I've ever seen," Dillon said.

"I'm thinking of burning the target."

"That assumes you can hit it with a match." Bobby had to grin.

"True."

Dillon peered down his scope and Bobby wandered over. He'd never spoken much to Dillon, though both men knew each other by reputation.

Dillon had pushed the target back to fifty feet. Still using his left hand, he sighted the target. He inhaled. He exhaled. He inhaled one more time and Bobby could feel the man's focus as a sudden physical presence. Dillon's finger moved six times, the flexing of his index finger no greater than the whisper of a butterfly beating its wings against the air. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. The entire clip was unloaded in three seconds or less.

When Dillon pulled in the target, Bobby shook his head. This time, rather than annihilate the bull's-eye, Dillon had formed a star.

"Show-off," Bobby said.

"Gives me something to bring home to my girls."

"Your daughters?"

"Yep. Two of them. One's sixteen, one's six."

"Do they shoot?"

"Older one, Samantha, she's pretty good." Bobby read between the lines. If Dillon said his daughter was pretty good, that probably meant she could outgun Bobby. Considering what Bobby knew of teenage boys, that skill could come in handy.

"And the younger?"

"Lanie? Takes after her mother. Can't stand the sound of gunfire. But she has other skills. You should see her ride a horse."

"Nice." Dillon was gathering up his spent casings. Bobby helped him out. The brass was the most expensive part of a bullet. Serious shooters like to reclaim the casings for reuse in their own custom-made ammo.

"Married?" Bobby asked now.

"Ten years," Dillon said.

Ten years with a sixteen-year-old daughter. Bobby did the math on that, then gave up.

"What does your wife do?"

"Tess teaches kindergarten. And chases our girls. And tries to keep me out of trouble."

"Sounds like a good life," Bobby said.

"It is."

"Well, I should get back to practicing." But Bobby remained standing where he was. Dillon was watching him, his gaze expectant. Shooters had a bond others didn't have. They appreciated the art, they respected the technique. They understood that snipers didn't get drawn to the craft because they were budding Dirty Harrys or lone gunmen anxious for another shootout at the OK Corral. Bobby did what he did because the skill challenged him, not because he'd ever wanted anyone to get hurt.

"Was it hard?" Bobby asked quietly.

"Afterwards, I mean."

"After what? After I shot the man in Arizona, or after I shot Jim Beckett?"

"Either one."

"Sorry to say, son, but I've never killed a man."

"Not even Jim Beckett?"

"No." Dillon smiled ruefully, then flexed out his shoulder.

"Though it wasn't from lack of trying."

"Oh," Bobby said, though he hadn't meant to sound so disappointed.

Dillon looked at him awhile, contemplating. Finally, the man gestured around the empty space.

"Ten years ago," he announced, "I would never have thought I'd be here. Never thought I'd have a wife. Never thought I'd have two daughters. Never thought I'd be… happy."

"Because of Beckett?" Bobby asked.

"Because of a lot of things. Maybe I've never killed a man, but for a lot of my life, I came close enough." Dillon shrugged.

"I remember what it's like to sit and wait with your crosshairs sighted on a human head. I know what it's like to will yourself to pull the trigger."

"I didn't think much of it at the time." "Of course not. At the time, you were too busy. At the time, you were doing your job. It's now, in all the hours and days to come, in all the moments when life gets quiet, that you're gonna find yourself remembering again, wondering for the eleven hundredth time what you could have done differently. If you could have done something differently."

"I keep telling myself it doesn't matter. What's done is done. No use torturing myself with it now."

"Sound advice."

"So why aren't I taking it?"

"You never will. You wanna talk about regrets? I can talk about regrets, Officer Dodge. I can give you a whole laundry list of people I wished I had saved and people I wished I had killed. Give me five minutes and a bottle of tequila, and I can destroy my whole life."

"But you don't."

"You have to find something, Officer Dodge. Something that anchors you, something that keeps you looking forward, even on the bad days, when you're tempted to look back."

"Your family," Bobby guessed.

"My family," Dillon agreed evenly.

Bobby looked him in the eye.

"So who really killed Jim Beckett?"

"Tess did."

"Your wife?"

"Yeah, that woman can sure wield a shotgun."

"And she's doing okay with that? Killing him?"

"Honestly? She hasn't touched a gun since."

Catherine arrived at the hospital just in time to find her in-laws standing by the nurses' desk.