Mr. Murder

agency?”

“What does this have to do with what happened here today?”

“Routine,” Lowbock said. “I have to fill out all the little lines on the crime report later. Just routine.”

Marty didn’t like the way the interview increasingly seemed to be turning into an interrogation, but he didn’t know what to do about it. Frustrated, he looked to Paige for the answer to Lowbock’s inquiry because she kept their financial records for the accountant.

She said, “All the paperwork from the gun shop would be stapled together and filed with all of our canceled checks for that year.”

“We bought it maybe three years ago,” Marty said.

“That stuff’s packed away in the garage attic,” Paige added.

“But you can get it for me?” Lowbock asked.

“Well . . . yes, with a little digging around,” Paige said, and she started to get up from her chair.

“Oh, don’t trouble yourself right this minute,” Lowbock said. “It’s not that urgent.” He turned to Marty again: “What about the Korth thirty-eight in the glovebox of your Taurus? Did you buy that at the same gun shop?”

Surprised, Marty said, “What were you doing in the Taurus?”

Lowbock feigned surprise at Marty’s surprise, but it seemed calculated to look false, to needle Marty by mimicking him. “In the Taurus? Investigating the case. That is what we’ve been asked to do? I mean, there aren’t any places, any subjects, you’d rather we didn’t look into? Because, of course, we’d respect your wishes in that regard.”

The detective was so subtle in his mockery and so vague in his insinuations that any strong response on Marty’s part would appear to be the reaction of a man with something to hide. Clearly, Lowbock thought he did have something to hide and was toying with him, trying to rattle him into an inadvertent admission.

Marty almost wished he did have an admission to make. As they were currently playing this game, it was enormously frustrating.

“Did you buy the thirty-eight at the same gun shop where you purchased the Smith and Wesson?” Lowbock persisted.

“Yes.” Marty sipped his Pepsi.

“Do you have the paperwork on that?”

“Yes, I’m sure we do.”

“Do you always carry that gun in your car?”

“No.”

“It was in your car today.”

Marty was aware that Paige was looking at him with some degree of surprise. He couldn’t explain about his panic attack now or tell her about the strange awareness of an onrushing Juggernaut which had preceded it, and which had driven him to take extraordinary precautions. Considering the unexpected and less-than-benign turn the questioning had taken, this was not information he wanted to share with the detective, for fear he’d sound unbalanced and would find himself involuntarily committed for psychiatric evaluation.

Marty sipped some Pepsi, not to soothe his throat but to gain a little time to think before responding to Lowbock. “I didn’t know it was there,” he said at last.

Lowbock said, “You didn’t know the gun was in your glovebox?”

“No.”

“Are you aware that it’s illegal to carry a loaded weapon in your car?”

And just what the hell were you people doing, poking around in my car?

“Like I said, I didn’t know it was there, so of course I didn’t know it was loaded, either.”

“You didn’t load it yourself?”

“Well, I probably did.”

“You mean, you don’t remember if you loaded it or how it got in the Taurus?”

“What probably happened . . . the last time I went to the shooting range, maybe I loaded it for one more round of target practice and then forgot.”

“And brought it home from the shooting range in your glovebox?”

“That’s right.”

“When was the last time you were at the shooting range?”

“I don’t know . . . three, four weeks ago.”

“Then you’ve been carrying a loaded gun around in your car for a month?”

“But I’d forgotten it was in there.”

One lie, told to avoid a misdemeanor gun-possession charge, had led to a string of lies. All were minor falsehoods, but Marty had enough grudging respect for Cyrus Lowbock’s abilities to know that he perceived them as untruthful. Because the detective already seemed unreasonably convinced that the apparent victim should be regarded instead as a suspect, he would assume that each mendacity was further proof that dark secrets were being concealed from him.

Tilting his head back slightly, staring cooly yet accusingly at Marty, using his patrician looks to intimidate but keeping his voice soft and without inflection, Lowbock said, “Mr. Stillwater, are you always so careless with guns?”

“I don’t believe I’ve been careless.”

The raised eyebrow again. “Don’t you?”

“No.”

The detective picked up his pen and made a cryptic note in his spiral-bound notebook. Then he began to doodle again. “Tell me, Mr. Stillwater, do you have a permit to carry a concealed weapon?”

“No, of course not.”

“I see.”

Marty sipped his Pepsi.

Under the table, Paige sought his hand again. He was grateful for the contact.

The new doodle was taking shape. A pair of handcuffs.

Lowbock said, “Are you a gun enthusiast, a collector?”

“No, not really.”

“But you have a lot of guns.”

“Not so many.”

Lowbock enumerated them on the fingers of one hand. “Well, the Smith and Wesson, the Korth—the Colt M16 assault rifle in the foyer closet.”

Oh, sweet Jesus.

Looking up from his hand, meeting Marty’s eyes with that cool, intense gaze, Lowbock said, “Were you aware the M16 was also loaded?”

“I’ve bought all the guns primarily for research, book research. I don’t like to write about a gun without having used it.” It was the truth, but even to Marty it sounded like flimflam.

“And you keep them loaded, tucked into drawers and closets all over the house?”

No safe answer occurred to Marty. If he said he knew the rifle was loaded, Lowbock would want to know why anyone would need to keep a military weapon in such a state of readiness in a peaceful, quiet residential neighborhood. An M16 was sure as hell not a suitable home-defense gun except, perhaps, if you lived in Beirut or Kuwait City or South Central Los Angeles. On the other hand, if he said that he hadn’t known the rifle was loaded, there would be more snide questions about his carelessness with guns and bolder insinuations that he was lying.

Besides, whatever he said might seem foolish or deceptive in the extreme if they had also found the Mossberg shotgun under the bed in the master bedroom or the Beretta that he had stashed in a kitchen cabinet.

Trying not to lose his temper, he said, “What do my guns have to do with what happened today? It seems to me we’ve gotten way off the track, Lieutenant.”

“Is that how it seems?” Lowbock asked, as if genuinely puzzled by Marty’s attitude.

“Yes, that’s how it seems,” Paige said sharply, obviously realizing she was in a better position than Marty to