they will handle a situation like this. Give it to me. I’ll hold it for seventy-two hours, then I’ll give it back to you. I’ll tell the sheriff informally what I’ve done so they don’t try to do anything formally.”
Sam knew the protocol. He knew they could put him on leave and ask him for his gun. Danni was trying to save him from all of that.
“I don’t want to miss a day looking for this guy.”
“Come on, Sam. You’ve got to bury your wife. You have to tend to your children. You need at least a couple of weeks.”
“I’m not taking that long.” He almost shouted the words. “I’m gonna get this piece of shit.”
“We’ll see. For now, give me your gun for seventy-two hours.”
Sam took his Glock out of his holster and reluctantly handed it to her.
“I’m sure this isn’t the only gun you have,” she said as she took the Glock.
Sam looked at her again. “Do you want to leave me defenseless?”
“He’s not coming after you, Sam. You’re the wrong sex. Now where’s your other gun?”
Sam reached into the top drawer of his desk and pulled out a key. “I’ve got a few,” he said and opened the door to what appeared to be a closet. Danni watched, expecting him to pull a gun out of his shoebox or something. Instead, he walked into the closet, which was free of clothing, reached down to an almost invisible latch on the right-hand side of the back wall, inserted the key, turned it, and the wall became a sliding door revealing a small room on the other side that contained a mini arsenal. Sam entered the room with Danni right behind him. There was a rifle with a scope (Danni couldn’t make out the model) mounted on the wall with several shotguns, and an AK-47. Sam had built a long thin table underneath the mounted guns. In the middle of the table were some tools, cleaning materials, two high-intensity lamps, and a chair for Sam to sit in while he was doing his work. On each side of the chair, laid out in a row, were five semiautomatic guns: two to the left, three to the right.
“I built this den with my own hands,” Sam said. “And I put this little room in for myself. Nobody knew about it but Alice, and now you.”
“What the hell are you getting ready for, World War III?” Danni asked.
“I’m a collector. It’s my hobby. Rifles, shotguns, semiautomatic weapons.”
“No revolvers?” Danni asked for no particular reason.
“I don’t like revolvers,” Sam replied.
Danni thought for a brief moment about how Sam had dismissed her argument that Thomas Felton might have been a collector of exotic knives, but she let it pass. This was not the time. She put the Glock on the left side of the table to make the distribution even.
“Is that the only key to this room?” she asked.
“It sure as hell is.”
“Why don’t you lock up and give me the key.”
To Danni’s surprise, Sam did exactly as she requested, which made her believe he had another gun hidden somewhere else.
“I’ll give this back to you in a few days, I promise.”
“I wouldn’t have given it to you if I didn’t trust you, Danni.”
Chapter Twelve
Vanessa Brock and Pedro “Pete” Diaz had their own plan to deal with the danger and peril associated with a serial killer loose in the city of Oakville. Vanessa told the plan to her parents, who were insisting that she come home to Missouri. Both she and Pete were seniors and very anxious to graduate and get on with their lives—she as a teacher and Pete to go to graduate school for his MBA.
“We’ll be fine,” Vanessa said. “Pete is going to stay at my apartment and sleep on the couch. He’s got a license to carry a gun and he knows how to use it. He goes to the firing range every week and he says he won’t let me out of his sight.”
Vanessa’s parents knew the sleeping on the couch part was a lie, but they weren’t going to call their daughter out on that one. The rest sounded mildly reassuring. Vanessa had always been headstrong and they weren’t going to talk her out of anything she wanted to do anyway. And Pete was a barrel-chested powerful young man. They had met him several times on their visits to Oakville. So they accepted her assurances.
Except for the couch part, the rest of the story was substantially true.