An Obvious Fact (14 page)

I nodded, just as happy not to compete. “Okay, but if you could let him know I'm here and that I tried, I'd appreciate it.”

He nodded and glanced at his friend. “Frick and Frack, huh? I've heard that my whole life; do you know where it comes from?”

“They were a pair of Swiss skaters who came to the U.S. back in 1937; they were in the Ice Follies shows and became a household phrase.”

He stared at me. “Before my time, pops.” I nodded and we started to surge our way back through the crowd as he called after us, “Hey, I said there weren't any spots in the men's bracket, but we had somebody drop out in the women's, so do you think your friend would like to shoot?”

Vic looked at him and then tilted her head back—showing off the elongated canine tooth. “Fuck yeah.”

Not for the first time in our collective lives, we needed a shotgun.

Lucky for us Chief Nutter was shooting in the second round, and even more fortunately, he was a small man and had extra equipment, including a lovely 332 Remington that had been cut down an inch, making it a perfect fit for the Terror. While the first-round shooters peppered the air with pellets and the hillside with broken pottery, Vic tried on Nutter Butter's old shooting vest, which, with a little adjustment, fit like a dream.

“I need my shooting gloves.”

“Where are they?”

She looked at me as if I were the raw recruit who'd just been brought up from stupid. “They're on the seat of the Tahoe with my Flyers hat. Could you get that for me, too?”

“Anything else?”

She examined the beautiful over-and-under. “Lessons?”

When I got there, Dougherty was studying the SUV as if it had dropped out of the sky. “What are you doing with Irl Engelhardt's car?”

“It's a long story.” I tossed the gloves in the orange and
black hat. “You stuck doing crowd control or can you watch the competition?”

“I can't. I've got to move around and keep people from getting into trouble. Hey, I saw your dog down at the Ponderosa Café with Henry and Lola.” He cocked his head. “The conversation seemed pretty intense.”

“I bet.” I started back. “Well, you might want to try to see some of the tournament—Vic's shooting.” When I got back to the competition, there was a group around my undersheriff, all of them giving her advice.

Vic nodded and smiled the way she did when she wasn't listening. I arrived with her equipment, and she pulled her Broad Street Bullies hat down low, just above her space-age Oakley Radarlock sunglasses.

She thanked everybody for the pointers, hooked her arm in mine, and looked at the late afternoon sun. “Okay, what the hell am I supposed to do—hit the little ashtrays?”

“Yep, and make a visual connection with the target—keep a good line with it, don't start low when you're shooting high. The better you get set up, the more efficient you become.”

“Got it.”

“Attack the target line but don't rush.”

“Got it.”

“Stay loose and lead fast. Those ashtrays are moving pretty quick.”

“Got it.”

“Have fun.”

She nodded, pulling the gloves on and wrapping the Velcro around her wrists. “I always have fun with a gun in my hands.”

I followed her back to where Chief Nutter was polishing the proffered weapon. “Where'd you get that antique, Bill?”

“Oh, my wife bought it for me before we got divorced—she got the house and I kept my guns. No harm no foul.” He looked at the sheen sparkling off the stock. “It ain't nothin' too fancy, just a working man's gun, but she's true and shoots straight with no idiosyncrasies, which is more than I can say about my ex-wife.” He handed the shotgun to Vic.

Vic held it like a baby, smiled at the old chief, and then turned toward the assembled competitors with a predator's eye. “Who am I up against?”

“Some of the best shooters in all of the upper Midwest.” He pointed at a blonde woman with a straw cowboy hat. “Connie Evans, two-time national champion from Sioux Falls.” He gestured to a dark-haired woman. “Patricia Frontain out of Chicago, teaches at the National Sporting Clay Association. And that cool drink of water on the end is Annemarie Potter, who can out-shoot most of the men here.” He tiptoed to see the others. “Raye Lankford, all-Midwest, and Kelly McBride on the end down there won it all last year.”

I nudged her shoulder. “Scared?”

She barked a laugh. “Hell with that; I'm used to targets that shoot back.”

Carefully watching how and what the other women were doing, she joined them with the Remington's butt cupped in her hands, which were laced at her crotch.

