Pursuit: A Novel

12

Prescott took the film to the photography lab and went to his hotel to sleep. When he awoke in the evening, he picked up the two hundred color prints. The diminished size of the photographs made the painting even sharper and the impression of perfection more striking. He was tempted to call Cara Lee Satterfield and tell her, but she had known long before he did. Instead, he packed his bags, took a cab to the bus station, and bought a ticket to Philadelphia. When he got there, he rented a car and drove west, deeper into Pennsylvania. What he wanted now was easier to obtain in some places than in others. After he had reached the hills, where there were farms and small towns, he made his first stop. He picked up the local newspaper, checked the bulletin boards in the first laundromat he saw, and then looked for flyers left at convenience stores. He was looking for announcements of private sales.

Prescott liked estate sales best, but not if they were big enough to be held as auctions. What he needed was a person he could talk to, and he preferred the closest female survivor. He would look over the dead man’s belongings, maybe buy something that was expensive and portable, like a rare book, a watch, or a set of cuff links. That would get him talking to the woman. He would talk about her wisdom in passing on possessions that someone else could use, listening for her lament that there were things she didn’t know what to do with. He would let slip that he was sure his wife—or daughter—would have the same problem: he was a gun collector, and guns were hard to resell. In some places, this was likely to give the woman the creeps, and the conversation would be over. But in these rural areas, more often than not, he would be led into the house to look over a gun cabinet.

Sometimes the cabinet was a metal locker in a den, but sometimes it was a big, polished piece of furniture like a glass-fronted armoire. Behind the glass would be a row of long guns: usually at least a pump shotgun for fowl, a .22 rifle for vermin, and a bolt-action .308 or .30-06 deer rifle. But plenty of these cabinets had much more exotic and expensive rifles, custom guns with carved stocks, antiques, military assault weapons. He would look them over, appraise and appreciate them, sometimes buy one or two. But he would make it clear that what interested him most was handguns. In a few minutes he might be on his way out with a pistol or two that, if they had ever been registered at all, were still the official property of a dead man.

In the first town, the estate sale included no guns. After he left the turnpike near Hoyerstown, he passed a large building on the road into town. It was surrounded by fields, and backed by a long, low barrow that looked like the back of a sleeping animal. The big sign above the door said THE GUN CLUB, and the small one said OPEN.

He pulled his car into the lot and got out. Before he had taken two steps he heard the familiar thud of a gun being discharged behind a soundproofed wall, then several more shots. He opened the front door and the noise was louder. Three men wearing yellow earphones stood beyond a Plexiglas window, firing down adjoining cinder-block tunnels at small paper targets on wires that ran overhead. A wooden counter enclosed with the same thick Plexiglas dominated the entrance.

The slight man inside was only about thirty, but he had a shiny bald head. Prescott smiled at him and rested his elbows on the counter, so the man came to the window and opened it. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m from out of town,” said Prescott. “Is it possible to rent a weapon and get a little practice while I’m here?”

The man said, “Sure. For twenty bucks an hour, I can give you a .38 Smith & Wesson revolver. Ammo and targets are extra, and the range fee is fifteen bucks a half hour.”

Prescott said, “How about ear protectors?”

“Those are five.”

Prescott gave him sixty dollars, accepted a weapon with a big red number 12 painted on the grip. He bought a box of twenty-five rounds and went to the range. He could tell from the expression of habitual worry on the man’s face that this was a business that had not lived up to his hopes. Probably he had told himself that indoor shooting would catch on as a family sport, and then the world would flock here to hand him money. The world seemed to be otherwise engaged.

Prescott clipped his target to the wire, pressed the button on the pulley, and watched the target skitter down to the end of the range. He loaded the pistol and snapped the cylinder into place. The .38 was lighter than the weapons he was accustomed to, and he expected it would have little muzzle rise with target ammunition, so he took a comfortable one-handed stance, extended his arm, and squeezed off six shots in rapid succession. Then he pressed the button again to bring the target back on the wire. He unclipped it, held it up to look at it, then turned to set it on the shelf beside the ammunition. He found that the owner was out of his booth, standing behind Prescott’s tunnel to watch.

The man’s eyes were on the target, looking at the six holes all within the inch-wide black circle. Prescott knew he had him. The man was one of those guys who were so hooked on a hobby that they could think of little else.

