A Good Kill

by John McMahon

  The place was cramped and done in a greenish-blue color. Paint peeled off the ceiling. It felt like the inside of an old submarine. There were tables and old furniture spread throughout the space, but there was also machinery. A 3D printer sat at the far end of the room.

  Twenty men and two women hushed up as we reached the third rung from the bottom, where Wolf stopped. This group was older than the one on the floor above. Thirties and forties. Everyone stared at me and Remy.

  Wolf cleared his throat. “These folks are the cops I talked to y’all about,” he said. “They got something to say—maybe it’s lucrative for someone here.”

  Lucrative?

  What angle had Wolf presented to these people?

  “Fuckin’ cops,” I heard someone say, but I couldn’t tell who.

  “Nolan Brauer,” I said. I passed a photocopy of the man’s picture to Wolf, who stepped down and handed it to another guy. Brauer was the man who the Cracker Barrel waitress had called unmemorable. “He’s got a 3D-printed M24 sniper rifle.”

  “Bullshit,” someone said as the photo passed among the group.

  “No, y’all,” Wolf said. “I saw some of the damn parts. And not the easy ones to make. The inside of the trigger assembly was tight as fuck.”

  Murmurs moved through the room.

  “Guys,” I said. “He’s gonna shoot someone tomorrow, and there’s a couple rooms full of Feds looking everywhere online to see who it might be. But I think you guys have places that you hang out that the Feds don’t know about. We need to know where this Brauer guy might be. And who he might hate enough to kill.”

  I stepped backward and looked to Remy. “You wanna add something?”

  Remy stepped forward, and the place went quiet. Maybe it was my own bias, but I was guessing some of these guys didn’t get laid too often. And here was this cop who was drop-dead gorgeous and packing heat.

  “Guys,” she said. “We need you. We need your help. And we need it fast. ’Cause if someone dies tomorrow morning, a world of hurt is gonna fall on anyone who owns a 3D printer.”

  Wolf nodded and pointed us back up the stairs.

  “That’s it?” Remy asked as we trudged back up.

  “I think the way it works,” I said, “is now we wait.”

  “That’s right,” Wolf said as we got to the top. “’Cause the folks inside are just a small portion of the community. You gotta let ’em work. Text and chat with their people.”

  We moved back to the alley then, and the night sky was a purplish-black. The air smelled clean here, just four miles north of the numbered streets.

  I grabbed a pack of Marlboro Reds from my truck, and Remy grabbed her iPad.

  As I smoked, I found myself thinking about Kelly Borland.

  I considered what Remy had said last night when we argued. How it was part of my mission to keep myself unhappy. Was it a line my partner said to get a reaction out of me? Or the Gospel that I had been denying?

  My phone pulsed, and I looked down.

  It was Abe.

  The Feds got something. An assemblyman from Alabama. He received harassing mail from Nolan Brauer ten days ago. Turned it over to the police, but it’s just been sitting on someone’s desk.

  I picked up the phone and called Abe, putting him on speaker.

  “Clearson is getting on a copter and heading to Birmingham,” he said. “From there, it’s a one-hour drive to Downey.”

  “What’s in Downey?” Remy asked.

  “Some fundraiser tomorrow morning,” Abe said. “I’m going with him, so no need to be here at five a.m.”

  Remy and I looked at each other, but didn’t say anything.

  “So that’s it?” I asked.

  “The assemblyman’s got a pancake breakfast tomorrow morning outside his headquarters. There’s a five-story hotel a block away. It’s the only building over one story in the town. We assume that’s Brauer’s base of operations.”

  I stubbed out my cigarette and looked to Remy. This was a good thing. And at least we’d exhausted all means, trying to talk to Wolf.

  “So they got some confirmation on this?” Remy asked. “The Feds?”

  “That’s what they told me,” Abe said. “They’ve contacted the governor, who called his counterpart in Alabama. Everything’s whisper quiet so we can catch this son of a bitch setting up at that hotel.”