There seemed to be an unstated pecking order, with Evans going first. She was good, very good, catching the targets on a perfect line, graceful and balanced. The Frontain woman was faster but clipped one of the clays in a double and you
could feel the others sensing a weakness. The tall woman, Potter, was a natural but didn't keep a good line with the target, and I could see that she could be beaten—so did Vic. Lankford was a short blonde whose shooting was flawless, but she didn't seem as bloodthirsty as the rest, and that lack of competitiveness might be her downfall later in the shoot. McBride shot like Evans and was a problem.

Like a nervous groom, I watched as Vic stepped up to the station and carefully raised the over-and-under.

The puller lifted the remote that would signal the high and low houses and spoke in a loud voice: “Ready?”

All the other shooters had barked their command, almost as if the added impetus might help them in destroying their nemeses, but Vic was loose and draped around her weapon like a gunfighter. Although the place was almost silent, I had to listen carefully to hear the word drifting out like a sigh of foregone conclusion. “Pull.”

Firing points at one and six launched the two targets like miniature flying saucers, and they'd no sooner gotten to their separate trajectories than they both disappeared in two sequential blasts that almost sounded as one.

The chief leaned over to me. “That was her taking her time?”

“I guess.”

He whistled quietly. “Shee-it.”

Evans, McBride, and Vic graduated to the next level. The other shooters were talking, but Vic, with the Remington on her shoulders, stood looking into the distance like a major league pitcher throwing a shutout.

 

• • •

Bob Nance was in the finals of the men's competition but had made time to come over to where Chief Nutter and I were standing. Now leaning on the steel divider that separated the contestants from the hoi polloi, he squinted at me. “You bring a ringer to my tournament?”

“It's her first time.”

“You're kidding.”

“Nope, but she's got experience with shooting things. Four brothers who . . .” I paused and then started over. “Three brothers who are active-duty police officers, and a father who's the chief of detectives north back in Philadelphia.”

He looked at me out of one eye. “What's she doing in Wyoming?”

“I ask myself that a lot of the time.” I waited a moment and changed the subject. “Where's your daughter?”

He shook his head as he glanced around at the circumstance, if not the pomp. “She's bored silly by this stuff, but then she's bored silly by most of the things that I enjoy.”

“I'm sorry to hear that.” I waited again. “Hey, how long has your daughter been in county?”

He thought about it. “It's August, so I guess it's been about two months.”

“Before that she was in Los Angeles?”

“Yes.” His eyes stayed with mine. “Why?”

“You mentioned the other night that you'd been running interference on this relationship between your daughter and Torres for eight months.”

He continued to look at me. “So?”

“You said she's only been here for two months, so I guess they knew each other in L.A. or Tucson?”

He glanced at Chief Nutter and then back to me. “And why do you care, Sheriff?”

“I'm just trying to get a clearer picture of the relationship between Chloe and Bodaway in hopes that it might shine some light on the accident that may end up costing the young man his life.”

He crossed his arms over the Krieghoff K-80. “Are you accusing Chloe?”

“Nope.”

He glanced at Chief Nutter again to register his disapproval at being interrogated in this manner and then spoke slowly as if I might not understand English. “I have business dealings in Phoenix. I stay at the Biltmore, but my daughter, who used to stay there with me, said it was too stodgy, so she set herself up at the W, which evidently doesn't monitor the individuals who frequent their poolside bar.” He took a breath. “That's where they met and established a long-distance relationship, which I have been attempting to end for eight months.”

“I see.”

“Good, I'm glad you see.”

“And where were you the night that Bodaway Torres was run off the road?”

His eyes clinched down like the bore on the gun he held. “You know, Sheriff, I invited you here because I thought it might be fun, but you're proving to be tiresome.”

I smiled. “Oh, just give me a chance; I can get a lot more mundane.”

He studied me for a long while and then moved back among the other shooters.

“I don't think he likes me.”

Chief Nutter turned and rested the small of his back against the steel bar. “Is that your method, to go around pissing off all the people you're investigating?”

“Go with your strengths, I always say.”

“I know he's a little on his high horse.”

“And I know he bought you a truck.”

