“You remember that comedian Gallagher?”

“The guy with the watermelons?” I asked.

“Yup. Remember what the watermelons looked like when he got through with them?”

I nodded.

Jeremiah popped the latches on a jumbo acoustic guitar case and produced a .50 caliber Army M82.

“Now think headshot,” he said, as he handed me the rifle.

“All I asked for was a sniper rifle,” I said. “I don’t need to take out an elephant.”

“Elephant? Fuck, this thing’ll take out a tank.”

I have to admit, it was a thing of beauty.

“Okay,” he said, “here’s why I am handing you an M82. First, you didn’t give me a whole lot of time. You call at nine in the morning and you say you need a serious rifle by three in the afternoon, four at the latest. Even for a man with my extensive network of…suppliers, that’s aggressive. Now of course, I have no idea what you intend to do with this rifle…”

When Jeremiah says he has no idea, he’s lying.

“…so let’s just take a hypothetical situation,” he said. “Let’s say there’s a person out there who desperately needs killing. We’ll call this person ‘the asshole.’ Now, let’s assume there is another person willing and able to do this killing. We’ll call this person ‘the avenging angel’….”

“You wax poetic….”

He nodded in agreement.

“Now let’s further assume,” he continued, “that the avenging angel has scoped out the asshole’s neighborhood and has decided the best bet is to shoot the asshole from an upper floor of a nearby abandoned factory. Not unlike the old Draper factory. The avenging angel would probably plan on parking on one of the side roads nearby, going into the factory, taking the shot, then getting the hell out.”

“Can we stop calling this hypothetical shooter the ‘avenging angel’? Can’t we just call him ‘the hypothetical shooter’?”

 “Fine,” he said, “So the…the shooter…knows that the asshole’s house is a quarter of a mile north of the factory, across a corner of a lake.”

“Sounds like the shooter has thought this through,” I said.

“Hmm, perhaps,” Jeremiah said. “But there are pro’s and con’s to this plan. On the one hand, it is an easy shot, a shot that can be made with any good target rifle. On the other hand, it’s risky. Someone might spot the shooter going into the factory. Someone might notice an unfamiliar car parked on a back road. Someone might see the shooter leaving the woods or driving out of the neighborhood.”

I nodded.

“Now,” he went on, “let’s consider an alternative. Let’s just say the shooter felt comfortable with a longer shot. Say, 800 yards as opposed to 450. Then the shooter could position himself on the ridge directly across the lake to the west.  It’s still a clear shot, and this time the shooter can park his car out of sight on the service road and take his time getting out. The service road connects with a handful of back roads on that side of the lake, all lightly travelled, any one of which will take the shooter right to a main highway.”

“Of course this is all hypothetical,” I said, smiling, “but scenario two sounds like it might be the better bet.”

“That’s what I thought,” Jeremiah said, “but I wouldn’t want to take an 800 yard shot with just any rifle. For that shot, I’d prefer the gun you’re holding. And what’s even better, the rifle you’re holding doesn’t even exist anymore. It was supposedly blown up with a whole lot of other stuff in Iraq. Between that explosion and now, the gun has no history, and there is no way to trace it. Bring it back to me when you’re done with it, and it will once again cease to exist.”

Jeremiah was crazy. But good.

I returned the M82 to the guitar case and put that in the trunk of my old gray Toyota.

It was five thirty when I pulled into Ray’s driveway. I knocked, and a twelve year old girl in jeans and a Hanna Montana sweatshirt threw open the door.

“Uncle Deke, did you hear? I won my case! I won my case!”

“I heard, Tina. Congratulations!”

Tina’s mom, Lori, came to the door. There were dark circles around her blue eyes.

“Hey, Deke. Ray’s in the kitchen. He’s been sitting at the table with a big bottle of Jim Beam since this morning.”

I nodded and headed into the kitchen.

Ray and I have known each other since right after college, but I barely recognized the person sitting at the table. In the window behind him, the sun was sinking into the ridge across the lake. He looked a hundred years old and a million miles away.

“Hey,” I said.

He looked up and it took a few seconds for his eyes to focus.

“Deke? You hear the news?” he sneered. “We won. Some victory. The son of a bitch can keep living four houses away, and Tina still has to go to sleep every night afraid he’s gonna come back one day and kill her, but we fucking won. Isn’t that a goddamned joke?”

I wanted to tell him he wouldn’t have to worry about the asshole much longer, but I knew I couldn’t say anything. Anyway, he’d know soon enough.

“Hey, Ray, I’ve got a big favor to ask.”

“Sure, Deke,” he said, straightening up. “If I can.”

“One of my clients gave me a hundred dollar gift certificate to the Ninety-Nine Restaurant downtown. I just happened to find it this morning, and I realized it expires tonight. If I don’t use it, he’ll take it personally. He’s Italian. That’s the way they are. Problem is, I’ve got other plans for tonight. I need you to take Lori and Tina out to the restaurant tonight and use the certificate. Have appetizers, dinner, the whole nine yards. I’ll swing by in time for dessert. That way, when my client asks, I can say I took some friends to dinner.”

