Lee Child - MatchUp

“Too early. Lang found him in the river, dragged him out. Cain’s a big guy. Would have been easy to see in the woods, as it was light. There was only one shot. I suppose somebody could have been poaching deer. We’ve seen a couple.”

“That’s pretty thin. One shot, hits the guy through the heart from the back, and the shooter disappears.”

“It’s thin,” Virgil said. “I kinda think he was murdered. You need to get an investigator in here, soon as you can. Start looking at their backgrounds. Lang doesn’t really have an alibi. He seems real. I mean, looking and listening to him, I buy his story. Still, I’d hate to think it was something else, that you might have a crazy out there.”

“We’ve got a detective on the way,” Blackwater said. “I’ll ask her to stop and talk to you, your friend, Cain, and Waller when she gets here, which ought to be pretty soon.”

The sheriff’s lips compressed as he surveyed the area again.

“This is bad business. Real bad business.”

Johnson Johnson wasn’t at the cabin when Virgil got back and his Cadillac was gone, so Virgil grabbed a Coke from the refrigerator and went into the bathroom to shave, shower, and put on fresh clothes. He was just pulling on his pants when he heard a truck pull up in front of the cabin, and then a second one. He looked out the window and saw Johnson Johnson getting out of his Escalade and a woman shutting the door of a Jeep.

She was tall and solidly built. She had a good figure but wasn’t slim. Nor was she heavy. Just solid and athletic-looking. Her hair was light brown with hints of red, pulled away from her face and tied at her nape. Her lips showed a hint of gloss and when she shoved a pair of sunglasses onto her head, he saw that her eyes were greenish, with flecks of gold. From habit he noticed the gold band on her left hand.

Married.

Had to be the detective.

Here to do her job.

Regan Pescoli was pissed as she drove into the parking area of the WJ Guest Ranch.

She’d already stopped by the river where deputies had blocked off what appeared to be the crime scene. She’d viewed the body, got all the particulars from Blackwater, then headed here to talk to Virgil Flowers.

This morning wasn’t the first time she’d been here. Her daughter Bianca knew the oldest Waller girl, Katy, and had spent some time here a few years back. The dude ranch and golf course hadn’t improved much. In fact, it looked more dilapidated than ever, as if surviving on a shoestring.

The apparent homicide of a fisherman was the first case she’d caught since returning to work three days earlier and already Blackwater, the prick, was stepping into it. She’d never gotten used to working with the acting sheriff of Pinewood County, but she had no choice.

She parked next to a newer Cadillac SUV with Minnesota plates. The driver, a big man, was just getting out, hopping to the ground and trying to avoid stepping in a puddle. Thankfully, for now, the rain had stopped and sunlight, filtering through the stand of pines surrounding the cabins dappled across the sparse gravel.

She slammed the door to her Jeep and asked, “Are you Virgil Flowers, from Minnesota?”

“No, I’m Johnson Johnson from Minnesota. Trust me, I’m much larger, better looking, and more intelligent than that fuckin’ Flowers.”

“Johnson Johnson?” she repeated.

“Right.”

“You with Flowers?”

A nod. “I’m his fishing partner. He’s probably inside the cabin.”

“Is he a bullshitter too?”

“Bullshitter? I speak nothing but the honest truth. Who’re you?”

“Detective Regan Pescoli, Pinewood County Sheriff’s Department.” To prove her point, she opened her wallet and flashed her badge.

“Okay. Good. Get this off Virgil’s back, will ya? We got more fishin’ to do. C’mon in.”

She followed Johnson Johnson up the steps, across the porch, and through a screen door. Inside, a tall surfer type with damp blond hair was buttoning his shirt. He was barefoot, apparently just out of the shower.

Johnson introduced them.

Regan and Flowers shook hands, and Flowers asked, “Have you been down at the scene?”

She gave a quick nod. “Just now. Talked to Mr. Lang. He seems freaked enough that I buy his innocence. For now. Until I learn different. The sheriff tells me you think it might have been a murder, not an accident.”

“The more I think about it,” Flowers said.

“Then we’re on the same page,” said Regan. “You told him the shot was a few minutes after eight o’clock?”

“I looked at my watch,” Flowers said. “The sun was up.”

She pulled out a notebook and jotted down the details as Flowers laid them out. Including what Cain had said to them as they passed the cabin earlier in the morning, where they all were relative to each other, the timing of the shot, when Lang raised the alarm, the arrival of the first deputy.

“We didn’t work through the woods looking for the brass. One shot from a rifle, I suspect it was a bolt action,” Flowers said. “If it had been a semiauto, the killer would have pulled the trigger again.”

She glanced down at her notes for a moment, then said, “If it was a bolt action, probably won’t find any brass. Not near the scene, anyway. Cain was almost certainly shot from this side of the river.”

“How do you know that?” Johnson asked.

“The slug hit him in the middle of the back and came out on the same level in front,” she said. “If the shooter had been on the other side of the river, he would have had to have been on that high bank, and the shot would have been angled down.”

Flowers nodded. “You looked at the wound?”

“Yeah. Looks to me, and the ME should be able to tell us for sure, that it was a pretty heavy caliber. Not a .223 or anything like that.”

“Wasn’t a .223,” Flowers said. “It went boom, not bap.”

“Probably a hunting rifle,” she said. “The crazies around here usually go for those .223 black rifles with the rails and all that crap on them, but maybe this was something different. You seem to think so.” Flowers clearly knew about guns, that much was obvious. “Regardless of the caliber, I think this was a hunter.”

“Who mistook Lang for a bull elk?” Flowers asked.

“Who shot him, either by mistake or intentionally. First we find the guy, then we find the motive.” Her smile was ice. “Unless it works out the other way around.”

She checked her watch and frowned.

That feeling again.

Time to stop by the house and feed the baby, or find an out-of-the-way place to pump her breasts.

“Look, I gotta go work the phones for a while. Thanks for this. I might need to come back and talk some more.”

She started for the door, but Johnson raised a hand and said, “I kinda need to tell you something. May be nothing, but I’m worried.”

She asked, “About this?”

“Yeah.” Johnson looked down at the floor, guilty of something but she couldn’t guess what. “The shooter might have made a mistake. I’ve been thinkin’ about it, and I believe that maybe he thought he was shooting at me.”

“Why’s that?” she asked.

Flowers was shaking his head and staring at his fishing buddy, reading the other guy, guessing something, and it wasn’t good.

“Johnson,” Flowers said, “what have you done?”

They all took chairs around the kitchen table and Johnson, appearing slightly shamefaced, rubbed his knees nervously, looked at Regan and said, “First, I’ve got to tell you about a break-in we had here at the ranch. Somebody stole six hundred dollars from the lodge owner’s daughter.”