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David looked at her, before turning his eyes to Arthur and finally to Nora whose knowing nods had never set him wrong.

‘I spoke to Logan immediately following J.T.'s arraignment,' he said. ‘He will have the video to us within the hour.'

Sara nodded. ‘So let's watch it and see what we think,' she said, taking his hand and squeezing it. ‘And then you can make the decision for us.'

M
arc Rigotti was on deadline. The
Boston Tribune
deputy editor had spent the entire weekend working on a Doctor Jeffrey Logan profile piece and now, after the startling revelations in this morning's arraignment, had put aside his feature article to concentrate on a major news story for tomorrow's front page. His editor, a newsprint dinosaur named Ed Wiseman, had been by his office twice, pacing around his desk like an expectant father. Ed was like that – had an inexhaustible passion for his job and considered every one of his potential front-page headliners as ‘babies' just waiting to see the light of day.

Briiiinng
. The shrill of his desk telephone cut across his stream of consciousness. Rigotti jumped in his seat before deciding the call should be ignored – until none of the editorial assistants deigned to pick it up, forcing him to give in to its incessant buzzing and grab at the receiver in frustration.

‘Rigotti,' he barked, his tone loaded with irritation.

‘Mr Rigotti,' said the voice, the man's reply also tinged with a degree of intolerance. ‘My name is Carleton Blackmore, General Manager of Hunting Rifles Inc. Las Vegas, Nevada.'

Jesus, thought Rigotti, one of those random gun nuts, the last thing he needed.

‘Ah . . . right, well, I'm sorry, Mr Blackmore. I'm actually on deadline and . . .'

‘Slandering another honest American enterprise, no doubt.'

‘Excuse me?' Now this Blackmore was starting to piss him off.

‘I know people like you, Mr Rigotti, journalists set on destroying honest businesses with your inaccuracies and lies. Yes, we sell firearms, sir, but our rifles are for hunting and everyone who buys one is skilled in the art of using them.'

‘I'm sorry, Mr Blackmore.' Despite himself, Rigotti was intrigued. ‘I don't understand.'

‘Stephanie Tyler's murder,' explained Blackwell. ‘I read your report, sir. You claimed in your article that the gun in question – one of
ours
I might add – was rumoured to have been purchased by the dead woman as a present to her husband.'

Rigotti had had access to the police report in which Logan had explained how he had come to own the gun. He had even been provided details on its appearance, make and model – information he had included in his original post-murder report.

‘But we do not operate that way, Mr Rigotti,' Blackmore went on. ‘We have a very select clientele and Mrs Tyler would not have been able to purchase that particular weapon – a custom-made Mark V – nor the specified cartridges, the powerful .460 Weatherby magnums – from us without proof of firearms training. In short, your story is a load of rubbish, sir, and makes us appear . . .'

‘How do you know the rifle was one of yours?' asked Rigotti, grabbing a pencil from his drawer and dragging a notepad from across his desk.

‘Because of what you described, sir – the Mark V Deluxe's aesthetics. I am personally aware of the weapon you spoke of, Mr Rigotti, because all of our rifles are a one of a kind.'

‘But how is that possible?'

‘We engrave each one individually, Mr Rigotti. We name them.'

‘You give your guns
names
?' said Rigotti, incredulous.

‘Yes, sir. You said the rifle in question was engraved with the lettering BH. I believe you said the letters were on the lower left-hand corner of the stock.'

‘I thought that was part of the make and model number.'

‘No, sir,' contradicted Blackmore. ‘The BH refers to its name – “Ben Hur”. I remember Ben personally – the Claro walnut stock, the rosewood forend tip and pistol grip cap with maplewood spacers and diamond inlay. Beautiful weapon, sir, one of our best.'

Jesus
, thought Rigotti, trying to dismiss the ridiculousness of the whole concept of naming a Goddamned gun to concentrate on the task at hand.
If Blackmore is right, then I have just stumbled onto something bigger than the rifle's namesake
.

‘Hold up, Mr Blackmore. Forgive me for my ignorance but if this weapon was purchased in Nevada, wouldn't the state have a record of . . .'

