Dead Soldiers by Bill Crider

said. “He told me that himself.“
    “And that’s where he made his mistake. He fell into a routine. Potential murder victims should never fall into a routine.“
    “I sort of get the feeling that Mal didn’t regard himself as a potential murder victim.“
    “Yeah. Well, a man can’t be too careful.“
    “What’s that supposed to mean?“
    “It means that Matthew Hart had a routine, too. Every morning he got up at seven o’clock, right on the dot, and as soon as he’d shaved and brushed his teeth, he went out to his driveway and brought in the newspaper. Between twenty and thirty minutes after he got up. Every single day. And that’s what he was doing wrong. He got shot in his driveway when he went for the paper.“
    “So somebody had been watching him.“
    “And somebody had been watching your pal Tomlin, too.“
    “There was a good hiding place where Mal walked the dog,“ Burns pointed out. “What about near Hart’s house?“
    “Hart lives out in the Heights,“ Napier said.
    The Heights was an older part of Pecan City, named because it was a little higher in elevation than the rest of the town. Recently a builder had started a new addition to the area, and some of the homes had nothing across the street from them except some uncleared woods.
    “Let me guess,“ Burns said. “Hart bought one of the new houses out there.“
    “That’s right. Hadn’t been in it for more than a month, but his routine had been the same ever since he quit teaching, according to his wife. After he read the paper, he’d get dressed and go to work. But this time somebody just hid out in the trees across the street and nailed him as he bent over to pick up the paper. Bullet went right into the top of his head.“
    Burns didn’t like to think about what kind of mess that might have made, but Napier told him anyway.
    “He was shot with a .22. If we find a slug at that old hospital, I’d bet it’ll be a .22 as well. A rifle of that caliber doesn’t make much noise at all, which is one of its good points if you’re shooting in a residential area. You have to be a pretty good shot to kill somebody with one, but a head shot generally works. A slug that size, it just sort of bounces around inside the skull and scrambles the brain like an egg.“
    “Thanks for sharing that,“ Burns said.
    Napier shrugged. “You wanted details. Now you have some.“
    “Right. So now I want to know how the toy soldier got there with Hart.“
    “Whoever shot him probably threw it across the street. It was lying about five feet from the body, a little scratched up from hitting the concrete.“
    “Which of course leads us to the really important question. What do the soldiers have to do with all of this?“
    Napier took another swallow of Pepsi, tilting the can back to get most of what remained. He set the can on the table, and Burns looked at him quizzically.
    “Well?“ Burns said.
    “Damned if I know,“ Napier told him.

Chapter Sixteen
     
    N apier put his Pepsi can in a recycling bin by his new refrigerator and asked if Burns wanted any more water. Burns didn’t, so Napier took his glass and set it in the sink.
    “Anyway,“ Napier said when he was seated at the table again, “the question about the soldier isn’t the only important one we need to ask.“
    “All right,“ Burns said. “I’ll bite. What’s another one?“
    “Another one is, what’s the connection between Tomlin and Hart and the soldiers. Who’d want to kill them and leave a soldier with the bodies?
    Burns resisted the strong temptation to say that among was the proper word rather than between . No need to irritate Napier unnecessarily.
    Burns had wondered about the connection, too, and he and Dean Partridge had talked about that point, but they had come to no conclusions.
    Now that a soldier had turned up near where someone had tried to shoot Mal Tomlin, it seemed clear to Burns that the soldiers hadn’t been taken because of their intrinsic value. Whoever