Coming Home to Roost: Chapter 15

I con­tin­ued to watch Celik for about thir­ty min­utes.  I want­ed to try to see what his move­ments might be on the spur of the moment, but I also did­n’t want to wait too long in case he was one of those ear­ly-to-bed types who would retire and turn out all the lights, forc­ing me into anoth­er night of lying here in the damp­ness.  It was already near­ing eleven o’clock, and I did­n’t know how long the porno would keep his attention.

I worked myself into a com­fort­able fir­ing posi­tion, with the rifle sling snug­ly hug­ging my arm, and gazed through the scope, which was show­ing a read­ing of 215 meters.  I knew that the infrared rang­ing sys­tem was read­ing the dis­tance to the glass win­dow at the back of the house, so I had to com­pen­sate the range man­u­al­ly by the extra fif­teen feet or so to Celik.  At this dis­tance, even a dis­crep­an­cy of those few feet would­n’t make a sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence in the tra­jec­to­ry of the bul­let.  My hope was that the glass would not undu­ly deflect it.

I lay there for a cou­ple of min­utes, tim­ing my breath­ing and, final­ly, took in a deep breath and held it while my fin­ger tight­ened on the trigger.

The report of the rifle seemed deaf­en­ing, but I knew that the atmos­pher­ic con­di­tions, espe­cial­ly the light rain, would serve to muf­fle the sound somewhat.

The bul­let reached its tar­get too quick­ly for me to actu­al­ly watch it through the rifle’s scope, but glanc­ing through the spot­ting scope, I could see a jagged hole and spi­der-web­bing in the glass where the bul­let had passed through the win­dow.  Looking far­ther into the room, I could­n’t see any sign of Celik, but there was a small hole in the back of the high-backed chair he had been sit­ting in. Beyond that, I could see blood splat­ter on the wall and TV, indi­cat­ing that the bul­let had found its intend­ed mark at the back of his head.  I had no desire to see what the front of his head looked like.  I was fair­ly sure that the face would be unrec­og­niz­able as the bul­let exit­ed his head.

But, since I could not actu­al­ly see his body from my posi­tion, it was going to be nec­es­sary for me to go to the house and make sure of my work.

I slow­ly and care­ful­ly placed every­thing in the gun bag, using the night vision gog­gles to help make sure that I was­n’t leav­ing any­thing behind.  Since the first shot had found its mark, I had not cham­bered anoth­er round, so there was no emp­ty car­tridge lying on the ground.

I might have left some impres­sions on the ground from my foot­steps or where I was lying, but if they were found, they would reveal noth­ing more than that some­one had been there.  I would soon be call­ing on some help that would erase all of tonight’s activ­i­ties, so there was slim chance of any­one com­ing to this side of the riv­er look­ing for signs of a sniper.

Once again, I man­aged to cov­er the ground back to where I had left the car with­out encoun­ter­ing anyone.

Until I was putting the gun bag in the trunk of the car!

“Hi, pal.  Whatcha doin’?” was the ques­tion that caught me unawares as I twist­ed about and near­ly placed a back­hand against the face of the obvi­ous­ly drunk fel­low behind me who was hold­ing a Dixie cup in his hand — a cup which most like­ly con­tained the liq­uid that was slur­ring his speech and ren­der­ing his brain inca­pable of know­ing what was going on around him. The ambi­ent light from some of the near­by lamp posts pro­vid­ed enough illu­mi­na­tion to show the fel­low hav­ing a dif­fi­cult time main­tain­ing his foot­ing as he swayed gen­tly as if an alter­nat­ing breeze were buf­fet­ing him.  He seemed to be total­ly unaware of the con­tin­u­ing driz­zle that had soaked me and was doing the same to him now.

“My wife and I had a lit­tle fight,” I lied, “and I’m going into town to find a motel to sleep in for the night.”

“Thas too bad,” he lisped.  “Wives can be like that sometimes.”

“Don’t I know it.  Look, you bet­ter get back to your camper.  I bet your wife is look­ing for you right now.”

“Nah.”  The words were fol­lowed by drool which ran down onto his chin.  “She don’t care.  She’s drunk­er than me.”  He end­ed the sen­tence with a drunk­en laugh.

“Well, I bet­ter go,” I offered.  “I need to get some shut-eye.  Can I help you back to your camper?”

“Nope.  I got it.  Just got­ta stop over there and take a piss,” as he stum­bled away.

I was pret­ty sure that he was too far gone to remem­ber either me or the car tomor­row morn­ing as I drove away from the park­ing lot and head­ed over to the house where Celik had been staying.

Though it was pret­ty late and the rain was con­tin­u­ing, I parked the Lexus as far as pos­si­ble from the house­’s yard light, not want­i­ng to illu­mi­nate it any more than nec­es­sary to any pass­ing car.  I walked around the side of the house to the back side and across until I reached the win­dow that had received the bul­let.  From just out­side that win­dow, I could still not see any sign of Celik, just the chair he had been sit­ting in, so I moved side­ways until I could see his body slumped slight­ly for­ward in the chair. The bot­tle of beer and the pret­zels were lying on the floor where he had dropped them.  The beer bot­tle was on its side, already devoid of its con­tents, only a small por­tion of which had drib­bled onto the floor.  He must have drunk most of it by the time the bul­let hit.  The movie was no longer play­ing, the TV screen now filled with just elec­tron­ic snow.

I need­ed some way to get into the house and turn off the TV just so it would­n’t draw any atten­tion from any­one pass­ing on the riv­er.  The back of the house had sev­er­al slid­ing glass doors in addi­tion to sev­er­al large win­dows.  I tried each of them and dis­cov­ered one set of doors that was not only unlocked but slight­ly open.  I knew I might leave some wet foot­prints inside, but a cou­ple of things need­ed to be done to reduce the chance of dis­cov­ery of the scene.  I also want­ed to retrieve the rifle that had been stolen from me, as I was sure that Celik had tak­en it.  I would­n’t want a rifle that could be traced back to me lying around for some­one to find.  Searching through sev­er­al rooms, I final­ly found it.  It was not even hid­den away, just propped up in the cor­ner of one of the bed­rooms, so I gath­ered it up and pre­pared to leave.

Taking one more glance at Celik’s body slumped in the chair, I could only muster one thought:  “Well, Alev, looks like the ‘flame’ has gone out.”

Using a pen­cil lying on a table beside Celik’s chair, I pressed the OFF but­ton on the TV remote and watched the screen go dark.  I did­n’t want the inte­ri­or lit up for the rest of the night even though it was unlike­ly that there would be any­one trav­el­ing on the riv­er dur­ing dark­ness and in the rain so I turned off all the inte­ri­or lights, exit­ed through the door I had entered and pulled it closed, mak­ing sure it was­n’t locked.

Celik was def­i­nite­ly dead.  Now for a call to L.T.