‘Our laws are a lot different to yours, Mr Rigotti,' interrupted Blackmore. ‘Clark County – minus Boulder City I might add – is the only county which requires registration of a gun and that law applies to handguns only. All other counties have no registration of any guns whatsoever.'

Which was a whole other story in itself
, thought Rigotti, before waiting for Blackmore to continue.

‘A person must hold a Nevada hunting licence to hunt game animals in this state but there are no laws about carrying a gun over the border – and if Ben Hur is in Massachusetts, sir, then I would suggest he was most likely stolen from his original owner and driven into your fine eastern enclave unnoticed.

‘Of course, I know you folks like to slap a law on anything more threatening than a water pistol,' the opinionated Blackmore continued, referring to the fact that Massachusetts had some of the most stringent gun laws in the nation. ‘But any non-resident can transport rifles and shotguns into or through Massachusetts if the guns are unloaded, cased and locked in the trunk of a vehicle. And they can physically possess an operable rifle or shotgun while hunting with a Massachusetts licence.'

Rigotti would check this later – but memory and intuition told him Blackmore was more than likely right, and if that was the case then . . .

‘Do you know the identity of the original owner, Mr Blackmore?'

‘Well of course I do, sir. Haven't you been listening? We are an extremely efficient operation, Mr Rigotti – a family business that likes to get to know our customers so that we might service their needs with care and proficiency.

‘In fact, the purchaser in question is an old client, sir. We may not see
him as often as we would like, but I know he can still split a hair with a pistol from a good one hundred feet away, and shoot a Goddamned mountain lion smack between the eyes without . . .'

Lovely
, thought Rigotti before interrupting, ‘And that purchaser is . . . ?'

‘Not the deceased ex-lawyer and not her TV star husband, that's for sure. Ben Hur's owner is a local man, Mr Rigotti, a skilled marksman by the name of Jason Nagle who is a respected businessman in his own right.'

‘What does Mr Nagle do, Mr Blackmore?'

‘Well, I am not exactly sure, but I know he runs his own company, and that his appreciation of a fine weapon – regardless of its cost – is evidence of his financial stability and excellent Goddamned taste.'

‘I see,' said Rigotti, his mind now racing a hundred miles an hour. ‘And this Mr Nagle, did he leave his contact details?'

‘Well, of course he did, Mr Rigotti. Like I said we . . .'

‘Yes, yes,' said Rigotti, not wanting the man to lose momentum. ‘I'm sorry. I can see you run a very respectable business, Mr Blackmore, and obviously I want to correct my paper's mistake by clarifying the information you have so kindly provided. I'd like to speak to Mr Nagle. And if you could give me his telephone number, Mr Blackmore, I would be happy to make sure the
Tribune
made amends by . . .'

‘I am afraid I cannot do that, sir – at least not without Mr Nagle's permission. But given you seem conducive to making amends, I may deign to make contact with him and ask him if he is good enough to give you a call.'

‘Are you sure you can't give me his details, Mr Blackmore? Because I am happy to save you the trouble and call him direct.' It was worth a shot.

‘No, sir,' said an adamant Blackmore. ‘I am afraid that would be both highly inappropriate and bordering on illegal given all of our contracts of sale come with a privacy clause. But I shall get back to you as soon as possible, as long as Mr Nagle is willing.'

Seconds later Blackmore was gone and Rigotti was ten minutes behind in his deadline. But for once, Wiseman would have to wait. Something else was brewing – something big, Rigotti could feel it.

T
he first thing David noticed was the strange green light that permeated the scene before him, casting shadows on the three ‘players' now sitting at the far end of a dining room table and making them appear anaemic, lifeless, dead. He knew some videos gave off a bile-coloured tinge, as if someone had placed a film of emerald cellophane over the camera lens, but this was more like the inhabitants of the thirty-two inch screen had been lit with the sickly hue on purpose – as if the illumination befitted the drama, which in the end, he supposed, it did.

