The Guilty (2008)
Page 11
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“You didn’t need name tags. Eighty-thirty in the morning,
both of you dressed and showered, Henry wearing matching
socks and the whole nine. Henry here is a reporter…no guy
I’ve ever met under the age of thirty is dressed well and
showered this early unless they’re going to work, going to a
funeral, or going somewhere with the person they sleep with.
Do you have a funeral this afternoon?”
My cheeks grew warm, and Amanda’s looked like they
could catch fire at any moment. “Not that I know of,” I said.
“Then you’re boyfriend and girlfriend,” Agnes said.
“That’s lovely. Please, sit. Candy cane?”
“No, thanks,” we echoed.
Agnes shrugged as if she couldn’t believe how anyone
could say no to such a scrumptious treat at this time of day.
In the meantime, Agnes seemed to have noticed me staring
at the photos behind her desk. I’d also noticed that she wore
a wedding ring.
“You never had pictures taped to your locker?” she asked.
“I did,” I said, “back in high school.” I glanced at her
wedding ring. “How does your husband feel about them?”
“What are you, ten years old?” she asked. “He knows I’m
not sleeping with Brad Pitt, and as long as that stays the case
he could care less if I have pictures of him or Stephen
Hawking on my wall. If you have a problem with them, you
can leave any time.”
There was a sharp pain in my side as Amanda elbowed me.
“Nope, no problem.”
“So, Amanda, how are you? It’s been, what, three years?”
“Four,” Amanda corrected. “Junior year, U.S. Nineteenth
Century Intellectual and Cultural History.”
“What’d I give you in that class?”
“A minus.”
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“That’ll do. I refuse to put up with students post-graduation
unless they’ve received at least a B plus. So what brings you
to our humble university? Not soliciting donations, I hope.”
I laughed. Amanda didn’t. Clearly I’d missed a joke.
“So, Mr. Parker,” Agnes said. “Amanda tells me you’re a
reporter and you have some questions a woman of my expertise might be able to assist you with. That correct?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. Agnes cringed.
“Don’t call me ma’am, please. I’d rather die alone surrounded by cats than think I’m a ma’am. Call me Agnes.”
“Right, Agnes. Anyway, you’ve heard about these murders,
right? Athena Paradis, Officer Joe Mauser, Jeffrey Lourdes?”
She shook her head sadly. “Terrible, terrible things. How
someone can murder people who’ve contributed so much to
our society is just shameful and beyond me.”
“The person who committed these crimes, I’m pretty sure
they’re using a weapon, specifically a rifle, that has some
specific cause or reason behind its use. The killer is also using
ammunition I’ve been told is quite out of the ordinary,” I
eyed her red hair, the lava lamps. “Amanda said you were
familiar with nineteenth-century weaponry…”
“Shoot,” she said. Then she laughed. “Get it, shoot? Go on.”
“Right. So my source in the NYPD told me that the bullet
used to kill both Athena Paradis and Officer Mauser was a
.44-40 caliber magnum round.”
Agnes bit her lip, furrowed her brow.
“That’s a powerful bullet,” she said.
“So I’ve heard. Is it true that it’s an uncommon round?”
“Depends,” she said. “Hunters use them all the time—
.44-40 bullets have massive stopping power, and just enough
accuracy that if you’re a decent shot, you’ll only need one
shot.”
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“I’ve scanned the police reports for every homicide in the
five boroughs over the last five years,” I said. “Three hundred
and twelve murders. None of them with magnum rounds.”
“Well, to be honest magnum rounds aren’t the kind of ammunition you tend to see these days, at least not around
here,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, the area between the Hudson and East River isn’t
exactly known for their hunting grounds.” She paused.
“Unless this man is making them.”
“I think he may be,” I said.
“Listen, Mr. Parker…”
“Call me Henry.”
“Right, Parker, I appreciate you coming down here, it
flatters me to no end that a former student thinks so highly of
me to believe I might be of some assistance on a murder case.
But I’m a college professor. Nothing more, maybe a little less.”
I looked around her office. “Mrs. Trimble, it’s clear you
have a passion for these weapons. Now regardless of what that
says about you, I’d sure as hell trust someone who has a
passion for something over someone who gets paid to do it.
I think Amanda’s right. But I’m not a cop, I’m not asking you
to help catch a murderer. But I think there’s more to this than
simple killings. I think this guy has a motive, and I think his
gun is a clue to that.”
Agnes took the candy cane from her mouth, tossed it in the
garbage. Looked me over. “You know my father took me to the
range when I was a little girl. Had one set up in our backyard.
