WEDNESDAY, 11:35 A.M.
CURT’S CUSTOM RIFLES
Liam meandered up to Curt’s Custom Rifles, which was not even a mom-and -pop establishment but a large workshop at the back of a small ranch house. Liam had already visited five out of eight custom rifle makers in the area. He had asked the same questions, but more than that, he had tried to get a sense of the maker’s style and personality. The guns’ purpose. The aesthetics.
Curt’s was a very private establishment.
Appointment only.
Liam might not be welcomed. Sheriff Taggart was probably right—this was a colossal waste of time. Still, if their perpetrator had bought his custom-made rifle in Jackson Hole, Liam would find that out. It was good old-fashioned police work. Grunt work that nobody else wanted to do.
He knocked on the door before pushing it open to step inside.
A man in his early thirties, about Liam’s age, hovered over a rifle barrel secured in a lathe on a large worktable. “Can I help you?”
Good. He wasn’t going to get berated for showing up without an appointment.
He thrust out his hand and the guy took it. “Name’s Liam. I wanted to check out your work.”
“My name’s Chad.” After noticing the question in Liam’s eyes, he said, “Curt’s my father.”
Liam dropped his hand and glanced around the room, noted a display, and got that good deep-in-the-gut feeling he’d been looking for.
“You don’t have an appointment.”
“No. I wanted to check you out before I made one.” Liam smiled, angling to get on the guy’s good side.
Chad eyed a couple of stainless-steel barrels next to the lathe. “What would you like to see? I have rifles ready for purchase if you don’t want to wait. And”—Chad studied him—“someone who has an appointment will be here in five minutes.”
This shouldn’t take that long. “What about a rifle custom made to my specifications?”
“Let’s hear it.”
“Namely this.” Liam pulled out his copy of the photo of the hunter and his custom-made rifle and stuck it on the counter. He pushed it forward. “Is this one of yours?”
Chad adjusted his glasses. Emotion flashed in his eyes, then was gone. “Are you asking me to make this for you? Or are you asking if I made this particular rifle?”
Smart man. “Did you make this rifle?”
Frowning, the man looked at the picture. “This looks similar to what we call our extreme long-range hunter rifle. I’m talking twelve-hundred–plus yards. That’s our specialty. But I can’t be sure that we made it. Beyond seeing the registration code, I’d have to take it apart.”
“What about the scope? Would you have to special order it?”
“Yes. Or someone could add that later.”
Liam was glad to hear the guy wasn’t going to lie to him, but he wasn’t telling the whole truth either. “But chances are since you’d make the bullets too and would need to test the gun’s precision since the extreme long-range rifle is your specialty, you would need the scope to do that.”
“Are you a cop or something?” Chad arched a brow.
A loaded question. “I’m searching for the man who killed two hikers.”
Chad’s face paled. “I haven’t had a client request that scope.” Chad handed the photo back.
Liam wished he had a magnified image with him. “What about the rifle? This is your style, right? That fleur-de-lis checkering with ribbons on the stock.”
“Anyone could have done that.”
Chad was shutting down on him, but he’d learned a lot, nonetheless. None of the weapons on display had that precise design, but close enough. Yes. Definitely close enough.
“I see my next customer driving up.” Chad handed Liam a card. “Make an appointment if you want to get a rifle from me.”
Liam scribbled his number on the back of Chad’s card and handed it back. “If you remember anything that can help, call me.”
Maybe Liam was wrong to spend time canvassing these shops, but a man who was trying to kill the woman his brother cared deeply about—maybe even loved—wasn’t someone to sit around and wait on.
Liam thanked Chad and headed to the door. Through the window he could see a stocky man in his fifties approaching. Liam put his hand on the doorknob.
“There was this guy . . .” Chad said.
Liam turned to look at him.
“He was maybe late sixties. He asked a lot of questions. I thought he was going to commission a piece. I told him six, seven months tops. He said he couldn’t wait that long.”
“Meaning . . .”
“I’m not sure. After he left, I thought to myself that he would try to build his own. He knew enough that he could if he had the right tools.”
A ghost gun.
“Got a name?”
Chad crooked his mouth. “John Smith.”