Smoke & Mirrors by John Ramsey Miller

was a very neat young man,” Winter said as he took the weapon and looked it over. “Why would he put this one away without cleaning it?”
    “It’s an expensive rifle,” Brad said. “Five to eight grand. Maybe more. The optics could run four or five.”
    “But there’s nothing here that shows he was the kind of marksman who could make a thousand-yard shot. This is the only real sniper rifle he had, and there are no rifle targets here. And,” Winter said, “he wouldn’t have left the brass behind. Aside from a ballistics match, he was a reloader and a neat freak. Doesn’t fit.”
    Winter opened a side compartment in the gun case, where he found a dozen clove-scented red toothpicks. There were also four loaded rounds and leather shooting gloves.
    “So, it still might not be your Styer,” Brad insisted, his eyes widening. “Looks like the toothpicks and the gun belong to Beals. He could have intended to leave the toothpick we found behind his ear on Scotoni’s corpse.”
    “This is a setup,” Winter said firmly.
    “You think Styer set Beals up? Think he knew Beals well enough to know about this room? Came here and planted the weapon after he killed him? Happened to have had a key to the house and this room?”
    “Maybe or maybe not. I could get past the locks in a couple of minutes.”
    “You said Styer always works up close.”
    “Only with his primary targets, and I’m sure he was trained in long-range marksmanship,” Winter said as he studied the handgun targets pinned on the walls. He noticed by the holes in the corners that one of them had been unpinned and pinned numerous times, and the others hadn’t. He moved closer and pulled out the pushpins holding the top of the target, letting it fall so it was held to the wall by only the bottom pins. It revealed a metal front to a safe imbedded between the studs.
    “Check the keys,” Winter said. “There should be one that fits this.”
    One key slid into the lock and turned easily. Winter opened the door and took a deep breath.
    “Christ,” Brad said. “We need one of those bill-counting machines.”
    A dozen DVD cases sat on top of several neat stacks of currency. Each was carefully labeled with a date.
    “Looks like we need some boxes,” Winter said.

28
    AFTER LEAVING THE MAJORITY OF THE EVIDENCE they’d gathered from Jack Beals’s house in the sheriff’s vault, the two tired men picked up fast food hamburgers and went to Brad’s house to eat and get Winter settled. Winter had checked out the DVDs so he could watch them away from the prying eyes of the other deputies. Where Styer was involved, the less that people knew, the better.
    Brad lived in a two-story brick house on a tree-lined street near downtown with a muscular—and suspicious—Labrador and pit bull mix named Ruger. Brad showed Winter to a guest bedroom on the second floor. A few minutes later, the two men were sitting downstairs in Brad’s den wolfing down the hamburgers they’d brought home. Ruger sat beside Brad’s recliner, his dark eyes glued to the new guy seated in the recliner opposite his master.
    “Ruger’s a handsome dog,” Winter said. “Bet he keeps strangers out.”
    “He’s actually a she,” Brad said. “She’s just big boned. Aren’t you, baby?”
    Despite Brad’s continuing admonitions, Ruger growled at their guest from time to time. Deer heads mounted on the walls stared out through glassy eyes and stuffed ducks on plaques flew imaginary circles around the furniture. Framed family pictures included one of a younger Brad Barnett in Marine fatigues. In the snapshot, he was holding a scoped rifle in the crook of his arm.
    “I guess you’re wondering what the friction between me and Leigh is about?”
    “None of my business,” Winter said. “But she does remind me of this girl I knew in grade school. Alice Murphy went out of her way to make my life hell. Whenever she saw me, she’d either stick out her tongue, rub my hair the wrong way, or