“Hold it!” Berke said, lifting a hand. “How do you know all this? How do you even know this guy is the one?” She’d seen Jeremy Pett’s driver’s license photo when Allen had introduced himself to them this morning, and he’d told them he would explain everything later but he had to go get John Charles out of jail first.
“The police passed along to us some information from a Detective Rios in Sweetwater. She did some digging after you’d left town. Nothing was making sense to her, but the fact remained that the shooting looked professional. So she went to your website and saw your latest video. She started thinking that maybe the video had triggered somebody with a military history, somebody who had experience with long-range shooting. If that was true, then this person might have decided to follow you to your gigs.” Allen glanced quickly at Nomad, to show he had a good memory for a guy his age. “To stalk you, and to set up his shots. That sounded to her like a military sniper. The question was: where did he start from? So…she took it upon herself to make calls first to the Austin PD and then she spread out to the PDs of the towns between Austin and Dallas.”
“Looking for what?” Nomad asked.
“A recent missing person report, filed around the 20th. The problem was that, if this sniper fits a psychological profile, he’ll probably live alone in a rented house or apartment, he’ll have trouble making social contacts and trouble keeping a job. So if he’s taken off on the road to follow you, there might not be anybody left behind to notice he’s gone. But…in this case, Jeremy Pett had made a contact, and there was a missing person report that caught her interest, filed on Monday the 21st, in Temple, Texas.”
Allen pulled up another sheet of paper from the folder to be sure he got the name right. “Pett’s apartment manager, Teyo Salazar, told the Temple police he went into the apartment with his key to leave a sack of tamales because, as he said, Jeremy was very depressed about his finances. Inside, he found blood on the carpet, on the wall and in the bathroom. The tub had been drained, but there was blood evidence in there as well. Also a box cutter, and some drugs in the apartment. So Mr. Salazar calls the police, and they start looking for Jeremy Pett but he’s nowhere to be found. They relayed this information to Detective Rios, who started a search of Pett’s personal history. She discovered that Pett was a decorated Marine sniper, discharged in January of 2005 after the second battle of Fallujah. Then she turned to his credit card history. She learned he’d used his credit card to buy gas at a station about ten miles west of the one where Mike Davis was killed. The time on that transaction was twenty-some minutes after Mr. Davis’s death.”
“Oh, shit,” Terry said, a stunned exhalation of breath.
“That’s not the kicker.” Allen’s cool blue eyes scanned his audience. “He used his credit card again on the night of the 20th, to pay for a room at the Lariat Motel.”
Berke made a noise, kind of a soft gasp, but no one looked at her.
Nomad said with a mixture of shock and anger, “The fucker was right in the motel with us? Christ, man! What the fuck have we done to him?”
Roger Chester stood up. “Take it easy, John.” The real reason he’d stood up was that his hemorrhoids had flared on the flight from Austin and his folding chair wasn’t making him feel any better. He looked at Truitt Allen. “It’s got to be more than a video. Who kills somebody because they don’t like a video?”
“I can’t say. But I do know from experience that people can create extraordinary circumstances in their own minds. Especially disturbed individuals, which I think is fair to say is the case here. They can create scenarios that would boggle the imagination of anyone we consider ‘normal’. Do you remember the Beltway sniper shootings in 2002? In Washington DC, Virginia and Maryland?”
“I do.”
“Ten people were killed and three critically injured,” Allen went on. “Four people were killed in a single morning, during a two-hour time span. As you may recall, it turned out to be the work of one man and a boy. The man was an Army sergeant in the Gulf War, qualified as an expert with the M16 rifle. After he was caught, he explained his motives. He’d planned to kill six people a day for thirty days. He was going to extort millions of dollars from the government to stop the killings, and then he was planning on travelling to Canada, stopping at YMCAs and orphanages to recruit children who could also be trained as snipers.” He raised his black eyebrows. “He was going to be a father figure to an army of young snipers. They would then be sent to major cities across the United States to carry out mass shootings. Insane? To us, yes, but to him it made perfect sense. It was an achievable goal. It gave him something to—shall I say—shoot for.”
That’s not fucking funny, Nomad wanted to say, but he kept his mouth shut.
“I’ll point out that a check of Jeremy Pett’s firearms licenses shows that he owns a Remington Model 700 SPS rifle, which fires the same .308 Winchester caliber long-range bullet that killed Mike Davis and hit George Emerson. The rifle is similar to what he would’ve used in Iraq, and with a decent scope and an open field he can make shots at over five-hundred yards. Maybe not every shot, because he’s lost some of his ability and he doesn’t have a spotter. He also owns a .45 automatic, so he can be deadly at close range too, but I think he trusts his sniper skills more than his pistol ability.” Allen managed a sad smile. “It’s what he’s good at.”
“So find him, then!” Nomad realized his voice was a little too strident. “Trace his credit card or something! Do you know what kind of car he’s driving?”
“Just before I came to get you, his license tag number and a description of both him and his pickup truck were released to the media. It should start showing up on the local channels this afternoon and on the national broadcasts as soon as they’re ready to put it in rotation. As for the credit card, he’s stopped using it. The last credit purchase was again for gasoline in El Paso, on the afternoon of the 23rd. He’s gotten himself some money. Maybe pawned the pistol…who knows?”
“Okay, great,” said Terry. “But can’t you…like…call around to the front desk of every motel in town and try to find him? I mean, could it be that hard?”
“We’re working on that. Nothing’s turned up yet,” Allen answered. “I love my town, but I’ll be the first to tell you that there are some pay-by-the-hour holes here he can disappear into, and if he’s paying up front with cash nobody’s going to ask for an ID or write down his plate number. He might have decided not to use his real name. Understand that this man may not be who he once was, but he still has his Marine training and he knows how to improvise.”
“Maybe he’s gone,” Ariel ventured. “Maybe shooting Mike and George was enough.”