Serve & Protect

Chapter 3-1

Chapter 3

Mac decided some things were done best in person and talking to gun shop owners was probably one of them. He made printouts of the photos from the morning and went to visit a gun shop where he bought some of his weapons.

Hank Owens was in his 60s, wiry, thin, energetic. He was mostly bald with a fringe of white hair that he kept trimmed close. The owner of Shoreline West Guns, north of Seattle, Hank had been a Green Beret back in the day. A lot of vets like Mac found him comfortable to deal with.

Mac showed him the photographs. Hank squinted at them and scowled. He turned to his desk and found a loupe; something Mac hadn’t used since his college photojournalism class. Hank looked at the photos again.

“Like a team photo, but with AR-15s?” Hank mused out loud. “Vets? They don’t look like vets.”

“The one I know isn’t,” Mac said. “How’s business been? The guy’s house I saw this morning probably had 100 guns stashed away in it.”

“It’s been good,” Hank agreed. “But not unusually so. And nothing that felt like a run on something or anything weird. But then really? Those pictures feel weird, and stockpilers can be very strange dudes. But they’re usually harmless. They just like guns.”

“A banker, an accountant and a desk jockey at the Port Authority,” Mac said, quoting Rodriguez.

“I am seeing more of that kind of clientele,” Hank said, still looking at the photos. “Which is good news for me; they have money.”

He took the loupe back to the photograph again. “Huh, thought I recognized him. That big dude in the back row? That’s the owner of Marysville Tactical Guns. He might know something. But that’s an even weirder place for a bunch of white desk dudes to be hanging out, I’d think.”

“Surprised they could even find it,” Mac agreed. He thanked Hank and bought some ammunition to encourage further good will. Besides, he always needed more ammo. He got out to the truck and added his purchase to the locked box under the spare tire. He was cautious about his weapons; he thought everyone should be. Having been set up by an old Marine friend who stole one of his weapons had only enhanced his paranoia. There were people out to get you; no sense making it easy for them.

He looked at his watch. Not even noon yet. Marysville was even further north of Seattle, but at this time of day it would probably only take him 30 minutes. Getting back home again was another matter. Rush hour in Seattle started at 3 p.m.

He shrugged. He wanted to know how a gun dealer in Marysville got to be in a “team photo” with a bunch of desk jockeys from Seattle. He liked that term of Rodriguez’s. Made him laugh.

The shop was closed for lunch when he got there. He frowned and walked the neighborhood. It was just what he’d expected. Run-down, a couple of car repair shops. A carwash. Two pawn shops that also sold guns. Marysville wasn’t quite as dangerous as it used to be, Mac had heard, but it was still poor. And he knew first hand that poor and crime went hand-in-hand. At least the kind of crime that made it into the police blotter.

Twenty minutes later the “big dude in the back row” came back to his shop and opened it up. Mac pushed up his sleeves so his Marine tats were visible on his forearms. He usually preferred to keep them covered. But here? He shrugged.

He went inside. The shop was better kept than the outside might have suggested. Mac looked around with interest. He wasn’t in the market for a new weapon right now, but you never knew.

“Help you?” the man asked.

“Mac Davis. I’m a reporter for the Seattle Examiner. Hope you might help me out.”

“Oh Lord, another liberal journalist who doesn’t know an AK-47 from an AR-15 and wants to know why I’m against gun registration,” he said.

Mac laughed. “Do I look like some bleeding-heart liberal?” he asked, genuinely amused. “I spent four years as a Marine in Afghanistan. And those were the years I carried legally.”

“Sorry,” the man said. “Craig Anderson, Army, Desert Storm. I don’t have much patience for the clueless ones.”

“I hear you,” Mac agreed. “And I have to put up with a lot more of them for longer periods of time than you do.” And that was no lie, he thought.

“OK, so how can I help you?” Anderson said. “You buying? Or what?”

This could get expensive if he bought ammo at every stop. “Looking for some information,” he said. “But I might stock up a bit on some ammo for a 9mm.”

“I can help you with the second, but information?” He shrugged. “Ask.”

Mac brought out the photograph and pointed at him in it. “So, got a strange call out this morning,” he began and told him about the murder. Craig Anderson winced at the death of the children.

“Not the gun’s fault,” he said.

“No,” Mac agreed. “He’d have grabbed the butcher knife if a gun wasn’t there. But what was weird is he must have had 100 weapons. In his garage, in his house. And he’s like some desk jockey downtown. Strange. And on his wall were several of these pictures. Like they’re some sports league team photos. A friend recognized you. So, I thought I’d come out and ask if this was some new craze among the middle-class, white-collar crowd?”

Craig Anderson snorted. “That about sums it up,” he agreed.

Anderson got a Pepsi out of the cooler behind the counter. Raised it in question.

“A Mountain Dew if you’ve got one.”

The big gun dealer pulled one out of the cooler and tossed it to Mac. He caught it. Popped the top, and took a long swallow.

“So? White-collar gun stockpilers?” Mac asked.

“Been, oh about eight months ago,” Craig Anderson said, settling against the counter comfortably. He was in no hurry. “Gotta call from a man I know who runs a range, teaches some classes, does gun safety. Good enough guy. He’d been approached by a bunch of men who wanted to learn to shoot. Well, sure he says, that’s what he does, teach people to shoot. But these guys didn’t want to learn to shoot one kind of gun, they wanted to learn to shoot them all.”