  The metal door to the back of the game place scraped open, and Wolf pointed at me and Remy with his bony fingers, beckoning us inside.

  “All right,” I said to Abe. “Stay safe.”

  Remy was already moving ahead of me. Before I could tell Wolf that we didn’t need his help.

  I hung up and squinted at Wolf, who was standing with two nerdy-looking dudes. One was white and had legit mom jeans on. Like high-waisted, early ’90s numbers, into which he’d tucked a collared shirt. The other guy was Black and wore thick glasses and a white button-down over shorts. For the first time, I realized that Wolf was probably the hippest guy in this crowd.

  “This is Ladrell and Malcolm,” Wolf said.

  The two men stared nervously at Remy—their eyes moving from her chest to the asphalt and then back.

  “Wolf,” I said. “Sorry, I don’t think it’s—”

  “Just hear them out, Marsh,” Wolf said, reading my look on the pair.

  Malcolm, the Black guy, spoke first. “So, a lot of the guys downstairs make models, you know? LOTR characters—that sort of thing.”

  I looked to Wolf, who quickly translated that LOTR stood for Lord of the Rings.

  “Or Darth Sidious figures if you’re into Star Wars,” Ladrell said. As if that clarified something about their culture.

  “Point being,” Malcolm said, pointing at the basement below, “they aren’t gonna be able to help much. But with us, it’s different.”

  I suddenly noticed Malcolm was holding three of my business cards and Ladrell was holding two. These guys had scored the full set.

  “We don’t print those things,” Ladrell said. “We make guns, me and Malcolm.”

  He swallowed. Waiting then, as if I might arrest him.

  “Okay,” I said. Trying to wear a friendly face even though the guy had just admitted to producing ghost guns.

  Remy cocked her head at Ladrell. “Have you heard something?”

  “I didn’t take it seriously,” Ladrell said. “But there was like . . . I don’t know how to describe it . . . an RFP that was put out.”

  “A request for proposal?” I asked.

  “An online challenge,” Malcolm said. “A million bucks for the first person who can make a 3D-printed M24.”

  “As a model?”

  “No,” Malcolm said. “There’s already models. I got two of them. You get the million bucks if you can prove it works. One test bullet fired and posted online. And the gun still intact.”

  “We figured it was a prank,” Ladrell said. “The plastic couldn’t withstand the power.”

  “But there’s new plastics this year,” Wolf said. “Metallic powders in them. They mimic metal.”

  “And did the person putting out the RFP say why they needed the gun?” Remy asked.

  “No, but there’s been chatter,” Malcolm said.

  “Is the target someone in politics?” I asked. Trying to connect the maker of the weapon to the man who Abe and Clearson were flying to Alabama to protect.

  “In a way,” Malcolm said. “There’s this foundation that some of our friends have been watching. A guy named Saul Goldberg started it. He was some Wall Street type, but not a trader. Came from the tech side and made hundreds of millions. His sister’s kid was a victim in a shooting. So four years ago he started something called Not in This Town.”

  “It’s an anti-gun group,” Wolf said, this time with no affect in his voice. It suddenly dawned on me that
Wolf’s whole style and vernacular might be a put-on, all the “yo” and “girl” shit.

  “The idea is to fight the NRA their way. With money,” Ladrell described. “This Goldberg guy put in fifty million to start the foundation, but now they got a ton more money from Democratic donations and fundraisers.”

  “So Goldberg works with politicians?” I clarified.

  Malcolm nodded. “And in two districts so far, they’ve beaten the pro-NRA candidate at election time.”

  I looked to Remy. This was all coming together. Verifying what Abe and Clearson had said.

  “So you’ve heard chatter on the politician who’s the target?” Remy said, looking for fidelity.

  “Well, we caught wind of something, but we’re not sure it’s legit.”

  “Is it at an event in Alabama?” Remy asked.

  The two looked at each other and shook their heads. “No. What we heard is in Atlanta,” Malcolm said. “Eight a.m. tomorrow. Outside the Georgia Aquarium.”

