Shallow Graves

She was so excited. I’ve never seen her that way. She was obsessed with the idea of being in a movie. That’s all she talked about. If you made a movie here, I was afraid I’d lose her. She’d try to get a part, she’d go off to Hollywood. I did have somebody plant something in the car. And then, yes, he called the police. But I didn’t have Marty killed. I’d never do that.”
    “You were the one who ordered the parking lot plowed over?”
    “When the accident happened—when the car blew up—I was terrified that I’d be accused of it.I told Moorhouse to have it dozed so the tourists wouldn’t freak out. He does what I tell him.”
    “And Sillman? The rental place.”
    “I had my man talk to Sillman. We arranged to offer Marty’s family some money. A lot of money. It looked like an insurance settlement.”
    “And you had those two locals pay me a visit? Beat me up?”
    Ambler nodded. “I wanted you gone so badly. All she did was talk about you. Talk about movies. I was losing her. I was desperate.” He looked down at his hands, studied his long fingers. Ambler broke open the shotgun and put it on the counter. He picked up the bullet casings. “Winchester .300’s. But there’s something different about them.”
    “Magnums,” Pellam said.
    “I don’t have a gun that’ll take these.” He looked up. “You want to check?”
    Pellam glanced at the shotgun. He said, “I believe you.”
    Ambler handed the cartridges back. “Those’re unusual rounds.”
    “Used for real long distance shooting.”
    “What kind of weapon would that be?” Ambler asked.
    “You can get a Beretta bolt-action chambered for them. SIG-Sauer has a .300 magnum and—”
    “Beretta, you say?”
    Pellam said, “You know somebody who’s got one?”
    “I do, but I don’t think—”
    “Who?”
    “You don’t know them. A couple brothers.”
    Something flashed through Pellam’s mind.
    Pellam said, “They wouldn’t be twins, by any chance?”
    “Yeah, as a matter of fact, they are.”
    “ YOU AREN’T GONNA like it,” the deputy said to the sheriff.
    “I don’t like a lot of what’s been happening around here lately,” Tom said.
    They were in the police station, Sunday night, though one thing about Cleary: the Sabbath wasn’t any quieter than any other day. The only difference now was that all three of them were working—two in the office, and the other deputy in the field—and they were expecting a visit from a detective and another deputy from the County Sheriff’s office, who were going to be assisting in the investigation of Ned’s murder.
    “I was talking to people who had seen him in the past twenty-four hours. Who’d seen Ned, I mean.”
    The sheriff knew this, since he’d sent the deputy to do just that. “And?”
    “A coupla folks saw him with Sam Torrens. At the festival.”
    “So?” Tom was exhausted. A blown-up car, drugs, arson, fights. And now a high school boy murdered. Life in small-town America. Crap.
    “It was just before the kid got sick.”
    “Kid? Which kid? Explain it to me, will you?”
    The deputy said, “I’m saying that it looks like Ned was the one who gave the drugs to Sam Torrens. That heroin shit.”
    “Oh.” The sheriff closed his eyes and rubbed them with his knuckles. “Is that what I’m not going to like? You said before I wasn’t going to like something.”
    The deputy continued. “Keith Torrens got his boy a .22 for Christmas last year. I seen him buying shells.”
    “When?”
    “I don’t mean recent. I just mean I know he’s got a .22 in the house. And had some shells.”
    “Come on, Randy. Everybody in town’s got a .22. They practically come with the house when you buy one.”
    “I’m just saying.”
    “And we don’t know for certain it was a .22 killed Ned. Could’ve been a .25 or a .222. Ballistics’ll tell us.”
    “Maybe. But you’d think there’d’ve been more damage—”
    “We. Don’t. Know.”
    The deputy nodded. Finally he said, “Closest thing to justifiable I’ve ever seen.”
    The sheriff wondered where the hell that was coming from. The deputy had worked on exactly one murder in his four years on the force and that had been when Barnie Slater’s wife used a deer slug in his sleep to keep him from taking the lamp cord to her anymore. She had fresh coffee for the deputies when they’d arrived. The sheriff said, “Justifiable’s the prosecutor’s decision, not ours.”
    After a moment Tom asked, “When was the