—
Because sometimes the only thing that is going to make you feel better is shooting a machine gun.
Kay was reading the poster behind the counter when the assistant appeared in front of her.
“Hi, I’m Jim, how can I help you today?”
“Kay Myers, MPD.” She showed him her ID and put the target down on the counter. “Is this from here?”
The man in the TOTAL DEFENSE T-shirt scratched his chest and studied the target.
“This is a Krüger target, so it’s from here all right—we’re the only people round here who do Krüger targets. I always try to get our customers to take the target they used back home with them.”
“Why is that?”
Jim shrugged. “When they see the target maybe it inspires them to come back and try to shoot better next time.”
“I see. Does that make it likely that it was you who gave the person concerned this target?”
“We have another shooting instructor—Barbara. But as a rule, yes, it’s me.”
“Okay. Have you seen this man here before?”
Kay held up the screen of her phone to Jim. It showed a frozen moment from a video of Tomás Gomez outside the Rialto, the porn movie theater.
Jim studied the image while Kay looked around. When she came in there had been only the Donald Duck figure, now there were three people in line behind her.
“I see hundreds of new faces every day, I can’t remember them all,” said Jim, still peering in concentration at the screen. “But sure, we mostly get whites in here, not too many Latinos, so I ought to remember the face if he was in here recently. But to be honest I have trouble seeing differences in the faces of people of a different ethnicity than me. Hope you don’t find that offensive, Detective, I heard it’s a simple biological fact of life.”
He looked up at her, and she couldn’t work out whether his look was challenging or not. It didn’t make much difference to her either.
“How about the way he walked, and his body language?” asked Kay. She touched the Play arrow on the video, and they watched Tomás Gomez walk across the street. She thought she saw Jim hesitate. But when Gomez had disappeared inside the Rialto he handed the phone back to her.
“Sorry.”
There was a cough in the line behind Kay. She put her card down on the counter.
“Call me on this number if you think of anything.”
“Will do. By the way, where did you find this target?”
“In a restroom. In the bubble wrap his rifle was packed in.”
“Hey, Jim,” someone in the line called out, “can you get Barbara to come and help out here?”
“I’m done,” said Kay, and with a nod to Jim left the store.
It had started to cloud over on her trip out and now the sky was covered in a sullen, lead-blue sheet.
She got into her car and drove along side streets toward Interstate 35W and the center of town. She came to a T intersection in front of a small lake and stopped. The sign facing her said that Interstate 35W was a left turn, but it also showed that a right would take her northward to Cedar Creek. Kay had decided she would phone the old lady who had called in the tip-off and try to assess its importance, but now she was only twenty, at the most thirty minutes’ drive from where she lived. Kay hesitated. Had rush-hour traffic started? And then it was as though the heavens made the decision for her as the sky opened in torrential rain. She could no longer see the sign through the water flooding down her windshield. She set the wipers going. Then she made a left turn signal and headed west, toward city hall.
36
McDeath, October 2016
It was pouring down as Bob swung into the parking lot in front of McDonald’s. He turned off the engine and peered out. Heard the distant rumble from the freeway that passed directly above him and blocked out the view to the west. It wasn’t exactly an idyllic location and the cloud cover that swallowed up the daylight didn’t make it any more inviting. He saw Mike’s Chevrolet Caprice station wagon farther ahead in the parking lot. He pulled out his phone and tapped in a name. The voice that answered sounded resigned:
“What is it, Bob?”
