Marcie's Murder (23 page)

Two doors down was an army surplus store. He went inside
and bought a
pair of black oxford lace-up
shoe
s and a
black canvas messenger bag. After paying for
them
he took a moment at the counter to transfer his clothing purchases into the messenger bag
and secured the flap
.
Then he put on his new shoes and stuffed Grimes’s
decrepit
Reeboks
into the
plastic bag
from May Ellen’s
and
asked
the man behind the counte
r to throw
it
in
to
his waste basket.

“Everybody needs a Jack Sack,” said the man, a tall, thin fifty-something with short
gray
hair and a trimmed white mustache.

“Pardon me?” Hank asked,
slinging the bag over his shoulder and shifting it around so that it rested against the small of his back
.

“A Jack Sack,” the man repeated, nodding at the messenger bag.

“A Jack Sack.”

“Yeah, you know. Like Jack Bauer
used to
carr
y
.”

Hank laughed. “Oh yeah, right.” He could immediately picture the popular character, a counter-terrorism
operative
from
the former television
series
24
who
often
carried his PDA, gun, explosives
,
and other tools of the trade in a messenger
bag
similar to the one Hank had just bought
.
Welcome to the global village,
he
thought
, where television provides us with universal
ly
-
understood
referents
no matter where we are
.

Hank wandered down the counter
to look at
a glass display case contain
ing
an assortment of firearms. He was not comfortable without his
handgun
,
which was still sitting in Tazewell
despite his best efforts
,
and
he
wished he could buy something now to
carry until he got it back
. He saw a well-worn SIG Sauer P
-
22
5
and thought of Karen, who
preferred SIGs and
favored the
226
.
He asked to look at it. The man
took it out of the case and
handed it over
. A
lthough it had quite a few miles on it, it
appeared to be
in good shape.
The man handed him an empty magazine. Hank inserted it and dropped it out again. He set the magazine
a
side on the counter and
checked the chamber
. He
pulled the slide back and locked it in place with the slide stop. He rotated the disassembly lever down, released the slide lock
,
and removed the slide.

“You know your firearms,” the man said,
watching him
.
“You like cop guns?”

“I
a
m a
cop,” Hank said. “Out of state
.”

“Oh.”

Hank
set down the gun and the slide assembly and
held out his hand. “Hank Donaghue.
From
Glendale, Maryland.”

The man shook his hand. “Jefferson
Milroy
Davis.”

“
Jeff Davis.
Like the President of the CSA
.
”

“I’m a descendant,” Davis said
proudly
.

“Is that a fact?”

“Yep.”
He watched Hank
pick up
the recoil spring. “It’s braided, see?” He pointed at the spring. “Nice piece of engineering. Works well, lasts longer, makes the gun shorter
,
and it’s less expensive to manufacture than a gas system.”

Hank nodded. The spring looked fine.

“Don’t forget, we’ve got the instant check system here in Virginia,” Davis said. “One call and I can have you approved in the time it’ll take you to pick out your ammo.”

“I’m not going to buy right now,” Hank said, “although it’s tempting. What are you asking for this?” He began to reassemble the gun.

“
Four
-twenty,” Davis said. “Because it’s you, I’ll throw in the extra magazine I’ve got for it
, the SIG carrying case
,
and a box of ammo.”
He showed Hank a box of fifty Federal 9 mm jacketed hollow point rounds.

“How long have you had
it
?”

“I
took
it
in
last summer.”

“Sell many handguns?”

Davis shrugged. “So
-
so. I do better with the long guns.” He glanced at another display case on the wall toward the back of the store
that held an assortment of rifles and shotguns
. “I have a few handgun collectors that come in from time to time, but they
all
pretty much have
a SIG
in their collection already or
else
they
just
aren’t
interested.”

“What about local law enforcement?
Any of those guys ever come in to buy from you
?”

Davis
guffawed
. “No
,
never
.”

“Oh?”

“
They’re not exactly a gun-savvy lot.
Oh, o
nce or twice one of them’ll come in and try to hassle me for selling stolen property or some such shit, but I don’t stand for it.
I don’t sell junk
, a
nd I don’t buy from just anyone
.
I’m picky
with
what I take in. I want to know about the provenance of each piece before I’ll
buy
it.
I
’ve told them
before;
they can
run every
firearm
in the store if they want to.
I’ve got a proving barrel in back. They can test fire rounds from every one of these guns if they want and run them through
their system
till their
fingers
bleed before they’ll find a problem with any of my stock.
”

“What about Chief Askew
, ever deal with him?”

