Page 79 of Fish in a Barrel
At that moment Henry gave an exultant, “Yes!” and stood up straight to pump his fist before turning the lever handle and letting them in.
“Good job, padawan,” Jackson praised. “Now, did you bring a flashlight?”
“Yes, sensei,” Henry said, reaching into his cargo shorts and pulling out a smallish but powerful Maglight. He proceeded to hold the thing up to his shoulder and shine it in either direction until they both saw the door marked Stairs.
“Sadly, the elevators were out of service,” Henry narrated, and Jackson let out a pained gasp as they both headed in that direction. The door to the stairwell, which would have been locked during regular hours, was open now, the doorknob drilled out and removed. Jackson tapped Henry on the shoulder and had him shine the light on the ground, and they both let out a low whistle.
“That look like metal shavings to you?” Jackson asked.
“Yes, boss, it does,” Henry agreed. “And fresh ones—all bright and shiny.”
“Someone got here before us and bored out the door. What do you want to bet the door to the roof will be in the same shape?”
Henry chuffed. “No bet. It’s like you can see the future.”
Of course Jackson didn’t count on trudging up four flights of stairs in order to see that future, and he was irritated to find himself sweating and breathless, his hands shaking on the stair rail as he pretended his back was just fine and everything was okay.
Henry went through the door first, and Jackson followed at a much more sedate pace, stepping over the predicted pile of shavings as he did so. He let Henry do the perimeter of the roof first, while he went directly to the northwest corner, which was the part of the building he was pretty sure faced Charlie Boehner’s apartment complex.
He was standing next to the guard wall, wishing he had a sniper’s scope or even an ordinary gun sight, when Henry finished his round and came to stand near his shoulder.
“Jackson? How you doin’?”
“Great,” Jackson lied, still laboring to get his breathing under control.
“Really? Are you really doing great?”
Jackson became aware that Henry was eyeballing the back of his hooded sweatshirt and suppressed a groan.
“I’m bleeding through the fucking sweatshirt, aren’t I.”
“Yeah. Man, you could have just let me come up to the top of the building. You’re so dumb, you’re lucky your cat doesn’t sleep on your face and end it all.”
“He doesn’t have any opposable thumbs. I’m sure if he could open his own bag of kibble, he’d think about it.” It was a crisp day, and Jackson had soaked his sweatshirt with sweat—and apparently, with blood. Fabulous. It was even one of the newer ones Ellery had bought for him. He shuddered and very carefully didn’t say anything about how badly he wanted to teleport down the stairs he’d just managed to haul his way up.
“Okay, sensei,” Henry said on a sigh. “So we’re up here, you’ve proved you’re perfectly fine, now what are we looking for?”
“You tell me,” Jackson said. “Boehner’s apartment is about six hundred meters that way.” He waved his hand in the direction they’d come from. “K-Ski is getting us some trajectory measurements. Where would an optimum place to shoot from be?”
Henry grunted. “About where we’re standing.”
Jackson took a few steps toward the cinder-block “wall” that traveled the perimeter of the building. “Burton told me once that a sniper’s long-range rifle often has to be secured to a stable base—I don’t see any marks like that here. What else could he have used?” He poked around on the gray cinder block, looking for tool marks that would show the rifle’d been anchored to the wall.
“Wait,” Henry said, kneeling on the ground. “Not the wall. Look here.”
Jackson backed up a foot and found the idea of getting to his knees and then back up again was just not working for him.
“Can you tell me?” he hedged, and Henry gave him a patient look.
“I’m taking pictures now,” he said. “You can see the tripod markings. Whoever it was knew enough about ballistics to pick up his shell casings—”
“One,” Jackson said. “One shell. Went through the edge of the window, through Boehner, through the far wall of the apartment, across the street, and into the park.”
Henry let out a low whistle. “Okay. This is just a guess, mind you, but deer shot and elk shot are designednotto do that. You want a game animal to go down hard and fast and die as soon as possible. That doesn’t work with shot that passes through their bodies. It needs to do bigger damage. Humans are a lot more fragile, but often there’s technology or buildings in the way. Military ammo is often designed to gothroughthings—walls, Humvees, body armor. So whoever we’re looking for, I’d put money down on the bullet being military grade, and often but not always—you know this because there’s always nutballs out there who want to burn the world—this means military trained.”
Jackson nodded. “Jade’s having Crystal and AJ look up our players: Brentwood, Cartman, the four choirboys from the trial. I don’t think it’s Cartman. He would have had no reason to be driving away so quickly at the time he nailed Sandra’s car if he’d been the one to actually put Boehner in the ground. But Idothink he knowswhyBoehner was killed, and that’s important too.”
“Okay,” Henry said after getting some pictures with his camera. Per Jackson’s training, he held up a small ruler to measure the width of the tool marks left from the tripod. “I’m going to forward these to Burton. He might recognize them and—”
