JIM LONNAGAN EXAMINED the shotgun carefully, then the revolver, handling both with expert hands. Then the rifle, which looked a lot like the two his father had left him. All his attention was focused on what he was doing, but he became vaguely aware that the gun store’s owner, John Robbins, was speaking briskly.
“No problem with the background check, of course. But there wouldn’t be, you being a cop and all. But I thought you didn’t approve of guns in the house, Jim? I mean, I know your service weapon has to be there, but in a gun safe when you’re off duty, so any kids in the house can’t get to it.”
Calmly, Lonnagan said, “Don’t worry, these’ll be under lock and key as well. I’ve ordered a nice display case for the . . . man cave half of the basement.” He laughed a little.
Robbins laughed as well. “She let you have half, then? Well, at least you aren’t out in the garage. That’s the only man cave my wife lets me have.”
Lonnagan smiled at him. “I’ve fixed it up nice. Big couch, TV, pool table. I’ll store my golf clubs down there. And these guns. The cabinet has a good lock, I made sure of that.”
“I imagine you did.” Robbins finished ringing up the sale, adding in the boxes of ammo Lonnagan had requested—and a thick pack of paper targets that could be pinned up on hay bales or stuffed dummies, or just at the firing range in the basement of the sheriff’s department. Robbins assumed one or more of those places would suit Jim Lonnagan.
“There you go.” He handed over change and watched Lonnagan stuff it into the front pocket of his jeans carelessly before zipping the shotgun and rifle into a single carrying case and the revolver into its holster. The ammo was bagged up for him, and he picked up everything before reaching over to shake Robbins’s hand.
“Thanks, John. See you around.”
“You too, Jim.” He watched the other man leave, and it wasn’t until then that he realized he was wiping his hand down his jean-clad thigh over and over unconsciously.
He frowned, then shrugged. Everybody has cold, clammy hands sometimes. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing at all.
* * *
? ? ?
“A CONSIDERATE HUSBAND,” Katie said rather mournfully about the late Sam Bowers. “He brought that basket of dirty clothes down for her too.” The basket heaped with clothing sat on top of the dryer some feet from the couch and victim.
Archer grunted. “We’ll know more when we talk to his coworkers at the bank and check into the family’s finances, but I never heard they were having any troubles financially.”
“No, me either. Never heard there were any marital problems.”
“We’ll have to talk to friends and family,” Archer said. “Outsiders usually don’t know what goes on inside a marriage, not all of it at least, but they may have noticed something.”
“Something worth Sam killing himself over?” Katie shook her head. “I don’t see that.”
“Neither do I, but neither one of us was him. Some people handle problems easily, and some don’t. It could have gotten to be too much for him. Something could have.” The sheriff paused, adding, “But I’d expect a note. Most people who commit suicide feel the need to explain why, especially when they have family bound to be shocked and when everything looks good from the outside so there’s no obvious reason for suicide.”
“Yeah. When I went next door to talk to the neighbor who’s keeping the kids, she was completely stunned. Doing her best to keep the kids busy and distracted from what’s happened and happening over here, of course. Two of them are too young to understand or have any idea what’s happened, and the oldest is only eight, so he’s just mostly scared and worried— Where was I going with this?”
“The neighbor was stunned. It’s Hannah Seaton, right?”
“Yeah. First time I’d met her. Anyway, she was completely stunned. Said Sam Bowers would never in a million years commit suicide. Said he was devoted to Stacey, adored his kids, and never missed a chance to have family time. Both families often barbecued, she said, their kids playing together, and she’s absolutely certain there was nothing wrong with that marriage or their life. Said they were two of the happiest people she’d ever known.”
Archer looked at her, baffled. “Well, family and neighbors don’t always see, but . . . Unless we find something sticking out in their financial records or phone records, or something bad happening with his job, I’m having a hard time seeing this as a suicide myself, in spite of how it looks. Also having a hard time seeing it as anything else. I’ll hand over my pension if his wife had anything to do with it.”
Katie wasn’t as startled as she wished she could be. “I know if there’s any question about a death we have to look at the spouse, always, but . . . this looks like a suicide right enough. And if it wasn’t one, all my questions still stand, plus quite a few more. Why here in the basement with the kids upstairs? On an otherwise normal Wednesday morning? Why no note? And if it wasn’t suicide, if somebody killed him, who could have managed that here?
“I don’t believe Stacey could have done it any more than you do. For one thing, she didn’t have a drop of blood on her minutes after this happened, according to Hannah Seaton, and I’m willing to bet the doc will say if anybody but Sam Bowers pulled that trigger, they’d have had plenty of blowback all over them.” She tried not to sound as queasy as she was when she added, “You can see some of the spray on his pants and even on the floor close to the couch.”
“Yeah, I know. But if it wasn’t suicide, if it was somebody else killed him, somebody who didn’t belong in the house today, then how’d they get in? This isn’t a walkout basement and there’s no egress at all, so anybody coming into the house would have had to come from upstairs—actually through the kitchen—to get to the basement door.”
Katie nodded. “They have a decent security system, which Stacey said was always on at night, turned off only when she and Sam came downstairs in the morning. No signs any of the doors or windows have been forced. According to Stacey, she was in the kitchen from the time they came downstairs.”
It was Archer’s turn to nod slowly. “And even supposing a killer managed to get in at some point when the system was off, might have lain in wait down here for God knows how long, with God knows what motive driving him, how was he able to get Sam to just peacefully sit down and let his head get blown off with his own shotgun?”
“No signs of a struggle,” Katie offered. “I suppose he could have been hit on the head before he had any sense of a threat; the shotgun blast would have removed all signs of a blitz attack.”
Archer nodded again, but said, “Say that’s what happened. Say somebody hid down here as long as it took, knew the combination of the gun safe—which also requires the fingerprint of Sam Bowers to gain access, though if he was knocked out that wouldn’t have been more than a slightly awkward problem— Where was I going?”
It was a characteristic both the sheriff and the chief deputy shared, though Katie wasn’t at all sure whether one of them had caught it from the other.
“Say somebody did hide down here,” she prompted.
“Yeah. Say somebody did, and then managed to surprise Sam, and knocked him out without making enough noise to alert Stacey. Then he positioned Sam with his own shotgun, stage-managed it to look like suicide, and pulled the trigger himself.
“Setting aside the question of blowback, since for all we know he could have been wearing a fucking hazmat suit, how the hell did he get out? Stacey not only closed the basement door until we got here, she locked it. She was sitting at the kitchen table waiting for us, staring at the locked door. And I’ve had a deputy stationed at the door upstairs since we got here.”
“It doesn’t seem possible, much less likely. Even if Sam Bowers had done anything to make an enemy that bad, and from everything we’ve heard so far everybody liked him.”