One Perfect Shot

Chapter Fifteen

“So how did you do this?” I asked, and passed the bullet to Estelle Reyes. It seemed a natural enough thing to do. The deputy beckoned toward the back of his Bronco. The tail gate was open, and the mess inside was typical Bob Torrez. No doubt-well, maybe-he knew where everything was, but his organization was a private affair.

Two rifle cases rested close at hand, and he opened the nearest one and retrieved what anyone who had watched television westerns or had even a faint interest in firearms would instantly recognize as a Winchester lever action carbine. He jacked the lever open and handed the weapon to me. It appeared to be pristine, without a scratch on the wood or the bluing.

“All right,” I said, and peered at the legend on the barrel. “A.32 Winchester Special.” I nodded at the bullet that Estelle still held. “And that?”

Torrez opened a tool box full of gun stuff-patches, oil, screw drivers, rods and hammers, even a stopwatch. He opened an ammo box and held the cartridge out to me.

“Thirty-thirty,” I read off the headstamp, and then made the connection. “You’re telling me that you fired this in…that?” I looked with suspicion at the.32 Winchester, warm in my hands. “You’re telling me that the.30–30 will chamber just fine in the.32?”

“Sure enough.”

“And that’s what you shot into the log.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Huh.” I rolled the cartridge between my fingers. “From how far away?”

“A yard, maybe.”

“Okay.”

“You want to follow with me on this?” His tone said that I didn’t have much choice. Excited in his own quiet way, Torrez was sniffing hard on a trail.

“Sure.”

He retrieved a roll of qualifying targets and peeled one off. I’d probably shot half a thousand of the B-27 human silhouette qualifying targets in my career. Featuring a full-sized human head and torso on a 24 x 45 inch sheet of paper, it was an absurdly easy target to hit, mainly because it didn’t shoot back.

“I have a stand,” Torrez said.

“I hope so, ‘cause I ain’t going to hold the target for you,” I quipped. We watched him staple the target on the light frame, supported by a pair of steel feet. Satisfied, he walked the target stand out perhaps fifty feet, in front of the sloping back wall of the gravel pit.

“Ears?” he asked.

I nodded at Estelle, and she dug out the set of ear plugs. The deputy handed me a set of the department’s fancy schmancy ear muffs.

“I just get one?” I said as Torrez rummaged and then handed me a single cartridge. I glanced at the head stamp and saw that it was a.32 Winchester Special, the right ammo for the right gun.

“Go ahead, sir,” he said.

“Range is hot,” I mumbled and stepped forward, glancing at my two companions to make sure ears were covered. A quick glance along the rim of the quarry assured me that no youngsters had sneaked up to watch. The cartridge slipped into the chamber effortlessly and I closed the lever. Fifty feet isn’t much of a challenge with a rifle, so I aimed for the head. What the hell. Why not grandstand when given the chance. The light rifle’s sights were clear, the stock comfortable.

The report was a muted bark, the recoil a good stout punch. With the sun as it was, even my sorry eyes could see the light streaming through the hole right in the center of the felon’s forehead.

“Nice rifle,” I said. “I should own this.”

“George Payton can make that happen, sir.” Torrez referred to one of my oldest friends, owner of the Posadas Gunnery.

“He let you walk out with this?”

“Sure.” He handed me another cartridge. “Try it again.”

Not the dullest tool in the box, I saw that the cartridge had come from another box, a.30–30. From neck down, it looked exactly like a.32 Winchester Special. The only difference was from the neck up-a slightly smaller bullet at.308 rather than.323.

“Well, this is going to be fun,” I said, and suddenly the rifle felt awkward. A lifetime of gun handling, without a single incident of jamming the wrong cartridge into a weapon, made the whole process just feel wrong.

I glanced back at Torrez and Estelle Reyes, both of whom waited expectantly.

Loaded and locked, a thoughtful exhale, just the right sight picture, my index finger so smoothly increasing pressure on the heavy trigger. The rifle bellowed again, bucked against my shoulder, and I saw dust fly.

The felon stood in the sun, a single hole in his forehead. I lowered the rifle and peered more closely.

“Must have gone through the same hole,” I laughed. “The old Robin Hood splitting the arrow trick.”

“Do it again,” Torrez said, and this time he handed me five rounds. “Just shoot until you have a group.”

One after another, I fed the five rounds into the carbine’s magazine. And one after another I let fly at the target. With the first shot, a hole appeared near the bottom edge of the human figure, right under the belt buckle. The second and third kicked dust, no where near the damn paper. Round four blew off the felon’s right ear, and the fifth and final shot exploded a chunk of target frame just above the steel feet. “Oops,” I said, and lowered the carbine, its barrel warm. “Well, that’s impressive shooting,” I said. “Did you do any better?”

