One Perfect Shot

by Steven F Havill

  “That Winchester has won a bunch of matches for me,” Arnett said. “Sixty years old, and look at that rifling—still crisp and sharp.”

  I stood silently, holding the rifle, enjoying its classic lines. Every movie goer who ever enjoyed a western had seen some version of this gun. After a moment, I eased the lever closed, pulled the trigger and lowered the hammer with my thumb. I wasn’t looking closely at the rifle, though. My gaze was locked on the open safe behind Arnett. The row of rifles, all good soldiers standing in line, included a couple of semiautomatics, and at least four bolt-actions. Four other lever actions, three of them short enough to be carbines, rounded out the row.

  “The other levers?” I asked.

  Before answering, Arnett accepted the .30-30 Winchester and put it back in the rack. He put a finger on the muzzle of one rifle and tipped it forward a little, not offering it to me. “Marlin .45-70. I bought this big old bad boy for an elk hunt up north in Montana.” Shifting his finger to the muzzle of what was obviously another Winchester, he explained, “This one is a later model ’94 carbine in .32 Winchester Special. I use it during the long range portion of the three-gun matches. That and this little jewel for the twenty-two event.” He tapped the muzzle of a slender lever action .22 caliber rifle, then moved on to a fancy little number that showed a lot of brass and an octagon barrel. “I picked this up just this summer.” He hefted it out of the safe, but by then my attention was elsewhere. I knew the rifle that he held was a more-or-less repro of a ’66 Winchester, a gun that wouldn’t come close to accepting the cartridge size we were interested in.

  He held the replica long enough that he could see I wasn’t much interested. “What?” he prompted.

  “Tell me about the .32,” I said.

  “Yeah, so?” He slid the replica back into place, and reached for the .32 Special, picking it out of the safe rack with a one-handed grip on the fore-end wood. “A late one. 1959,” he offered. “It’s a good solid gun. George Payton had that in his shop, and I couldn’t pass it up.”

  “Ah, George,” I said. My fingers were tingling.

  “He’s got another one right now,” Arnett said. “Priced out of my league, but he’s got it. Made before World War II.”

  I didn’t mention that the specimen from Georgie Payton’s inventory had been in Deputy Torrez’s possession out at the gravel pit, blasting the wrong sized bullets down range. At the moment, we were far inside without a warrant, and Mark Arnett had been the proud owner, enjoying showing some friends his collection. That might change in a heartbeat. But what the hell. I drew the slender ballpoint pen out of my pocket, reached out and slid it down the barrel of the .32.

  “Mind?” I said, and again, with one hand on the butt plate and the other using the pen as a handle, I hefted the rifle, not adding my finger prints to the rifle’s collection. Torrez was on the same page. He snapped on a pair of surgical gloves, and that earned a frown from Arnett.

  “I got the lever,” the deputy said to me, and as I held the rifle, he opened the action.

  “Shit,” Mark Arnett said, and I could imagine how he felt. We weren’t old friends any longer, enjoying a collection. If he was smart, he’d stop the whole show now and tell us not to let the door hit us in the ass on the way out. If he was smart, he’d tell us to fetch a warrant and in the next breath, he’d call his attorney. But he knew us, and I could flatter myself that he trusted us. So he did none of those things. “You want the bore light?”

  I nodded. Arnett held it in the action. With Torrez supporting the rifle with his gloved hands, I removed my pen from the bore and peered inside. For a long time, that crisp, bright bore held my attention. When a cartridge is fired in a rifle, it’s a contained symphony. About forty grains of gun powder ignites in this particular version and burns in a microsecond, creating an incomprehensibly huge cloud of brilliantly hot gasses. Contained in a brass shell casing that is in turn contained in the chrome steel chamber of the rifle, the erupting gas seeks exit. By moving the projectile, the ‘plug’, forward, there’s relief, and the whole mass of gasses propels the bullet down the tube and out the muzzle, on the way to the target…in this case, Larry Zipoli’s forehead.

