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“We won’t take more than twenty minutes of your time, Mr. Eddard. And we won’t have to bother you again. It’s important that we establish whether or not Mr. Ballencoa has left town. If he has, then we’ll take our business elsewhere.”

The old man growled and grumbled, phlegm rattling in his throat. He wrung his hands in the greasy rag, then threw it at the lawn mower in disgust. “Oh, all right.”

Mendez and Hicks waited in their car for Carl Eddard to retrieve his house keys.

“Are you out of your mind?” Hicks asked as soon as they had closed their car doors.

Mendez pretended ignorance. “For what?”

“If Detective Neri gets wind of this, he’ll bellyache to his boss, who will bellyache to our boss. You’ll get both our asses in a sling.”

“For what?” Mendez asked again. “We’re not doing anything but having a look around. It’s not an illegal search because we’re not searching for anything. We won’t touch anything. We won’t take anything.”

“You’d better hope he hasn’t written a murder confession on the bathroom wall.”

“We came all the way up here to find this clown,” Mendez said. “I want to know if he’s packed his bags and gone. If all his shirts are still hanging in the closet, then he probably hasn’t moved to Oak Knoll and we don’t have to worry about it.

“If he’s gone out of that house lock, stock, and barrel with no notice to anybody . . . I’m not going to like that, are you?” he asked.

“I’m still not convinced there’s a lot of reason for us to care one way or the other,” Hicks said. “The guy’s got no wants, no warrants. The only person who claims to have seen him in Oak Knoll is arguably unstable.”

“Tell me this,” Mendez said. “Who sets up house one place, gets his mail someplace else, doesn’t keep a bank account, doesn’t have a telephone, leaves town in the dead of night without telling anybody . . . ?”

“A criminal,” Hicks conceded.

“A criminal that might be in our sandbox now. Maybe Mr. Eddard here doesn’t care about a convicted child predator living across the street from the high school. I do. You should. You’re the one with daughters.”

“I don’t want him in my backyard,” Hicks admitted, giving in as Carl Eddard made his way down the sidewalk to his red 1978 El Dorado.

“Let’s get on with it,” Hicks said. “You’re buying lunch after. I at least want to get my ass chewed on a full stomach.”

15

The handgun was a Walther PPK nine millimeter Kurz. The Baby Nine, Lance had called it. It took .380 ammunition and fit a woman’s hand comfortably. Yet its attraction to her husband had been a Walther’s claim to fame as the sidearm of James Bond—the PPK 7.65 mm—beginning with one of Lance’s favorite Bond movies, Dr. No.

Her husband could go on about Bond for hours, his eyes as bright as a boy’s on Christmas morning. The memory brought a bittersweet touch of warmth to Lauren’s heart. She didn’t allow it to take root or last for long. Fond memories had a way of becoming like hard stones that tripped her into a pit of despair. Today she already felt the tips of her toes slipping over that edge.

Unfinished justice was her hot button, her trigger. She couldn’t stand it for herself, nor could she deal with it as an onlooker. The outrage that rose up inside her was a hot, writhing thing that wanted to tear out of her like a wild animal.

She needed to do something to release the anger in a way that was both violent and controlled. Shooting her husband’s pistol was her answer. She could take the Walther in hand and feel its power, feel the hard cold steel and the no-nonsense, justice-starts-and-stops-here weight of it.

The gun accepted no excuses. Its perspective had no gray areas. What came out of it was truth—a terrible truth, a final truth, a truth she and she alone controlled. No buts. No what-ifs. No legal loopholes. She could pass sentence with the pull of a trigger, and no one could argue with her verdict.

Lauren had found two gun ranges on the outskirts of Oak Knoll. Down the road from the Oaks Country Club, the Oaks Gun Club was a proper gentleman’s club with a state-of-the-art indoor range as well as a rifle range and areas for shooting trap and skeet. The buildings were lovely, the grounds manicured.

Lance had belonged to just such a club, where the members dressed like models for the Orvis catalog, and a rifle was a serious monetary investment. Lauren still had his shotgun, custom-made in Italy with a beautiful exotic wood stock and intricately etched steel.

The club had been part of their social scene. Many of the same friends with whom they rubbed elbows at polo and tennis had been members.

But a social scene was the last thing Lauren wanted these days. She had no interest in dressing for the range in anything other than jeans and a T-shirt. She wore a black baseball cap with the bill pulled low over her eyes and her ponytail pulled through the opening at the back. Hers was the only BMW in the parking lot of the shooting range she had chosen.

Canyon Gun Range was located on the far side of Oak Knoll. And by far side she meant as far away from McAster College and the boutiques and pedestrian plaza as it could be. The area was industrial, with a lot of low, steel, warehouse-type buildings that housed welders and cabinetmakers and auto body repair places. The building that housed the gun range had a pro shop on one end and a sleazy bar with topless dancers on the other.

This was where Lauren chose to bring her dead husband’s elegant James Bond weapon to practice her marksmanship and try to appease the demons stirring within.

No one she would ever know would ever find her here.

The lot was half full of cars. She got her gun bag out of the trunk, hefted it over one shoulder, and went inside.

The heads of dead animals lined the wood-paneled walls of the shop. She could feel their sightless stares almost as strongly as she could feel the stares of the men in the store. If she’d had bigger breasts, they probably would have told her she had come in the wrong door and sent her to the other end of the building. She was the only female in the place. But there was no mistaking her for a stripper these days. Too thin, too old, too pale, too worn.

Exchanging as little conversation as possible, she checked in at the desk and took care of the paperwork. The clerk examined the Walther and offered her a deal on paper bull’s-eye targets. Lauren forked over the extra buck for the full-sized male silhouette.

Once inside the range itself, eye and ear protection in place, she clipped the target up and sent it zipping down the line to the fifteen-feet mark, then picked up the gun from the bench.

For the first time since she had rushed out of Anne Leone’s office Lauren felt a calm come over her. Her mind went clear and still. Her breathing evened out. Her hands steadied.

Taking a deep breath, she raised the Walther and began, quickly falling into a familiar rhythm. Bang! Bang! Bang! Breathe. Bang! Bang! Bang! Breathe. Bang! Bang! Breathe. Reload. Bang! Bang! Bang . . .

Torso, torso, head shot, breathe. Torso, torso, head shot, breathe . . .

Every shot hit its mark, leaving the paper target shredded. One target and then another and then another.

When she had finished she swept up her brass, tossed the casings in the trash along with the decimated male silhouettes, and repacked her gear bag.

As she turned to go she realized the men shooting in two other lanes had stopped to stare at her. Another man picked up his bag from the back bench and held the door for her to go out:

When they reached the pro shop and had pulled their mugs down from their ears, he looked at her again and said, “Lady, I wouldn’t want to be your boyfriend.”