Free New River Blues by Elizabeth Gunn

for an angle,’ Roy said, peering into the tiny birdshot holes that peppered the walls and headboard. He sang it softly, ‘Now show me an angle, an angle,’ to the tune of an old song that started ‘I’ll give you a daisy, a daisy.’
    â€˜Man, these things are just so damn small, though – oh, looky here.’ He beamed at an ugly scratch a metal pellet had made across the front of a nightstand. ‘More like it! Pass me the little square laser that figures angles.’ He held the black plastic device next to the scrape and turned it on. A red tunnel of light cut through the dim haze in the room. He fiddled till he was sure he had the beam lined up with the scrape, then read the angle. ‘Seventy-eight degrees. Beautiful. Sarah, bring that artist’s tablet over here, will you? Good, now stand about where you think the shot came from. There you go.’ A red dot appeared on the tablet. ‘Jenny, bring over the other laser, please.’
    He lined up his beams with scrapes and nicks, and measured the angles. When most of the dots lined up on the tablet Sarah was holding, they took that for the shoulder height of the shooter, and measured the distance from the dot to the floor. Roy consulted a chart and told Sarah, ‘If your shooter aims from the shoulder like most shotgun users he’s shorter than average, not over five feet eight.’
    â€˜But if he shoots from the hip he’s a giant, right?’
    â€˜Way over six feet. Which do you like?’
    â€˜Don’t know yet. Haven’t seen the husband.’
    Her phone rang and Lopez said, ‘Gentleman just drove up, says he owns this house and he wants to talk to whoever’s in charge.’
    She put the phone against her chest and asked Roy, ‘Is this weird or what? I say “husband” and he appears in the yard.’
    â€˜Awesome. Could you conjure up another lab tech? I could use some help here.’
    Sarah put the phone back on her ear and said, ‘Hold him right there, I’ll come down.’
    Holding Roger Henderson anywhere might be quite a job if he’d decided to put up a fight, she thought as she walked toward him. He was a big, solid man, looming over Lopez. Muscled up in the chest and shoulders, too, and Patricia hadn’t exaggerated about his arms and hands.
    Her watch said one-fifteen. Where the devil has he been?
    Frankie Lopez was squinting and shrugging and waving his hands, using body language to emphasize his deep regret at keeping Henderson out of his own house. Lopez had learned to compensate for his small stature by defusing tense situations with good nature and guile. Just now the tactic didn’t seem to be working very well. As Sarah walked up to them, Henderson turned toward his house and snapped, ‘Oh, bullshit!’
    She ducked under the tape and stood erect in front of him, holding up her shield. ‘Hello, Mr Henderson. I’m Detective Sarah Burke.’
    â€˜I asked to speak to the person in charge.’ His voice was hoarse. He had a wide face with a bad scrape on one cheekbone. His nose had a neat flesh-colored bandage that she hadn’t noticed before, and his eyes were bloodshot. In puzzling contrast to his commanding manner, his head looked as if it might have been in a bar fight.
    â€˜I’m the case officer, Mr Henderson. I’m very sorry for your loss.’ Her quiet courtesy pricked his bubble of outrage; he opened his mouth and closed it again.
    While the quiet lasted she looked him over. He wore neatly pressed khaki pants and a blue button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled twice. Two pens were clipped in his shirt pocket. The cell phone that hadn’t answered earlier was in a carrier on his belt, along with a measuring tape, hand-held GPS, and a beeper – his belt was almost as busy as a patrolman’s, she thought, all he lacked was a gun. Or did he? She considered patting him down but decided, Not in