by P. L. Gaus
“Push what?”
“Push The Man, fool. What’d he do?”
“You tell me.”
Hershon slammed the flat palm of his free hand against the partition and curled his fingers as if he were clawing through the reinforced glass. “What’d Jesse do?”
Branden stared back, fought an internal battle with his nerves, hung up the receiver slowly, stood, and turned to walk out.
Hershon shouted a profusion of curses into the phone, and Branden turned back to face him. Slowly and deliberately, he came back to the phone, lifted the receiver, and stood in place behind the glass, listening.
Hershon barked, “What?”
“I asked you a question,” Branden said with as much insolence as he could muster.
“He offed The Man, didn’t he.”
“I wouldn’t know. He killed a young girl,” Branden said. He let the futility of the conversation show on his face as boredom.
Hershon broke into a cautious smile.
Branden stood with the receiver to his ear and waited with an uninformative expression. “Tell me about Jesse Sands,” Branden said.
“I told him how to get The Man.”
“Which means?”
“You figure it out. Aren’t you supposed to be some kind of professor?”
“Why would you have told Sands to have done anything?”
“Who’s got him locked up?” Hershon asked. Branden realized the question wasn’t a change of topic.
“Holmes County Sheriff. Why’d you tell Sands something like that?”
“Told Jesse lots of things in eight years sleeping together.”
“Why’s he so unconcerned to be locked away for murder?”
“If it weren’t that, it’d be something else, sooner or later.”
“That’s rather fatalistic, wouldn’t you say?”
“Cut the crap, Professor. Where’s Millersburg?”
“Like I said, Ohio.”
“County jail?”
“Right. Now tell me about Jesse Sands.”
“He did the max, here. Now he’s back inside, somewhere else. What’d you expect?”
“You say that as if it were of no consequence.”
“It isn’t. Now tell me what happened.”
“He killed a girl.”
Hershon drew closer to the glass. “Tell me about that.”
“Why was Sands in prison?” Branden asked.
“He raped some girl. How’d he kill her?”
“Shot her. Raped who?”
“Some old lady, twenty years ago. Shot her where?”
“In the chest. What’d you mean he did the max?”
“No parole. Not where, where? He shot her where?”
“In her own home. He took the maximum sentence?”
“Do the whole stretch and you’re free. Daytime or night?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did he kill her at night or in the day?”
“Night. What did Sands talk about when he was in?”
“How’d he get caught?”
“What did he talk about?”
“How’d he get caught?”
Branden waited purposefully.
“Revenge.”
“Meaning?”
“Sands talked about revenge. How’d he get caught?”
“The police grabbed him outside the girl’s house with the gun he used to shoot her. Revenge for what?”
“Tell me exactly how he was caught.”
Branden gave it to him in detail and asked, “Revenge for what?”
But Billy Hershon never answered. He thought for a moment longer about the story Branden had told him of Jesse Sands’s capture. His eyes narrowed at one point and then opened again. A distant look appeared in his gaze, and then he refocused his cold eyes on the professor. In his expression, there was the unmistakable pride of a grand triumph. Jesse Sands’s triumph. A satisfied smile, a victorious swagger, and Hershon disappeared behind the door into the cellblocks.
26
Monday, June 16 4:45 P.M.
“YOU said William Erlanger called you himself?” Cal asked from the passenger seat of Caroline Branden’s car.
Caroline drove east on Route 39 and said, “Yes. He said David Hawkins had been out to his long-distance rifle range yesterday.”
“Did he say he saw David?” Cal asked.
“I’m not sure, Cal. We’ve just got this appointment this afternoon. That’s about all I know. Erlanger said it couldn’t wait for Michael to come home from New Jersey.”
“Have you heard from Mike?”
“Just a brief call before I came to pick you up. It was all a dead end in New Jersey.”
