Free Gray Ghost by William G. Tapply

and Calhoun hadn’t paid any conscious attention to the vehicle, but there it was, vivid and specific in his memory.
    This vehicle belonged to Paul Vecchio, the history professor from Penobscot College, the man Calhoun had taken fishing, the man who’d discovered that burned-up body on Quarantine Island.
    He held the short-barreled deer rifle like a pistol, the barrel resting on his shoulder, stepped out of the woods into his yard, and called, “Hey. Mr. Vecchio.”
    Two bad things happened.
    First, Mr. Vecchio did not answer.
    Second, Ralph did not come scampering down off the deck or in from the woods to greet him, which he normally did without being called when Calhoun came home.
    Again Calhoun called. “Mr. Vecchio. Paul. You here?”
    Then: “Ralph, where the hell are you?”
    No response from either of them.
    He crept up the stairs to his deck, moving silently on the balls of his feet, holding his rifle with both hands, ready to shoot.
    When he saw Paul Vecchio, he lowered the weapon.
    Vecchio was sitting in the same Adirondack chair where Kate, and then the Man in the Suit, had sat the previous evening.
    Except Mr. Vecchio’s eyes were half-lidded, and he had a shiny red blotch on his chest, and it was pretty obvious that he was dead.

CHAPTER FIVE
    Calhoun laid the .30-30 on the table and went over to look at Paul Vecchio. The blood that smeared the front of his pale blue shirt was dark and sticky-looking. There appeared to be three wounds, two high on the right side of his chest, the other lower, in the middle of his belly. The ones in his chest had done most of the bleeding. Calhoun couldn’t tell how big the bullet holes were under Vecchio’s shirt.
    He squatted down on the deck so that he was eye-level with Paul Vecchio. Even in death, the professor looked mild-mannered and friendly. He seemed to be looking at Calhoun out of the sides of his half-closed eyes, and one corner of his mouth was crinkled into half a grin, as if he were sharing some joke, waiting for Calhoun to laugh.
    He remembered how Vecchio had whooped and hollered and shouted how much fun he was having when they’d found the blitzing stripers and blues. He was the kind of man who hugged life against his chest, who jumped in up to his ears.
    Now he slouched there in Calhoun’s Adirondack chair, still as a stone. Those twinkling eyes were cloudy. His grin was frozen on his face.
    Son of a bitch.
    Calhoun blew out a breath and pushed himself to his feet. If he couldn’t save Paul Vecchio’s life, maybe he could avenge it.
    And if something had happened to his dog …
    He went to the deck railing and yelled for Ralph.
    He waited. Yelled again.
    Where was that dog?
    Without thinking about what he was doing, Calhoun surveyed the crime scene. He looked around the deck for spent cartridge casings or anything else that might be evidence. All he found that hadn’t been there when he’d left in the morning was a purple plastic sunscreen bottle lying beside the chair Vecchio was sitting in. It looked like it might have fallen out of his hand when he was shot. Calhoun remembered that Mr. Vecchio was pretty sold on the importance of sunscreen.
    He knew better than to touch anything, even a fallen bottle of sunscreen. He continued looking around the deck for spent cartridges and found nothing, which meant that either the shooter had picked up his empties or he’d been using a revolver.
    He climbed down off the deck and looked under it in case one of the cartridge cases had fallen through the cracks between the floorboards. None had. Then he scanned the parking area. He didn’t have much hope of finding tire tracks or footprints. There hadn’t been any rain for a week, and the ground was hard and dry, and anyway, there had been quite a bit of traffic at Calhoun’s house lately. The sheriff, Kate, the Man in the Suit, Calhoun himself with his truck and trailered boat, and now Mr. Vecchio.
    Still, Calhoun looked carefully, mentally dividing the area