Smoke and Mirrors

27

Jack Beals’s house was two miles from the city limits, a small brick ranch house set in a circle of leafless oaks surrounded by soybean fields. The place had a narrow gravel driveway and a neatly kept yard. Winter and Brad climbed out of the Tundra to a stiff northern wind that caused Winter to button his wool jacket against the chill and pull down the bill of his ball cap. The two men slipped on surgical gloves as they approached the front of the house.

The exterior windows were fitted with formidable burglar bars, and the front door was a steel security model painted stone gray.

“Looks like Beals was paranoid,” Brad said, taking an envelope out of his pocket. Opening it, he poured into his hand the ring of keys they’d found in Beals’s pocket.

Two dead bolts later, Brad pushed open the front door and they stepped into Jack Beals’s living room. Blackout shades made the house as dark as a cave, so using the light from the open front door, Brad found and flipped on the lights.

The living room furniture was spare, but tasteful and expensive. A sleek leather couch and matching side chairs faced each other over a maple coffee table set on a real zebra-skin rug. The light fixture was a sphere crafted of wide ribbons of bird’s-eye veneer shaved so thin they were translucent. Two oversized abstract paintings hung on the walls and a freestanding bar near the door to the kitchen was topped with an ice bucket, a pitcher, and several bottles of liquor.

A plasma TV had been positioned on a sleek credenza, which Winter opened. It contained a video/DVD player and stereo setup that shared a pair of surround-sound speakers with the TV. Winter opened the drawers and thumbed through stacks of movies on DVD.

The master bedroom revealed a bed on a platform of polished wood, a large bamboo rug, two matching chests of drawers, and another abstract painting on the wall over the bed. “Not set up for spend-the-night guests either,” Winter waxed.

The door to the walk-in closet was open, with the clothes neatly ordered on shelves or hung precisely on rods. A camera case sat on the floor. Inside the case Winter found a video camera.

The bathroom was spotless.

A steel security door with a dead bolt indicated that the room down the hall was probably not a guest room. One of the keys opened it, and Winter found the light switch beside the door. A row of fluorescent fixtures illuminated the room like high noon in Miami. The windows were plated in sheet metal, the floor covered with heavy canvas painted battleship gray.

This room was about as different from those in the rest of the house as a pig and a parrot. In a cabinet, behind sliding sheets of Lexan, a dozen pistols hung by their trigger guards on pegs. Some, like a SIG P-210 and a beautifully engraved Colt National Match 1911 with a four-digit serial number, were expensive. Three tactical shotguns fitted with high-intensity flashlights formed a row on one side. There were two AR-15s, one with a scope.

A pair of electronic earphones hung on another peg.

Two reloading presses were mounted on a sturdy table. Stacked red plastic bins at the rear of the table held cartridge brass in various calibers, bullets, powders, and primers. Hard long gun cases stood together under the table along with three pairs of hunting boots. Targets pinned to the walls held groups of interlocking holes from handgun practice.

An aluminum rifle case leaned against the wall. Winter put it on a table and opened it to find a tactical rifle with a camouflage composite stock and a very substantial scope.

Brad lifted the gun to read the markings on the barrel.

“Dakota T-76 Longbow in.338 Lapua Magnum,” Brad said. He opened the bolt and sniffed the chamber. He smiled. “It’s been fired recently. I think we might not be dealing with your Styer after all.”

Winter felt momentary relief that Beals might have fired the round that took Sherry Adams’s life. But the feeling didn’t last but a moment. “Even without my business card, it doesn’t wash. He was a very neat young man,” Winter said as he took the weapon and looked it over. “Why would he put this one away without cleaning it?”

“It’s an expensive rifle,” Brad said. “Five to eight grand. Maybe more. The optics could run four or five.”

“But there’s nothing here that shows he was the kind of marksman who could make a thousand-yard shot. This is the only real sniper rifle he had, and there are no rifle targets here. And,” Winter said, “he wouldn’t have left the brass behind. Aside from a ballistics match, he was a reloader and a neat freak. Doesn’t fit.”

Winter opened a side compartment in the gun case, where he found a dozen clove-scented red toothpicks. There were also four loaded rounds and leather shooting gloves.

“So, it still might not be your Styer,” Brad insisted, his eyes widening. “Looks like the toothpicks and the gun belong to Beals. He could have intended to leave the toothpick we found behind his ear on Scotoni’s corpse.”

“This is a setup,” Winter said firmly.

“You think Styer set Beals up? Think he knew Beals well enough to know about this room? Came here and planted the weapon after he killed him? Happened to have had a key to the house and this room?”

“Maybe or maybe not. I could get past the locks in a couple of minutes.”

“You said Styer always works up close.”

“Only with his primary targets, and I’m sure he was trained in long-range marksmanship,” Winter said as he studied the handgun targets pinned on the walls. He noticed by the holes in the corners that one of them had been unpinned and pinned numerous times, and the others hadn’t. He moved closer and pulled out the pushpins holding the top of the target, letting it fall so it was held to the wall by only the bottom pins. It revealed a metal front to a safe imbedded between the studs.

“Check the keys,” Winter said. “There should be one that fits this.”

One key slid into the lock and turned easily. Winter opened the door and took a deep breath.

“Christ,” Brad said. “We need one of those bill-counting machines.”

A dozen DVD cases sat on top of several neat stacks of currency. Each was carefully labeled with a date.

“Looks like we need some boxes,” Winter said.