After turning onto a small township road, they soon saw the Erlanger rifle range on old farmland. They found the almost unnoticeable little sign beside the road, pulled into the gravel lane, and drove over a rise, around two sharp corners, and onto the gravel lot behind the firing line. Cars, trailers, and campers were aligned in rows behind two concrete buildings, and several dozen people strolled among the campers and the buildings of the range.
In front of the white concrete buildings was the firing line, under a long roof of corrugated metal sheeting on high poles. Range officers in orange jackets patrolled both ends of the line, and a man in an orange vest sat in a wooden tower behind the line. Under the long roof, on benches made of double-thick concrete blocks, sat dozens of shooters. Most of them worked quietly beside their rifles, but occasionally, one would take a shot.
At the end of the current thirty-minute relay, the man in the tower spoke into a loudspeaker. “Cease fire!”
His ceasefire command was parroted at the ends of the firing line by the two range officers on foot. “Cease fire; cease fire.”
“Open all actions!”
“Open all actions; open all actions.” Actions clicked open, up and down the line.
“Empty all chambers!”
“Empty all chambers; empty all chambers.” Chambers emptied out, everywhere along the line.
“Bench all firearms!”
“Bench all firearms; bench all firearms.” From one end of the line to the other, men and women secured a firm purchase on their ornate rifles, and lifted them into vertical positions in wooden racks.
“Stand clear of all firearms and make the line safe!”
“Stand clear of all firearms and make the line safe; stand clear of all firearms and make the line safe.” Up and down the line, men and women stepped back from their rifles.
Now the range officers moved from their positions at either end of the firing line to inspect each shooter and each rifle. The officer on the right reported first to the tower. “Line is clear on the right!”
A similar announcement soon came from the officer on the left. “Line is clear on the left!”
The man in the tower announced: “The range is closed. You will have one-half hour to post and pull targets.”
“The range is closed; the range is closed.”
For the first time since Caroline and Cal had arrived, the shooters moved about casually on the firing line and behind it. Before, they had seemed controlled, deliberate, absorbed with their shots. Now, most of the shooters were milling about, talking, or were taking a fresh target downrange, at two hundred yards.
As they stood there, the range officer from the tower arrived with a telescope mounted on a tripod. He was a big man, soft-spoken and gentle, but given a megaphone, the absolute master of authority on the line. “I’m Erlanger. I presume you must be Caroline Branden.” He set the tripod and telescope on the lawn in front of them.
Caroline answered “Yes” as Erlanger sighted-in the telescope and focused on the distant targets.
“I take it that neither of you has been to a benchrest target range before. Have a look.”
He stepped back from the telescope and took a position behind them. They each took a turn at the eyepiece. At the end of the two hundred yards, there were small squares of paper w
ith thin grid lines in black. At the center of the targets, there was a small bull’s-eye.
It was Caroline who asked the obvious question, while peering through the scope. “How big are the targets?”
She lifted her head from the scope, and turned to hear Erlanger’s answer. He had anticipated the question and stood silently displaying a sample, and a satisfied smile. The target was no bigger than a half-piece of typing paper, and the precise grid lines inscribed a black circle no larger than a quarter. As Cal inspected the target more closely, Caroline returned to the telescope.
“I can’t see any hits, Mr. Erlanger. Why are they taking down targets that have no bull’s-eyes?”
“Look off-center, about an inch or two from the bull’s-eye,” Erlanger answered.
“Oh, I see. Yes. Little bullet holes,” and then the next obvious question, “Why doesn’t anyone seem to be able to hit the bull’s-eye?”
Erlanger said, “I can help you with that question,” and asked them to follow him on a tour. They stepped away from the firing line, and followed him into the stand of trailers that were parked on the grounds.
As Erlanger led them among the trailers, he pointed out some of the license plates and said, “We get shooters from all over the world here.” There were dozens of license plates from other states, and insignias on trailers from other countries. Germany, South Africa, Australia, Finland, and Switzerland.
Erlanger led them into one of the clubhouses. “We’ve been a worldwide center for benchrest competitions for ten or twelve years now. We hold them every summer, right here in Ohio.” In the clubhouse, there were trophies and displays, as well as magazines, supplies, concessions, equipment, and shooting gear for sale.
