On the Bourbon Trail – chapter two

It was a pretty day, late November, endless blue in the sky, the other two primary colors warming up the trees. The trip up to Frankfort was uneventful, a Sunday drive, and the range was pleasant in the sun behind the Kentucky State Police Training Academy. Tim made his shot, then sat up and looked around for Art. Watching from his booth, the range officer made a show of wiggling his pen, sauntered over to the line. Tim offered up his paperwork and the man put his John Hancock on the page with a flourish.

"Another day, another bull's-eye."

"Bullet in, bullet out," said Tim. "Thanks."

"No problem."

"Where'd the old man go?"

"He's in chin-wagging with the Commander."

Tim looked at the door of the Academy, then at his watch. "Can I…?" He gestured downrange.

"Yeah, sure. Go right ahead. No one's booked in today. The new recruits are out doing driver training."

"I got a special target I want to put up. You mind…?" Another vague wave downrange.

"Go right ahead. I'll stand here and make sure nobody shoots you."

"Appreciate that." Tim pulled a piece of paper from his jeans' pocket. "You got some tape?"

"Yep." They walked back to the officer's booth and he dug out some masking tape and handed it over. "Looks like the wind's picking up."

"Great. I love a challenge. I only get to make at most hundred-yard shots these days. Hardly worth getting outta bed for."

The officer snorted, said, "Quit bragging."

Tim raised his eyebrows and sighed dramatically. "It's not easy being this good." He trotted off across the range, stopping at the four hundred yard marker, not far enough out for his liking, but, unsure when Art would return, he decided it would have to do. Unfolding his target, he taped it to a butt, tapped the face between the eyes, turned and ran back to the line. He was a little out of breath and happy about it when he lay back down on the grass, something else to overcome to make the shot, add some more challenge.

By the time Art walked up behind him and kicked his boot, Tim had put three rounds into the paper as fast as his bolt-action rifle would let him, to make up for cheapening the distance to target. He ignored Art, focused and put one more through the forehead of the man in the photo for good measure, then he sat up and smiled.

"You ready to go?" said Art.

"Ready when you are."

"I'm ready."

"I'll just be a minute breaking down, and I gotta collect my target."

"Why don't I get it for you while you put your stuff away? The knees could use some flat terrain exercising."

The smile disappeared. "Don't worry about it. I'll get it. It'll only take…"

But Art was already heading across the grass, snarling as he went. "Goddammit, I'm not an invalid. I'll be right back."

Tim bit his lip then scrambled to get his rifle in the case, thinking he could probably beat Art out there if he ran fast enough. But Art's amble was deceptively quick. He was standing with his arms crossed, studying the photo taped over the target when Tim arrived a little out of breath from an Olympic-record four-hundred-yard dash.

"Nice shooting."

"Uh…thanks."

"Nice target."

"Uh…"

"You wanna explain this?"

"Uh…"

"No. No. Don't. Let's wait, shall we? You can explain it later, maybe while we're doing some bourbon tasting. Something tells me I'm gonna need a drink for this."

Art stewed and Tim drove, down through the limestone cliffs and into the valley cut by the Kentucky River to the turn that took them to the Buffalo Trace Distillery. They pulled into the visitor's parking, Art keeping up an uncomfortable silence and Tim tapping a rhythm of unease on the steering wheel with his fingers. It wasn't until they were out of the car and walking, following the signs for the visitor's house, that Art broached the subject again.

"So, let's hear it. Who's the dead man in your sights?"

Tim's fingers stopped their drumming. "He was still breathing last I saw him."

"You sound worryingly disappointed."

The grunt in reply was noncommittal. Art reached out and stopped Tim, physically brought him around so they were face-to-face.

"Imagine for a minute how that piece of paper will look in the hands of a prosecutor in a murder trial if your guy shows up dead."

"I'm preventing a crime, not committing one, keeping myself from doing some seriously inconvenient violence."

"I don't think that argument will hold up against the evidence – morally or legally."

"I'm just working out frustration, Chief, nothing more."

"That's not the way most people work out their frustrations."

"It's not?"

Art brought both hands up to his face, dragged them slowly down, pausing halfway to dig his fingers into his eyes. "No," he said when they cleared his mouth. "In fact, that kind of behavior, which might seem harmless to you, and maybe even funny – God knows I wouldn't care to guess what goes on in that head of yours – would send up red flags on any psych eval."

"Are you threatening that again?"

"Does it worry you?"

"Maybe."

"Well, I'm happy something worries you. But in what way does it worry you? And for once think before you speak, because how you answer could mean the difference between whether I go through with my threat or not."

"It worries me how you see me. You don't seriously think I'd shoot someone just because they pissed me off? This guy doesn't even carry – he's a pro-gun-law lobbyist."

"Oh, so you mean you only think I'd disapprove if you shot someone who was unarmed and pissed you off?"

"Come on, Chief. I'm being funny and you know it."

"Do you see me laughing? Your idea of funny puts me on edge."

"Since when? You're usually hawing it up with me. I just figured you were playing the straight guy today."

"You usually don't use pictures of actual people for target practice."

