Klauder saw the hammer pulled back and stepped forward, ice running down his spine.
Tustin’s head lifted. He whirled, bumping her elbow and tearing her hands apart.
Too far away to do anything, Klauder yelled.
The automatic spun slightly as it fell, the muzzle rotating toward them, roaring as it hit and obliterating his yell and masking the impact as it drove Meg back a step before she collapsed.
Beyond her Mrs. Tustin’s eyes rolled upward, face frozen in horror as she sank to the floor, while Tustin screamed, “That’s how! That’s how it happened to Fen!”
Klauder frantically tore open the yellow slicker, exposing the blood rapidly staining the tan uniform below the badge.
He would swear forever that he saw life linger for a second above her before it was gone, although they said she really died on the way to the hospital.
The precise time didn’t matter at all.
She’d have wanted him to see it through, so he stayed until Tustin’s statement was duly typed up and signed in the presence of his lawyer and the district attorney.
He’d gone over after breakfast to see Fen, Tustin said, taking the gun with the idea that if Fen saw how serious he was, he’d be more inclined to listen to him.
The gun served its purpose. Fen said he hadn’t realized selling to Benson was so important to him. Now that he knew, they’d work something out. Tustin was ten or fifteen feet away, the gun in his right hand. Intending to step forward and shake Fen’s hand, he began to transfer it to his left. It slipped from his shaking fingers, firing as it hit the planks of the landing. Fen collapsed, rolled, and fell into the skiff.
All he could think of, he said, was what would happen to his wife if she was all alone. He worked Fen into the chair, used the hose to wash down the landing and the skiff, and sent the skiff out into the lake with some vague idea that if he was found somewhere on the other side, no one would know where he died. That might have been so, but the battery had been only partially charged and the skiff ended in open water, fair game for the prankish teenagers in the sport cruiser. He recovered the gun from where the recoil had sent it, told his wife what happened and to say nothing when the police came around. He’d thought of throwing the gun into the lake or burying it, he said, but was afraid someone would find it and hurt himself or someone else.
Part of Tustin’s motivation had to be that with Fen dead, his problem might be solved, but he’d never admit it.
Well, his wife was definitely alone now, heavily sedated in a hospital bed. Already agonizing over her husband’s causing Fen’s death and then trying to evade responsibility, how she’d carry the additional burden of causing Meg’s was anyone’s guess. The justice system had no quarrel with her. An accident, pure and simple. She’d been cooperating when it happened.
Like Klauder, Novachek, the chief deputy, was still functioning in a fog of disbelief. Some of the deputies sat stunned and staring at blank, flickering computer screens, others doing useless things like spinning a pencil with a forefinger. The entire crew was there except for those on patrol duty. It would not do for a raucous drunk to challenge one tonight.
Seated with elbows on her desk and his head in his hands, Klauder stared at the bagged automatic, unloaded now, its clip beside it. An old gun, an import, finish dull and scratched and worn, bought long before manufacturers began to build in safety devices against accidental firing. What everyone called a bureau drawer special.
“Novachek,” he said, “could the casing in the water be thrown where it was found if the gun was fired on the landing?”
Novachek shrugged. “Who can say? The water could have rolled it around a little. Why?”
“If you’d dropped this gun and killed Fen Dexter, what would you have done with it?”
“Thrown the damned thing as far as I could out into the lake.”
“Where it could be found, like the casing. If you decided to keep it, would you have unloaded it?”
“For damned sure. What are you getting at?”
“If Meg hadn’t—” His throat tightened. “If there had been no second time, what would you have thought of Tustin’s story?”
“That he could be lying in his teeth—” Novachek passed a hand over his face. “Jeez, Klauder, what difference does it make now?”
He pushed the automatic toward Novachek with a forefinger. “Have a state police weapons expert strip it down and go over it. Tonight.”
“They won’t move that fast—”
“Yes, they will. For Meg. Call me at home with what they find.”
The rain had ended, leaving the streets glistening in the muggy warmth of a summer evening that couldn’t touch the coldness inside him. Arms folded, her face soft with sympathy, Christine was leaning against his Cherokee.
“Would a little silent company help?”
“It wouldn’t hurt,” he said.
She made coffee and then curled up on the sofa while he paced the floor of his cabin, the warmth of her presence keeping the grief from surfacing and breaking him down.
One in the morning before Novachek called. He listened. Said, “You and the D.A. can take it from here.”
And went back to pacing, his part of it done. Only the cold and numbness inside him to handle now and only one way he knew how to do that.
He was untying the Cessna in the long shadows of sunrise when Otto came out, started to say something but merely clapped him on the shoulder.
And then alone, leaving Christine standing by the Cherokee, he took the Cessna up into a cloudless, rain-washed morning, the rolling mountains brilliant shades of emerald accented by mist clinging in the narrower valleys like faults in an enormous stone; slowly climbing in a wide circle until he reached ten thousand feet.
Meg hadn’t liked it this high. Doesn’t seem real, she said.
That’s the idea, Meg. Just you and God up here. The hurt and pain left behind, and for a little time the world below can be what you’d like it to be — no stupidity, no fear, no hate, no death — and even though those spectres surround you again the moment you touch down, you’ve conquered them for a few minutes.
The county rolled by below. Her county. Not many more weeks before the green became a brilliant multicolored carpet and the ragged V formations came honking in to rest and feed on the lake and in the fields before continuing south. Some would die before hunters’ guns, but not enough to make a difference. The difference could be made only by people like Benson who would destroy their thousand-year-old resting stations with wholesale abandon to pocket a few dollars.
She’d never made rash decisions, he knew. Probably had debated with herself as to whether she needed him more than the fish and wildlife commission. The commission had won. Change was inevitable, but the way should be paved with forethought and consideration. She’d draped that responsibility around his shoulders like a mantle. She never gave someone an option when it came to doing what she felt was right. His turn had come several times before. This had been the final one.
As he turned, a cable system satellite dish atop a mountain caught the sun with a momentary flash, the bit of brightness standing out against the background. Something like what the weapons expert would have seen on the dull metal sear when he’d disassembled the automatic.
When an automatic like Tustin’s was cocked, a notch in the sear held the hammer back until released by the trigger. The hammer can be jerked out of the notch if the weapon is dropped, but that depends on how worn the notch is, how hard the weapon is jarred, and its attitude when it hits. The odds are against it, but it could happen twice in a row. Even kill twice.