Cal stepped up to a glass case and studied the inscriptions on the trophies. Most of them bore Erlanger’s name, from matches in the United States and abroad. Cal noted trophies from France, Finland, Austria.
Next, Erlanger led them into an adjacent building where several rifles were in various stages of manufacture in the first two rooms. “The reason we’re known for benchrest competitions is because of our rifles. We make what I consider to be the finest, most accurate benchrest rifle in the world. We use Hart barrels from New York, made of stainless steel, and we tune their lengths like the pipes of an organ. The actions are machined to such precise tolerances that we need computerized technology to cut them out.” He pointed to giant, automated lathes and drills, Mazak CNC machines that effortlessly and methodically carved complicated rifle actions out of aluminum blocks.
In another room, Erlanger showed them five or six massive green machine tools where three men worked to polish and finish the actions. Bolts lay around the room on shelves, in line for assembly, polished and finished to a supreme brightness. “We use certain parts from Remington firing pin assemblies, but refinish each bolt in six separate hand steps. Some of these lathes helped to win World War II, and now they turn out the most accurate rifle components in the world. Poetic, don’t you think? The barrels are fluted to conserve weight, and they’re glass bedded and free floated in polymer stocks. We use 7075 aircraft aluminum in the actions and for the scope rings. That conserves weight too, but requires a perfect fit on the bearing surfaces. There aren’t many outfits in the world that can duplicate our rifle.”
Outside, Erlanger said, “I hope you’ll be able to appreciate my point, Mr. Troyer. The reason I called you, Mrs. Branden. It’s all a matter of precision. Our rifles have to be made to extremely precise tolerances. And every rifle we make is meant to be exactly like the others in one respect. They are the most accurate and precise rifle in the world at two hundred to three hundred yards.”
“You made David Hawkins’s rifle for him?” Caroline asked.
“Yes,” Erlanger said. “I tried to talk him out of the blue sparkle polymer for the stock, though.” He laughed in recollection. “Tacky, really. Fifties-style. But he said he’d had a steering wheel like that, on one of his first cars when he was a kid, and he wanted the rifle that way too. No trouble to oblige him. After he won the ’02 match, we’ve gotten a lot of requests for the same color.”
As they walked back to the firing line, Caroline said, “You still haven’t told us why no one hits the bull’s-eye.”
Erlanger explained. “Benchrest shooting is a precision sport. The winner is the one who can put one round after another into precisely the same spot. The winner is the one who has the smallest hole in the target after five rounds have been logged, sometimes ten. It takes tremendous concentration and a lifetime of practice to be able to do that at two hundred yards. Benchrest shooters require the best rifles that can be made. They make their own ammunition, because factory ammo is not nearly reliable enough.”
“But why not hit what you shoot at?” Caroline asked.
“Because in this sport, Mrs. Branden, you’d hit it,” Erlanger said.
“I don’t follow,” Caroline said.
“The demands of benchrest shooting are relentless. Wind, weather, even barometric pressure can influence a shot. Sometimes shooters will bring their reloading equipment to the range just to be able to make up a slightly different load, in case the weather changes. Under those sorts of constraints, and at two hundred yards, a shooter doesn’t want the shape or appearance of the bull’s-eye to change with each shot that hits it.”
“The shooter preserves the bull’s-eye in order to have something better to aim at?” Caroline asked.
“Wouldn’t you?” Erlanger said.
Cal eyed the big man nervously and asked, “You said on the phone that you’ve seen David Hawkins.”
“I didn’t see him, myself. Others say they saw him. But he was here all right, yesterday for about an hour. He left his targets posted when he had finished. Nobody in the world would pull down a David Hawkins target. If he doesn’t come back, those targets’ll stay posted until they fall down of their own accord.”
Erlanger led them up to his spotting scope, and asked one of the line officers, “Is that Hawkins’s target from yesterday?”
