Chapter 7

Next on Connor’s list was the Universal Church of Spiritual Resurrection, located on Wappoo Road a few blocks off Old Savannah Highway. As with most establishments in the area, it had been reborn from various previous lives as a laundromat, wholesale furniture outlet, exotic pet store, and hibachi bar and grill.

Then the good reverend Ed Wheeler had found it, or it had found him, and it became home to a congregation composed of delinquents, outcasts, and felons. In other words, the usual spectrum of Saturday night sinners who sought Sunday morning repentance.

Connor had been here before, a lean-to annex behind a storefront sanctuary. Mostly cinder blocks and dry rot trim that seemed to provide a steady diet to termites and other insects, fogged glass windows covered with bars designed to keep the bad guys out, rather than in. The born-again pastor and ecclesiastic had welcomed Connor into his temple with impassioned grace and abiding acceptance, but had proved to be of little help in locating Willis Ronson. Yes, the guy had attended meetings. No, his interest had not seemed genuine, and admittedly he only was there because the court said he had to be. No, Wheeler didn’t think the group meetings had done him a bit of good, and he wasn’t surprised to learn that he’d been arrested again. Jesus loves everyone, but He can only help those who choose to help themselves.

After leaving the Strickland residence up in North Charleston, Connor had called ahead to verify that Wheeler was in the house. He was, and when Connor pulled his car into a space beside an overflowing dumpster in the alley out back, he found the minister sitting on a picnic table, whittling a piece of wood with a pocketknife. Connor slid out from behind the wheel and closed the door, wondered if the blade was a subtle threat, or just an idle pastime the guy had picked up at Broadview, shaving toothbrushes into prison shanks. Either way, he chose to ignore it as he approached the redeemed felon for whom God had provided unyielding faith and a resounding conviction far different from that which any jury had handed down in a court of law.

Wheeler kept cutting as Connor approached, eventually setting the knife down so he could use his hand to shield his eyes from the sun. He slid off the table, clenched his fingers for a pious fist-bump, and said, “Peace be with you, brother Jack.”

“Back at you,” Connor replied. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in an actual church, and this one didn’t count since it was just the rear gravel lot of a building that bordered the rear gravel lot of another building. Lily’s funeral; that was it. So many years ago that his memory of the event had all but faded, except for a five-year-old life cut short because of a lottery ticket and a quart of ice cream.

The storefront pastor made room for Connor to sit beside him on the table, leaving a good twelve inches between them as an unspoken boundary. “I don’t know what more I can tell you than the last time you were here,” he said. “Nothing has changed.”

“Except Ronson is dead,” Connor replied.

Wheeler nodded at the grim reminder, tilting his head up at the sky as he closed his eyes. Communing with the Lord, or just paying a silent tribute to a member of his flock? “Like I told you before, Mr. Willis was very much a private person. Didn’t let go of himself too easily.”

One of the things Connor had not yet grown accustomed to in the South was how people were raised to attach a common prefix—usually Mr. or Miss—to a person’s given name. Mostly it was a sign of respect, but often deference, in the case of class or employment. Mr. Jack, Mr. Jordan, Mr. Willis. Or in the case of Wheeler, he supposed, Mr. Ed.

“He never spoke in your meetings?” he asked.

“Only when spoken to, if I tried to drag him into the conversation. Most of the time he would just sit there, hands in his lap, staring at the floor. Fact is, if it weren’t for the parole board, he wouldn’t have been there at all.”

“Did you ever see him talking to anyone outside of your group sessions?” Connor asked. “Before or afterwards?”

“You asked me that before.” Wheeler picked up his knife and the chunk of wood and started carving again. “Like I said, he was pretty much a loner.”

“Did he usually drive himself, or did someone drop him off and pick him up?”

“Mostly came and went by himself, but a few times a woman gave him a ride.”

Connor figured that would have been Donna Ronson, who previously told him she made it her mission to ensure that Willis stuck to the provisions of his parole. No guns, no public drinking establishments, no backsliding. And mandatory attendance at the post-prison reform meetings twice a week. Religiously.

“Did you ever talk to him in private, when no one else was around?” he asked.

“At the very beginning, when he needed my approval to enroll in the program,” Wheeler said. “He made a point of letting me know that he didn’t want to be a part of it, and wouldn’t give it a second thought if he wasn’t being forced to. Quoted that old saying about not wanting to belong to a club that would have him as a member.”

“What did you say to that?” Connor asked.

“I reminded him of a passage from Luke, chapter eleven, where Jesus tells us, ‘Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you. Everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks, finds. And to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.’ Thing is, Willis Ronson had an answer for everything, and all he said was, ‘Bullshit. I knock and I knock, and all I get is a fucking door slammed in my face.’ Pardon my French.”

“French is my second language,” Connor replied. “Did he ever talk about his time in prison? Anyone he met in there?”

Wheeler took a minute to shave a long curl of wood from the block, which he then flicked to the ground. “Not really. Mostly I got the feeling he hated it about as much as the rest of us. Too much time to think, reflect, hate, curse, blame. And dodge the bullshit comes at you twenty-four seven. Where’d you finally find him, if you don’t mind my asking?”