  “Do you always clean your firearms after a session?”

  “Absolutely. Sometimes several times during a match.”

  “Always?”

  “What’s your point, sheriff?”

  “I think you can probably guess, Mark.” He knew—far better than I—that even a single round, a single symphony of burning powder and brass projectile hustling down the barrel, would leave its mark on the bright steel. Turning the bore light, I could see the haze of powder residue. I could see a fleck or two of unburned powder just forward of the chamber. Closing my eyes, I bent my head and inhaled slowly and deeply through my nose. Even as a mending smoker days removed from my last cigarette, I could smell the sweet aroma of burned powder.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  “That rifle was thoroughly cleaned after my last match,” Arnett said, but he sounded distant.

  “When was that?”

  He glanced across the room at the large wall calendar over the bench. “July eighteenth.”

  I tipped the gun toward him. “That smell fresh to you?” I pushed the rifle away when he reached for it. “No touch. Just smell.”

  He did so, and stepped back. “It’s been fired.” He reached around to put the bore light in place and examined the bore for himself.

  “You recall doing that? Firing it a few times? Maybe to try out a new load?”

  “No.” He hesitated for a moment. “I’ve been shooting the same load in that rifle for years. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I gotta tell you, I don’t like the way this is goin’. You’re telling me that somebody used this rifle to shoot Larry Zipoli?”

  “I’m telling you that I have questions, Mark. We all have questions. Look, what do you think would happen if you fired a .30-30 round in this rifle?”

  I decided at that moment, watching Mark Arnett’s face, that he was a pretty sharp fellow, even though flooded with emotions he didn’t know how to deal with. My question out of left field drew him up short, and his eyes narrowed. It was obvious to me that he wasn’t just pondering an interesting question—he was putting two and two together now. I held up the plastic evidence bag containing the fired slug. “What do you think?”

  “I think it wouldn’t shoot for shit,” he said flatly.

  “Might not even leave rifling marks on the bullet, would it.”

  “There’s about fifteen thou difference in bore diameter,” Arnett said. “So no. The rifling wouldn’t have much to grab on to.” He opened the box of new .30-30 slugs, selected one, and motioned for Torrez to change his grip on the gun. I took the pen out of the muzzle, and he dropped the shiny new bullet down the bore of the .32. With a little clink at the end as it hit the bolt face, it dropped through slick as can be.

  “And the bullet’s most likely going to keyhole, besides,” Arnett added.

  The room fell silent. Arnett looked as if he wanted to say something, then thought better of it. Maybe he was mulling the warrant/attorney suggestion.

  “So now you know where we’re at,” I said. “Are you going to let us take this rifle for a little while, or do you want us to get a warrant?”

  “Shit, take it,” he said without hesitation. He reached into the corner and hefted a plastic rifle case. “Do what you got to do. You got a shell casing for comparison? I mean, what good, otherwise?” I finished putting the Winchester in the case without upholstering the smooth surface with my fingerprints.

  I would be quickly paddling out of my depth if I tried to answer his questions, and I nodded at Bob Torrez. Anything I said would be bullshit, and Mark Arnett would know it. A shrewd guy himself, Deputy Torrez could figure out for himself how much we wanted to reveal.

 
; “There’ll be burned powder residue imbedded in the base of the bullet.” The deputy’s voice was almost a whisper. “That can be chemically matched to the residue in the rifle’s chamber.”

  “Horseshit,” Arnett scowled.

  “When you crimp the cartridge casing around the brass bullet,” Torrez added, “there are characteristic scuff marks…nothing like rifling cuts, but microscopic marks that we can compare.”

  “Do you think this is what happened with all this shit? A .30-30 fired from a .32?”

  Torrez nodded. “I tried it.”

  Arnett gazed at the young man in disbelief. “You got to be shittin’ me.”

  “Nope.”

  “Why would anybody do that?”

  “Don’t know, Mark.”

  “And if you think Mo is involved somehow, you’ve been smokin’ that funny tobacco,” Arnett said.

