The Investigator (Letty Davenport, #1) (6)

Walls picked up the edge, looked between them: “You guys ain’t close friends, huh?”

“We met an hour ago,” Kaiser said.

Letty: “It’s not looking promising.”



* * *





Walls shifted his shooters into booths one, three, and five, and put Letty and Kaiser in the ten booth. He clipped a target onto a shooting frame and cranked it fifteen yards downrange. As he did that, Letty was digging in her briefcase and Kaiser said, “Wait, wait, wait. Before you start messin’ with a gun, I want to know that you know what you’re doing.”

“I know what I’m doing,” she said. She took out a gray canvas sheath, unzipped it, and extracted a black pistol with a low optical sight.

Kaiser asked, “What the fuck is that?”

Walls said, “I believe it’s a Staccato XC. Never seen one in person. It’s not stock . . .”

Letty popped the empty magazine out of the pistol, jacked the chamber open, and turned it to show Kaiser that it was empty. “I had it custom-regripped because my hands are small. My dad suggested the checkered cherrywood, because it’s pretty. Trigger was already perfect.”

“I like a pretty gun,” Walls said. “Your dad does guns?”

“He’s a U.S. Marshal. He tracked down that cannibal guy out in Vegas. He shot the 1919 killer in Georgia.”

Walls said, “Damn.”

Kaiser said nothing, but took an ugly tan Sig from his range bag, ejected an empty magazine, took a loaded magazine from the bag, and slapped it home. To Letty, he said, “If you’re sure you know what you’re doing with your pretty gun . . .”

Letty said, “Hang on a minute.”

She put the gun on the range shelf, with a loaded magazine next to it, picked up her purse, extracted a rubber band and a wallet, took all the currency out of the wallet, wrapped the rubber band around it, and then dropped the bundle at the tips of Kaiser’s steel-toed boots.

“That’s a thousand dollars, fresh out of the ATM,” she said, standing too close to him, right in his face. “Five shots, three seconds, cold pistols. Mr. Walls scores it.”

Kaiser turned from Letty to Walls and back to Letty, and said, “I spent eight years with Delta. I’ve pumped out fifty thousand rounds.”

“A thousand dollars or shut the fuck up,” Letty said.

Kaiser again looked at Walls, who grinned and shrugged. “I wouldn’t bet her. If she said that gun was gonna jump up and spit in your ear, I believe you’d wind up with an ear full of spit.”

The big man stooped, picked up the money, and handed it back to Letty. “No bet. I can’t afford it on my salary, even if you can. Carl can score it. Five rounds, three seconds.”



* * *





Letty put on her shooting glasses and electronic earmuffs as Walls set up a timer. She kept her hand at her side until Walls asked, “Ready?” and she said, “Ready,” and then the timer beeped.

She brought the pistol up and bapbapbapbapbap, her elbows and shoulders absorbing the recoil, getting her back on target after each shot.

They pulled the target and Kaiser said, “Huh,” and Carl said, “I’d call that as two and a half inches. Could have been two and a quarter, if it hadn’t been for that little flier. Right on three seconds. Not bad for a cold pistol. Lot better’n a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.”

Kaiser: “I can beat that.”

“Then you should have bet the money,” Letty said. “Though I wouldn’t want to put any extra stress on you. Losing to a chick? Could throw some shade on the Delta rep.”

“Nice. Two minutes on the range and she’s talking trash,” Walls said with a happy grin. “I like it, I really do.” He ran out a new target and when the timer went beep! Kaiser fired his five rounds, bapbapbapbapbap. When they pulled the target in, Walls said, “This is gonna be close.”

Kaiser: “C’mon, man. I beat her. She had that flier.”

“But your group’s a tad looser,” Walls said. They laid the targets on top of each other and Walls shook his head. “I can’t call it. Wait, I can call it. It’s a tie.”

“This is bullshit,” Kaiser said. “Like, this rim right here . . .” He pressed a thumbnail into one of his shots that overlapped one of Letty’s.

Letty said, “I’ll admit it’s not bad shooting, even for four seconds.”

Walls laughed and clapped her on the back with a heavy hand, like she was a guy, making her half-smile, half-grimace, and said, “I wasn’t gonna say nothin’, though it wasn’t a whole four. Three-point-five to be exact.”

“Fuck both of you,” Kaiser said. He might have suppressed a grin.

Letty slipped a hand into her jeans pocket and pulled out a thin, compact Sig 938. “You got a carry gun on your belt. You want to go again?”

“I got a carry gun, but it’s not a toy,” Kaiser said. He reached under his shirt, which he’d worn loose. He produced a pistol smaller than either of the bigger guns they’d been shooting, but larger than Letty’s carry gun; still an ugly desert tan. “Three shots at seven yards, one and a half seconds.”

They spent an hour shooting, burning up ammo, trading pistols, Letty winning some, Kaiser some others, at seven, ten, fifteen, and twenty-five yards. Walls got his own gun, an accurized Kimber .45, but he was older and past it, and wasn’t competitive. A couple of the other shooters came over to watch, and one jumped in, but he wasn’t competitive, either.