The Boyfriend Read Free Page B

right.
    There was no need to adjust his aim. It was his trigger pull tugging the gun to the right. He had to concentrate on bringing the trigger all the way back without letting the sights move. Bang! Then the jangle of brass.
    As Till went through the next six rounds he knew he had solved the problem, because the pattern of holes in the ten circle in the center was dense enough to show daylight. Bang! That was the last round, so he released the empty magazine and set it and the pistol on the counter in front of him. He took off the ear protectors, then reached up and pressed the button, and the target skittered toward him on the wire and stopped. He had carved the center out pretty well, with only the one hit a half inch to the right of the bull’s-eye. Gunfights were hardly ever at twenty-five yards. They tended to be close-in and sloppy. Nonetheless, bad habits had to be strangled the day they appeared.
    Till supposed he needed some time on a combat range, walking through an unfamiliar course to keep his skills sharp. Most people didn’t identify visual cues quickly enough or open fire early enough, so it didn’t matter what they might have hit if they had fired. He would try to get around to a combat range soon. Right now he had an appointment.
    He packed the Glock, the earphones, and the spare magazines into his aluminum case; locked it; opened the door; and left the range. He put the case into his trunk and drove.
    The thing about gunfights was that they were all motion. Nobody just stood there like a dueler. A shooter’s eyes and ears were distracted by bangs, shouts, and muzzle flashes. There seemed to be no time, no place to hide, no incentive to stick his head up into all that flying metal long enough to aim and fire. The mind had to insist that he had to do it if he wanted to be the one who went home.
    Jack Till parked his car in the municipal lot behind his office and took the aluminum case with him. He didn’t want to face even the minuscule chance that somebody would pick today to pop his trunk when it was full of guns and ammunition. He walked around the block to the doorway at the front of the building between the jewelry store and the dentist’s office and climbed the stairs to the second-floor hallway. His office was the one just at the top of the stairs, and on the door was a sign, TILL INVESTIGATIONS. He put away his gun case, sat at his desk, and looked at his watch.
    He still had a few minutes to kill before the potential clients arrived for their appointment. He wished he didn’t feel nervous about this. He knew that they were the parents of a girl named Catherine Hamilton who had been murdered. That meant they probably wanted him to accomplish something the whole police force couldn’t. He needed money right now, and the only way to get it was to get a case, but he had to reserve the right to refuse.
    He heard them walking up the stairs, the woman’s high heels making a sharp sound on the wooden stairs while the husband’s leather soles went shuff, as each one slid onto the next step. He stood and opened the door. The husband was much shorter than Jack Till’s six feet three. He was in his early sixties, barrel-chested, with bristly white hair and a lined face. His wife seemed about ten years younger, with light reddish hair and white skin. They both had the look of people who had been mourning for a month or two and were beginning to sense that the pain would never decrease.
    Till said, “I’m Jack Till.” He shook Hamilton’s hand, then accepted Mrs. Hamilton’s and gave it a gentle shake, then sat down behind his desk. The Hamiltons took the two empty chairs in front of it, and told him the story he had expected to hear.
    Many times in his life Jack Till had sat across a table from a person who had lost someone to a crime. The experience was always a proof of the inability of speech to comfort anybody and the inadequacy of any attempt by human beings to institute a decent