Rogues Gallery (20 page)

This looks like a job for Sebastian McCabe!
“No, I guess I'd better not.”

III

So if I wanted to be a hero to my assistant, I had to get Mac off his duff to find the real murderer (if there was one) pronto. No problem. It would be far harder to stop Mac from getting involved. All I had to do was find him, which proved to be harder than I expected.

Meanwhile, Popcorn and Oscar clearly weren't on the same page regarding the innocence of Ashley Crutcher. Well, that wasn't my problem. Or was it? I didn't want Popcorn grumping around about it; that might affect her office efficiency. More importantly, she was as much my friend as she was my co-worker, and so was Oscar. After he left - the parting was a little stiff, but maybe that's just because they had an audience - I thought of making some insightful comment to Popcorn about the course of true love never running smoothly. (At least, it didn't for me.) Then I realized that she's fifty-one years old, a widow, a grandmother of three, and undoubtedly wise to the ways of love from reading those lurid Rosamund DeLacey romance novels. She should have been giving me advice to the lovelorn back when I needed it.

I tried calling Mac three times over the next couple of hours, both on his office phone and on his smartphone, but without success. I chalked that up to committee meetings because I knew he didn't have a class today. After lunch I tried again. He picked up on about the fifth ring.

“McCabe here.”

I know that. I called you. Who else would be answering your cell phone?

The background noise sounded like the Fourth of July.

“What's the racket?”

“Gunfire.”

Of course. How did I not know that?

“I am taking a late lunch hour at The Bull's Eye. I have just arrived. Please join me.”

I would have argued, but talking over the gunfire was too much effort. I told him I'd be there in five minutes.

The Bull's Eye Gun Shop & Shooting Range is located in a strip mall in the newer part of Erin. It's far enough away from campus that I decided to drive my classic (i.e., ancient) lime green Volkswagen Beetle there instead of pedaling on my bike. Mac puts in an hour or two there from time to time, shooting at a target with his Colt .32, for which he has a concealed carry permit. He says it helps him think when he's plotting a mystery novel. That may even be true. But I think he also harbors the illusion that someday his ability to shoot may actually matter. If it ever does, I don't want to be there when that happens.

It was a crisp fall morning with the sun shining brightly, by no means a bad day to be playing hooky from the office. I wished I could just keep driving along the river - or better yet, north to Cleveland and my true love. But that didn't happen.

At one-fifteen in the afternoon, The Bull's Eye wasn't exactly hopping, but it wasn't deserted either. A handsome woman of about thirty in an expensive leather coat was leaning over the sales counter when I came in, intently listening to a healthy-looking sport with curly brown hair and a faint mustache. He pointed out all the fun features of a .38 that seemed to be scaled down to fit her female hand. Seeing the sales staff was tied up, I looked around on my own. I'd only been here with Mac once before, for research back when I was writing my still-unpublished Max Cutter private eye novels.

The front portion of the business, where I stood, was a sporting goods store masquerading as a cozy lodge. Stuffed heads of deer, moose, and boar looked down from the paneled walls. A television set was mounted in one corner of the room, and an American flag decorated the other. The only firearms on display in racks were the Thompson Center Hawken rifle kits (American-made, the box said) and the long guns (some in camouflage colors). The handguns were behind the counter. But everything else in the store that pertained to weapons, from ammunition and Bianchi leather holsters to pistol perches and recoil pads, were on open shelves. Then there were what you might call accessories - expandable batons, blackjacks, mace, and tie tacks shaped like little handcuffs.

When the man at the counter was finally free (because the leather-coated woman had left with a gun in her purse), I put down the paralyzer tear gas I'd been studying and went over to him. He was wearing a blue polo shirt with the store's target-themed logo printed on the front. The shirt was unbuttoned, leaving tufts of hair sticking out.

“Yes, sir?” he said with a “here to help you” smile.

“A friend asked me to meet him here. He's about this high” - I indicated with my hand - “and about this wide and he has a beard.”

He chuckled. “You mean Professor McCabe?”

“That's the one.”

