by Robert Pobi
“And you think he might know someone who knows someone?”
“If it has to do with firearms, Oscar is the guy. Apparently, when you’re good at your job, all kinds of people show up on your doorstep.” She turned to him and smiled.
“And I’m supposed to be the mean one.” He pulled on his fur-rimmed hood and stepped out into more of the same. Snow. Wind. Cold temperatures.
He climbed through a mid-thigh-high bank to get onto a sidewalk that was pockmarked with half-buried footsteps. Whitaker tried to follow in his path, but the stride was too wide, and she gave up after almost losing a boot. “I’m starting to think you’re bad luck,” she said.
“The feeling’s mutual.”
The iron door possessed the same carcinogenic complexion as the rest of the structure. It was outfitted with a litany of locks, and an intercom was fastened to the wall beside it, looking like it hadn’t worked for a long time.
Whitaker reached out and pressed the small red button with a gloved finger. Then she looked up at the camera nestled into an alcove in the masonry.
A moment later, the locks went through their turns and the door opened. Whitaker was suddenly staring into the wide black eyes of a side-by-side twelve gauge.
“What the fuck you assholes want?” The words came from a voice mercilessly sculpted by cancer’s familiar hands.
Whitaker dropped the hood on her parka. “Nice to see you, too, old man.”
The barrel stayed leveled at her head. “Whitaker?”
“Hey, Oscar.”
“Nice to see you.” The old man’s mouth shifted to what had to be a smile but in reality clocked out at less of a frown. “I think.”
Oscar moved the double barrels onto Lucas and studied him for a few suspicious seconds, his eyes rotating from the Persols down to his anodized hand, then back up to his sunglasses. “And him?”
Lucas reached and placed the index and middle fingers of his aluminum hand in the barrels. He steered it away. “Point that at someone else,” he said.
They stared at one another for a few heartbeats before Oscar nodded and snapped the safety home with his thumb. “Can’t be careful enough these days. The neighborhood’s gone to shit.”
Whitaker let out a breath that frosted the air, and Lucas said, “Maybe it’s the people who live here.”
Whitaker gave him the stink eye.
Oscar waved them in. “Don’t stand out there; I don’t need the goddamned neighbors knowing my goddamned business.”
After they stepped inside, Oscar slammed the door, snapping locks and dropping a thick piece of angle iron into place, sealing the building from interlopers. The room was completely black except for a single task bulb illuminating a metal lathe off in the distance. And by the way the sound bounced around the place, it was easy to tell that it was huge.
Oscar disappeared under the welded metal stairs that led to the office on the second floor and threw the breakers. The shop illuminated one section at a time, each round pool of gray-blue light coming to life with a loud clack!
In sharp contrast to the time-blackened exterior, the workshop was spotless and organized, as neat as any lab Lucas had seen. Gunsmithing tables sat alongside ancient brakes, lathes, drill presses, and two dozen other machinist’s tools—all predating the computer age by an easy half century. There were a dozen felt-lined tables populated with firearms in various states of disassembly, surgery, and modification. The walls were lined with thousands of rifles, and felt-lined oak shelves filled up a good hundred feet of wall space, crammed with pistols of every conceivable make and caliber. Every firearm in the place was individually labeled with a bright yellow inventory tag. Lucas couldn’t help wondering how many of these repairs and modifications would never get done; it was obvious that Oscar was losing his battle with sickness.
Oscar came out from under the staircase, and a small grunt morphed into a bout of coughing befitting a Volkswagen diesel that he punctuated by spitting into a handkerchief. “Cancer is a cunt,” he said, pocketing the cotton square.
“Oscar, this is Dr. Lucas Page.”
They shook hands, and Oscar said, “The astrophysicist?”
“The one and only,” Whitaker answered for him.
Oscar gave Lucas an obvious up and down and nodded in approval. “Your piece on ballistics was excellent.”