Prescott knew that he needed to appear careful and methodical. The man owned a business, after all, and since the business involved handing a firearm and ammunition to a total stranger and telling him to fire at will, he was understandably anxious. Prescott sent a new target down the wire, emptied the pistol of its spent casings, set them on the shelf neatly, held the weapon so the muzzle was low and downrange, then reloaded and fired his second six into the bull’s-eye. He cleared the pistol again, brought the target back, and took his time getting around to unclipping it, so the owner could satisfy his curiosity. Prescott was getting used to the feel of the gun, so this time the pattern was even tighter. He kept at it, showing the man that he was a consistent, practiced, competent marksman, and that he was never careless. That part was important.

When he had finished, he brought the gun up with the cylinder open, and set it on the counter. The man had warmed up considerably. “You’re a hell of a shot.”

Prescott said, “Shooting relaxes me. I spend a lot of time on the road, though, so it’s hard to keep my hand in. When I’m away from home I try to keep a list of places where I can fire a few rounds.”

“You come through here often?”

“Never have before, but I expect to be in the neighborhood for a month or two. I’m a civil engineer, and there’s a project going up near Philadelphia that I have to keep an eye on.” He paused. “Maybe you can help me. I live in California and I don’t travel with my own firearms. You know where I can pick up a gun around here?”

“What are you looking for?”

“What I’d like would be a good used nine-millimeter. I’ve been looking for a couple of days, but haven’t seen anything I liked. Something like a Beretta Model 92. Maybe a Glock or a SIG if one turned up.”

The man looked disappointed. “You know, I sold a Model 92 about two months ago.” He seemed to feel uncomfortable, and said, “I wasn’t the one that sold it, really. It’s just that when somebody has something to sell, they usually tell me, and I mention it to the people who come in and ask.”

“I hope you get a commission,” said Prescott. “It’s only fair.”

The man looked down slyly. “Well, yeah. Usually I get ten percent.”

“I’d like something right away, so if you hear of anything, keep me in mind.” He started to go, then said, “In fact, I’ll tell you what. I’ll be in the neighborhood for a while. If you find something for me today, I’ll pay you twenty percent above the sale price, and what you get from the seller is between you and him.”

The man looked pleased. He held out his hand. “I’m Dave Durbin. What’s your name?”

Prescott said, “I’m Mike. Michael Kennison.”

“I’m going to put in a call to the gunsmith who maintains our weapons for us. He refurbishes used guns and resells them. If you’ll hang around for a few minutes, I’ll find out what he’s got right now.” He retreated behind the counter with the Plexiglas window and went to his desk.

Prescott could hear him on the telephone between the rounds fired on the range. Durbin held his hand over his free ear and spoke loudly. “He’s not just the average customer, he’s a real shooter . . . and he’s a friend of mine, so I’d like to find something good for him. Nine. He wants something like a Beretta or a SIG. Got anything?” In a moment he hung up and beamed as he came to the window. “He’s just down the road, so he’ll bring a couple of things in here for you to look at.”

Prescott smiled. “Well, that’s great. Thank you very much.”

Durbin seemed to notice the revolver on the counter. “Hell, this thing’s got to be cleaned anyway. Why don’t you go back and shoot until he gets here? I’ll call you.”

Prescott bought another box of bullets and went back to the range. Fifteen minutes later, as he was unclipping a target from the pulley, he turned and saw Durbin with another man, knocking on the Plexiglas to get his attention. He lifted his ear protector and shouted, “I’ll be right out.”

He carefully unloaded his pistol and took it out into the open space behind the range. The man with Durbin was a tall fat man in his sixties with white hair in a crew cut. He was holding a hard-sided suitcase.

“This is Billy,” Durbin said. “And this is Mike. Why don’t you come on into the office?”

The area behind the glass was more like a booth than an office, but it had a desk. Prescott and Billy went in, and it was slightly quieter there, with an extra layer of Plexiglas separating them from the range. Prescott began to understand Billy after a few minutes with him. He was a retired machinist who worked on guns as a hobby. The reason he had driven here was that he wasn’t interested in making a deal for a gun with a total stranger unless he was in the presence of third and fourth parties who were also armed. He opened his suitcase on the desk, and Prescott could see pistols arranged neatly on a stenciled cutout foam rubber pad in rows of three.

Prescott looked respectfully at the guns. He spotted a Beretta Cougar in a space that didn’t quite fit it. He said to Billy, “May I?”

