Horns of the Devil - Jeff Trask [02] by Marc Rainer Read Free Book Online

seat.
    Carter drove, with Wisniewski riding shotgun. Trask sat behind Tim. The drive up Interstate 95 from DC to Baltimore took the usual hour, an hour in which not a single word was spoken.
    Trask’s mind began to drift again. He closed his eyes and released the latches on all the files. Not all of them floated out at once. He’d learned to control them. He was back with his mother, with a doctor of her own choosing, not one of those the school wanted him to see, the ones with the pills. This one was different. He didn’t have to strain to hear voices behind closed doors. This doctor talked directly to him.
    There’d been some tests. A deck of cards, more than a hundred shown to him, kept in order. The second time through he’d been able to recall the order perfectly, predicting the next card in the deck time after time. The doctor nodded. “ An incredible eidetic memory, photographic recall,” he’d said. “Most lose this ability by your age. Do you have a lot of things that seem to float through your mind all at once?” Yes, sir. “The key to living with your ability is learning to focus on one thing at a time. We’ll work on that. Do you like any games, sports?” “He loves them,” his mother had said, surprised. “I’d always thought that was kind of…” “Inconsistent? Not really. Athletic drama. No predetermined outcome. No plot he’s already read a hundred times. What kind of sports interest you, Jeff?” Football, baseball, he’d said. It was the South, after all. “But he’s so small.” Mom couldn’t help herself. She was worried. Should have been. He’d stayed hurt, played hurt most of the time. She never knew, or that’s what he’d believed.
    Trask felt the car slowing as it left the highway.
    They reached the ME’s office, introduced themselves to the Maryland State Police officers working the case, and watched as the doc cut into the tattooed bodies. One spent round came out of the head of one of the victims; another had been killed by a shot that had gone all the way through his torso.
    The doc handed the bullet to the Maryland guys, who looked at it before passing it to Carter.
    “7.62 round,” Dix said.
    “Everybody loves an AK,” one of the troopers said.
    “It wasn’t an AK.” Carter had the round under a microscope on a counter that ran along the side of the examining room.
    “Yeah, yeah. Not a true Russian AK-47,” the trooper shot back, pissed at being corrected. “The usual cheap-ass Chinese knock-off. A Norinco SKS.”
    “It wasn’t an SKS, either.” Carter still had the round under the scope.
    “ Sure it was,” the trooper shot back. “Both the vics were MS-13. Our most probable perps are M-18 types. We’ve had intel they were trying to move into the area. They hate each other, and the gang weapon of choice is the AK—excuse me—the Norinco SKS . They can get one for twenty bucks from the underground dealers, and we have fits matching the round to the rifle—”
    “Because you don’t get the usual lands and grooves on the round that you’d see in a good American rifle,” Carter interrupted. “The reason being that the SKS is a Chinese assault rifle, made to stand up in the worst combat environments imaginable, with little or no maintenance. It never jams because the rifle bore is oversized compared to the round. The slug just rattles around on its way down and out of the barrel. It’s accurate at short range, but shit after a couple hundred yards.” He pointed to the microscope. “Not an SKS.”
    The troopers, then Wisniewski, then Trask, took turns looking at the bullet, which bore very distinctive rifling marks.
    “Big deal.” The same trooper spoke up. “The gooks happened to get one of their barrels right.”
    Carter looked at him with a hard glare that made it clear the debate was over.
    “NOT an SKS.”
    He nodded toward the ME.
    “Thanks for letting us sit in on your exam.”
    Trask and Wisniewski followed him back to the Buick and