Page 58 of PSYCHOlogical

Chapter Twenty-Two

Val

With my sushi pinched between the tips of my chopsticks and the utensils dangling loosely from my fingers, I stared back at Briggs with an open mouth.

“You’re kidding me?” I gawked. “There’s two pieces? And they split apart?”

He chuckled. “I thought you said you watched cop shows on television.”

“I do,” I said. “But I always thought when they said ‘bullet’ that it meant the entire thing. I guess I didn’t realize part of it was spit out on the floor and the other part ended up in the victim’s brain. I thought the whole thing went in the victim’s brain.”

He shook his head. “The brass part is the shell casing. The lead part—of the tip of the bullet—is the projectile. Inside the shell casing is the gunpowder. At the back of the shell casing is a primer. The primer is a very small explosive device. When the trigger is pulled, the weapon’s firing pin contacts the primer, and it explodes. That small explosion causes the gunpowder to explode, which does two things. One, it sends the projectile—or bullet—out the end of the barrel, toward the target. Secondly, the weapon’s slide is blasted back from the explosion, which extracts the empty shell casing and tosses it aside. A spring causes the slide to slam closed, which automatically loads the next round. If you pull the trigger again, the entire process repeats itself. So, on television when you see them grab the slide and load the weapon? That’s bullshit. The weapon is carried with a round in the chamber, and it reloads itself when you fire it, automatically.”

“So, that whole click-clack thing they do when they’re getting ready to kick in the perp’s door is fake?”

“Completely,” he said. “It’s theatrics, and nothing more.”

Without taking my eyes off him, I poked a piece of raw tuna in my mouth.

I hadn’t forgotten about what happened over the course of the day and doubted I ever would. I’d reached a point, however, where the death of my two coworkers was no longer at the forefront of my thoughts.

Vincent’s simple existence was consuming me.

“Do you listen to music?” I asked.

“All day, every day,” he said. “Any time I’m driving, of course. And, if I’m in my home, it’s playing. Always.”

“Me, too. I love music. I play it to fall asleep. I’ve got one of those programmable things beside my bed, and I can listen for an hour or whatever, and then it shuts off.”

“I leave mine playing all night,” he said.

“Do you read?”

“Technical stuff,” he said, “but not books. I don’t like fiction.”

“Any of it?”

“Nope.”

“Besides exercising and work, what do you do with your time?” I asked.

“Don’t laugh,” he said.

“I’d never laugh. I’d just like to know.”

“I save all my change. Even if I can make exact change for something, I don’t. I even find myself buying something because I know it’s going to be $1.03, just so I can get the change. Then, a few times a month, I sort it all by denomination and year, in little stacks.”

“That sounds like a tedious task. Do you cash it in?”

“Once a year, right before Christmas. Until that point, I just count it, and recount it.”

“Wait. You’ll recount this month what you’ve already counted from last month?”

In the midst of dipping his sushi in soy sauce, he paused. “I sure do.”

“Holy cow. So, when December rolls around, you’ve got a ton of change, huh?”

“Not as much as you’d think. About a thousand bucks.”