“Yes, sir, five shots as near as I remember.”
“Right,” Erlanger said. “Hawkins took his first five shots in half an hour at the range. That’s way too fast for him.”
“Did you notice the flags, George?” the range officer asked.
At fifty-yard intervals, reaching out toward David Hawkins’s target, they saw several long, narrow, yellow silk flags, each attached, about two feet off the ground, to thin white poles. Each now registered the faintest cross-range breeze.
“Wind markers,” Erlanger explained.
Next, Erlanger motioned to the eyepiece, and made way for Cal. “Mr. Troyer, I wonder if you’d be willing to tell me what you make of that target.”
Cal stepped up to the spotting scope and peered downrange. He focused carefully, studied the target for a while, and then looked up from the eyepiece to Erlanger. “I know about these sighter targets from the service,” Cal remarked.
Erlanger waited silently, and Cal returned to his observation. Then he spoke for the record. He called the shots in order of fire, as they lay on a standard NRA six-bull scope-zeroing target, left to right for the top row of three bull’s-eyes, and again left to right for the bottom row of three.
“Five shots. Last bull blank because he didn’t need it. First shot at 2 o’clock; an inch high and an inch and a half right of center.”
“That’s Hawkins’s typical hit, judging from the target Michael and I saw at his house,” Caroline said.
Cal lifted his eye from the scope and looked back at Erlanger for confirmation. Getting that, he returned to the eyepiece.
“A second shot at twelve o’clock, dead center but an inch high. Hawkins must have made a windage adjustment. Third, fourth, and fifth shots all dead-center bull’s-eyes. An elevation adjustment. Now he’s dead-on.”
“And you conclude . . ?”
“He’s sighted in his benchrest rifle on the bull’s-eye.”
“Correct
.”
“Let me see,” Caroline said. When she looked up from the scope, Cal took another turn at the eyepiece and groaned.
Erlanger moved the scope out to focus at a greater distance, made a careful adjustment with the eyepiece and said, “That’s not the end of it.” He rechecked his spot and waved Troyer up to the eyepiece. The scope was focused on a thin slip of yellow silk, fluttering gently in the distance. Cal peered downrange, and Erlanger added, “That’s David Hawkins’s flag posted at three hundred yards.”
Cal suffered an inner wave of numbing hopelessness, and put his hands on top of his head as if he had surrendered. Caroline looked again into the scope and realized that any lingering doubts that her husband might recently have held about David Hawkins would now transform themselves into a fatal resignation.
Caroline asked, “Is there another target out there?”
When Erlanger had repositioned the scope, they each peered downrange and saw another NRA scope adjustment target, with the same two rows of three bulls each. The first two bull’s-eyes in the top row of three had bullet holes that had fallen low, the first more so than the last. The third was nearly on, and the last three bull’s-eyes on the bottom row had six-millimeter holes, dead center on the bull’s-eyes.
Erlanger let them adjust their thoughts to that vision, and then he said, “Now let me explain something about David Hawkins. David shoots a 6 mm PPC. He uses 68-grain Berger bullets made in Phoenix. I’ve heard him say that, with Hodgdon powder, he can push them out at over 3,500 feet per second. That’s movin’ out, in anybody’s book. But the key to David’s success has been attention to detail. As you’ve seen from his little yellow flags, he notes the wind downrange. He knows the atmospheric pressure on the day of a match. His 36-power scope is so powerful that he can see the grains in the paper target, even at three-hundred yards. And on hot days, he watches the heat shimmers in the scope. He notices the patterns that heat convection produces at the target when he takes his first shot. Then he waits for the identical shimmer pattern before he takes another shot. Precision. He never fails. Coolest trigger I’ve ever known. He knows how to calm his heartbeat, because with a 36-power scope, the pulse in your trigger finger will shake the scope as it holds on the target. He slows his heartbeat when he’s about to fire a shot. And here’s the thing. If his scope is sighted in on you, you’re going to bleed. That’s all there is to it.”