Finished with my work for the day, I went home for supper, then got some single malt, and went into my study to read. The three shepherds came in, found their dog beds, and began to decorate them with dog hair. Frack, the oldest of the three, was showing a lot of gray in the muzzle, and even though he could get around on his three remaining legs, he was slowing way down.
I never thought it was possible to smell a moving bullet, but you can if it's close enough. Its vapor trail gives off a brassy, coppery smell, somewhat like ozone but with a distinct flash of heat. Also, if it's that close, the shock wave will press on your eyes.
The round that razor-cut the air in front of my face came through the window from the outside, but I didn't learn that until later. I'd been reading my book, not bothering anybody, when what turned out to be a. 30-06 soft point clicked through the window, burned into the kitchen, and smashed six coffee mugs into ceramic dust inside one of the cabinets. I remember hearing a distant boom outside, but I was too surprised to do much more than blink as I rolled out of my chair onto the floor and pulled the table lamp over with me, breaking the bulb and putting the room in darkness.
I lay on the floor, wondering what would happen next, smelling expensive Scotch on the rug. A big piece of glass guillotined out of the window frame and crashed to the floor. A moment later I could feel a cool breeze from outside. I listened to see if anyone was coming up to the house, maybe to look inside, see if he needed to finish the job, but heard only the night wind. My nearest gun was in the gun safe in my closet.
Then I realized that this had to have been a warning shot. Somebody with a long rifle and a scope had just put one between my nose and my book, and I didn't think it had been Horace. If the shooter was that good, he could just as easily have put it in my ear.
Three cold shepherd noses were pushing into various places on my body, making sure I was okay. I crawled across the floor, found the phone, and called the cops.
"Okay," Horace said. "This doesn't compute."
"You mean Breen as the shooter."
"Yeah. What are the chances of an ex-con, out, what, three whole days? Getting his hands on a thirty-aught and some ammo, finding your house, setting up a nighttime ambush, and then getting clean away?"
There was silence around the office conference table. I could see that my troops were as skeptical as I was. The sheriff's office had found where the shooter had set up in the construction site behind my house in Summerfield. They'd even found a single spent center-fire cartridge and footprints leading out through all the red mud to the gravel construction access road. After that, nothing. No witnesses, no tire tracks, no dropped calling cards saying the Shadow did it. Nothing. They were stumped.
"I mean," Horace said, "where would he get wheels? Did he buy the rifle? Steal it? Somebody just lend him one? Whatcha need a rifle for, Billie Ray? Not gonna murder some guy, are you?"
"And why the warning shot?" Tony said. "Guy like that, takes a baseball bat to two women 'cause the baby was crying? You're talking some kinda single-cell organism, does that kinda shit. Give a guy like him a rifle, put him in position, he wouldn't shoot a warning shot."
I nodded. "Yeah, that's what I think, too. Breen's definitely a POS, but I don't see him as a careful planner. It wasn't him."
"So," Pardee said. "You maybe got more than one ghost out there?"
I threw up my hands. "Would I necessarily know? It was a fluke that the people at Alexander State were able to warn me about Breen."
"Have they grabbed him up?" Horace asked. "Squeezed him a little?"
I nodded. Arlanda Cole had called first thing this morning after word got out downtown. Billie Ray had come in when called. He denied knowledge of any shootings, anywhere, anyhow. She'd said that, in her opinion, he seemed to have genuine parolee religion and that he was not about to put his freedom in danger just to scare me with a rifle. Besides that, his girlfriend could vouch for him at the time of the shooting. Of course.
That said, I couldn't think of anyone else who would do that. During my time I'd put more than one bad guy away, but so had all of us, and it was inevitably a team effort. The perps who came back as ghosts and acted on it usually did it by walking up in broad daylight, doing a remember-me, and then opening up with a barrage of some kind. They weren't thinkers, planners, or talkers. They were doers.
"Okay, then," Pardee said. "Let's assume we're right about that. So who-and why the warning shot?"
I drew a blank. Somebody from the hills, like one of the Creigh clan? Long guns were their specialty, but warning shots were not their style. If the hill people thought you owed them a death, they just flat took it. Fair's fair. And the vigilantes of cat dancer fame? I'd kept my part of that Faustian bargain and paid for it with my professional reputation. They had no reason to want my skin, assuming they were even still in business. There was another Billy, one with a y, down in Wilmington, who might qualify, but to the best of my knowledge he was in federal hands until the end of time for his part in the nuclear power plant sabotage case.
"How soon's that old house of yours out in Rockwell County going to be ready?" Horace asked.
I shook my head. "My ace restoration consultant says ten years to completion. I could get a trailer, I guess." A fleeting image of that flash of light and the disappearing horseman on the western ridge crossed my mind, but that didn't make sense, either. I hadn't been there long enough to provoke this kind of violence. Even the reenacting antebellum spinster across the road, strange as she seemed, had been friendly so far. "I don't know, guys, maybe I have to start sleeping days and then doing a little night recon for the next couple of weeks. See what we can turn up."
"We?" Tony asked hopefully.
"The shepherds and I. This guy comes back, I might miss him, but they won't."
They looked disappointed. The secretary told me I had a call. It was my old boss, Bobby Lee Baggett, high sheriff of Manceford County.
"Who'd you piss off this time?" he asked.
"I might have a ghost," I said.
"You probably have several," he said with a laugh. "Not to mention cat dancers and that wild bunch up there in the Smokies. But you said might-you don't think this is Mr. Breen?"
Leave it to Bobby Lee to have been thoroughly briefed. "It seems improbable that he could get something like this organized so quickly."
"On the other hand, he's had seventeen years to plan it and set it up. Getting out to your place and doing the deed would only take an hour."
He had a point there, I thought. "That means helper bees," I said.
"Yup, it does. Since it happened on my patch, I've got people pulling that string as we speak. You got someplace to go? I heard you'd bought a big plantation over in Rockwell County."
"Jungle drums alive and well, I see."
"Oh, absolutely. You know how it is-we keep track of our more notorious alumni. Seriously, give it some thought: We can work the cop side here, and you make it harder for the mopes to find you. You want me to talk to Sheriff Walker up there?"
"I was going to do that myself," I said, "but an advance call wouldn't hurt."
"You assume I'll speak well of you, Lieutenant."
"As well as you can, boss."
"You miss it?"
"I miss the people more than the job."
"You took a bunch of 'em with you, as I remember. Horace, Tony, Pardee. How's that going for you, your private snoop deal?"