The Fury - Jason Pinter [10]
and the impact site, it has all the marks of a point-blank
shooting. See, normally when a bullet is fired, espe
cially from close range, the wound will leave burn
marks on the flesh, which is literally seared from the
heat. In this case, the burn marks were nearly unde
tectable."
"Why?" I asked.
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Jason Pinter
"My guess?" Binks said. "The killer was using a
silenced weapon. Now, very few guns have those kind
of professional silencers you see in movies, that screw
on like a lightbulb. Usually they're homemade, a length
of aluminum tubing filled with steel wool or fiberglass."
"Forensics is checking for both," Makhoulian added.
"It's not just professionals who use them. Some
hunters use silencers out of season. Even guys in their
backyards shooting beer bottles who don't want their
neighbors to hear. Of course, there's a chance the killer
simply did it the old-fashioned way," Binks said, "and
covered the muzzle with a pillow. The killer didn't need
to be an expert in weaponry. In fact, there's a reason you
see that in the movies. It's not going to dampen the noise
completely, but as a quick fix--"
"Please," I interrupted, pleading to either man.
"Explain to me what the hell all this means."
Makhoulian said, "It means whoever killed your
brother shot him once in the back of the head with a
silenced weapon. Then while he was lying on the
ground, dying, the killer shot him one more time to
finish the job. Your brother wasn't just killed, Henry. He
was executed."
4
I followed Detective Sevi Makhoulian out of the
examiner's office. An unmarked Crown Victoria sat
outside, and Makhoulian approached it. He leaned up
against the door. He took a white handkerchief from his
jacket pocket and wiped his forehead. I stood there
watching him, unsure of what to do. What the next step
was.
"You still haven't told me why you're so convinced
Stephen Gaines is my brother. And even if he is, why
did you call me? " I asked. "I barely spoke two words
to Gaines in the entire thirty seconds I knew him. So
again, why me?"
"You weren't our first choice, Henry," Makhoulian
said, pocketing the cloth. "The first person we called
was James Parker, your father. And Stephen's father."
"Wait," I said. "We had the same father?"
The detective nodded with no emotion. "You thought
you were related through osmosis?"
I hadn't had much time to really think about every
thing, to consider what all this meant, but if Makhou
lian was right and Gaines was my brother, we had to
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Jason Pinter
share a parent. And I could never picture my mother
holding on to that kind of secret. There was no way she
could keep that from me.
My father was another story.
From the first time I could think clearly, I recognized
my father was the kind of man, who, if not your blood,
you would go out of your way not to know.
Even as a younger man, he was mean, belittling,
nasty, vicious. Violent.
That man was fifty-five now. In the last twenty years
he'd never held a steady job. Never made enough money
to move out of the house I grew up in, never desired to
give my mother anything more than he had when they
married. If anything, he took much of it away.
He preferred swinging from branch to branch on the
employment tree, always looking for a vocation where
the bosses didn't mind if you showed up late, left early
to drink, and showed no ambition to rise above foot
soldier. Comfort was given highest priority. When I
began to write first for my school paper, then took
various internships before taking a paid job with the
Bend Bulletin, James Parker approached it like I was up
setting the gods of apathy. And hence upsetting his life.
The harder I worked, the more work came home with
me. My editors and sources would call at all hours of
the night, and because this was before cell phones were
more common than pennies, they would call my
family's landline.
I remember sitting at my desk, the phone resting
inches from my hand while I wrote, my eye always
flickering to the headset, waiting to pick it