“Can’t you just tell him that anyway?”

“Not this guy. He’ll check with someone at the restaurant to see if I was really there. If not, I’m on his shit list and I lose his business. Come on, you guys deserve a free meal after all you’ve been through. It’ll do you all some good.”

Tina came running in.

“Can we, daddy? I love the Ninety-Nine. We can celebrate that I won my case.”

He smiled, but it looked like he wanted to cry.

“Sure, honey,” he said, hugging his little girl. “Mommy can drive us.”

Once I saw their car disappear around the corner, I drove out to the west side of the lake. The sun had slipped behind the tree line and it was getting dark. Everything was like Jeremiah had said. No traffic, easy to hide the car. I took the case out of the trunk and carried it into the trees and up the hill.

They call an M82 a light .50, but that’s a fucking joke. The thing weighs a ton.

I found a nice grassy place to lie down and set up. I opened the guitar case and took out the rifle. I adjusted the bipod and lay down with the stock against my right shoulder. It was hard at first to tell what I was looking at through the scope since it was getting dark, but I finally made out the swing set in Ray and Lori’s backyard. Then I counted four houses over.

The lights were still out. For three weeks, Mr. Anderson the child molester had come home exactly at 6:45 p.m. every weekday, including Friday. I checked my watch. It was only 6:43, but I panicked. What if he picked this Friday to stop off for a drink? Or to see a show? Or to go out of town?

Something rustled the leaves behind me. I rolled to my left and pulled the .45 from under my arm just in time to see a raccoon disappear into the bushes.

“You’d better run, you little son of a bitch.”

I laid the .45 beside me and settled back into position. I’d moved the rifle when I rolled over, so I had to find the house again. It was harder this time. The swing set was lost in the darkness, but I was able to make out a canoe on the house next door. When I counted off to Mr. Anderson’s house, the lights were on. I wondered if all pedophiles were so punctual.

I set the crosshairs on the kitchen window over the sink. I’d noticed the guy likes to wash his hands a lot. A regular Lady MacBeth.

Mr. Anderson entered the kitchen and went to the refrigerator. I didn’t trust myself to hit a moving target with this cannon, so I had to let him walk back out of the kitchen with a Heineken. The scope was that good, I could make out the label.

I slowed my breathing, the way the ex-Marine taught me way back in Boy Scout camp, where I spent a week shooting .22s at paper targets. The goal was to group five shots so they could be covered with a quarter. I think I did that on day three. By day four, my five shots could be covered with a dime, and by the end of the week, the counselors all watched me to be sure I was firing all my rounds. Each of my targets looked like there was just one hole in the center of the bullseye.

Mr. Anderson must have got dirty again because sure enough, there he was at the sink. He had a smug little grin on his fat, pasty face, like he was remembering something that tickled him. At first I aimed at his nose, then changed my mind at the last moment and dropped the crosshairs to just right of his sternum. I exhaled, slowly squeezed the trigger and blew his heart right out of his chest.

“What the hell was that?!” Someone shouted on my right, not more than a couple hundred feet back in the woods.

“It came from over, up on the ridge!” A different voice. Younger. Immediately, I heard feet crashing through the dry leaves, coming fast.

I hopped up and grabbed the M82 by the handle. Forget the brass. I tried to stuff the rifle in the guitar case, but it wouldn’t close, so I held it shut under my arm and tore off down the path toward the car. I could hear the voices moving toward where I’d been, but I was too focused on moving quickly and quietly to make out what they were saying.

I got to the Toyota, jammed the still open case in the back seat, and started the car. There was a little moonlight, so I drove a half a mile or so with the headlights off. When I was sure I couldn’t be seen from the hill, I turned on the lights and got the hell out of there.

I was just about to congratulate myself when I instinctively put my right hand inside my jacket.

An empty fucking holster.

I hit the brakes and sat there in the middle of the deserted road. What a goddamned idiot! A registered pistol with my fingerprints all over it. If I went back now, the odds were excellent I’d be seen and could be identified. If I didn’t go back, and whoever heard the shot found the gun, the cops would run a make on it, and they’d have me by tomorrow.

Shitty odds either way.

“Fuck it,” I said, shifting into gear and continuing down the road. I figured there was no point in worrying. There was nothing I could do right now. I might as well wait till the early hours of the morning, sneak back, and if there was no one around, try to find the gun myself. It was a lame-ass plan, but it was all I had.

I stopped once more to put the rifle in the case properly and to put the case in the trunk. I swung by the Ninety-Nine just in time to eat some kind of brownie and ice cream drowned in hot fudge. Tina and Lori were smiling, and even Ray looked sober and less miserable. Sometime tonight or tomorrow, they’d be even happier.

When I left the restaurant, I drove out to Jeremiah’s. He was sitting on his front porch, plucking a mandolin, an old kerosene lantern beside him. I got out and took the case out of the trunk.

“How’d it go?” he asked, putting down the mandolin.