He beckoned and I took the opportunity to stow the rifle in the case. The target he unrolled showed a tight group of five rounds, slightly above and to the right of the X in the center chest. Torrez came as close to a laugh as he ever did. “This five shot group is with the correct ammo, sir. The other group is with the.30–30 stuff.”

“I see no other group.”

He reached across and pointed at the hole right beside the lower right staple that secured the target. “I made one.” He took his ballpoint pen out of his shirt pocket. “And this is what’s interesting.” He lightly circled the irregular hole.

“It’s keyholing,” I said. “At what, only fifty feet?”

“Yes, sir.”

I turned away and walked out to the target stand. The hole through the forehead was true, but the other two were skewed, indicating that the bullet had wandered and slapped through the paper obliquely, damn near sideways…reminiscent of how the single slug had smacked Larry Zipoli just above the eyebrow.

“That’s half of it, sir,” Torrez prompted as he saw me settle into a quiet moment of reflection. He pointed at a cardboard box. “I ran both guns through my chronograph.” I knew that the little gadgets used two sensors triggered by the shadow of the bullet as it sped by. Simple stuff for the electronic chips inside the machine to compute velocity in feet per second.

The deputy pulled a small notebook out of his pocket. “The.30–30 cartridges, fired from a standard.30–30 Winchester,” and he jerked his chin toward the second rifle case, “worked out to an average velocity of 2270 feet per second. That’s an average. They were pretty darn consistent.”

“And so?” I relaxed back against the narrow shelf of the bumper.

“When I fired the.30 caliber ammo in the.32…” He held out the notebook. “Take a look at these.” The velocity of each of five rounds was recorded in Torrez’s block printing. The shots ranged wildly, the slowest at 1712 feet per second, the fastest hitting 1925.

“So,” I said, “not only is the damn thing grossly inaccurate, not only does it throw bullets sideways, but it’s also slowed way down. Not fast enough to pass through both the windshield and Larry Zipoli’s skull. What did you get for penetration in that block of firewood? About five inches?”

“Give or take.”

I let all that digest for a moment. I had to admit that the little butterflies of excitement were starting to flutter in my gut.

“That could be how it happened, sir.”

“Yes, it could. You have the right ballistics to match the penetration, you’ve got the yaw of a sideways strike, you’ve duplicated the lack of rifling marks.” I grinned up at him. “Nice work, Deputy. Only one thing’s wrong with this whole scenario.”

“Yup.” Torrez pocketed the notebook. “With the wrong ammo in the gun, we can’t hit shit.”

“How many rounds did you fire at the target?”

“Same as you, sir. Five rounds. One hit. The rest just splattered. The one hit was dumb luck.”

“Not much of a batting average.” I regarded the gravel at my feet. “I’ve got this image of the gunman walking toward Larry Zipoli. He’s carrying the rifle, and Larry puts the grader into neutral. What, we’re going to have a little show and tell? Someone’s bought a new rifle and he’s going to show it to Larry? But then the guy stops some X number of feet in front of the grader and throws up to his shoulder. Larry’s got time maybe to think, ‘Oh, shit,’ and the round comes through the windshield and nails him in the forehead.”

“Maybe.” The tone of his voice said that he didn’t believe it for a second.

“So the statistics say, Roberto. But are you going to go assassinating with a rifle that hits the target only one time out of five? And that’s at only fifty goddamn feet. I don’t think so. I mean, none through the center. None where we aimed. Only a moron would try that. Hell, big and pugnacious as Larry Zipoli might be, he’d have had time to jump down and bury a lug wrench in the guy’s head.” I shrugged.

“And we even found the lug wrench this morning,” Torrez reminded me.

I looked across at Estelle. “Remember what I said about puzzle parts, young lady?” She nodded. “We’re ready to hear ideas.”

Again, she took her time. “It would be helpful to know how many shots people heard.”

I laughed and stood up. “You and me both. And suppose that two reliable witnesses…and isn’t that a goddamn oxymoron-suppose that two people heard a total of ten shots. Are we supposed to think that Larry Zipoli was so stupid that he just sat there smoking his cigar as thirty caliber bullets went zinging all around his cab? And not one of those bullets even grazes the grader…not a goddamn one…until the fatal shot hits dead center?” I shook my head in frustration.

“Except that it’s possible that the first shot just happened to be the successful one,” Estelle Reyes said quietly. She didn’t amplify the comment. I could figure out the one-shot scenario for myself, but I didn’t believe it for a second. I guess I out-waited her, since eventually she added a statement of simple statistical fact.

“The first shot can just as easily be the one bulls-eye as the fourth, the seventh, or the tenth…or the hundredth.”

“Yup,” Bob Torrez said. After all his work, of course he wanted that to be true.

“Pretty goddamn undependable way to kill somebody,” I said.