The Assassin (Isaac Bell 8)

“Don’t!” chorused Bell and Walt. Neither questioned Archie’s courage, but his judgment was not seasoned to their liking. He had come late to the detective line—personally recruited by Bell, on the first case that Mr. Van Dorn had allowed him to form his own squad. As Mr. Van Dorn put it more than once, “It’s a miracle how a Protestant New York blue blood can get his Irish up as fast as Archibald Angell Abbott IV.”

“It’s O.K.,” said Archie. “He’s alone and he’s dead.”

Walt Hatfield cocked both his pistols. “Archie, if you touch that doorknob, I’ll shoot you.”

“Shoot me?”

“To prevent you from killing yourself. Stand aside and let Isaac show you how we do it in Texas.”

Isaac Bell gestured Walt to take cover, bounded onto and across the veranda, shouldered Archie aside, jammed his spine to the wall, and rammed his rifle backward to smash the door open with the butt.

The blast it triggered shook the earth.

11

A swath of buckshot wide as two men screeched through the doorway and splintered both sides of the jamb. Isaac Bell hurled himself into the bunkhouse before the assassin could reload.

Cavernous ten-gauge shotgun barrels stared him rock steady in the face. He dived sideways, hit the floor with a crash, and rolled into a crouch before he realized that the shotgun was lashed tightly to a post.

Ears ringing, Bell lowered his Winchester and looked around.

A horseshoe dangled from a rafter. It was swinging on a string that looped over several nails and down to the shotgun’s triggers. Opening the door had bumped the horseshoe off a nail. Its weight had fetched up the slack in the string and jerked the triggers, firing both barrels simultaneously.

Big Pete Straub lay on his back on the bunkhouse floor. His right foot was bare. Flies were darting in and out of a ragged three-inch hole in the top of his head. With one shoe off and one shoe on, the refinery police chief had killed himself by putting his rifle barrel in his mouth and pushing the trigger with his toe.

“So much for your assistance pattern, Isaac,” said Hatfield. “The man went out alone with a bang.”

“Almost took us with him,” said Archie.

“About that ‘almost,’ Archie?” said Hatfield, cocking an eyebrow that demanded an answer.

“Thank you, Walt. Thank you, Isaac.”

“You can thank us by remembering that criminals do the damnedest things.”

Bell was already kneeling by Straub’s gun. “Savage 99.”

Hatfield snapped a spent shell off the floor. “Another wildcat.”

The sleek, hammerless Savage felt remarkably light in Bell’s hands. He noticed an extension on the fore end of the chamber, as if a quarter-inch piece of metal had been added to it. A metal slide under the wooden end released it, revealing the underside of the barrel. A square stud projected from it. The wood had a corresponding hole. Bell fitted the wood to the barrel, held the chamber in the other hand, and twisted firmly. The barrel, which he expected to be compression-screwed into the chamber, rotated an easy quarter turn and pulled loose. He was suddenly holding two separate parts, each barely twenty inches long, short enough to conceal in a satchel, a sample case, or an innocent-looking carpetbag.

“Walt, did you ever see a breakdown Savage 99?”

“Ah don’t believe the company makes one.”

“Someone made this one with an interrupted screw.”

r /> Bell put it back together by inserting the barrel into the chamber and turning a quarter turn. A metal slide underneath fit into a corresponding slot, locking the barrel in place. Thanks to the interrupted threads—an invention that had made possible the quick-sealing cannon breech—the rifle could be broken down or reassembled in two seconds.

But the question remained why such a light weapon for a man as big as Straub?

“No telescope.”

“Holes tapped for mounting one?” asked Walt.

Bell inspected the top of the frame. “Mounting holes tapped . . . You should have seen his shot in Kansas. Archie saw it.”

“Better part of a half a mile,” said Archie.