The question caught Connor off-guard, but he figured there was no reason to hold back. Give a little, get a little. Maybe, if Wheeler had anything of substance to give.

“Holed up in a motel outside a hick-ass town in the middle of nowhere,” he said.

“This town have a name?”

“Andrews. Did Ronson ever mention it?”

Pastor Wheeler gave the question some serious thought, but eventually came up empty. “Don’t ring a bell, but then again, he didn’t talk much. Did you ask him about it when you caught up with his sorry ass?”

“His lawyer told him not to talk,” Connor explained.

“The colored chick who got shot, same time he did,” Wheeler said. Not a question; he already seemed to know the details. “That must’ve been some fucking drive-by.”

“A lot happened in a short period of time,” Connor conceded. He knew he needed to steer the conversation back on track, so he said, “If Ronson showed up at your meetings under duress, only as a condition to being paroled, do you have any idea why he would have risked going back to Leeds by jumping bail?”

Pastor Wheeler stopped his carving, stabbed the point of the knife into the wooded picnic table. “Mr. Willis knew he was looking at some serious time for doing what he did, and I could tell he was scared shitless about going back in,” he said. “I did my best to talk to him about that, help him conquer his fear. I explained that Isaiah tells us ‘Despair not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine.’ And in Deuteronomy we’re told, ‘Lord your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.’ But I could tell he wasn’t listening. Fact is, I don’t think he’d ever listened to anyone his entire life. Especially the Lord.”

“When was the last time he attended one of your meetings?” Connor asked.

“That would’ve been a day or two before he got himself arrested for spoolin’ up that wire,” Wheeler replied. “I mean, that was some dumbass cracker idea. Where’d he think he was going to sell it, anyway?”

Connor had been thinking the same thing ever since Bucky Foster tasked him with going after Ronson. Not just the shit-for-brains idiocy of stealing wire from a live electric transformer station, where thousands of volts could fry your ass, but trying to dispose of it afterward. Sure, there were scrap yards that would pay good money for things like steel and tin, but hardy worth it for a load of wire boosted from a Dominion Energy yard that any recycler would recognize from watching the news.

Maybe money had gotten tight, living on his own, and Ronson needed a few hundred bucks to tide him over. Maybe he’d found himself in a financial scrape that he had to pay his way out of. Street debt carried a high vig, and the rapidly compounding interest usually required an extra-legal means of staying ahead of the enforcers.

“Maybe he wasn’t,” Connor said to Wheeler. The aroma of smoking barbecue from a joint down the street invaded his nose, reminding him that he’d only eaten a pastry for breakfast and might be due for an early lunch. “Maybe he had other plans for that copper.”

“Something like that would require advance planning,” Wheeler pointed out. “I didn’t get the sense that Mr. Willis did much of that.”

No, but someone else might have, Connor thought as he hoisted himself off the picnic table. “Thanks for all your help, Reverend,” he said. “You still have my card?”

“In my office, what there is of it,” Wheeler told him. “Listen, if you ever feel the need to confess your sins to the Lord, you come on by, you hear?”

“This’ll be the first place I come,” Connor assured him.

Willis Ronson’s last known gainful employment had been at a vehicle wrap shop on the other side of Charleston, but the gun range Scott Strickland had mentioned was closer. So was the rib joint that had gotten Connor craving barbecue, so he stopped off for a quick bite before heading up Sam Rittenburg Avenue, where Top Shot Sports and Armory was located.

He found it at the far end of a strip mall that also housed a mattress store, a small fitness club, and a Dollar General. It was a nondescript building, muted beige stucco, with a sign in the tinted window that advertised “Group and Private Training.” The front door featured a decal of rifle crosshairs, and block lettering on the wall beside it read: “Schedule your next event here: Birthdays - Bachelors/Bridal Party - Team Building – Catering – Family Fun. Inquire within.”

Connor parked a few doors down and cut the engine. A digital readout on the instrument panel told him the outside temperature was in the upper eighties; another steamy lowcountry summer was on its way. He got confirmation of this as soon as he opened the door and felt as if he’d just passed the gates of Hell.

As he pushed his way inside, he was struck by how the place didn’t look like any gun range he’d ever seen. Certainly not the one he’d gone to after he’d bought his SIG Sauer P365 and needed to refresh his boot camp shooting skills. That place had been all business, gray walls racked with pistols and rifles, new and used, some for sale and some just to be fired on the premises.

By contrast, Top Shot had the ambiance of a corner coffee shop, where one might be just as inclined to order a Smith and Wesson as a chai latte with nutmeg. The design palette was woodsy green and earth tones, glossy epoxy floor covered with natural jute rugs. The walls were hung with photos of bears and deer and ducks that were meant to be appreciated as targets, not as nature prints. An L-shaped glass counter held an array of new rifles and handguns, from AR-15s and Brownings on one side of the room to ever-popular Glocks and Rugers, and even Connor’s own micro-compact SIG, on the other. Every one of them glistening and new, nothing used. Clean and spotless, first class all the way.

