side of the cemetery, the hillside fell away sharply toward the back of the hospital. A weed-choked track ran along the bottom of the slope, and on the other side of it were an electrical substation and a mechanical yard, probably related to the hospital, with what looked like backup generators and a couple of large tanks, possibly for diesel. The hospital parking ramp rose on the other side of that, probably two hundred and fifty or three hundred yards away.
Dunn parked on the street a block away from the cemetery, walked along the rough track between the cemetery and the electric substation, until he thought he was about at the middle of the graveyard, then climbed the embankment. The picket fence on the back side of the cemetery was more than neglected—it had crumbled and fallen in several places.
Once on top of the ridge, Dunn looked down at the school’s playing fields, which were clearly visible, but a long way out. How far? Four hundred and fifty yards? More? Even with his surveyor’s eye, he wasn’t sure.
He looked around, found a handy tombstone, and sprawled beside it. He was six feet back from the bluff, and a rifle, he thought, would set up perfectly for a shot at the school. A senile cottonwood tree stood twenty yards down to his left; he moved over to it. The trunk was big enough that he’d be invisible from the street that ran along the front of the cemetery, and the slope below was sharp enough, and the hospital far enough away, that he couldn’t be seen from below, either.
But it was an extremely long shot; with a moving target, almost impossible for a man of his limited skills. The target would have to be motionless.
He spent a few minutes walking around the cemetery, zeroed in on a crumbling wooden shed, which probably once held yard tools. The shed was sitting on patio-style concrete blocks, each three inches thick, two blocks to each stack. He knelt and looked at them, and on one side of the shed found a loose block. He used his pocketknife to pry at it, careful not to make any obvious scratches. When it was loose, he pulled it out, and peered under the shed, then stuck his arm under. There was enough space, he thought, to hide a rifle.
He put the block back in place.
* * *
—
HE LEFT THE CEMETERY in the dark and walked back to his car. At home, he loaded Google Earth, which had a fairly accurate measuring tool, called up a satellite image of the school, and measured the distance from the cemetery cottonwood to the back of the school. Four hundred and ninety-six yards.
He thought about that and a question popped into his head. Was it necessary to actually kill the kid? Or only hit him? And maybe, not even hit him, if the bullet hit close enough to frighten him. It now occurred to Dunn that the important thing was that the right people knew that the kid had been shot at.
Better if he was actually hit, because then there’d be no doubt, but a close miss might be good enough. He thought about it that night, in bed, and decided that he needed to find out exactly how bad a shot he was.
And the next day was Saturday, the job site closed down.
* * *
—
HIS WEST VIRGINIA CABIN was deep in the woods and more than rustic: it was primitive, and for that reason, had never been broken into, although somebody had peppered the outhouse with a .22.
The cabin itself was a prefabricated metal shed with four windows and one door, which was locked with a heavy padlock, and all of it set on a concrete slab. Inside was an old wooden table with two metal folding chairs, a waist-high shelf that served as a kitchen counter, and a wide wooden rack that would keep an air mattress off the floor. There were fluorescent lights hung overhead with a plug-in cord that dropped to the floor at one side of the shed.
All of that could be seen through the windows, which was why nobody had ever tried to break in: there was nothing to steal