“Learn them all,” Mac said slowly. “What kind of bullshit is that?”

“Right?” He drank some of his Pepsi. “So, he says sure, let’s start with the basics. I think he started them with a .22 pistol for Christ’s sake. But they stayed with it. And they wanted to buy guns. So, he’s got to make a living, like we all do. These guys are willing to pay good money, and so he develops a checklist and certification and what have you.”

The two of them looked at each other and cracked up.

Craig Anderson took another swallow, wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “And he calls me. Every Saturday for the last year, I go out to his range and show them my weapons. They have to get certified by my friend first, and we do it all by-the-book legal. And then they move up to the next level of weapon. That’s a picture of the group who have made it to the AR-15 level. They wanted a group photo.”

He laughed again, and shook his head. “Got me what they’re up to, but it’s been a nice piece of income for the store.”

“The guy this morning probably had 100 weapons,” Mac said slowly. “Everything from an AK-47 to a busted-up shotgun. That’s beyond what you’re talking about.”

“Sure is,” Craig agreed. “I wouldn’t sell an AK-47, and my friend isn’t teaching these wannabes to shoot one either. Might have a busted-up shotgun, though.”

Mac wasn’t sure he bought the bit about not selling an AK-47, bet he would — and could — if Mac plopped enough money on the counter. But he didn’t push him. “Everyone’s got a busted-up shotgun,” Mac said, sourly. “They just don’t usually have a hundred other guns to go with it.”

A bit more chat and Craig Anderson agreed to call his friend and see if he’d talk to Mac. While he made the call, Mac wandered the store looking at the inventory. Nothing spoke to him.

Craig handed over a piece of paper with a name, address, and phone number on it. “Said he’d be happy to talk to you,” he said. “Recognized your name.”

Mac looked at the name on the paper. “Yeah,” Mac said. “We know each other.”

He bought more ammo and wondered if he could write it off on his expense account. He wondered if he even had an expense account.

Mac freely admitted he’d been a punk kid. He’d run the streets of Seattle with his cousin Toby, the son of his Aunt Lindy and her Black ex-husband, and with Shorty, a Filipino-Mexican kid, who remained his best friend. They’d been doing car thefts and running them on consignment down to the Bay area. The night they got caught, Shorty hadn’t been with them. Toby had just turned 18, got tried as an adult, and did time. Mac had been almost 17, and a judge did him a favor — gave him probation if he’d sign up and ship out after graduation. Mac did four years as a Marine in Afghanistan, and it had occurred to him that time in JD lockup would have been a shorter sentence. And safer. Probably safer anyway.

But he came back clean and sober, went to college on VA benefits, and found he had a knack for telling a story. He got a job at the Examiner, moved into the top floor of his Aunt Lindy’s home on Queen Anne, and was doing good.

Not as good as Shorty, who was a data-miner making big bucks on the weekend and teaching math in Bellevue the rest of the time. He often joked he was the only teacher who could actually afford to live inside his district.

But still, Mac was doing good enough. It hurt that his cousin wasn’t. But that had more to do with drugs than a criminal record.

So, the cop who had busted him all those years ago — 11 years ago — had been a guy named Andy Malloy. Street cop. Spotted what he thought were two black teens in a Mercedes coupe heading south on I-5 from the U-district. Pulled them over on suspicion of Driving While Black. Toby had tried to make a run for it. And then took the fall when they were caught. Mac had always been bitter, because he was pretty sure that if they’d looked white they wouldn’t have been pulled over that night. He knew it was the thing that turned him around. But that bothered him too, because he wondered if he didn’t get the break because he was the white cousin and not the black one.

“So, Andy Malloy is running a gun range these days?” he said out loud, looking at the piece of paper. “Did he retire? He couldn’t be that old.”

He looked at his watch and then did a map search: 10-20 minutes, but further out. Damn it, he didn’t want to come all the way up here for a second trip.

But he wasn’t about to walk into a gun range owned by Andy Malloy without more information. He called Rodriguez.

“Yeah.”

“You remember a cop named Andy Malloy?”

“I remember him,” Rodriguez said sourly. “Why?”

“Because he’s the guy that’s running the gun range for desk-jockey gun nuts,” Mac said.

Rodriguez was fluent in Spanish. At least the swear words. Fancy that. Mac waited until he got it out of his system.

“He’s the cop that busted me and my cousin,” Mac said neutrally. It had been a righteous bust. The Mercedes had been stolen, after all. “Why did he leave the force?”

“That I know,” Rodriguez said. “Couple years later he got booted off for excessive force. Grand jury failed to indict.”

No surprise, Mac thought. Cops had limited immunity to prosecution. Which basically meant if you were a cop and wanted to shoot someone, wear your uniform.

“When was this?” Mac asked.

Rodriguez was silent. “About six years ago? So, you were in Afghanistan? College?”

“Yeah. Or in transition,” Mac agreed. “Not that I would have cared. I wanted to be a sportswriter.”

Rodriguez grunted.

“What happened? Must have been serious if they actually booted him and made it stick.” Mac had a lot of respect for the police union. It protected their own. Rotten apples and all.

“He killed a kid,” Rodriguez said bluntly. “The kid sassed him, and Malloy shot him. He should have gone down for it, but he didn’t. Malloy said he was coming at him; thought he was hopped up on something. Kid had had his growth spurt — 12 years old and probably stood 6-feet tall. We lost a great future basketball player that day.”