“Thank you.” Lucas had written the book for a DOD think tank back when he still needed a way to pay for groceries. It made the rounds in various governmental agencies, eventually ending up at the FBI, where it became a standard manual. He had spent a good portion of his life wishing he never wrote it. Like now.
Oscar moved on, casting a sideways glance at Whitaker. “How’s your shooting?”
She smiled at that. “First in the Law Enforcement Eastern Division, third overall.”
“Third?”
She shrugged. “I had an off day.”
“Yeah, well, we all—” And he was overtaken by another stretch of hacking that again ended with him spitting bloody mucus into a handkerchief. He wiped the corners of his mouth and nodded at the dark overhead. “Let’s go upstairs. I need to take some medicine.”
As Oscar climbed the welded metal steps to the office overlooking the workshop, Whitaker pointed out that he didn’t advertise and he only accepted new clients on referral as long as they understood that there was a two-year waiting list just to bring a firearm in. And then there was still plenty of waiting to be done. Which once again hammered home the realization that work on many of the weapons in the shop downstairs would never be completed.
The office was large, with a twelve-foot ceiling. One wall was lined with shelving, one had a massive fireplace centered in it, and two walls were floor-to-ceiling windows that oversaw the shop. The space was covered with what looked like ten acres of Persian rug. Two big tufted leather chesterfields and a pair of club chairs flanked the fireplace, and there was a bar stocked with a good choice of scotches, from low-grade blends to expensive Japanese single malts. There was a good eighteenth-century portrait in a rocaille frame over the fireplace, a wall of reference books, a handcrafted stereo, a small two-person dining set, a fridge, and an old leather psychiatrist’s couch in the back corner. But the centerpiece was a taxidermied elephant’s head, painted pink and staring down as if waiting for someone to turn on the television. There was a duffel bag on the floor, and a baby-blue sweater was neatly folded on top. It wasn’t hard to figure out that Oscar spent a lot of nights here.
The old man put the shotgun down on his desk atop a pile of takeout menus, hung his apron on the antler coatrack by the door, then folded his glasses into a shirt pocket. After another short bout of coughing and spitting blood, he went to the bar. “Want a drink, Dr. Page?”
Lucas shook his head as he walked around the room, taking in the details. “Thank you, no.”
The old man turned to Whitaker. “The usual?”
She looked at Lucas, letting him know that she knew she was on duty, then said, “Sure.”
Oscar pulled a bottle from the forest of booze vessels and poured a couple of fingers of scotch into two simple glass tumblers. He handed a glass to Whitaker, then headed to his seat with the bottle in one hand, his drink in the other.
Lucas scanned the library, recognizing most of the books on ballistics, including his own. But the thing that caught his attention was the collection of cartridges on the mantel. He sighted down the long oak surface and did that thing he did with numbers, coming up with 2,461 separate rounds. The collection was organized from smallest to largest, eight rows deep, variances in length and diameter factored into the order. The first round in the forest of brass was a weird little caliber that Lucas didn’t recognize, the last being a .50-caliber shell that might as well have been designed for shooting dinosaurs. The rounds were well thumbed, and would have taken Oscar years to put together, even with the contacts in his rarefied profession.
Oscar dropped into a leather club chair by the fire and said to Luc
as, “If it’s not booze, all I have is water.”
“Not a problem. I just had lunch.”
Lucas caught Whitaker eyeing him as she put the booze into her system. It was clear that she was wondering if he would blow this. Oscar didn’t seem like the kind of man who relished having strangers in his place. Especially ones who didn’t drink.
When the booze was away in his boiler, Oscar poured another and eased back in the tufted leather. “So, what brings you down to my humble place of business in the End Times blizzard?”
Whitaker bypassed small talk and went straight for the big money. “You heard about the killings?”
Oscar nodded and put another mouthful of single malt away. “Everyone’s heard about the killings.”
