The Investigator (Letty Davenport, #1) (7)
On the way out, Walls said, “You’re not a terrible-bad shot, little lady. Come back anytime.”
“I will, Mr. Walls.”
“You can call me Carl,” Walls said.
She nodded. “And you can call me Letty.”
* * *
In the truck, Kaiser squirmed around in the driver’s seat, getting his butt settled in, then said, “I’d kill for that fuckin’ Staccato.”
“You could sell your Rolex and Range Rover and buy several,” Letty said.
“Can’t do that,” Kaiser said and grunted. “When you’re Delta, you spend a lot of time in combat zones. Good pay and no income tax. If you’re careful, when you get out, you’ve got a nice bankroll. The first things you gotta buy are a Range Rover and a Rolex. Couldn’t hold my head up with the boys if I didn’t.”
“What if you’re not careful?”
“It’s a Prius and an Apple Watch.”
“I didn’t realize that,” Letty said.
“I got a personal question, if you don’t mind,” Kaiser said. “I know why I’m good with guns. It was my job. It’s still my job, to a certain extent. I don’t love guns. They’re like hammers. Tools. But why are you a shooter? You a gun freak?”
Letty shrugged. “I grew up with guns and I needed them. Most people don’t. All these high-capacity guns flashed by the nutcakes? They’re a disaster. If I had my way, there’d be no guns but single-shot hunting rifles and single-shot shotguns. You could do all the target shooting you want with those. You could hunt to your heart’s content. Of course, you’d actually have to learn how to hunt or how to hit a target, and most of those dimwits don’t want to be bothered. They want to play with guns because they can’t get laid, is my opinion.”
“So it’s women’s fault.”
“Got me there,” Letty said.
Kaiser laughed, then said, “Still, you don’t believe in high-capacity weapons, but you . . .”
“I don’t believe in them, but that’s not where we’re at, is it? There are more guns in this country than there are people, so it doesn’t matter what I believe. I will not be the victim of some lunatic.”
“Okay.” Kaiser sat staring through the windshield, then said, “Listen. About this morning. I apologize. I was an asshole. You’re the best female shooter I’ve ever seen. But I can tell you something, Ms. Davenport: punching paper is a lot different than shooting real live people.”
As he put the Range Rover in gear, Letty said. “I know. I’ve shot three people. Killed two of them. The other one was a cop. I shot him four times, two different occasions. Little .22-short, that was the problem. No punch. He always wore this heavy canvas winter coat. Never did kill him, not for want of trying. Though my dad and another cop did. None of it bothered me much.”
Kaiser let the truck coast in a shallow circle across the parking lot. “You’re serious?”
“Yes,” she said. “If you have your doubts, it’s all on the Internet. You could look it up.”
* * *
She listened, heard her mother’s voice and a male rumbling, then the voices went up and her mother began screaming RUN, LETTY! and Letty turned and stepped across the room and picked up her rifle, which was unloaded because her mother made her swear to keep it unloaded in the house, and she fumbled in the pocket of her trapping parka for a box of shells and then heard a crash of breaking glass and a RUN, LETTY! and she broke the gun open and there was a sudden tremendous BOOM and the sounds of fighting stopped . . .
Too late.
She looked wildly around the room, flipped the old turn lock on the door, grabbed the steel-legged kitchen chair at the foot of her bed, and without thinking about it, hurled it through the bedroom window. There were two layers of glass, the regular window and the storm, but the chair was heavy and went through. Running footsteps on the stairs, like some kind of Halloween movie—and Letty threw her parka over the windowsill to protect herself from broken glass, and, still hanging onto the rifle, went out the window.
She hung on to the coat with her left hand and dropped, pulling it after her; the coat snagged on glass and maybe a nail, ripped, held her up for just a second, then everything fell. She landed awkwardly, in a clump of prairie grass, felt her ankle twist, a lancing pain, and hobbled two steps sideways, clutching the parka in the cold, and saw a silhouette at the window and she ran, and there was a noise like a close-in lightning strike and something plucked at her hair and she kept hobbling away and there was another boom and her side was on fire, and then she was around the corner of the house and into the dark.
Hurt, she thought. She touched her side and realized she was bleeding under her arm, and her ankle screamed in pain and something was wrong with her left hand. She touched the hand to her face, and found it bleeding; She’d gashed it on the window glass, she guessed, but she kept going, half-hopping, half-hobbling. Cold, she thought. She pinned the rifle between her legs and pulled the parka on. She had no hat or mittens, but she pulled the hood up and began to run as best she could, and her left hand just wasn’t working right . . .
She was only a hundred feet from the house when she realized she wasn’t alone in the yard. There was a squirt of light and then she heard movement, a crunching on the snow. He was coming after her, whoever he was, and he had a crappy, weak flashlight to help him.