He handed me a set of electronic earmuffs and told me to go on back to the target range. I remembered the earmuffs from my previous visit. Ingeniously, they let you hear most sounds, such as conversation or the ringtone of a cell phone, but block out all sounds above 86 decibels, most noticeably gunfire.

There were only three or four shooters on the range, but they'd been busy. The air smelled of cordite, although it wasn't permeated with the foggy haze of gun smoke that you might expect. Apparently that's filtered out these days.

A blond woman with muscles came out of a stall and strode past me, a look of satisfaction on her young face. She was carrying a big gun.

Mac was in the next stall, firing away at a cardboard target bearing the image of a male head and shoulders in silhouette. I noticed that Mac's aim had improved since the last time I'd been here with him. If he ever got attacked by a cardboard target, he'd have nothing to worry about. Now I had a problem. Coming up to him and tapping him on the shoulder didn't seem like a good idea. The man had a gun in his hand! Fortunately, he saw me coming out of the corner of his eye. He lay the Colt pistol down on the counter in front of him and, turning around, motioned at the gun as if offering me an opportunity to shoot. I held up my hands in a protesting gesture. I'd gotten out of here that one time without wounding myself or anybody else, and I don't like to press my luck.

Mac shrugged and made a “follow me” gesture. We went out a side door.

“Are you quite sure, Jefferson, that you do not - ”

“I'd love to, but I'm a man on a mission.”
Like the Blues Brothers!
Maybe I wasn't working for God, but I liked to think that we were at least on the same side. “Popcorn is counting on us to help Ashley Crutcher. And I guess Ashley wouldn't mind, either.”

He raised an eyebrow. “The details in the
News-Ledger
were sketchy, but I assumed the death of her husband was a tragic accident.” Mac knew her from the Poisoned Pens, about as well as I did.

“I'm pretty sure you've told me on more than one occasion to never assume anything.”

I gave him the lowdown on what we'd learned from Oscar, ending with my quasi-assurance to Popcorn.

“I hope you have not overpromised, old boy.” Mac sighed. “Well, the situation is serious, but not urgent. I shall finish shooting.”

So, with ear protectors back on, I was forced to watch my brother-in-law darned near obliterate the target, putting holes practically on top of holes. After a half-hour or so of this, we walked out together and turned in our ear protectors.

“How'd it go, Professor?” the guy at the counter asked.

“I had a splendid session, Carson! I finished my next novel. Now all I have to do is write it.”

Carson looked puzzled. “Well, that's good, I guess. But the important thing is that you can defend yourself if you ever need to, like Mrs. Crutcher did.”

A funny feeling crept up my spine, and it wasn't a pleasant one. “You know Mrs. Crutcher?”

“Oh, sure. She's been a regular in here lately.”

IV

We met with Ashley Crutcher and Erica Slade in Erica's office the next day. By then I'd convinced myself that there was nothing damning about Ashley target shooting - lots of women do it. But I wasn't sure I could convince anybody else. Marvin Slade and the entire readership of
The Erin Observer & News-Ledger
, just to pick random examples, might see this as proof of cold-blooded practice for killing her ex after somehow luring him into his former home. For that reason, I'd been careful not to mention The Bull's Eye when I talked with Lynda on the phone before going to sleep.

Erica's office is a former Episcopal chapel on Water Street. Undersized for a house of worship, it had proved too small for its brief incarnation as a trendy pub called The Sanctuary. The pub owner also had a few other problems, legal ones that had caused him to hire Erica. She'd taken his equity in the building as part of her fee. As an office it was spacious for one person, with plenty of room to expand the practice later. The building still had the stained-glass windows - and the bar. Nice touch, I thought.

We sat around an oval table in a conference room.

“Thank you for allowing us to speak to your client,” Mac told Erica.

“Yeah, it was really swell of you,” I added, “especially since you know damned well we're just trying to save her derriere.”

