“I’m ready,” he called over his shoulder.
“Okay,” Mark responded immediately. “Commence firing.”
Using the bolt handle on the rifle, Brian loaded the first round into the barrel chamber. The ease and the feel of this action impressed him. There was no doubt in his mind that he was using a precision instrument. Totally relaxed, he sighted through the scope and saw the target clearly. Using a very steady pull on the trigger, Brian shot a round and immediately saw the hole appear in the target slightly lower than he anticipated. After a minor elevation adjustment of minute of angle, he shot another round, and on this occasion the hole appeared exactly where he intended: dead center. The sound and the feel of the weapon were outstanding, far better than what he remembered with the Remington 700. Then in rapid succession he fired eight more times, emptying the weapon.
After quickly refilling the magazine with ten more cartridges, he moved to the target positioned at two hundred yards. Repeating the process, he found he didn’t have to change the minute of angle to achieve equivalent and impressive accuracy. Moving then out to the three-hundred-yard targets, he again repeated the process, shooting ten more rounds and finding that he did have to make a very slight adjustment as he’d done initially.
Knowing that the range master was impatient to leave and concerned about getting home himself after hearing about Juliette’s latest fever, Brian checked the gun’s breech to be absolutely sure it was empty, removed the magazine, and called over his shoulder that he was done.
“Cease fire,” Mark called out as if there were other people firing besides him. Then he added: “Wow, that was quick. Are you sure you are finished?”
“I am.” Brian stood up and started to repack the Remington MSR back into its shoulder bag. Under normal circumstances he would have enjoyed continuing to put the gun through its paces, but he felt guilty about not getting home earlier. And he felt that with the thirty rounds he did fire, he could give Deputy Chief Comstock a definite thumbs-up about the weapon. In his estimation it was clearly better than the older model, but whether it was worth the increased cost was another question entirely, especially since he didn’t know the details.
“Would you like to go downrange and retrieve your targets?” Mark asked.
“No, thanks,” Brian said. “I could see what I needed to see through the scope.”
From the rifle range, Ted dropped Brian off at the pistol range, telling him that the range master was expecting him.
At the range, he wasn’t alone despite the lateness of the afternoon, sharing the facility with a half dozen other NYPD officers. As a consequence, he couldn’t be quite so efficient timewise, as safety protocols had to be scrupulously followed. Still, Brian managed to go through a full box of fifty cartridges in relatively rapid order. After forty minutes, he was already on his way back to his car, having left the protective equipment with the range master. Climbing in after putting the Remington in the back of the Subaru, he forwent the opportunity to have either gun serviced at the gunsmith, which he’d usually done in the past. Instead, to save time, he planned on cleaning the pistol himself later in his basement, and as for the rifle, it had been used so little he doubted it needed any attention whatsoever.
As soon as Brian could, he put in a call to Camila. Although he hadn’t gotten any call or text from her, he was still uneasy about Juliette. He was relieved when Camila reported that all was quiet.
“Is she still sleeping?” he asked.
“Last time I looked, about a half hour ago,” Camila said. “I have a feeling she’s down for the night as soundly as she is sleeping.”
“I’m on my way now,” Brian said. “I’ll be home in twenty minutes, tops.”
“There’s no need to hurry.”
“Okay, good,” he said, feeling some relief. “In that case, how about I pick up some Mexican takeout from Tijuana Restaurant on my way home?”
“That’s a good idea.”
“Why don’t you call and order for the three of us in case Juliette wakes up?”
“Okay,” Camila said agreeably. “What should I order for you?”
“I don’t care,” Brian said. He actually wasn’t particularly hungry although Mexican food sounded good. “Just double up whatever you want.”
“When you called earlier, I forgot to tell you that your mother and your brothers and sister stopped by after the funeral,” Camila said. “I told them where you were. I hope that was okay.”
“Of course,” he said through gritted teeth. Hearing that his family had come by fanned his guilty feelings about missing the funeral formalities. “They’re probably at my mother’s. I’ll call them when I get back.”
“There was also another request about a possible security gig,” Camila said. “It’s for another potential December wedding. The info is on your desk with the other one.”
“Okay, thank you,” Brian said. He thought it mildly ironic that just when he was seriously thinking about going back to the NYPD, there’d been two requests for security work after it had been so quiet. He couldn’t help but superstitiously wonder if such a coincidence was a kind of subliminal message that he shouldn’t be so quick to abandon Personal Protection LLC.
Traffic was heavy and the driving slow, even stop-and-go in places. Still mystified by Juliette’s recurrent fever, he changed his mind and decided to call Jeanne after all. Although earlier he’d worried about calling her too much and planned on waiting until he was able to check on Juliette himself, he still felt comfortable enough to get her opinion and perhaps ameliorate some of his anxiety that was mounting the longer it took to get home.
“How was your visit to the ESU?” she asked the moment they were connected, dispensing with any traditional hellos. She sounded happy to be hearing from him, which relieved him of his concerns of calling her too frequently.
“The visit couldn’t have gone better,” he said. “The best part is that it made me feel even more inclined to go back to being a cop. At the same time, ironically enough, there’ve been a couple inquiries about security gigs this very afternoon to muddy the waters.”
“Serious inquiries?” she asked.
“That I don’t know until I call them back,” Brian said. “Both involve possible December weddings.”
“I’m not sure if you should count on December weddings,” Jeanne said. “Especially with the coronavirus spike that’s expected.”
“You’re probably right,” he agreed.
“More to the point, it sounds as if your visit to the ESU was a good idea.”
“It was a great idea,” Brian agreed. “I even got a chance to visit the shooting range, which I enjoyed just as much. I hadn’t been able to do that for almost a year.”
“Good for you,” Jeanne said.
“Now to a more important topic: Juliette. I was distressed, to say the least, when Camila told me that her fever had returned, and I wanted to get your take.”
“I’m not completely convinced it was a fever even though she had an obvious chill,” Jeanne said. “It was only a tad over a hundred: certainly nothing like the 102 you saw this morning. But I’ll tell you what surprised me more than the possible fever was how quickly her mood changed. One minute she was enjoying herself immensely, even giggling because she was doing so well with the board game the three of us were playing. But then it was like a shadow came over her face, and she seemed miserable. She didn’t want to finish the game even though she was clearly about to win fair and square.”
“That is strange,” Brian agreed. “It’s not like her at all. She’s a competitive little thing.” He audibly sighed. “I can’t help it, but I think she’s fighting something off. Whether it’s a cold or flu or what, I don’t know. Luckily it’s unlikely to be Covid, with the way the symptoms come and go, at least according to the MMH ED docs. But I wish they weren’t so quick to label them psychosomatic. It irks me to death that they refuse to do any testing, even a simple blood test, much less a Covid test.”