There was a long silence, with some clicks. “I don’t know what kind of trouble you might be in, down south. You’re in some trouble here in Springfield.”
“What do you mean, trouble? I haven’t done a damned thing illegal.”
“That may be, Mr. Daley. But this is a homicide investigation now, and you are more than a ‘person of interest.’ You were interviewed by Agent Blackstone, with negative results. Agent Blackstone was found dead this morning.”
It was a sunny clear morning, but I could feel walls closing in on me. “I didn’t do it. I couldn’t have done it. How could I? I’ve been in New Orleans for a week!”
“Well, you were in New Orleans a week ago and you’re there now. You could have gone to Singapore and back in between.”
“Yeah, I’m sure you guys wouldn’t notice. But you said you got the car?”
“The car?”
“Before New Orleans’s finest picked me up. You said you’d retrieved the car from the airport in St. Louis.”
“We did, yes.”
“Then? You were about to say something else.”
There was a sound like papers being shuffled. “I was going to ask you… about firing the rifle. You did do some shooting with it.”
“Just a few rounds. As I told Blackstone. Just to zero it in.”
“Why?”
“To zero it in.”
She sighed. “I mean why would you want to zero it in if you never planned to use it?” That blocked me for a moment. “Hello? Doesn’t that seem odd to you?”
“The note… there was a note!”
“We found a note, crumpled up on the floor of the car.” She paused. “It says, basically, you’ll be paid $100,000 to kill someone, and there’s a down payment in the rifle stock. Nothing about zeroing the weapon.”
“No, I’m wrong. I’m sorry! It wasn’t the note; it was a phone call right afterwards—a woman told me to take the rifle down to the Coralville dump and zero it in. Then police up the brass and targets.”
“What about the police?”
God, was this happening? “Police. It’s a verb. It means to clean stuff up. I was supposed to pick up the brass from shooting it. The spent cartridges.”
“So was it a phone call or a note? Or was it both?”
“Both. It was both.” I took a deep breath. “Someone put the rifle on my doormat back in Iowa City. Put it there while I was asleep, and rang the bell and drove away.”
“And you didn’t call the police then because?”
“We told all this to Agent Blackstone.”
“And he’s dead now. You didn’t call the police?”
“There wasn’t time! I opened the box and while I was looking at the rifle, the god-damned phone rang. A woman warned me not to call the cops, and then said to take the rifle out to the Coralville dump and zero it.”
“She actually said ‘Don’t call the cops’?”
“I don’t remember her exact words. But she threatened to kill Kit if I didn’t cooperate.”
“In so many words? ‘We will kill Catherine Majors’?”
“No… I don’t know. She said they’d done it before, and she had me Google some kid’s name. Who had died of mylo something. Mylo-thrombosis? It was pretty convincing.”
“And on the strength of that?”
“What do you mean? They threaten to kill my girlfriend and ‘on the strength of that’ I go zero their fucking rifle? Yes! You wouldn’t?”
“What were you supposed to do after that? Did they say who you were going to shoot with the rifle?”
“I don’t think they ever did… no, never. Just that he was someone bad.”
Paper rustled. “‘You will agree that the World is a better place without him.’ The word ‘World’ is capitalized.”
“I noticed that. And a couple of other grammar things. So he’s not too literate?”
“You never know, Mr. Kinney—Mr. Daley. ‘He’ might be a female, and more literate than you or me, faking it. Though you’re right; on the surface it appears to have been written by a person with little education, probably male.
“Of course that generates the question of how and why some semiliterate person could and would set up and execute this complex stunt.”
Her use of the word “stunt” was interesting. “Wait. Do you still think that I might have done this ‘stunt’ myself?”
“Nothing is off the table, Mr. Daley. My personal opinion is that you didn’t do it. People who haven’t seen the recording of your interview, who don’t know anything about you, might think otherwise.”
“But it’s ridiculous! Why would I go to all that trouble just to get into more trouble?”
“You’re an educated man, and a writer. You know that people do things for odd reasons, or no reason. That you or someone else would set this up is ‘odd,’ but odd things happen.”
That was almost exactly what Blackstone had said. Maybe it’s a mantra you have to learn for Homeland Security. “And I suppose my fingerprints are all over the note.”
“In fact, no. That piece of paper has been folded and unfolded and crumpled up, but as far as we can tell no one has ever touched it without gloves. You do admit to reading it?”
Shit. I loved where this was going. “Of course. I told Blackstone—”
“Why would you put on gloves to read a note? Why would an innocent person avoid leaving fingerprints on anything?”
I had to admit that was a pretty good question. “I… I guess I was in a suspicious frame of mind. Cautious frame of mind. I started to take the rifle out of the box but then I thought, hell, I’m taking this straight to the cops; don’t want to mess up any prints that might be on it.”
Long pause. “But in the event… you actually didn’t take it to the police.”
“No! Like I said! That’s when the woman called.”
I heard her exhale in exasperation. “I’m trying to make a list here. First your doorbell rang, late at night.”
“Morning. About four in the morning.”
“What were you doing up at that hour?”
“I wasn’t up! The phone woke me up.”
“Calm down, Mr. Daley. I’m trying to decipher the notes from your conversation with Mr. Blackstone. You went to the door and there was no one there.”
“I heard a car leaving, peeled out. Before I opened the door.”
“There was no sign of them when you opened the door?”
“Nothing but the box. I heard tires squealing while I was getting dressed.”
“What did you think it was? Four in the morning.”
“I don’t know. Kids, I guess.”
“Why did you go to the door when the phone rang?”
“Not the phone! The doorbell.”
“Okay. Kids rang the doorbell and left behind an expensive sniper rifle.”
A really bad feeling was growing in my head. Could I open my mouth without screaming? It would feel so good to throw the phone into the traffic.
“Are you there, Mr. Daley?”
What would it sound like on her end, when a car ran over it? Would it be loud enough to be worth the cost?
“Mr. Daley?”
I took a deep breath. “Add this to your list. I’ve had enough abuse for the day. My shoulders and wrists hurt from being manhandled by jackbooted fucking storm troopers. On your list I want you to write down the time of day. Call me exactly twenty-four hours from now and I’ll answer. If the phone rings before that I will throw it in the fucking Mississippi.” I snapped it shut with a sound like a rifle shot.
An elderly couple sitting down at the next table smiled and applauded softly. “Whoever they are,” the old lady said, “fuck them.”
I gave her a V-sign. My grandfather’s generation. God bless the sixties.