The chief was silent for a moment and then leaned over into my line of sight. “You got something you want to say?”

“He hates that kid lying in a hospital bed in Rapid, and when I'm looking for somebody who might've done a victim harm, I generally look for a suspect who doesn't particularly care for that victim.”

“And if I told you Bob Nance didn't have anything to do with injuring that boy, you'd believe me, right? Because the night Bodaway Torres was hurt, Nance was drinking with me at the clubhouse over there.” I stared at him, and he looked at the power broker. “So, I guess that means I'm one of the bad guys now, huh?”

I watched as the other women in Vic's round began to shoot. “Not necessarily.”

“Well, I'll tell you, I truly wish I had the finely tuned instrumentation that enables you to tell the difference between right and wrong, Sheriff.”

“Speaking of high horses.”

He smiled—it was slow, but he smiled. “He's divorced, too. Sometimes when I finish a shift, it's just easier to come up here than sit down in town with all the people I arrest for DUIs. Last week when that kid got tagged, Bob was here with a bunch of friends, playing cards into the wee hours.”

“Good enough.” I folded my arms over my chest.
“Speaking of Bodaway, did I mention that both Mike Novo and I found gold paint on the young man's bike—the same gold paint that's on his mother's convertible?”

He made a face. “Jeez, Lola ran over her own kid?”

“Think she's capable of it?”

“Yes. Well, no. Well, I'm not sure, to be absolutely honest. I don't know her that well.”

The Evans woman stepped up, preparing for the targets that would be pitched from the opposite towers, both high and low. She shot, annihilating the first clay but barely clipping her second.

I tipped my hat a little forward so that I could see better. “The car was parked at the Hulett Motel that night with the keys in it, so I suppose anybody could've been driving it.”

“You ask her?”

“I did.”

“And?”

“She says it wasn't her.”

“You believe her?”

I chuckled. “Well, I'm not sure, to be absolutely honest.”

Vic stepped up to the fifth station, which was made out of redwood and dug into the hillside, the 12 gauge broken down and cradled in the crook of her arm. She tightened her gloves, adjusted her hat, and then loaded the Remington with the two rounds one of the pullers handed her.

The chief unconsciously straightened his own hat. “She gets two clean hits, and she'll advance.” He turned and grinned at me. “And then she'll shoot against the men's finalists, who I'm pretty sure are going to end up being your buddy Bob Nance and that surgeon from Billings.”

“Well, that should be interesting.”

The puller looked at Vic. “Ready?”

Once again, you could barely hear her voice, and it was epic watching her raise the thirty-inch barrels like a cobra rising to strike. “Pull.”

The target flew in a flat trajectory, different from the ones launched before, so Vic had to re-aim, but the result was devastating, the clay pigeon exploding. Something must've happened in the release of the second bird, though, and it was already speeding in the opposite direction when Vic sighted it. She waited just a split second.

Nutter was clutching the steel bar. “She's waiting too long, it's going to be too far for . . .”

At that second my undersheriff jerked back with the blast of the shotgun, and the clay target burst apart at the very edge of the Remington's range.

The crowd erupted, and she turned and bowed, slinging the shotgun on her shoulder, whereupon they roared some more. She popped the two empty shells and gave them to a puller and then walked straight toward us. Handing Nutter the 12 gauge, she smiled through the carnival-glass optics of her glasses with millions of tiny rainbows dancing. “I like this game.”

He laughed. “It shows.”

She pulled the earplugs. “I think I could get good at it.”

I nodded toward the blonde woman. “Looks like you and Evans are going to be representing the gentler sex in the next round.”

She turned her face, scanning the other shooters. “Who's next?”

“Bob Nance and Frank Carlton, that older hotshot over there with the khaki hat. The chief here says he's some kind of five-time national champion.”

“They miss anything yet?”

“Nope.”

“Well then, we're all even.”

Nance sauntered over and, leaning on the railing, studied my undersheriff. “Bob Nance.”

“Vic Moretti.”

I thought he was attempting to get a little edge. “Hey, you're pretty good.”

“Thanks.”

He smirked. “You're pulling just a bit when you fire.”

“‘There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter.'”