  “We didn’t say that he was involved, Mark,” I said.

  “You don’t got to. Look, the last time that rifle was out of this safe…the last time…was when I shot it in a match. You think any other way, it’s bullshit. Look.”

  He opened one of the cabinets above the bench. “Look. Here’s a box of .32’s,” he said, and pulled out a large plastic ammo box that hit the counter with an authoritative thud. He fumbled the latch and opened it, revealing a hundred bright cartridges, nose down, the fresh primers facing us. “I got four of these boxes. You want to check all four hundred rounds?”

  “We might.”

  “Well, then,” and he hauled all the storage boxes out. When he was finished, he said, “Satisfied? And I got five boxes of thirty-thirty.” He hauled one out and opened it. “This one ain’t full, but the others are.” Sure enough, there were forty-nine loaded cartridges, their headstamps bright, announcing the caliber and the manufacturer. In additon, there were thirty-seven fired rounds, with fourteen unoccupied slots. The empties were inserted in the box mouth up, the powder residue obvious around the necks and case mouth.

  With bifocals, my vision was pretty good, but not as good as Bob Torrez’s. He could see that the mouth of one fired case was larger than it should be. Arnett, intimately familiar with the reloading process, familiar with measurements and quality control, familiar with what it took to win shooting matches, moved faster than the deputy…perhaps because Mark wasn’t thinking about latent finger prints. Before we could react, he snatched the last empty round out of the box.

  He read the headstamp, or tried to. His eyes were blurring. Even I could see the tears forming at the corners—rage, grief, frustration, all of the above. “Ah, come on,” he whispered, and shook his head. He clenched his eyes hard, and the veins on his neck bulged. With a hard snap, he hurled the empty shell casing across the bench. It struck the wall and skittered into a corner.

  Without another word, he turned and headed for the door. This time, Bob Torrez was faster. He blocked the passage, but it didn’t appear that Mark had a clear idea where he wanted to go. He turned half a circle and pounded the table with his fist.

  “Mark, use some judgment,” I said.

  “You won’t even need to talk with that little fat bastard when I finish with him,” he said between clenched teeth. His vitriol took me by surprise.

  “Not going to happen, Mark,” I said. “This isn’t about taking the belt to his butt and then grounding the kid for a couple weeks. The boy is scared out of his mind and on the run. That’s what it looks like to me. If he pulled that trigger on Larry Zipoli, then you’re going to need to help us, Mark.”

  He made a strange gurgling noise, as if he was choking on his own spit. He sagged back against the safe, both hands on top of his head.

  “Have you ever made that mistake?” I asked gently. He shook his head without moving his hands. “Ever reach for the wrong box? I mean, the guns are similar—the ammo is similar.” I reached across the bench and retrieved the empty casing by slipping my pen down its mouth. Sure enough, the head stamp in the brass base announced .30-30 Winchester.

  “No.”

  “Did you ever run short of .32 cases and blow out a few .30-30’s to get you by? I mean, you could do that.” I was no reloader, but knew enough folks who did, and knew that they were always experimenting with this and that, fashioning cases that couldn’t be purchased commercially. He shook his head again. “Ever loan these guns to someone who might do that?” There was that chance, of course—the chance that somehow, Mo Arnett was innocent as the driven snow.

  I reached out a hand and rested it on Mark’s shoulder. “We need to talk with your son, Mark. We need to talk with Mo.”

  “You better find that little shit before I do,” he threatened again, the only thing he knew how to do just then. He was of the old-fashioned beat-the-crap-out-of-the-kid school of child rearing—a school that sometimes had my sympathy. But sometimes that mentality just wasn’t enough.

