Free Assassins Have Starry Eyes by Donald Hamilton Page A

table and felt a little funny. After all, I had sat in quite a few blinds and pits along the river with that automatic and the man who had owned it, in the past three years. I had sworn at the muzzle-blast of that damn compensator, and griped about the gun’s habit of tossing its fired shells into the face of whoever was standing to the right of it. I had also watched it knock three mallards out of a decoying formation—like busting pipes in a shooting gallery—and reach into the sky an incredible distance and fold up a Canada goose flying far overhead. With a rifle, I could usually hold my own against Jack Bates, and maybe do a little better at long range, since he was fundamentally a snapshooter rather than a marksman; but when it came to shotgunning, he was an artist, and I didn’t even try to compete. Well, that was a good enough epitaph for a hunting man, I reflected. I said, “It’s funny nobody heard the shot. That’s a game refuge up there and they’re kind of sensitive about having guns go off.”
    Van Horn said, “As a matter of fact, a forest service truck came along a little later. One of the men living a few miles below had heard the report while he was shaving, but he’d gone looking up the wrong canyon first. He puts the time as just about daybreak. Unfortunately, by the time he arrived and took charge, the kids had already flagged down a couple of other cars and people had walked all over the place.”
    I frowned at the gun. “Was it buckshot?” I asked.
    He hesitated. Policemen are all alike, even when you put them into gabardine suits and fancy government jobs. They never like to answer questions for fear they might accidentally give somebody a break.
    “Yes,” he said. “Why?”
    “Jack had a habit of loading up his shotgun at night—Number One buck, usually—and keeping it handy when he was camping out. We had arguments about it. I never like a loaded gun in camp.”
    “I see. Was this habit of his well known?” I shrugged. “I may have kidded him about it with other people listening. Anybody who’d camped with him overnight would know it, of course.”
    Van Horn nodded. “You talked to him last night, I understand. He was resigning his position at the Project, is that right? According to Dr. DeVry, he was upset about”—he glanced at Natalie, who was not cleared for confidential information—“about what he’d seen in Nevada. I noticed something of the sort myself; but I only saw him for a moment when he stopped by my office to leave his report. I’d like your opinion: would you say he was disturbed enough to kill himself?”
    I said, “That’s a stupid damn question, Van. If I’d thought so last night, I’d have done something about it, wouldn’t I?”
    “Not if you were too annoyed with him for quitting to consider the possibility.”
    “Thanks,” I said, “for reminding me. Actually, he seemed pretty well under control to me. He’d made his decision to quit, and that took care of the situation.”
    Van Horn touched the gun lightly. “The safety is off,” he said, “which indicates it was fired deliberately, not by accident. Everything adds up to suicide, Dr. Gregory, except for one thing. The police surgeon says that, judging by the distribution of the pellets and the lack of powder burns, Dr. Bates was shot from a distance of at least eight feet.” There was a little sound from Natalie. I may have made some similar noise myself. Van Horn went on in his deliberate and pedantic way: “Even if he had arranged an elaborate method of killing himself by remote control—and suicides will rig up some fancy devices; God only knows what goes on in their minds during the final few minutes—we can’t quite see how the gun, which would naturally recoil even further away from him, got back to be found beside his body. Furthermore, there are no fingerprints on the weapon at all, not even Dr. Bates’s. Somebody wiped it quite clean.” He cleared his throat. “Under the