They were in Arthur's office – David, Sara, Nora and Arthur, and further away from the TV which Nora had placed on Arthur's desk, Doctor Jeffrey Logan and Katherine de Castro were seated in a second row of wooden guest chairs Nora had commandeered from David and Sara's offices. They were silent – just like the trio on the screen before them – the only noise emanating from the ‘home-made' production being the occasional chink of silverware against china. The inhabitants were sitting with their heads down, as if determined to concentrate on their meals, as if hesitant to lift their heads until . . .

‘J.T.,' said a voice out of frame, a voice David recognised immediately, despite its lack of any trace of the happy intonation his memory had impressed upon him.

‘Yes, Mother,' replied the boy, his chin rising slightly towards the unseen figure stage right.

‘Did you finish your biology project?' asked Stephanie, still beyond the camera's eye. She must have been serving from a side table, thought David, or perhaps collecting some napkins from a drawer.

‘Yes, Mother.'

‘And the DNA bases – are you sure they were in the right order?'

‘Yes,' replied the boy, his eyes seeming to flick towards the front of the room before looking ‘off-screen' towards his mother once again. ‘Adenine in yellow, thymine in green, guanine in red and cytosine in orange.'

‘And the adenine attaches to the thymine while the . . .'

‘Guanine connects with the cytosine,' finished J.T. robotically.

‘I know. Are you trying to lecture me?' she asked, her words paced as if in rhythm, the syllables broken up as if she wanted to sound them out individually for effect. ‘I was dux of my high school, you know, and could have just as easily chosen medicine over law – if I had so desired.'

‘I'm sorry, Mother,' replied the boy, his voice still a monotone drawl but now with an edge of . . . sadness. ‘I did not mean to . . .'

‘Stephanie, really,' said the man at the head of the table at last. Doctor Jeffrey Logan was still wearing his ‘work clothes' – a crisp blue shirt teamed with a subtle but expensive gold-striped tie. The on-screen Logan placed his knife on the table, while using his left hand to gesture rather animatedly in the air.

‘Is this really necessary? It is my birthday, for Christ's sake. I have no doubt J.T. has done a stellar job as always,' he said, pointing the fork towards his son who sat to his right with his shoulders hunched, his hands now forming fists around his glinting silver cutlery.

‘Just for once do you think you could sit down and behave civilly? Just tonight could you try to . . . ?'

‘I took it apart,' she said then, finally entering the picture.

David found himself gasping. Her skin was so pale – her complexion so insipid – that he almost did not recognise her.

‘What?' asked J.T., his eyes flicking forwards again, his question not so much one of surprise but acceptance.

‘I took it apart,' she confirmed.

She was in the shot proper now, her right hand resting on the back of a so far silent Chelsea Logan's chair. Chelsea had not moved an inch since this family ‘sideshow' began. Her head was still down, her eyes set determinedly upon the centre of the table before her.

‘I was not sure of one of your connections so I took it apart,' said Stephanie, talking to her son but staring directly at her husband as if defying him to argue, her hands clenching, her long neck contorting in strands.

‘Jesus, Stephanie,' said Logan, before rising from his seat to confront her. ‘The boy is just a child. He works so hard. It will take him hours to rebuild it.'

There was silence, and the Logan on the TV screen looked towards his son who, or so it appeared, could not think of anything else to say. And then, in what appeared to be an extremely out-of-context gesture, Logan sat back down and reached across the table for the silver gravy boat before him. Chelsea appeared to be following his hand with her eyes, as if mesmerised by the inappropriateness of his action.

‘J.T. is sorry,' said Chelsea, her voice an unexpected bark. ‘He's sorry, Mom . . . and he will build it again, won't you?'

‘Yes,' said the boy. David could have sworn he was crying.

When Stephanie then looked at her son, David found himself leaning forward onto the edge of his chair, needing desperately to read the emotion in her face. But the lighting was too severe, the shadows too deep, and within seconds Stephanie Tyler had left the frame again.

‘Here,' she said, after a time, re-entering the picture to hand her husband a long package wrapped in brown paper and string.

Logan took it, slowly, deliberately, turning it over in his hands. ‘What is it?'

‘It's your fucking birthday present, you ingrate,' she said, the first time David had heard her answer with any sense of ‘spirit' – causing his heart to rise and sink at the very same time.