Lucas knew that a portion of the Second Amendment folks were a singularly minded group who interpreted every act of firearm violence as a newly minted excuse for the government to come after their guns.
Whitaker went on. “Our guy’s a shooter. But he’s not using military or tactical rounds; he’s using a modified deer slug. Bench-load .300 Winnie Mag.”
At that, Oscar shifted in his seat. “Good choice.”
“But it gets weird after that. Copper-alloy jacket, lead-alloy core with a machined kernel of ferrous metal suspended in the mix.”
That seemed to stop Oscar’s internal machinery, and something blipped on his features. “Ferrous?” He leaned forward and poured two more fingers of medicine into his glass. “Which makes them armor piercing.”
“There’s more.”
Oscar took another sip of booze. “Of course there is.”
“The ferrous core isn’t any sort of normal steel. It’s meteoric in origin.”
Oscar stared at Whitaker for a few seconds, and Lucas wondered what he was thinking. He hoped that Whitaker was doing that Amazing Kreskin Jedi mind trick of hers.
“Meteoric? As in from a meteor?” the old man asked, and his head swiveled to Lucas for a second. “A space meteor?”
Lucas didn’t bother to nod. “That’s the only kind there is.”
Whitaker continued, “Whoever put those rounds together isn’t some guy in a garage with a hacksaw and a drill press from Lowe’s—this is a guy with a lot of experience. Either the shooter does his own work, or he has someone do it for him.”
Oscar examined Lucas over the rim of his glass, then his eyes shifted back to Whitaker. It was obvious he considered her some kind of a friend and was weighing that against an unknown part of the equation—probably the shield hanging around her neck. “And what is it you expect from me?”
“Whoever this guy is, he is doing this for a reason. I don’t expect you to ask around about the work and I don’t expect you to ask around about the rifle, but I’m looking for anyone who might fit the ideals. Just ask a few questions.”
Oscar polished off the scotch. “And you figured that I’m so close to death that I might sacrifice my principles to help you out.”
Whitaker knocked back her own drink and leaned forward in the chair, hands on her knees. “Oscar, this guy is big game hunting my people in my city. All I’m asking is for you to think about it.”
Oscar put his empty tumbler down on the coffee table. “I’ll walk you out.”
28
Midtown
The day had been busy on regulars but shy on walk-by traffic. No one wanted to go out in the storm unless they had to—all the checks today were for people who lived less than a block away. The everyday folks and the three-times-a-week people all showed up and had been generous with tips.
Connie was changing in the basement, behind the door of the rusty high school locker that Nick provided to all his employees, when Kirby knocked at the window.
She looked up through the bars and gave him the I’ll be up in a minute sign.
He rolled his eyes and pointed at his wrist. He probably had a meeting with his buddies tonight, and he’d want her to go along. She’d refuse and they’d argue.
It wasn’t that she didn’t like his friends. She simply understood them better than he did. Sitting around an apartment arguing about how it was time for action. Angry at the world. Angry at everyone. They had a few valid points, but they only saw things in black and white. They called it patriotism, but it was really more of a low-level Fascism fueled by a lot of anger that never translated to any kind of meaningful action.
She had experience with their thinking; she had been raised on it. Which was why she stuck with him. He was part of home, part of her past, and it made her feel a little more whole to have him in her life here.
She was finishing the tug on her zipper when she heard Nick at the top of the stairs. If she didn’t hurry, she’d have to blow herself out of the basement, and after the day’s shift, she really didn’t feel like sucking the fat Greek’s cock.
Kirby banged on the window with his guitar case, and she gave him the thumbs-up. I’m coming! she mouthed.
She hit the bottom of the stairs at the same time as Nick. “Where you goin’?” he asked, and by his tone, she could tell he thought it was blow job time.
“I got things to do,” she said, and she ran by him before he could grab her arm.