Billy nodded, and Prescott lifted it and looked closely at it. The slide was worn, the barrel burned out from too many rounds. He set it back without comment, but Billy said, “Dave told me you wanted a Beretta, and that’s the only one I have now. I can work it over for you, get a new barrel, maybe reblue the slide. But that Walther over here is good, and you can have that right away. It’s a P99, a year old. Been fired maybe once, and the woman who owned it didn’t like it. Little bitty thing—she liked the name because of James Bond, but when she fired it, she found it a little hot for her. I traded her a nice .38 Special and a hundred bucks.”

“What are you asking?”

Billy acted as though he had never considered the question before. He thought, calculated, estimated. “Four hundred would probably do it.”

Prescott examined the weapon, and saw that Billy was only exaggerating the gun’s condition slightly. He transferred it to his left hand and held out his right to shake with Billy. Billy started to take it, then held back. “I’m not actually a licensed dealer, so I don’t have no papers for you. I’ve got to trust you not to get in trouble with it.”

“I’ll try not to,” said Prescott, smiling. He opened his wallet, took out four hundred-dollar bills, and handed them to Billy, who stared at them for a moment, folded them, and put them under the foam rubber in his carrying case. Prescott chatted for a few more minutes, then said, “Well, it’s time for me to get back to Philadelphia. Thanks again.” As he left, Durbin escorted him to the parking lot. Prescott handed him a hundred-dollar bill. “This is for your trouble, Dave.” In another minute he was on the road again. He drove northwest as far as Binghamton, New York, then turned in his rental car and rented another with New York plates.

He continued west, assessing his progress. He had his gun, a high-end nine-millimeter that had been gone over carefully by a gunsmith, cleaned, oiled, and in perfect working order. It was probably still registered to its first owner. Billy might very well have been lying about the woman who had only fired it once, but it didn’t matter. No attempt to trace it would lead to Roy Prescott. If an investigator ever traced it far enough to force Billy to admit he had sold it illegally, he could only say he had sold it to a man named Mike Kennison who had told a story about a construction project in Philadelphia.

Prescott had a clean, fast rental car with 250 miles on its odometer. He had his pictures, so good that they were probably better than photographs. He supposed that he should be feeling amazed at how easily this was going. But there was something about the hunt this time that was a bit different, and it disturbed him.

At each of these stops, he had devoted himself to studying the people around him, and found that his old ability to figure out what he needed to know had sharpened and expanded. He knew more about them than he had ever known about the people he had used and left before. He could tell things about them from the way they held their heads or walked or moved their hands. He looked into their faces and read things: stupid misconceptions that they stubbornly clung to in the face of all evidence, bad decisions they had made years ago and still thought about sometimes and regretted. He sensed the things they worried about late at night, and he saw the courage and will it took when they woke up each morning to take up the weight of their lives again.

No, he decided, knowing wasn’t the odd thing about this trip. He had always been good at analyzing people instantly because his life sometimes depended on it. He had been like a dog sniffing for danger and always smelling more subtle things in the process, noting them and pushing them aside to think of things that would help him survive. What was different now was that he was interested. The isolated qualities he had noticed had grown into parts of stories. People were poor, lonely creatures who had come into the world unready and helpless, and by adulthood had only partly managed to change that, and by the time they’d made much progress, they had already started to die. That was what was odd, that feeling.

He supposed that the change had come from spending too much time visiting the mind of Cara Lee Satterfield. He had stared so hard at her paintings for so many hours that he had begun to see what she was actually doing when she made a portrait of a person. What she did was an abbreviated version of what old portrait painters had done. In old paintings, a man would be standing in the foreground, staring at the painter, and at his feet and behind him and beside him in artistic arrangement would be the symbols of his trade—orb and scepter, guns and swords, maybe astrolabes and maps, as though those were the contents of his mind. A woman might have children, lapdogs, flowers, fans, pens and paper. Somehow Cara Lee Satterfield had managed to show what her model had in his mind without the objects. It was as though she had painted the whole portrait—the props, the face, the expression in the eyes, the subtle curl of the lip—and then painted over the objects that had inspired and stimulated the face to assume that habitual pose.

What worried Prescott was the eerie feeling that the sudden expansion of his receptivity was beginning to give him. It could be a sign that he was now reaching a new level of perception that was going to make him harder to beat. But it could be what people felt after they’d had a premonition. They took a long, quiet look around them, appearing to an observer as though they were counting the leaves on the trees, memorizing the exact blue of the sky, saying good-bye to the world.