Free Touchy and Feely (Sissy Sawyer Mysteries) by Graham Masterton Page A

at the most likely location of the shooter,’ said Jim. He had a voice that came right from the back of his throat, as if somebody were half-strangling him. ‘Here—in this area in front of the old abandoned diner, right opposite the filling station.’
    ‘OK.’
    ‘The reason for that is, the damage caused to the victim’s skull indicates that the shot was probably fired from no more than one hundred fifty to two hundred feet away. There are all kinds of imponderables, like the charge used, and the weapon involved, but Howard Stanton was not killed from any great distance, like for instance he wasn’t shot by a sniper concealed way back in this wooded area here.’
    Doreen pushed open the office door, carrying an untidy armful of files and a styrofoam cup of cappuccino. ‘Did I miss anything?’
    ‘Probable location of the shooter,’ Jim repeated, without any hint of irritation. ‘The direction in which the victim fell to the ground tells us that the shot came from somewhere between the Branchville turnoff and this roadsign here. There’s no natural cover within three hundred fifty feet of the gas station—only the derelict diner, and this old International pickup parked outside of it. This might lead us to conclude that if our perpetrator shot Howard Stanton from anyplace else, apart from the diner, or the pickup, he would have had to be standing right out in the open.’
    Steve said, ‘It was getting pretty dark, wasn’t it, and it was starting to snow, so he could conceivably have stood on the side of the highway without anybody spotting him.’
    ‘True, but it would have taken some kind of nerve, don’t you think? The cashier could have looked across the road and seen him at any time, as could Mrs Stanton, if she had turned in his direction, or even Mr Stanton himself. And Route Seven was fairly busy, considering the weather, and the time of day.’
    ‘Did you check the diner?’
    Jim nodded. ‘We went over every inch of it. It was still shuttered and padlocked, and nobody had forced any of the windows or any of the doors. Nobody had gone up the front steps or stood on the verandah.’
    ‘How about the pickup?’
    ‘It wasn’t locked, but there were no indications that anybody had opened its doors in a long time . . . in fact the passenger door was rusted solid. We checked if anybody had climbed into the back of the vehicle and used the roof of the cab to steady a rifle, but there was no forensic evidence for that, either. No footprints in the back of the truck, no elbow-scuffs on the roof of the cab, no fibers, nothing. Besides, the angle of trajectory was way too low.
    ‘However—’ said Jim, and with a flourish, he opened an envelope and produced three photographs of the snowy ground in front of the diner. ‘We’re increasingly convinced that there must have been a second vehicle.’
    ‘A second vehicle?’ asked Steve.
    ‘That’s right. And all the evidence suggests that it was parked right next to the pickup at the time of the shooting.’
    ‘Go on.’
    ‘We found a rectangular area next to the pickup truck where the snow covering was considerably thinner. This indicates that a vehicle was parked there prior to the start of any substantial snowfall, although it had left before the snowfall became really heavy. Unfortunately, the later snowfall obscured any tire-tracks, as did the footprints of half-a-dozen troopers and media folk and rubbernecking passers-by.’
    ‘Any idea what kind of vehicle we’re looking for?’
    ‘Something big is my guess. It could have been a full-size sedan, but I’d put my money on a station wagon or a panel-van.’
    ‘Why do you think that?’
    ‘Because the bullet hit Howard Stanton at an upward angle of approximately eleven degrees from the horizontal, which tells us that the perpetrator fired from very low down. Not more than thirty inches off the ground, maybe even lower, if he was firing from the spot across the road where this vehicle was