Rivard began fiddling with his tin of Red Man snuff again.
“Do you want me to do this, Marc?” Rhine asked.
“Tim knows me,” he said. “I’d feel like shit if I let anyone else break the news to him.”
We made our way around the outside of the low-slung building. There were five stalls set up along a roofed concrete breezeway. Each station had a bench where a shooter could sit and steady a gun. Each wooden table faced an open field with targets staggered at intervals. Four hundred yards in the distance a berm of bulldozed earth served as a backstop for the bullets.
Standing in the last stall were two hairy, potbellied guys, both of whom were wearing ripped T-shirts and jeans. They were the ones firing the AR-15s. Shells jumped crazily from their semiautomatic rifles.
A third man—dapper, clean-shaven, hair going silver—was the one shooting the pistol. It was a long-barreled .22 Walther GSP, the kind used for serious competitions. I followed the muzzle to the bull’s-eye fifty yards away. The marksman hadn’t once missed the center circles.
The fourth man sat on a folding chair with his back to us, keeping watch on the shooters. Like the others, he wore ear protectors clamped over his head. This was the range master, Tim Winters.
The dapper pistolero spotted us from his stall. He paused to stare at us through yellow-lensed shooting glasses. Then he cleared the chamber of his gun and ejected the magazine.
Winters, alerted to our presence, turned his head. He was in his fifties, wearing a too-tight polo to show off pectorals that, despite his best efforts, were beginning to sag. He studied us without expression, then raised an airhorn from beside his chair and let off a blast.
“Cease firing!” Winters shouted in the silence that followed.
“What’s going on, Marc?” Winters’s hair was dyed that reddish brown color that never fools anyone. He carried a holstered .45 on his hip. “What’s with the retinue?”
“Hey, Tim. Any chance you can shut down the range for the rest of the day?”
“They all paid for the hour.”
“It’s important we speak with you alone, Mr. Winters,” said Sheriff Rhine.
“Let me talk to the guys, make sure they’re good with this. You all can go inside. Help yourself to soft drinks.”
I didn’t know what to make of the fact that he hadn’t asked us why we’d come. It would have been my first question.
Rivard led the way into the darkened interior. The room resembled an empty restaurant, a cheap one, with plastic tables and chairs. There was a shellacked counter with a cash register and a display rack of chips and pretzels. Behind it were shelves of ammunition for sale and assorted guns to rent. The log walls were decorated with posters from the National Rifle Association and framed targets, some human-shaped (one resembled Hillary Clinton), riddled with tightly clustered bullet holes.
A question had been nagging at me, and I took the opportunity to confront Rivard about it. “Marc, how come you didn’t tell me that one of the girls Tommy stopped that night was Joe Brogan’s daughter?”
“Because I knew you and Joe had history,” he said sharply. “I knew it would just get you worked up.”
The sheriff said, “Are you suggesting, Mike, that we should be looking at Brogan as a suspect?”
“Joe’s no murderer!” Rivard said.
“What about that crazy Viking who works for him?” I said. “Billy Cronk?”
The sheriff cleared her throat with great and sudden force.
Winters had appeared in the doorway. His broad shoulders were backlit by the bright July afternoon. It was only as he stepped inside that I noticed how he lurched when he walked.
“I’m going to sit down if you don’t mind,” he said. “Goddamn back acts up when I stand too long.”
There was absolutely no physical resemblance between father and son. Tommy was the stereotypical ninety-pound weakling. Tim looked like a former power lifter whose muscles had turned to fat.
“Let’s hear it,” he said. “What did the kid do now?”
As police, we had been taught how to deliver a proper death notification: which words to use, which words not to use. Never resort to euphemisms, we’d been told. Always emphasize to the recipient that their loved one is dead, deceased, expired so there is zero confusion. People have difficulty accepting the worst.
Rivard removed his hat. “I’ve got bad news, Tim. I’m afraid Tommy is dead.”
The clock on the wall was one of those battery-powered models that loudly ticks off every second.
Winters’s voice was flat when he finally spoke. “How’d he do it? How’d he kill himself?”
I did my best to hide my shock at the cold-bloodedness of his reply.
“The medical examiner hasn’t yet determined the cause of death,” Rhine said, “so we can’t say with confidence.”
The clock ticked off another twelve seconds.
Winters fidgeted, seemingly bothered by the pain in his back. “You’re the Washington County sheriff, correct?”
“Roberta Rhine. I wish we were meeting under better circumstances.”
The range master turned his craggy face in my direction next. “And who are you?”
Rivard interjected before I could introduce myself, “This is Warden Bowditch.”
I watched for an indication that my name meant something to Tim Winters, but he didn’t so much as blink. He returned his attention to the sheriff. “So where did he do it? Where did he kill himself?”
“His truck went off the dock in Roque Harbor.”
“So he drowned, you’re saying?”
“It’s too soon to tell,” said Rhine. “Tommy’s on his way to Augusta for an autopsy.”
“Is that absolutely necessary?”
“An autopsy is legally required when the cause of death isn’t immediately apparent.”
“I suppose I have to go down there to identify him.”
“That won’t be necessary. I can show you a photograph.” She produced her cell