Picket fence with empty paint cans on it. Only seven-year-old
in my town who could shoot paint cans from twenty yards out
with a 9 mm with eighty-seven-percent accuracy. I know guns.
I don’t like what they can do, but I’m in awe of them.”
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“I can see that,” I said. “And that could be the difference
here.”
“Do they know what kind of gun it was fired from?”
“Not specifically,” I said. “But there are clues. A witness
to Jeffrey Lourdes’s murder said she got a good look at the
weapon. She said it looked old, like she’d seen it in a movie.
It might have had a wood stock. That’s as much as I know.”
“Mr. Parker, hundreds of guns fit that description. If that’s
all you have…”
“Does the phrase ‘gun that won the West’ mean anything
to you?”
Agnes’s eyes opened wide. She brought a hand to her
mouth, chewed on a fingernail. Suddenly she stood up, started
running her finger along the spines of various books on her
shelf. She stopped at one. Took it out and laid it on her desk.
She flipped it open. It was text heavy, filled with old photographs and illustrations. She turned to the index, flipped some
more, scanned down, then stopped when she found what she
was looking for.
“You say you think this rifle bears a significance to the
case?” she asked. All the playfulness had left Agnes Trimble’s
voice. She was working now, the switch I assumed made her
so good at her job was now turned on.
“I don’t know about the case, but it does to the man committing these crimes. I just need to prove it. I need to know
why this gun is so special to him.�
�
She turned the book around so it faced me.
“Could this be the gun?”
On the page was a photograph of a rifle. It had a wooden
stock, like Lourdes’s assistant said. Other than that, I didn’t
know.
“Look here,” Agnes said. “Rather than a traditional trigger
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guard, it has a reloading mechanism with only one side
attached to the frame. Makes for easy and fast reloading.
These kind of rifles are as common as sequin jumpsuits. You
asked about the gun that won the West? Well, here it is.”
The caption beneath the rifle read, Winchester 1873, First
Model Rifle, S/N 27.
It was a beautiful piece of firepower. I examined it.
“At the time, this gun was given the highest production run
of any rifle in history,” she said. “As much as the Winchester
won the West, it nearly drowned it in blood as well.”
“Does the Winchester 1873 take .44-40 magnum rounds?”
Agnes nodded, her fingernail underlining a passage in the
text.
The Winchester 1873 lever action rifle was originally
chambered for the .44-40—a bottlenecked cartridge that has
acquired legendary status and is often referred to as ‘The car-
tridge that won the West.’
I read the line, wondered if this was the gun the killer was
using. The rifle obviously had history, a literal one at that.
But why would somebody in the twenty-first century use a
nearly hundred-and-forty-year-old gun?
“So the gun was accurate,” I said to Agnes. “And fast. But
it surely can’t match some of the weapons around today.
Hell…Uzis, semiautomatics, Saturday night specials.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen movies, too. And yes, there are many
guns currently on the market that obliterate the necessity of
the Winchester. But if this is the gun, and I’m assuming at this
point that’s a big if, this man is not using it for efficiency or
posterity.”
“So why use it?” Amanda said. She was into this, a little
too much.
“The Winchester 1873,” Agnes said, her voice taking on a
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reverential tone, “until the Uzi 9 mm came along, was the
most famous and most recognizable gun in the world. Over
half a million were produced and in circulation before the turn
of the century. Between lawmen, outlaws and other savory
and unsavory types, just about anyone who needed to kill
someone was doing it with a Winchester model 1873.”
“What made it so popular?”
Agnes breathed out, whistled. “Oh, well, take your pick.
The construction was far more rugged than the previous
models. That beast could take a pounding. It had a leveraction mechanism, and what that does is allow the shooter to
fire several cartridges without having to reload. The 1873
model was lighter and faster than its grandfather, the 1866.
The 1873 had a steel frame, which allowed Winchester to use
a centerfire instead of a rimfire for the first time.”
Amanda said, “You know if I knew you knew all this, I
might not have registered for your class.”
“If I didn’t know all this, I wouldn’t have a dozen unregistered students every semester taking my class for no credit.”
“So what’s the difference between centerfire and rimfire?”
Agnes seemed to get that I knew a little less about weaponry than
your average twenty-five-year-old. She spoke with no condescension, and I could tell her interest was more than academic.
“The centerfire was one of the most important technological advancements in the history of advanced weaponry. See,
with a centerfire, a gunman could use more than one cartridge
at a time.”
“Or gunwoman,” Amanda added. “Hey, I know about
Annie Oakley.”
