“Was he a dealer?” Mac asked thinking about the guns he had. His aunt rolled her eyes and teased him about the number of guns he kept hidden about the house. His 4-Runner had a special hide for some of them. When he had to rescue his kidnapped boss last fall from an isolationist community, he outfitted his team without having to borrow any.
And even he didn’t have this many guns. He had better quality, though. This was almost like a hoarder. He considered that and filed it away.
Rodriguez shook his head. “Doesn’t seem to be,” he answered. “He’s an accountant. Works downtown for one of the big accounting firms. His wife was a school teacher. He just liked — likes — guns, I guess.”
“Are there more in the house?” Mac asked, as Rodriguez closed the garage door. Was the door even locked? Mac wondered.
Rodriguez nodded, and led the way from the garage to the back door. A bicycle was locked up next to it. Mac took a deep breath and exhaled. He hated it when his stories involved kids. Except for the occasional Officer Friendly story — which he also hated doing — when kids were involved in his stories, they were victims. All too frequently, they were dead victims.
Rodriguez handed him gloves and booties. He put them on, and followed him into a mud room, then into the kitchen. Again, very much like the Mac’s own home — it was an iconic craftsman bungalow style. Mac liked them.
Rodriguez nodded at the kitchen table. Someone had been in a rage. The table was turned over, chairs thrown.
“Best we can reconstruct, he was gone for the weekend. Came home late, found divorce papers on the table. He lost it, killed the kids and then her. Made her watch,” Rodriguez’s voice was a flat monotone. Mac wasn’t fooled. Rodriguez was tamping down the rage he felt that a man could do that to his wife and kids.
“A bit cold to serve papers that way,” Mac observed. “But damn. Take the papers like a man.”
“The papers were in a folder next to her purse. Looks like she came home with them Friday, set them aside, because he was gone,” Rodriguez said. “We’ll know more about that when we call her attorney.”
“So, you wait to call her attorney until business hours, but me you drag out at O-dark-30?” he groused.
Rodriguez smiled briefly. “Anything I can do for the press,” he said.
Mac followed him through the house. There was a display case of weapons in the living room. A crime scene team were going over the room. There was a pile of weapons on the coffee table. A woman was carefully tagging each and putting them in a box.
Down the hall. The photos on the walls were of men posed together, holding rifles. AR-15s. Figures, Mac thought sourly. He pulled out his camera and took some photographs of the framed photos. He turned back and took a few of the people working in the living room. Rodriguez just waited.
There was something about the photos on the wall though that nagged at him.
“Was he in to re-enactments?” Mac asked. “No, those are AR-15s. So not hunters either. Some kind of gun club?”
“Come see the rest,” Rodriguez said. Mac followed back into bedrooms. More crime scene team members. Mac reconstructed the events in his head: He comes home, grabbed his wife, beat her up, he’d guess, and then dragged her into their daughter’s room. Shot the girl. Dragged the wife into the boy’s room, shot him. Then shot the wife. And fled.
Jesus.
Rodriguez was just watching silently as the crime scene team did their job. The boy at age 6, had his own rifle in a wall rack. A nice .22. Starting him young. Not the daughter, oh no, Mac thought bitterly. Let’s not give weapons to the women. Too bad the wife hadn’t grabbed one of his own weapons and shot him. There were several in their bedroom. Handguns in the nightstand drawers.
“OK, Lieutenant,” Mac said. “Why am I here?”
Rodriguez gestured with his head toward the way they’d come. They walked silently back out the door to the back yard. Mac made a mental note to snap some photos of the arsenal in the garage.
“This is the third gun stash like this we’ve found in the last month,” Rodriguez said.
Mac frowned. “Third shooting death?”
Rodriguez shook his head. “No, one was an ‘accidental’ death.” Neither Rodriguez or Mac considered those kinds of deaths accidental. Negligent. Someone had been negligent and a kid died. Mac hoped the police charged that fucker. “A kid with daddy’s loaded gun,” Rodriguez continued. “The other was a burglary. Someone broke into a man’s stash and stole a bunch of them. He had a nice detailed list of all his weapons, with the stolen ones flagged for us. For insurance purposes, he said.”
“OK,” Mac said slowly. “Three different gun stockpiles. But that’s not illegal. You can own as many guns as you want in this state.”
“No, it’s not illegal,” Rodriguez agreed. “But there was something weird about them. This guy’s an accountant, right? No military service, no connection to law enforcement. The kid who killed himself? His father was a banker. No military, no law enforcement. Same with the guy who got burglarized. A desk jockey for the Port Authority.”
“So middle class, middle-aged, white-collar men,” Mac said, his eyes narrowed in thought. “OK, that’s a bit unusual. But what’s bugging you?”
“Bugged you too,” Rodriguez observed. “Those photos on the wall. Why did you study them?”
Mac thought about it. His instincts made him take notice, he acknowledged. He had good instincts for danger — trained by the best Uncle Sam could provide.
“I don’t know,” Mac admitted. “But alarms went off when I saw those photos on the wall. Something’s not right.”
Rodriguez nodded. He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked around the
