“You are, sir, I believe, a marksman of some note.”
“I am a shooter, yes. I was a Marine sniper many years ago. I won the big shoot they hold in the east back in 1970. The Wimbledon Cup, they call it. Not for tennis, for long-range shooting. Also, I have been in some scrapes over the years. But, sir, can I point a thing out?”
“Go ahead, Mr. Swagger.”
“I think you’ll find them shots came from the other side of the gap. That’s what my daughter said, and that’s what the indication of Dade’s body said. Now, there ain’t no way I could have fired those shots from over there and gotten to my daughter over here in a very few seconds. There’s a huge drop-off, then some rough country to negotiate. I was with my daughter within thirty seconds of the last shot. You can also see the tracks of my horse up here from the ranch house, and no tracks that in any way connect me with what went on over there. And finally, you have surely figured out by now that poor Dade is gone because whoever pulled the trigger thought he was hitting me.”
“Duly noted, Mr. Swagger. But I will have to look into this further, to let you know. I will be asking questions. I have no choice.”
“You go ahead. Do I need a lawyer?”
“I will notify you if you are considered a suspect, sir. That’s how we do it out here.”
“Thank you.”
“But you were a shooter who used a rifle with a scope? And if I don’t miss my best guess, this was a pretty piece of shooting with just such a rig.”
“Possibly. I don’t know yet.”
“This couldn’t be some sniper thing? Some other sniper? Maybe someone getting even with you for something in your past?”
“I don’t know, sir. I have no idea at all.”
The lieutenant’s radio crackled and he picked it up.
“Benteen here, over.”
“Lieutenant, I think we found it. Got a couple of shells and some tracks, a coffee thermos and some messed-up ground. You care to come and look?”
“I’ll hop right over, Walt, thanks.” He turned to Bob. “They think they found the shooting position. Care to look at it, Mr. Swagger? Maybe you can tell me a thing or two about this sort of work.”
“I would like to see it, yes, sir. There’s no word on my wife?”
“Not yet. They’ll call as soon as they know.”
“Then let’s go.”
Of course the chopper was a Huey; it was always a Huey and Bob had the briefest of flashbacks as the odor of aviation fuel and grease floated to his nose. The bird rose gracefully, stirring up some dust, and hopped the canyon to the ridgeline on the other side and set its cargo down.
Bob and the lieutenant jumped out and the bird evacuated. A hundred yards away and up, a state policeman signaled and the two men followed a rough track up to the position. There, the younger cop stood over a little patch of bare ground. Something glittered and Bob could see two brass shells in the dust. There were some other marks and scuffs, and a Kmart thermos.
“This appears to be the spot,” said the young officer.
“Maybe we’ll get prints off the thermos,” Benteen said.
Bob bent and looked at the marks in the earth.
“See that,” he said, pointing to two circular indentations in the dust right at the edge of the patch. “Those are marks of a Harris bipod. The rifle rested on a Harris bipod.”
“Yeah,” said the cop.
Bob turned and looked back across the gulf to where Dade’s body still rested under a coroner’s sheet. He gauged the distance to be close to two hundred meters dead on, maybe a little downward elevation but nothing challenging.
“A hard shot, Mr. Swagger?”
“No, I would say not,” he said. “Any half-practiced fool could make that shot prone off the bipod with a zeroed rifle.”
“So you would look at this and not necessarily conclude that it’s a professional sniper’s work.”
“No. In the war we did most of our shooting at four hundred to eight hundred meters, on moving targets. This is much simpler: the distance is close, his angle to the target was dead on, the target was still. Then he misses the other two shots he takes at my wife, or at least he didn’t hit her squarely. Then he comes back and hits the old man in the head as he lays dead in the dirt. No, as I look at this, I can’t say I see anything that speaks of a trained man to me. It could have been some random psycho, someone who had a rifle and the itch to see something die and suddenly he sees this chance and his darker self gets a hold of him.”
“It’s been known to happen.”
“Yes, it has.”
“Still, it would be a mighty big coincidence, wouldn’t it? That such a monster just happens to nail your wife? I mean, given who and what you were?”
“As you say, such things have been known to happen. Let’s take a look at the shell.”
“Can’t pick it up till we photo it,” said the younger man.
“He’s right. That’s procedure.”
“Okay, you mind if I squat down and get a look at the head stamp?”
“Go ahead.”
Bob bent down, brought his eyes close to the shell’s rear end.
“What is it?” asked Benteen.
“Seven-millimeter Remington Mag.”
“Is that a good bullet?”
“Yes, sir, it is. Very flat shooting, very powerful. They use them mainly in hunting over long distances. Rams, ’lopes, elk, the like. Lot of ’em in these parts.”
“A hunter’s round, then. Not a professional sniper’s round.”
“It is a hunter’s round: I’ve heard the Secret Service snipers use it, but nobody else.”
He stood, looked back across the gap. Bipod marks, circular, where the bipod sat in the dust, supporting the rifle. Two 7mm Remington Mag shells. Range less than two hundred meters, a good, easy shot. Nearly anyone could have made it with a reasonable outfit. Now what was bothering him?
He didn’t know.
But there was some oddness here, too subtle for his conscious mind to track. Maybe his unconscious brain, the smarter part of him, would figure it out.
He shook his head, to himself, mainly.
What is wrong with this picture?
“I wonder why there’s only two shells,” said Benteen, “if he fired four times. That would be two missing.”
“Only one,” said Bob. “He may not have ejected the last shell. As for the third shell, maybe it caught on his clothes or something, or he kicked it when he got up. Or it was right by him and he picked it up. That’s not surprising. The shells are light; they get moved about easily. You can never find all your shells. I wouldn’t pay too much attention to that.”
Was that it?
“Good point,” said the elderly officer.
But then the radio crackled again. Old Benteen picked it off his belt, listened to the stew of syllables, then turned to Bob.
“They found your wife.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
She would live. She lay encased in bandages. The broken ribs, five of them, were difficult; time alone would heal them. The shattered collarbone, where a bullet had driven through, missing arteries and blood-bearing organs by bare millimeters, would heal with more difficulty, and orthopedic surgery lay ahead. The abraded skin from her long roll down the mountainside, the dislocated hip, the contusions, bruises, muscle aches and pains, all would heal eventually.
So now she lay heavily sedated and immobile in the intensive care unit of the Boise General Hospital, linked to an EKG whose solid beeping testified to the sturdiness of her heart despite all the fractures and the pain. Her daughter sat on her bed, flowers filled the room, two Boise cops guarded the door, the doctor’s prognostication was optimistic and her husband was there for her.
“What happened?” she finally said.