29
26 Federal Plaza
When they got to the war room, Kehoe was already in full swing. SOP was an early-morning meeting followed up at the end of the day with a wrap (which served as the launching pad for that evening’s workload). It was now almost four in the afternoon, and the sun was beginning to fade.
The entire team, now nearly seventy people, zeroed in on the need to know and the here and now. Kehoe paced in front of the screens, looking very much like a college professor giving a seminar. But in place of pie charts, graphs, and equations, the monitors displayed images of Philippe Froissant, the Frenchman that Lucas doubted had anything to do with the killings.
“We still haven’t nailed down direct evidence to tie Froissant to these two killings, but information from French intelligence agencies combined with a recommendation from both our DHS and DOJ suggest that this is our suspect.” When Kehoe saw Lucas, he stopped his delivery and nodded at him. “Which brings me to the mystery man you’ve seen walking around the crime scenes and our building for the past twenty-four hours. People, meet Dr. Lucas Page.”
The forest of heads swiveled simultaneously, and Lucas nodded once and gave a small light bulb wave with his prosthetic hand so that there would be fewer surprises in the days to come.
Herd curiosity satisfied, the attention focused back on Kehoe.
“Dr. Page is filling the capacity of special investigator. He is an astrophysicist by trade, if you can call it that, and specializes in three separate branches of math that I won’t pretend to understand. For our purposes he’s here for projectile geometry. Dr. Page is partnered with our own Agent Whitaker, and I expect you to extend him every professional courtesy.”
Introductions done, he returned to lecture mode. “On to ballistics.” He nodded, and the screens behind him changed, now displaying images of the slug from the Hartke murder scene. It was mangled but in one piece, remarkable considering it had been dug out of frozen asphalt after punching through a human being and a car. It looked like a cast of some unidentifiable internal organ.
Lucas took up a position against one of the glass walls that bordered the hallway. Whitaker eased up beside him and leaned back, crossing her arms. “You missed the rundown on the French suspect.”
“He’s French—he likes wine, pretty girls with hairy armpits, and nice clothes—what’s to know?” he whispered.
“You ever run out of sarcasm?”
“Sure. About twice a week.”
Kehoe rocked up onto the balls of his feet—a new habit that Lucas hadn’t seen before. “Our shooter favors very specific ammunition. He’s not using off-the-shelf—these rounds are bench-loaded and have significant idiosyncratic properties; please check your in-boxes for a more detailed rundown when we finish here.” Kehoe nodded at one of the screens, and a
brochure photograph of a bullet popped up. “We’ve only recovered one round so far—from the scene of Agent Hartke’s murder—but all evidence at the tram shooting indicate the same type of projectile. The slugs he’s using began their life as off-the-shelf rounds manufactured by Nosler under their AccuBond line—copper-alloy jacket with a lead-alloy core in a .300 Winchester Magnum. This, in itself, appears to be atypical for our suspect. We expect him to use a military-grade antipersonnel round.”
At that point, Kehoe’s eyes went right back to Lucas, and for an instant they tried to communicate some unknown message. “These are modified hunting rounds, machined to contain a kernel of ferrous metal that is meteoric in origin.” Kehoe looked at Lucas. “Dr. Page, do you see any tactical advantage in using such an unusual core?”
Lucas shook his head. “Over a man-made ferrous alloy? Not that I can discern. Before humans figured out how to smelt iron, many cultures used it as a material of opportunity. There are recorded instances of the Inuit using it in edged tools, and more recently, a knife with a blade of meteoric iron was found in King Tutankhamen’s burial chamber. Both examples rely heavily on superstition, and that’s the only benefit I can see—there’s some imagined purpose or import to the shooter.”
“How difficult is it to source?”
Lucas shrugged. “You can’t buy it at your average scrapyard, but it’s not completely uncommon. Specialty scientific and educational wholesalers are the obvious starting point. Mineral collectors. Finding a meteorite would be the most untraceable method. And since each meteor has its own unique mineral signature, it’s possible that it comes from a known source.”