In other words, not the sort of place he would picture Willis Ronson frequenting.

A signal connected to the front entry must have rung through to the back, because ten seconds after Connor walked in, a clerk emerged through a door designated “Range.” The unmistakable sound of a pistol being fired followed him out, indicating that was where the action went down.

“Afternoon, sir,” the man said as he removed a pair of what appeared to be noise-cancelling headphones, and slipped behind the gun counter. “What can I do you for today?”

“Quite a set-up you’ve got here,” Connor replied. “Don’t know if I should sign up for some time on your tactical range or order a vodka martini with a twist.”

The clerk didn’t seem to have a sense of humor, because he came back with, “Mixing alcohol with guns isn’t a good combination for safety.”

“I suppose not,” Connor said. “And you do have a good selection of firearms here.”

“You an owner, or looking to buy?” the guy behind the counter asked him.

“Owner. That one there, in fact.” He pointed at the SIG P365 SAS under the glass, less than six inches long and just over a pound fully loaded.

“That’s a truly fine handgun,” the clerk said. “Carbon steel barrel, stainless steel frame with flush-mounted FT bullseye fiber-tritium night sight. Are you military?”

“Was. Tenth mountain division, Ft. Drum. One tour in Iraq.”

“We honor your service, sir. In fact, there’s a ten percent discount on all products and range time for current military and veterans.”

“Good to know,” Connor said. “But today I’m here for something else.”

He immediately sensed a hitch in the clerk’s demeanor, a subtle shift in attitude from warm and affable to wary and suspicious. “And what would that be?” he asked.

Connor already had Willis Ronson’s photo dialed up on his phone, and he held it out for the clerk to see. “This man comes in here from time to time. You recognize him?” Phrasing it in such a way that his patronage at Top Shot Sports and Armory was already known and documented, not leaving room for an outright denial.

“You said you were former Army. Does that make you a cop?”

“Not then or now.” Connor was ready with a business card, which he handed over. “Bond runner, with Citadel Secure Bail Bonds. The person in the photo is Willis Ronson, deceased.”

“No shit,” the clerk said. “I mean, I’m sorry to hear that. And yeah, I know him. Knew, I guess. How’d he die?”

“Two bullets to the back. Day before yesterday. Maybe you saw it on the news.”

“I try not to watch it, what with everything in the world going to hell. Mind if I see that picture again?”

Connor brought it back up on his phone and held it out for the guy to get a better look. “Anything you can tell me would be a help,” he said.

“There ain’t a whole lot, since I only saw him once or twice,” the clerk said. “You might want to talk to Tony. He’s the owner—Tony Young—but he’s at lunch.”

“I’ll do that,” Connor replied. “But right now, anything you can tell me about Mr. Ronson would be useful.”

“Yeah, well…if memory serves, he had this thing for Glocks. Didn’t own one, but was really into shooting them. Not too good at it, to be honest, usually hit way outside center mass.”

“He ever talk about why he was shooting? Self-defense, neighborhood crime? Sport?”

“Like I said, I only saw him a couple, three times. Not enough to chat him up. And he pretty much kept to himself. The kind of loner you end up hearing about on the news.”

“If you watch it.”

“Right. What’s all this about, anyway?”

Connor hesitated, considered how he was going to frame his answer. Since Willis Ronson was dead there were no real privacy issues to deal with. He’d been caught in the act of pilfering wire from the electric company, skipped out on his bail, and holed up in a dingy motel room with empty Cuervo bottles scattered around the floor. A felony conviction had followed him when he was paroled, and the law stated he was to have no contact with firearms. Ever. So why was he paying good money to shoot handguns at Top Shot Sports, if he could never own one again?

“Did Ronson ever meet up with anyone here, maybe talk to other customers?” he asked, dodging the question.

“Not that I ever noticed. Part of the loner thing, I guess. But again, you might want to talk to Tony.”

“Were you aware he had a felony on his record?”

“Whoa,” the clerk said, raising his hands defensively. “Not our job to run a background check on every customer who comes through that door.”

“Course not,” Connor replied. “I’ve got no beef with you. I mention it only because he’s supposed to stay away from guns, yet here he was.”

“You thinking someone he might’ve met here coulda been the one who shot him?” the guy asked.

“One of a thousand scenarios,” Connor said with a noncommittal shrug. “You’ve got my number there, so if you think of anything that might help, give me a call?”

“Sure.” He glanced at Connor’s business card, then stuffed it into his pocket. “Since you tracked this Willis Ronson here, you think the cops might could do the same?”

Connor doubted Nelson Burdette would know enough to talk to Scott Strickland but, even if he did, Strickland likely wouldn’t give up much to a SLED investigator. Not if it might bump him back to prison. He also wondered if some other kind of enterprise was being conducted here besides selling and shooting guns.

“Probably not,” he replied. “And like you said, it’s not up to you to vet everyone who comes in and asks to shoot.”