“Something’s building,” he said at last. “And God help me, I trust your instincts. As you say, nothing illegal about gun stockpiling. But, Mac, these aren’t preppers. No food stash, no extra vehicles. They’re not veterans who just feel safer if they have a few weapons in convenient locations. Not gun dealers. Or drug dealers for that matter. So, what are they?”
Mac thought about that. “Does it matter?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Rodriguez admitted. “These people died because an angry man had a ready weapon at hand. But hell, if it hadn’t been a gun, it could have been the butcher knife. The 4-year-old kid died because an asshole didn’t practice good gun safety procedures. And yeah, I found something to charge him with because I was pissed. That 4-year-old should still be alive.”
Mac gestured toward the garage, and Rodriguez nodded. Mac took some photos for the newspaper. He glanced at his watch. He needed to get into the office.
“So, you have a twitch,” Mac said. “And you want to make my instincts twitch too? Thanks a lot.”
Rodriguez didn’t even smile.
“Yeah,” he said. “Where are they getting all these weapons, Mac? And why? And what’s with the photos on the wall? And yes. The dead kid scene? Photos there too, although I didn’t think much about it at the time. I wasn’t at the scene of the burglary, I just heard about the stockpile and thought, ‘that’s odd’.”
“A gun club for weapon collectors?”
“Would you consider that a collection?” Rodriguez asked. “I wouldn’t. There’s nothing special about them. There are duplicates. No, I wouldn’t call them collectors. They’re stockpiling. And I want to know exactly what they’re stockpiling weapons for?”
Mac nodded slowly. He shot his photos of the garage. Checked his time again. “Let me know if you catch the guy,” he said. “I don’t suppose you have the name of the guy who got burglarized?”
Rodriguez smiled. “At the office,” he said. “I’ll get it to you.”
Chapter 2
Mac parked in his usual spot in the parking structure at the Seattle Examiner. It was right in front of the parking attendant’s booth, and only steps from the stairs to the third-floor entrance of the Examiner’s newsroom. A bit of courtesy to the attendant kept the spot free for him and he kept an eye on his rig as well.
The 4-Runner wasn’t a high-demand target; Mac wasn’t worried about it being stolen. But he did not want anyone to go through his vehicle. He thought briefly about the weapons stashed beneath the spare tire in a locked box. Was he any different than the gun-stockpile guys Rodriguez was concerned about?
Well, for all he knew, Rodriguez was concerned about his weapon stash too. Or would be, if he knew about all of it.
Mac nodded to the attendant who smiled and waved back. And then he went up the stairs, into the building, past the breakroom and bathrooms, through the sports department — his dream job when he graduated from college, but they didn’t have an opening — and into the newsroom. News had a job when he graduated, however, covering police and courts. He took it. Temporarily. Until sports had an opening.
His friends laughed themselves silly over that.
The police officers who’d been on the force a while had been incredulous. “You’re what?” one said. “I always expected to see you here again. But I figured it would be in cuffs, and someone would be reading you your rights.”
Mac had grinned. “I would have said that was the only way anyone would ever get me in here again, too.”
But it had been three years now, and he was still a cop reporter. He hadn’t even applied for the sports reporter opening last year.
He understood cops. Didn’t like them. But what they did — and didn’t do — mattered. And his stories mattered.
His friends had shrugged, even bragged that they knew him when he broke a big story about a corrupt politician who wanted to be on the president’s cabinet. Or when he had written about the attempt to firebomb abortion clinics in Seattle.
But truly, he believed the stories he wrote day-to-day were equally important as the big splashy ones. He liked his job.
He’d like it better if it didn’t mean being in the office at 6 a.m.
Mac stopped off in the photo department. Nestled between sports and news, it used to be some desks in front of a dark room. It had been remodeled about five years ago to open up the no-longer needed darkroom and expand the area for the large monitors and high-powered towers that went along with computers used for photo editing.
He was in luck. His favorite photographer was on desk duty. Angie Wilson didn’t appear to be any happier about the early morning than he was, and she glared at him when he approached.
“Took some photos at a shooting this morning,” he said, and held out his camera. She took it. “Not sure how good they’ll be.”
She grunted, plugged in the camera, downloaded the photos and opened them up on her computer. “I’d give you the lecture about calling a real photog if you want useable photos, but none of us want you calling us at 3 a.m. to take pictures,” she said sourly. “So, I’ll make something useable out of them.” She looked closely.
“Jesus, Mac,” she said. “How many guns did the man have?”
“No sure yet,” Mac told her, leaning on the desk to watch her as she scrolled through his photos. “They were still pulling them out of every nook and cranny when I left. But I’d guess more than 100.”
She shook her head, and that made the fuchsia streak across her bangs fall forward. She brushed the hair out of her eyes impatiently.
Mac wanted to brush it out for her. He kept his hands to himself. He liked Angie. She was barely 5-feet tall, but sturdily built so that she didn’t seem small. Not