“Hit a little snag,” I said. “There were a couple of people in the woods who heard the shot, but I managed to get out without them seeing me.”

“That’s good,” Jeremiah said, eyeing me suspiciously. “But if you got out of there all right, why do you look like you just ate a handful of shit?”

I shook my head.

“You got any Jack Daniels?” I asked.

“You know I always keep a stash around for my old pal,” he said, disappearing into the house and reemerging with a fifth of Tennessee’s finest sippin’ whiskey and a Flintstones jelly jar.

“In honor of George Jones,” he said when he handed me the glass.

“Amen.”

When the whiskey was down to Fred’s knees, I told Jeremiah about the gun.

“Hmm,” he said. “Sounds like you’re fucked, my friend.”

“Thanks,” I said, getting up to go. “If they finger me, they might come poking around here. Are you still okay to take care of the gun?”

Jeremiah laughed.

“It will be a boxful of parts before you’re even out of the driveway. And the barrel will be a lump of metal by morning,” he said.

I stopped at a liquor store, bought my own fifth of Jack and drove around drinking it till three in the morning. Three seemed as good a time as any. The back roads leading to the woods by the ridge were deserted, so I parked behind a clump of trees and got a flashlight from the glove box. I decided not to turn on the light till I was up the hill, so I made my way up slowly.

It was dark and quiet. No sound but the wind in the maple trees.

I got to the spot where I’d been all those hours ago and switched on the flashlight. A large man in a red and black checked flannel shirt was six feet from me, aiming the lost .45 directly at my chest.

“You looking for this?”

The guy was maybe six-three, two-fifty or two-sixty, some fat but mostly muscle. I couldn’t tell by the dim flashlight, but he looked to be late forties, early fifties. Maybe older. His hair was cut high and tight and a nasty scar ran from the center of his forehead, just missed his left eye, and finished below his earlobe.

“If I say ‘no’?”

“It won’t matter,” he said. “Why’d you do Anderson?”

What little buzz I’d managed to get from the Jack was gone now.

“I had an old score to settle,” I said.

“Did this old score have anything to do with a little girl named Tina?”

I wasn’t going to let on I knew the family if I could help it.

“Was that her name?” I asked. “Tina? A friend of mine who works at the courthouse told me about some lawsuit going on for over a year. He said even though the guy’s been abusing the girl for two years, he gets to go on living right down the street from her. I couldn’t stomach that.”

His right arm was as still as death, but his left hand came up to the side of his face and his fingers slowly traced his scar. He did it the way most people stroke their chin or tap fingernails on a tabletop. He was thinking.

“Where’d you get a .50 caliber rifle?” he asked.

“Found it lying around.”

“Who was your spotter?”

“Didn’t have one.”

He raised the eyebrow opposite the scar and looked impressed. The wind swept across the top of the ridge.

“Where’s the rifle now?”

I shook my head.

“It’s as gone as old Mr. Anderson,” I said.

“Good.”

“So what’s your angle?” I asked. At this point I had nothing to lose. “I figure there’s only three things you can do to me. You can shoot me. You can let me go. Or you can turn me in to the police.”

“I am the police,” he said. “Chief, to be exact.”

“Ah.”

“You know,” he said, “I felt so bad for that little girl all through the trial. But she has some guts, that one. She got up there in front of all those people, a bunch of grown-up strangers, and she told and re-told her story. One agonizing detail after another. She was determined to get that son of a bitch punished.”

“Yeah,” I said, spitting in the wet grass, “some punishment. He’d have to dish out a few bucks every month. But she’d have to spend the rest of her life scared, knowing he was still out there. Right down the fucking street. You call that justice?”

“No,” the chief said, “I don’t.”

He went back to running his fingers along the jagged scar. He looked down and spoke so softly I could barely hear him.

“My youngest sister got molested,” he said, “She was in the seventh grade. Her fucking English teacher. She told me and I went after him.”

“What happened?”

He shook his head.

“I wasn’t as tough as I thought. He put me in the hospital, nearly killed me. Said if I told anyone, he’d kill the two of us.”

“What did you do?”

“As soon as my father got to the hospital, I told him,” he said. “Long as I live, I’ll never forget the look in his eyes.”

The wind was blowing in cold gusts across the ridge. I realized I was shaking. The chief didn’t seem to feel it.

“My father was never the same after that. It was like it killed a part of him, finding out about it.”

“What did he do?” I asked.

The chief looked up as if I’d woken him out of a dream.

“What you did.”

He took my .45 by the barrel and handed it to me. I wasn’t sure what to do. If I took it, he could shoot me and I’d have a loaded weapon in my hand. Shit, up here, he could shot me any way if he wanted. I slowly reached out, took the .45, and returned it to the holster under my arm.

“So that’s it?” I asked.

“What do you want? A goddamned medal? A parade through the center of town?”

“That would be a bit much…”

He smiled.

“Now get the hell out of here before I change my mind.”

I slowly backed away from him till I was on the path. When I got to the car, I gunned it and got the hell out of there.