“No.”

“Too bad about his wife.”

Davis nodded. “The whole town’s talking about it.”

“What are they saying?”

“I’m not a gossip.”

The hell you aren’
t
, Hank thought.

“All I know is,
if I killed Billy Askew’s wife I’d be in
California
by now. I wouldn’t stick around waiting for that guy to find me.”

Hank raised an eyebrow.
“Volatile, is he?”

“Known to be. Never had much dealing with him, myself. Tough
guy
, though.”

Davis put the SIG back in
to
the display case.

“I’ve heard that Burkes Garden is a nice spot,” Hank said.

Davis nodded. “It is. Going to be around next Saturday for the festival? Good music and good food. It’s pretty much the only Saturday in the year that I’m closed all day.”

“I don’t know if I’ll be here that long. I understand there’s some kind of monastery up there.”

“Yeah, bunch of monks have a farm and a free clinic.”

“Ever deal with any of them?”

“Oh, yeah. Seem to be a decent bunch, not the sort of wackos you read about in the newspaper. I buy
vegetables
from them sometimes, so I know a few of them by sight. Now and again they come in here and buy some stuff from me.
Pretty much regular guys, other than the
super politeness and
the clean language.”

“What about the abbot there? Know him?”

Davis shook his head. “Never met him.”

Hank left the store still thinking about the SIG. Either he got his damned Glock
returned to him
right away
or he was going to
go back and buy that SIG
.

The next block up he
found a small electronics store called Jim’s Wireless.
According to the signs in their dust-streaked window
,
they were service providers for satellite dishes and wireless internet connectivity. They also sold electronic devices. Hank went inside and bought himself a prepaid cell phone, since his own cell was currently in Tazewell along with his damned Glock and his clothing, books, bourbon
,
and everything else he’d
had with him when he
arrived in
Harmony
.
By sheer chance
,
a
nother phone just like it had been returned that day because it wasn’t working properly
. Since
the battery
in that phone
had a full charge
,
Hank
convinced
the clerk to swap
it
into the phone he was buying.

Back on the sidewalk he
called Karen and gave her the number.

“How’s it going?” he asked her.

“We just talked to her doctor,” Karen said. “Got the records and there’s nothing for the past year. Zilch. She was taking her injuries somewhere else. Maybe the free clinic, I don’t know.”

“What’s your opinion of the SIG 225?”

“It’s good. How much?”

Hank smiled. Karen had
an
outstanding
sense of value
when it came to firearms. “
Four
-twenty with a second mag
azine
, carrying case
,
and a box of ammo.”

“Highway robbery. Is it in decent shape?”

“I wouldn’t bother mentioning it if it w
ere
n’t.”

“Right.
What ammo’s he offering?”

“Federal 9
mm
115
-
grain JHPs, box of fifty.”

“Okay.
Want me to take a look at it with you?”

“
Maybe tomorrow if I don’t get my Glock back.”

“No problem, Lou.”

He
put away
the phone and continued down the street. He
paused in front of a vacant storefront
, which
was apparently where Marcie Askew had
run
her art gallery. It was a single
-
story brick structure painted red and brown. Newspaper
was taped to the
inside of the
windows. Next door was a two-story brick building painted light brown and dark brown. There was no space between the buildings. There was no space between any of the buildings on this block, as a matter of fact. They were all jammed together like odd
-
sized cardbo
ard boxes crammed onto a shelf.

The building next door
belonged to Betty Gibson, a friend of Marcie Askew. Hank opened the front door and walked inside.

A bell jingled above the door. He closed the door behind him and looked around. It was a gift shop that
sold
hand-knitted sweaters, leather accessories
,
and a lot of stuff with feathers and tufts of fur. Hank wasn’t an expert in gift shops. He avoided them. They were foreign territory. He looked at a rack of books that were apparently self-published by local authors, but didn’t see the cook book from the restaurant.
He saw a display of greeting cards in cellophane, hand-painted rocks that resemble
d
turtles, frogs
,
and other small creatures, stuffed animals from the American Kennel Club that
were sold
as toys for dogs, and a
very
attractive display of local jewelry. Hank gravitated toward this last rack, looking for something for Meredith
.

Peripherally he was aware
of
two
women
sitting on chairs behind the counter along the wall, beyond the jewelry rack. He figured that the rack was located so that they could keep an eye on the merchandise to discourage shoplifters
.
He looked at brooches and earrings mounted on
pieces of
cardboard, slowly turning the rack.