  I cocked my head, confused.

  I asked the guys to hold a second and stepped over to my truck with Remy. Decided to call up Mandelle Clearson myself.

  “Hey,” I said. I could hear a chopper behind him. “We might have a lead here. How sure are you on this Alabama thing?”

  “Who’s your lead from?” Clearson asked.

  “You don’t know him,” I said. “But listen. Have you heard of a group called Not in This Town?”

  “Yeah, we know the guy who runs it,” Clearson yelled. “Pain-in-the-ass loudmouth from New York. He thinks he’s doing our job getting guns off the street.”

  “Have we considered if someone in his group is the target?”

  “We know who the target is, P.T.”

  “This group has an event in the morning,” I said. “In downtown Atlanta.”

  Clearson’s voice became more distant.

  “Mandelle?” I asked, but the phone disconnected.

  Remy looked at me. “What’d he say?”

  “I think he hung up on me.”

  My phone pulsed a moment later, and I stared at a message from Clearson:

  We got this, P.T. Stand down. Get some rest. You’re grasping at straws.

  I handed the phone to Remy, who stared at the text.

  I had been wondering all day what I used to like about Clearson.

  I couldn’t remember.

  “So?” she said.

  “Where’s the place in Atlanta that this function is at in the morning?” I asked.

  Remy had the foundation’s website open on her phone.

  “The National Center for Civil and Human Rights,” she said. “It’s located between the Georgia Aquarium and the World of Coca-Cola.”

  I considered the symbolic nature of this. “Can you think of a more iconic act by some nut who calls himself a patriot?” I asked. “Taking out someone at a place named the National Center for Civil and Human Rights?”

  “Intimidating,” Remy said. She held up her phone. “And check this out. The speaker in the morning. It’s Jerome Bleeker.”

  This was the candidate running against Toby Monroe for governor. He was speaking on the topic of 3D guns.

  We walked back over and found Wolf, Ladrell, and Malcolm, all huddled in a group outside the back door of the game place.

  “What’d your boss say?” Wolf asked.

  “He’s not our boss,” Remy said.

  “He’s a Fed,” I clarified. “And he said he knows better. But we’re gonna check out your lead.”

  “Nice,” Wolf said.

  “The problem is, where the ATF is looking is some tiny suburb in Alabama,” I said. “One tall building in town. If you’re right—and this Brauer guy’s as good as we think with a sniper rifle—he could be in one of fifty buildings in Atlanta. Too many to check in one night.”

  “Then we’ll need to look at trajectory,” Ladrell said, more to Malcolm than us. “Angle from roof to street.”

  I looked to Remy.

  We? Did I black out and someone deputized the nerds? Then again, without the Feds’ help, we were dead in the water. Just the two of us and no way to consider this many buildings.

  “I got a buddy,” Malcolm said. “He’s got a perfect one-to-five-hundred scale model of Atlanta. He’s probably ten minutes from here. If we want to check out trajectory, we could go old-school.”

  “String?” Ladrell asked.

  “I was thinking laser pointer,” Malcolm suggested.

  I glanced at my phone. It was past midnight.

  “And this friend of yours is up at this hour?” I asked.

  “For a couple more of these?” Malcolm held up my cards. “Zach’ll wake up.”

  34

  The 3D model of downtown Atlanta was in a house just north of the city limits.

  We left Ladrell behind and followed Malcolm and Wolf there. My Silverado trailed behind Malcolm’s Chevy Blazer, while Wolf and Malcolm called their buddy Zach and gave him a heads-up.

  As we drove, Remy did some phone research on the Not in This Town website, seeing that their 2020 platform wasn’t directed only at 3D-printed guns. It had a very specific angle.

  The group wanted to make the development of engineering plans equal to the manufacture of the guns themselves.

  Which would legally corner anyone putting plans online, unless they had a federal firearms manufacturing license. Which none of these rogue guys designing 3D guns in their basement did.

  I thought about what Wolf had said when we were in the back of Chester’s gun shop. About the reason someone might use a 3D sniper rifle.