Maybe you can't tell, but I was a bit miffed. Not only was Ashley a friend, but I thought Erica was as well, which is why I called her Erica. Most people call her Slade, which fits her and drives her ex-husband nuts as a bonus. He hates it that she still uses his name. I hadn't known her that well when she defended first an innocent suspect and then the real murderer in that
1895
murder business, but Lynda and I had later enjoyed numerous late dinners and discussions with her at Bobbie McGee's Sports Bar.

“Sorry, Jeff.” She didn't look sorry. “No offense. But when a client hires me, she gets all of me. I'm totally committed. That means I'm part of every conversation related to the case and I call the shots, not the client. If the client can't buy that, she's not my client. I refer her to another lawyer.”

Even without a jury to impress, Erica was dressed to the nines in a little black dress and silver jewelry. In her mid-forties, she looked younger thanks to an unwrinkled face and bright violet eyes. She wore her dark hair long. If it was a dye job, it was a good one. She probably stood about five-seven, but in those stiletto heels she was almost as tall as me. And she had lovely ankles.

“But we're grateful for your interest,” Ashley said. I was proud of her for speaking up, but not surprised. She'd always struck me as the independent sort. Erica looked at her like, “What you mean ‘we,' Paleface?”

Ashley was twenty-seven, according to the
Observer
, but she looked older this morning. Her wavy brunette hair was disheveled and her brown eyes made it clear that sleep had been a stranger of late. I'd always thought of her as pleasingly plump but I could imagine that with a few more days of stress her moon-shaped face would be going into three-quarter moon mode.

“I only hope we can help,” I said.
Otherwise, Popcorn will give me the cold shoulder for weeks and the Poisoned Pens will be down by one member.
No, that's not really what I was thinking. I was worried for Ashley.

“Many defendants go to extraordinary lengths to mount a claim of accident or self-defense in the face of murder charges,” Mac noted. “In this case, invoking the ‘castle doctrine' that allows one to kill in self-defense when fearing for her safety inside her own home would seem an obvious and easy course. However, we understand from Oscar Hummel that you have eschewed any such defense. May I ask why?”

“Because I didn't shoot the bastard!” Ashley blurted out.

Surprisingly, Erica didn't object to the undiplomatic noun. “Marvin expected us to cop a plea to involuntary manslaughter, angling for probation and no jail time, but Ashley would have had to plead guilty to a crime she didn't commit. We said ‘no thanks.' At that, Marvin made it pretty clear that filing charges is just a matter of getting the paperwork done. So we're going to court and I'm going to wipe up the floor with my ex.”
It wouldn't be the first time.

“Why is he so determined to go to the mat over this?” I asked.

Erica snickered. “Maybe he thinks that killing asshole husbands sets a bad precedent. Not that Ashley did that.”

“I didn't!”

Erica's unhappy six-year marriage to the politically ambitious Sussex County prosecutor was one of the frequent topics of those late-night chats we'd had with her at Bobbie McGee's. From Erica's perspective, Marvin Slade had been riddled with insecurities about his wife's career as a gym teacher and Cincinnati Bengals cheerleader, plus insanely jealous for no reason. After the divorce, she'd become a criminal defense attorney in revenge. By her count, she'd bested Slade in court more often than not and walked away with a good deal in every plea bargain.

“A suspicious mind like the prosecutor's is likely to find meaning in the fact that you have recently become a regular habitué of The Bull's Eye,” Mac said.

“How did you know that?” The look on Ashley's wide face could have been surprise or something darker, but I would have bet a lot that her attorney wasn't unaware of her newfound hobby. And I'm not a betting man.

“Carson Allen happened to mention it. And if he mentioned it to Jefferson and me, sooner or later Mr. Slade is going to hear about it.”

Ashley shrugged. “Well, it's no big deal. I've been doing research. I'm working on a new story about a female private eye. It could be a series. At some point she's going to have to fire a gun. I have to admit, though, I kind of like it. There's a rush when you pull the trigger and you feel all that power, you know?”

Maybe it would be best to keep that to yourself, Ashley.

Erica apparently thought the same thing. She spoke up, taking the floor from her client. “This discussion is irrelevant. Target shooting is a very popular sport, including among women. There are more guns than people in this country.”