The Tamarack Murders by Patrick F. McManus Page B

before Judge Patterson, and you could be on your way.”
    â€œLuther Hawkins is gonna be pretty mad at you, Bo, for letting me go.”
    â€œI’ll take care of Hawkins. You take care of Petey.”
    â€œI still don’t think I should have been arrested.”
    Tully rolled his eyes. “This is the last time I bail you out, Petey, and I mean it. I don’t care how many times I’ve done it before, this is the last!”
    Tully drove up in front of Petey’s house, shoved the criminal out the door and watched the little man walk up the driveway muttering to himself.
    Tully made a U-turn in the street and drove down to Luther Hawkins’s house. He parked, walked up, and beat on the door. Hawkins answered.
    â€œLuther, I just let Petey out of jail, and I don’t want you raising a fuss about it.”
    â€œBo, this is the second time he’s stolen my chain saw!”
    â€œI don’t care. The chain saw doesn’t run anyway.”
    â€œI know. That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t report it getting stolen.”
    â€œListen to me very carefully, Luther. You perhaps remember the shop-lifting charge I made go away.”
    â€œBut that was all a mistake! I completely forgot about that package of pork chops!”
    â€œYou had it stuck down the front of your pants, Luther. Nobody forgets what’s stuck down the front of his pants. Ed Riker is still mad at me for getting you off.”
    â€œI appreciate it, Sheriff. I’d appreciate it a lot more if I’d got to keep the pork chops. My mouth still waters when I think about them.”
    Tully sighed. He hadn’t felt like eating a pork chop since arresting Luther. “I’m sorry about your pork chops, and I’m sorry about the theft of your broken chain saw, and I’ve put them ahead of several other things like a murder and a bank robbery, but now I have to get back to solving those minor crimes.”
    â€œOh, all right, Bo. As a favor to you, I’ll forget Petey stole my chain saw.”
    â€œGood. I appreciate it.”
    Back at the courthouse, Tully went up to his office and flopped into his chair. Then he got up and walked to the door. “Hey, Lurch!” he yelled across the briefing room. “Come in here for a second.”
    Lurch sauntered over and took a chair across the desk from Tully. “Yeah, boss?”
    â€œYou turn up anything of interest on our victim?
    â€œGot the bullet analyzed. It’s a seven-millimeter, all right. If you find the rifle that fired it, we can get a match.”
    â€œSeven millimeter. That’s an elk-hunting caliber. Could be a hunting accident.”
    â€œPossible, but I don’t think so,” Lurch said. “I couldn’t find a shell casing, so the shooter must have picked it up. In a hunting situation, it seems likely he would have jettisoned the empty and jacked a fresh shell into the chamber. My guess is he worried about the empty. Maybe he’s done this sort of thing before.”
    â€œMaybe he likes being tidy.”
    â€œHe also had a scope on the rifle.”
    â€œHow do you know that?”
    â€œI measured the distance between the grove of trees and the body. A hundred and twenty yards. That would be a heck of a shot with open sights, nailing a guy precisely between the shoulder blades. The guy knew something about shooting. At least a scope would have let him see clearly that his target was a man. You don’t snap off a shot at something over a hundred yards. He would have had to rest the rifle on something, maybe a tree limb. I just don’t think you would risk an off-hand shot at that distance.”
    â€œIt wasn’t a tree limb he rested the rifle on, Lurch, it was his knees. He shot from a sitting position. Dave Perkins found two little scuff marks where the shooter dug in his heels. No criticism of your good work.”
    â€œDave Perkins? Dave is as good as it