  “No, that’s not what’s going to happen, Mark.” My grip on his shoulder rocked him a little, ameliorating the sharpness of my words. “Let me tell you what is going to happen. One of the deputies will be back with a warrant. We’ll use that whether you think one is required or not—and let me tell you. We appreciate your cooperation. But we’ll have a warrant. Then, this room will be sealed off, inventoried, all that happy shit. The two rifles will be taken into evidence, along with all the ammo for them. We’ll have photos up the whazoo. Prints on everything. Interviews, depositions. You know the drill. Between now and the arrival of the warrant, that door,” and I turned and nodded at the entry that Deputy Torrez so effectively blocked, “will be sealed with a Sheriff’s Seal. You won’t come in here. None of your family will. Not until we’re finished.

  “And if we’re wrong in all this, and Mo walks through the front door in five minutes with a hell of a perfect alibi, with a hell of a good reason for touching your rifles, I’ll be the first to show up and grovel with an apology, Mark.“ I smiled at him. “I’ll buy you a case of beer . Whatever the apology takes.” Safe promise, I thought. But it sounded good, and I saw Mark Arnett wilt a little.

  “What do I do?” The stuffing had been knocked out of him, the umbrage diluted. We were making progress.

  “First, we want Mo found, we want him safe. So go fetch your wife. Then decide what attorney you’re going to use, and get him over here to assist you, to assist Mo. Trust me on this…if he’s charged with anything, you’re going to need all the help you can get. So start early.”

  “He’s just a kid, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Yep, he is. Or was.” I opened the safe again, touching it gingerly by one corner of the massive door. “Are you missing any guns?”

  Mark Arnett’s glance was perfunctory. “No. Everything’s there.”

  “Small thanks for that, at least.”

  “There was one in the center console of the Pontiac,” Arnett said. His face had drained of color. “He don’t know anything about that one.”

  “You better hope he doesn’t,” I said, not the least bit optimistic. “What was it?”

  “A .45 Springfield.”

  “Loaded?” Why would it be there if it wasn’t?

  “One loaded magazine. Nothing in the chamber.”

  I groaned inwardly as Mo Arnett’s slippery slope clicked a few degrees steeper. Someone, most likely Mo, had used the not-so-thoughtfully hidden key to the gun room. Why he’d decided to take a shot at the grader—and maybe the operator in it, I certainly didn’t know. If the kids’ stories were to be believed, Mo was humiliated by Larry Zipoli. Most folks could take a little humiliation. But now, someone had managed to open the safe, unless dad was so careless that he left it unlocked. That someone was now fleeing in his mother’s car. And we could add the ‘A and D’ to the BOLO.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Estelle Reyes held out the photograph, and I took it reluctantly, standi
ng just inside my office door with about thirty other things that demanded my attention at that moment. The last thing I wanted was to be sidetracked by a treatise on religious art. Who the hell knew where Mo Arnett was at that moment, or what the kid might do next. Jim Raught’s saint panels weren’t going to fetch the boy home. But I could tell by the look on the young lady’s face that she’d been captivated by that puzzle, if in fact it was one. Maybe the muse of the three saints had grabbed her attention.

  “The attorney is sending us a photograph of the original retablo,” she said. “A good series was taken for a magazine article not long before the theft. It shows,” and she leaned forward to point out a neat circle she had drawn with an orange hi-liter around St. Ignacio’s left sandal. “That margin is a portion of the gold leaf. And you can see where it’s been mended at one time.”

  “I can?” One gold leaf looked pretty much like another to me, but I could see some small fracture lines that appeared to interrupt the flow of metal.

  She persisted. “Sophía Tournál is sending an enlargement, but from her description, I would guess that this is much the same.”

  “Sophía…”

  “My fiancé’s aunt. The lawyer.”

  “Much the same? It damn well better be more than that if we’re going to make time for this.”

  “Yes, sir.” She drew another photo from her briefcase. “This is the enlargement Ernie made for me from the art book. The damage to the gold border is quite clear in this.”

  I glanced, compared, nodded, and looked at my watch. Time was on Mo’s side. The saints could wait.

  “More important is that the work is attributed to Orosco on the back,” Estelle persisted. “The three retablos were actually framed as one unit in 1919, and the framer documented Orosco’s artistry by writing his name in India ink on the back, just beside the new frame.”