Dead Watch

Barber’s size was thrown out the window. He was like a goddamn weight lifter, and Bell’s fifty-five years old and is fifty pounds overweight. He threw Barber out the window? He’s lucky Barber didn’t throw him out.”
    “The problem is, eighty percent of the equation is image,” Arlo said. “They have an image they want. They want a guy who’s an economic liberal, but who’s in touch with the prayer people, who’s in touch with the gun people. Right now, I’m it; but with just a little twist, I become Hermann Göring. Then I’m not it. Then my fifteen minutes are up.” He stood up, took a lap around the room, gnawing at a thumbnail, tugging at it. He wrenched a sliver of it free, spit it into the carpet. “Look. We need a leak. We need to leak to the media that the feds think Barber killed Bowe. We need that out there right now. Everything’s right on a knife edge . . .”
    “We can do that. I can do it,” Darrell said.
    “If we can get that out for tomorrow—even if the feds equivocate—we’re in good shape. If we can get that out there tomorrow, it’ll make suicide more reasonable. It’ll take the story away from Bell and those other fuckups, no matter what they did.”
    “I’ll move,” Darrell said eagerly. “The Post , the Times , three or four TV channels . . . I’ll talk to Patricia. He’s got contacts everywhere. He’s got the phone numbers. We can reel it back in, Arlo. They won’t be naming a new guy until after Landers is gone, and that’ll take a while. We’re still good.”

    Merle’s was a long, low concrete-block building painted an anonymous cream, buried in a block of warehouses in the flight path of Dulles International. The sign outside, an unlit wooden rectangle, said, MERLE ’ S , and nothing else, in fading red paint.
    Jake parked, carried the rifle around to the front door, pushed in, was hit in the face by the not-unpleasant tang of burned gunpowder. The shooting lanes took up the back of the building; the first fifteen feet in the front was the salesroom, isolated from the shooting lanes by a double concrete wall, with panes of double vacuum-glass on both walls. You could still hear the gunfire, but distantly.
    Merle Haines was leaning on the counter, paging through a copy of American Rifleman , while Jerry Jeff Walker sang “I Feel Like Hank Williams Tonight” from a buzzing speaker mounted in the ceiling. Haines nodded at Jake, who was a seasonal regular, and asked, “How’s it going?” Jake nodded back and said, “I need to tune up the .243.” He handed over his car keys and Haines hung them on a Peg-Board and said, “Lane nine.”
    “And two boxes of that Federal Vital-Shok, the one-hundred-grain Sierra, if you’ve got it, and two targets.”
    “Goin’ huntin’,” Merle said. He took two boxes of 100-grain Federal off the shelf and two target faces from under the counter, and passed them over. Jake paid him, took his earmuffs out of his pocket, put them on, and pushed through the door into the range. The first eight lanes were for pistols, the last three lanes for rifles, with shooting tables. He walked past two fat guys shooting revolvers and one in-shape military-looking guy shooting a Beretta, down a short flight of stairs, to lanes nine, ten, and eleven. He was alone.
    He’d be shooting down an underground tunnel at fifty yards—not long, but long enough to get an idea of where the gun was. He sat down at a table, arranged a pile of sandbags on the table in front of him, took the rifle out of its case, pressed three rounds into the magazine, and jacked one into the chamber.
    The .243 was a comfortable gun, accurate and easy on the shoulder, if a little slow to reload. He fired five shots slowly, carefully, breathing between shots, then pulled the target in. Four of the shots were tight and all over the bull, right where they should have been. The fifth was a half inch to the right; he’d pulled it. Nothing had moved since Wyoming.
    He fired five more shots at the second target, and got one ragged hole three-quarters of an inch wide, across the lower face of the bull. He packed the gun up, collected the remaining cartridges, and walked back out through the salesroom.
    “Short and sweet,” Merle said, as he handed over Jake’s car keys. “Good luck with them critters.”

    On the way to Madison’s, she called and said, “I’m in the backyard. Johnnie Black is here, I’m calling on his phone. We’re talking about