Wolf Hour

24 Recoil, October 2016

It was starting to get dark as I watched Cody Karlstad walk through the parking lot. In the half-hour I’d been waiting up there on the roof there had been a lot of activity down below, cars coming, cars going. Through the telescopic sights I followed Karlstad until he reached the big blue pickup, unlocked it and climbed in. My pulse rate was low, even though I hadn’t taken the beta blockers as I had considered doing yesterday. I’d worked out that the reason I didn’t hit Dante properly was because my pulse rate had been too high.

The interior light came on.

I knew that gave me seven seconds. I knew because this was the fourth day I’d been there at the same time, and each time he had carried out exactly the same ritual. He put his briefcase on the floor in front of the passenger seat, slipped the key in the ignition, fastened his seat belt and turned on the ignition.

Cody Karlstad was a white, middle-class part-owner of an agricultural machinery dealership. He had three children and a wife who worked in the local church. Cody Karlstad was a frugal man. Despite the fact that his car was worth 50,000 dollars he parked it every morning in the free parking slot at Southdale Mall. That was seven o’clock, before the mall opened; he had five thousand vacant parking slots to choose from but he always picked the same one, just about in the centre of the desert. After that he headed over to the machine outside the mall to buy a packet of chewing gum. I guessed he did that so he could tell himself and any parking warden who checked that he was a customer at the mall and qualified to park there free. But of course it could also have been just that he liked chewing gum, or had chronic bad breath. Then Cody Karlstad headed over toward the building where he worked. It shared a parking lot with the women’s hospital, and he’d have had to pay a monthly rent of 155 dollars to park there. I knew this because the prices were posted on a yellow metal sign outside the main entrance. I had no idea why the sign was made of metal — did they maybe think the price would never go up?

I was lying on the roof of the parking garage now. Between me and Cody Karlstad was a busy road and a lot of parking lot. Altogether the distance was almost exactly four hundred yards, but through the telescopic sights it looked a lot less than that. With the silencer and the roar of traffic below me no one was going to hear the crack if I squeezed the trigger. When I squeezed the trigger. When!

So, I had seven seconds.

Seven seconds before the engine turned over, the headlamps lit up and the interior light automatically went out. But for the seven seconds before Cody Karlstad was wrapped in darkness the lighting would be perfect. On the windshield, positioned above the light, was that white three-by-three square I covered with the cross hairs as I slowly pulled the trigger back. Owing to the angle all I could see were the hands fastening the seat belt, not his face. Perhaps that’s why I didn’t feel nervous. But I wanted him to fasten his seat belt first, I didn’t want him slumping forward and leaving his upper body pressing the horn, which would immediately have drawn attention to the scene. Three seconds. Two. He’d fastened the seat belt.

The rifle butt imparted its slight kick to my shoulder.

I saw a black mark in the white square.

A perfect shot.

I lowered the sights.

In the interior, which was still illuminated, I could see Karlstad’s body shaking.

It shouldn’t have been shaking. I’d done all the calculations; the distance, the angle, the thickness of the glass, the height of the seat, the length of Cody Karlstad’s body from the hips upward. Cody ought to have been sitting motionless with a hole in his forehead. But there he was, shaking like he was strapped to an electric chair.

I loaded the rifle. Took aim again. Calmly. Pulled the trigger. The kick against my shoulder was almost pleasurable. Once again, the shot hit the taped square, an inch higher this time.

And Cody Karlstad stopped shaking.