Confidentially Yours Read Free

and a railing with a gate. On the far wall was a large-scale map of the county and a glass-fronted case containing several .30-30 carbines and a couple of tear-gas guns, while most of the space on the right was taken up by a battery of filing cabinets. There were four desks with green-shaded droplights above them. Mulholland, the chief deputy, was standing at the end of one of the desks near the left side of the room, intent on several objects atop it under the hot cone of light. One was a Browning double-barreled shotgun with the breech open, while the others appeared to be a shotgun shell, an envelope, and some photographs. Just as I approached, Scanlon emerged from his private office at the left beyond the desk. He was a big man, still slender and flat-bellied in middle age, and was coatless, the collar of his shirt unbuttoned and the tie pulled open. The graying hair was rumpled and he looked tired, but the hawk-beaked face and gray eyes were expressionless.
    Without a word he handed me one of the big 8-by-10 photographs. I looked at it and felt my stomach start to come up into my throat. It had apparently been taken in the entrance to the duck blind. Roberts had fallen back into the small boat in which he’d been sitting, most of the side of his head blown away above the right eyebrow and the eye itself exploded out of the socket by some freak of hydrostatic pressure. I shuddered and put it down on the table, and when I looked up Scanlon’s eyes were on my face.
    “Did you shoot him?” he asked.
    I was still shaken, and it didn’t penetrate at first. “What?”
    “I said, did you shoot him?”
    “Are you crazy? Of course I didn’t—”
    He cut me off. “Look, Warren, better men than you have shot someone accidentally, and panicked. If you did, say so now, while you can.”
    “I’ve told you already,” I said hotly. “I didn’t even see him. And I don’t appreciate—”
    “Keep your hair on.” He took a cigar from his shirt pocket and bit the end off it. “I just asked you.”
    “I thought you said he shot himself.”
    “That was what we were supposed to think,” Mulholland put in with a supercilious smile. He was a big, flashy ex-athlete who always walked as if he were watching himself in a mirror. I’d never liked him.
    “What do you mean?” I asked.
    “He wasn’t killed with his own gun.”
    “How do you know?”
    He shrugged, and looked at Scanlon. “You want me to tell him?”
    Scanlon was lighting his cigar. He waved a hand. “Go ahead.”
    Mulholland pointed to the shotgun. “Both barrels were loaded, but only one had been fired. Here’s the empty shell.” He touched the empty with his finger, rolled it over so the printing was uppermost. “See? Number 6 shot, it says.”
    “Yes. So?”
    He moved his hand to the white envelope, tilted it, and six or eight shot pellets rolled out onto the surface of the desk. “So these are some of the shot we took out of his head, and they’re number 4’s.”

ii
    I STARED FROM ONE TO the other. “Are you sure?” I asked at last.
    “Positive,” Scanlon said bluntly. “We’ve compared them with 4’s and 6’s from new shells, and miked ’em —the ones that’re still round—and weighed ’em at the physics lab out at the high school. These shot are number 4’s. And the fired shell was loaded with 6’s.”
    “Well, wait—maybe it was a reload. I’ll admit it would be silly for him to reload his own shells when he could buy ’em wholesale.”
    Scanlon shook his head. “It was no reload. It was a new shell, right from the factory. The same as the unfired one in the gun, and the other 23 in his hunting coat, out of a new box of 25. Somebody killed him, and then fired his gun to make it look like an accident. That’s the reason you heard two shots from over there.”
    “If he did,” Mulholland said.
    I turned and looked at him. “How was that again?”
    “I said, if you did hear two shots—from that other blind.”
    “If you