Agnes continued. “The older model Winchesters used a
rimfire, which fired at a lower velocity and smaller caliber
since the firing mechanism would often be damaged when
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using higher power ammunition. The steel frame made it the
first rifle which could be used in just about any weather condition. It truly was an all-purpose killing machine.”
I said, “Athena Paradis and Joe Mauser were killed by
.44-40 magnum rounds. I’m willing to bet Jeffrey Lourdes
was the same. My friend on the force told me the .44-40
rounds are pretty uncommon calibers to be used in an urban
setting.”
“They are, mainly because they’re impractical as hell,”
Agnes said. “But in the 1880s, you didn’t have Uzis. A good
rifle, accurate, powerful and easily reloaded, could win a war,
wreak havoc everywhere, or keep the law.”
“So basically this was a bad-ass rifle of the first degree.”
“I believe that’s how pretty much any historian would put
it.”
I sat back and tried to digest all of this. According to all
the facts we had so far, a young man could be running around
New York with a rifle made famous in the nineteenth century.
A rifle that would be described as a “killing machine.” So far
he had targeted three people who had seemingly no connection to each other aside from their propensity for front-page
coverage. Popular gun, popular targets. I knew there was
more to this story. That there was a very specific reason, if
this was the right gun, that this monster was using it.
Agnes continued, confirming my thoughts. “Nobody
would be using this weapon today without a purpose.”
“I know that,” I said. “But we don’t know what that purpose is. Where could someone find this gun?” I asked.
“Oh, hell, I don’t know. Someone who wants it bad, that’s
for sure.”
“Look, Agnes,” I said. “Three people are dead. Who knows
how many more are targeted, or if the cops can catch this guy
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before he crosses anyone else off his list? Right now all I want
to do is find out if this is the gun being used, and if so, why.
I know in my heart if I can answer that question, we’ll find
out who this man is.”
Agnes looked at me, looked at Amanda.
“You love her?” she asked.
Amanda’s mouth opened. The question knocked me a bit,
but I looked her in the eye and said, “Yes I do.” I felt Amanda’s
hand on mine.
“Then promise this girl right here that if you feel yourself
getting too close, you’ll back off. The kind of man who would
go out of his way to use a weapon with such a bloody history
won’t think twice about collateral damage. Reporters are no
good dead.”
“I know that,” I said.
“Museums,” she said. “Museums with Old West exhibitions. Collectors, but antique and current. Start your search
with everything below the Mason-Dixon line. Anyone who
goes out of their way to possess a working Winchester 1873
knows its history well. And appreciates it.”
“This killer surely does both,” I said. “Hey, would you
mind if I make a copy of this?”
next to the Wet Paint sign.”
I gently took the book, brought it to the machine, laid it
flat and made three copies of the page featuring the Winchester. I put the copies in my backpack, then brought the book
back to Agnes.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Don’t mention it. Now, what you do know,” she said, “is
that someone is looking to make a statement. The Winchester 1873 wasn’t just any gun. This was the gun that won the
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West, back when our country was going through its bloodiest and most dangerous time.”
“And now somebody’s brought that gun back east,” Agnes
continued. “And you better pray to God they’re not looking
for this gun to do what it does best, and pick up where it left
off. Because these dead people? They’ll just be the beginning.”
19
She shivered in the morning air. She wore a tan polo shirt
and skirt, the wind whipping through her uncombed hair. The
weather report said today would be chilly and she could have
easily worn a coat, but found herself caring less whether she
was comfortable and more about getting out of the house.
Last night had been a disaster. She remembered dancing
on tables. She remembered pouring alcohol down her throat
seemingly by the gallon. She remembered going home alone,
and her bloodshot eyes reminded her that she’d cried herself
to sleep. She remembered making a phone call around three
in the morning, but it went right to his voice mail. She woke
up with mascara stains on her pillow, throwing it into the
laundry in a fit of rage. It was then that she remembered her
meeting this morning.
There were three messages on her cell phone. She didn’t
even remember it ringing. One was from her friend Shayla
calling to make sure she got home all right. The second was
from her friend Bobby, one of the bazillion gorgeous gay men
of New York City who spent more money on clothing than
the U.N. spent on military aid and seemed to have swept all
the decent straight guys under some giant heterosexual carpet.
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Bobby had been positively shattered by Athena Paradis’s
murder. He owned an autographed copy of her book, had
preordered her CD, and her image wallpapered his Mac.
Bobby was also checking up on her. She’d gone to the bar
with Bobby and her “friend” Victoria, though neither he nor