out on the internet. After browsing for a while, he found a simple .308 ballistics chart and was astonished to find that he should be holding a full six feet over the primary target.
He restapled the aiming marker at six feet, and fired three more rounds at five hundred yards. This time, he found two holes on the extreme right side of the target, one five inches above the other; the third, he thought, was probably farther right.
He corrected the scope to shoot farther to the left, fired three more shots, and finally placed all three on the target, but not neatly grouped. His shoulder was getting sore from the repeated recoil, and he walked to the cabin to gather his gear and return home. On the walk back, another thought struck. While it wasn’t entirely the rifle, some of it might be. And, he reminded himself, he didn’t necessarily have to kill the kid, just hit him or come close.
At the cabin, he sat in his truck and went back to his iPhone. If he were to shoot a fairly high-powered .223 round, from a good rifle made for target shooting, he might be able to tighten his groups, and the much-reduced recoil might help prevent any tendency to flinch.
He was disappointed to find that he might reduce bullet drop only by six inches to a foot. That was better, though, and he might find the rifle more congenial to shoot. He deleted the app and shut down the phone.
He did know where he could get an anonymous high-quality .223, if he had the balls to go get it.
And if the cops hadn’t been there first.
* * *
—
DUNN GOT TO THE PLAINS at seven o’clock, with the sun right on the horizon. He first cruised the Stokeses’ house without slowing down. There were no signs of a police presence—no crime scene tape, no cop cars, nothing. He continued over to Warrenton, in the growing darkness, stopped at a Safeway, bought groceries for the next few days and a box of throwaway latex gloves.
At his house, he stowed the groceries, thought hard about it, and at nine o’clock, in full darkness, he cruised the Stokes place again. Again: no sign of life. He continued on for five miles, pulled off the road for a moment, got the lug wrench out of the back of his truck and put it on the floor behind the passenger seat.
The next trip back, he turned into the drive, continued past Randy’s parked car and around to the back of the house, out of sight, but still on gravel; his heart thumping like a drum.
He put on the gloves and got out and listened—nothing but crickets. He went to the back door, listened again, tried the doorknob: locked. He pressed against the door’s glass window with the wedge-end of the lug wrench. When it broke, almost silently, he reached through and unlocked the door, taking care not to cut himself.
Inside, he was hit by the stench. He hadn’t thought about it, but the nights had grown cool, almost cold, and the heat would be on in the house, and the bodies had been there for four days, and were decomposing. He had a penlight, and he turned it on, careful not to shine it at a window.
He was in the kitchen. He couldn’t see Rachel’s body but Randy was lying halfway through the arched doorway between the kitchen and the front room. There was a closed door to his left, and he opened it and looked through.
Rachel’s bedroom. A single bed, with a quilted coverlet, more quilts on the wall. Randy, he thought, would keep his guns in his bedroom, as there wasn’t a lot of space in the small house.
He swallowed, tried not to breathe through his nose, backed out of the bedroom and followed the pencil-beam of light out of the kitchen and into the front room, high-stepping over Randy’s body, trying not to look at Rachel’s, a dark oval lump on the floor.
On the other side of her body, there was another door. He stepped over her, pulled open the door, and found a narrow staircase. A second door was off to his right,