'Not particularly,' she said.
'I do,' he said, looking past her at the glass-paneled door through which he could see the stations of the hand gun range. 'The crack, the power. You know what I mean?'
'Not really,' said Aiden. 'Now, can you show me the gun?'
He got up slowly, hitching up his black denim slacks.
'When was Louisa Cormier last here?' she asked.
'A few days ago,' he said. 'Day before the storm I think. I can check.'
He went to the door of his office, opening it to the cracking sound of gunfire. He held it open for her, then stepped out in front of her, and crossed behind the five people at the small-arms firing range.
'Cold brings them out,' Drietch said. 'They get a little stir-crazy and want to shoot something. This gets it out of their system.'
Aiden made no response. Drietch went to a door next to the check-in desk. A man, stocky, balding, reached under the desk, pushed a button, and the door opened.
'I've got a key,' said Drietch, 'but Dave's almost always here.'
The room was small, bright, with small wooden boxes on shelves from floor to ceiling and a small table with no chairs in the middle of the room.
'We've got almost four hundred handguns in here,' said Drietch, moving to one of the shelves as he pulled a ring of keys from his pocket. 'Master key opens them all.'
He pulled down a box and placed it on the table in front of Aiden. Aiden looked at the box and then at the shelves.
'Some of the boxes have padlocks. Some don't,' she said.
'No gun in the box, no lock,' he explained.
'This box has no lock,' she said, looking at the box on the table.
'Must have forgotten to put it back on,' he said. 'It's probably in the box.'
Aiden concluded that Drietch ran a very loose ship.
'Ammunition's in a safe,' Drietch said, reading her look of disapproval.
Aiden said nothing. She reached down and lifted the lid of the metal box. There was a gun inside, a Walther.22 exactly like the one Louisa had in the drawer of her desk.
'Target gun,' said Drietch.
'It can still kill,' said Aiden, inserting a pencil in the barrel and lifting the gun from the box.
It took her a few seconds to determine that the gun had been cleaned recently.
'Did Louisa Cormier clean this gun?'
'No, Dave does that,' he said.
Aiden bagged the gun and turned to Drietch.
'I'll need a receipt for that,' he said.
She took out her notebook, wrote a receipt, signed it, and handed it to him.
'Does Ms. Cormier open the box and get the gun herself?'
'No,' he said. 'Stands and waits. I've got the key. I take it out, check to be sure it isn't loaded, hand it to her. I bring the ammunition to her at the range. When she's done shooting, she gives the gun back and I lock it up.'
'She never touches the lock or the drawer?' asked Aiden.
'She doesn't have a key,' he said patiently.
Aiden nodded and checked for prints on the box. She lifted four clean ones.
Aiden put her gloves into her kit. She'd have to check the toilets, garbage cans, trash containers outside for the missing lock. It wouldn't be fun, but it would beat digging for that bullet in the elevator pit.
The search took twenty minutes, during which time she also checked and double-checked the pay parking lot next door.
When she went back inside, Drietch was standing next to an open stall on the range, a gun resting on the platform against which he was leaning. He pointed at the gun.
As she approached, he stepped back, giving her space.
Aiden fired. The targets, familiar black on white circles, were about twenty feet away. She got off five rounds and handed him the gun. Something on the floor of the range caught her eye.
Drietch looked at the target. The pattern was all inside the bull's-eye. Aiden could have done almost as well if the targets were twice the distance away.
'You're good,' he said with respect.
'Thanks,' she said. 'Have everyone stop firing and tell them to put their guns down.'
'Why the-?' he began.
'Because there's a lock out there,' she said. 'And I'm going to go bag it as evidence.'
'Everything is arranged,' said Arthur Greenberg.
Mac had called him to double-check.
'Snow, rain, anything but the terrible Wrath of God will not stop us from going ahead,' Greenberg continued. 'Is there anyone you want notified?'
'No,' Mac said.
He was waiting at the courthouse for a homicide detective named Martin Witz and an assistant DA named Ellen Carasco to come out of the chambers of Judge Meriman's office, hopefully with a warrant to search the apartment of Louisa Cormier.
'Then,' said Greenberg, 'we'll see you at ten tomorrow morning?'
'Yes,' said Mac, looking at the solid door with the name of Judge Meriman engraved impressively on polished brass.
Greenberg hung up. So did Mac as the door to Judge Meriman's chamber opened and Ellen stepped out.
'He wants to talk to you,' she said.
Carasco was deceptively lean. Mac knew that beneath her loose-fitting suit were the impressive muscles of a bodybuilder. Carasco was ranked among the top thirty female bodybuilders in the world in her division. Her face was clear, pretty, her hair dark and long. Stella had more than once suggested that Carasco would not turn him down if Mac were to ask her out to dinner. Mac had never followed up on the suggestion. He didn't plan to.
Mac followed her back into the judge's chamber where Detective Martin Witz sat heavily in a reddish-brown leather chair facing the judge behind the desk.
Meriman, nearing retirement, proud of his mane of white hair and his well-groomed signature white mustache, nodded at Mac, who nodded back.
'We've been over the evidence,' said Meriman in a practiced baritone. 'I want to go over it again with you before I make my decision.'
Mac nodded again. Meriman held out a palm indicating that Mac should sit. He sat upright in a chair identical to the one Witz was in. Carasco stood between the two seated men.
'Victim was Charles Lutnikov,' said Mac. 'Lived in the same building with Louisa Cormier. They knew each other.'
'How well?' asked the judge.
'From the evidence, reasonably well,' said Mac.
Mac told the judge about Aiden Burn's discovery of the lock that had been used on the box that held the firing range gun, the recovery of the bullet in the elevator shaft, the typewriter ribbon and what they had found on it, the report by Kindem saying that someone other than Louisa Cormier may have written most of her novels.
'Gun been tested for a match with the bullet?' Meriman asked.
'We're doing that now,' said Mac.
'Flimsy,' said Meriman, folding his hands and looking up at his three visitors.
'Search warrants have been issued with less,' said Carasco.
'Two pieces of information,' Meriman said. 'First, this is a world-famous author we are talking about, a person with resources including an attorney of high cost and great skill. Second, your evidence is largely circumstantial and without substance. Highly suggestive, I agree, but- '