  That might fall under the category of making a statement.

  What better statement could you make against a potentially onerous 3D-printing law than to take out the people pushing for that law? And do it from a half mile away, using a 3D weapon.

  “Shit,” I said to Remy. “That’s a game-changer if it becomes law.”

  Malcolm’s Blazer slowed outside a large ranch-style home with confederate jasmine curling along a white picket fence that ran along the edge of the property.

  Remy and I got out. Followed Malcolm and Wolf over to the door, where he introduced us to his friend.

  Zach Obernick was white and six foot tall, with a neatly trimmed black beard and wavy hair. His wife, Flora, was Black and wore hospital scrubs that featured a pattern of tiny bears against a pink field.

  “You’re a nurse?” Remy asked the wife as we walked through their home.

  “I’m a pediatric neurosurgeon,” she said. “Just got off a late shift. You’re the detectives?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Remy said.

  Her husband opened their back door, and we followed the couple from the home out into a huge backyard.

  In the center was an all-glass room, about fifteen feet by fifteen feet.

  “A greenhouse,” Remy said, just as we approached the structure.

  “And wouldn’t that be nice,” Flora said. “Some beautiful flowers inside maybe.”

  The husband, Zach, came around with a key and unlocked the greenhouse door.

  But we didn’t see a garden full of daylilies or trays of hothouse tomatoes. Instead, we stared at a 1:500 scale replica of the city of Atlanta, set up on a mahogany ten-by-ten table, about four feet off the ground.

  “Wow,” I said. It was a city of white plastic structures, perfectly molded to show off every window and rooftop pool, but not painted. In between the buildings, which were labeled with their addresses on tiny signs, were gray roads painted on the table.

  The whole city stood about ten to twenty inches high off the board, depending on the actual height of each building.

  Wolf and Malcolm were the last ones in the door, and Malcolm moved around the far side of the table.

  “Right there’s the G
eorgia Aquarium.” Malcolm pointed. “Here’s the World of Coca-Cola.” Malcolm’s finger moved back to the courtyard. “And right here is the Center for Civil and Human Rights. That quad outside is the spot of Bleeker’s speech.”

  I knew Atlanta okay, and I recalled spending time in this specific area. Lena and I had taken Jonas to the aquarium when he was six. I remember going on the behind-the-scenes tour and learning this was the only place in the country where whale sharks lived.

  Remy moved around the far side of the table and was doing the same thing I was. Her eyes flitted from building to building near the center. Studying trajectory like a sharpshooter.

  “Laser pointer?” Wolf asked Malcolm, who produced one.

  Wolf handed it to Remy, and she pointed the pen from the top of the miniature SunTrust Plaza.

  “That works,” I said, watching as my partner aimed the red light down onto the open quad area in front of the civil rights building.

  “There’s one possibility,” Remy said.

  We did the same for the Westin Peachtree.

  I stared at the row of structures set along Centennial Olympic Park Drive NW. “Any of these condos you could take a shot from.”

  I pointed at a set of three buildings with tiny unpainted pools at the top. “The Children’s Museum of Atlanta. Also the Coca-Cola place itself. The parking garage for the aquarium.”

  We moved with the laser from building to building, each time assessing where a shot could come from. When we finished, there were sixteen buildings in question. Maybe eighteen if you were a perfect marksman. And we knew Nolan Brauer could shoot.

  “It’s a lot,” Remy said.

  “Well, you have a bunch of officers, right?” Wolf asked. “You said there were a couple departments of Feds working.”

  This was part of our spiel at the game place where we found Malcolm and Ladrell an hour ago. Then again, those agents all worked for Clearson, not us. And they’d all headed to Downey, Alabama.

  “Let’s jot down these addresses, Rem,” I said. “Get out of these nice people’s home.”

  Zach leaned in with a rectangular magnifying glass. He read off each address from the tiny buildings, while Remy typed them into her iPad. When she was done, I took a photo of the list with my phone, guessing we might have to split up.