"Just this one time."

"Oh, well, that's okay then."

Tim shrugged, crossed his arms tightly across his chest. "Maybe we should talk about this after you've had a drink like you suggested. You seem a little tense."

"Maybe you should… Look at that." Art's eyes had refocused from the rubbing and were now fixed on a warehouse in his view, six stories of hundred-year-old red brick with oddly placed and intricate plumbing decorating the outside and a barrel rail running beside it, linking it to another warehouse. A door on ground level was propped open and through it, down past a trio of old stone steps, deep in the dim and dusty light of the interior, Art could just make out the ends of oak barrels stacked and stamped. He walked past Tim and down the steps to the door and peered inside and let out a soft whistle. "I imagine this is what heaven looks like," he said.

Coming up behind, peeking over Art's shoulder, Tim opened his mouth to say something, but there were no words he could find for this. He gaped. Art turned a bit to let Tim have a piece of the narrow doorway, and they both poked their heads a little farther inside. Barrels filled the length and breadth of the room, hundreds of them, stacked three high on a framework of wood that looked as old as the brick façade.

Eventually, Tim found his tongue again, and it had a hankering for a drink. "Do you think it's the same on every floor?"

"I suspect so." Art let his eyes adjust to the gloom, then he let them wander down an aisle, counting rows of barrels. When he got to twenty he stopped.

But Tim kept going, took another step inside and leaned his head around the first row to peek down the width of the building. "How many floors, do you think?"

Art backed up, outside, and counted windows. "Six."

"Then there's got to be over twenty thousand barrels in here."

"Thank you, mental math fucking genius, for encouraging my alcohol addiction."

"Like you need encouraging."

"Sweet Jesus in heaven, I can actually smell it. Can you smell it? The beautiful aroma of Kentucky bourbon."

"I always think of caramel apples. And Steve."

"Steve?"

"Mr. Nickell, my neighbor growing up. He drank bourbon, used to let me have some on weekends."

Art made a face, hard to read, enough in it though that Tim qualified his comment with another shrug, feeling vaguely like he'd been caught out at something. "Half a shot, barely." He held up a hand, finger and thumb measuring out a meager amount.

"That'd be enough to get you half shot at that age." Art wiggled his eyebrows. "I used to sneak some from my daddy's collection. I'm sure he knew. I think of tobacco when I smell bourbon. He would sit in the living room after work and smoke and take little sips from his special bourbon glass. He actually had a special bourbon glass, kept it beside the bourbon, and he'd have a drink and a cigarette, one each, then wash the glass and put it back for the next day. That was his glass. None of us was allowed to touch it. I have it now, use it just like he did."

"Bet you have more than one in it though. You'll probably wear it out."

"My daddy worked for the State, road work supervisor. Not as much stress as law enforcement."

"Good rationalization, Boss."

Backing out of the building again, Art turned toward the river. "I think that gorgeous caramel apple smell is coming from this direction. Let's follow our noses, shall we?"

With each step down the laneway between the warehouses, the aroma of caramel and vanilla, the oak and smoke, the smells and memories of bar laughter and living room fires grew and blended until they all together seemed too large to fit into a bottle. Another open door in a smaller old and brick building invited, and Art walked right in, his nose leading.

"I think your nose just found the wellspring." Tim spoke in a church voice, reverent, licked his lips and stared at the vat of bourbon at the end of the room. A line of bottles was marching along a conveyor belt toward the back to be filled, and a half-dozen employees were at work, corking, labeling. Bourbon was thick in the air, clinging to the marshals in a way that was comforting and overwhelming at the same time.

Worries left behind in the cold and sunshine outside, Art leaned back against the wall inside the door and smiled. A woman loading a case at the end of one line smiled back.

Taking a deep breath in, Art enjoyed a little olfactory tasting. "I think I'll apply for a job right here when I retire, become a bourbon bottler." He jabbed a finger toward the floor. "I wanna work right here in this room."

"Maybe I'll come join you."

A security guard walked up behind them, stepped around Tim and peered past Art into the bottling room. Satisfied that there were only the two of them, he faced them, eyed them up and down suspiciously, expression stern. "This is private property. Can I help you, gentlemen?"

Art smiled to disarm, cranked up the hillbilly. "I understand you have some bourbon around here?"

"Just a bit."

There were privileges to working in law enforcement that Art was happy to take advantage of at times like this. He waved his ID and Marshal's star. "We were just up the road at the KSP training facility, heard you had a theft…" He left it at that, hoping to invite an assumption from the guard.

"That happened at the distribution warehouse, not here. If you want I can get someone who knows more about it down from the office to talk to you. Are they expecting you?"

"No. Just thought we'd drop in and see what's what. The Marshals Service's responsibilities are such that just about every type of criminal trips and falls in our path at some point or other, so we try to keep up on local crime in case we run across something of importance that's related, can help out somehow. It's amazing how often it happens. Needless to say, this theft is a tragedy of biblical proportions. It's got our attention."

The guard was softening, mouth twitching up. "It's got everyone's attention. You like bourbon?"

Tim grinned. "You must be psychic."

"Must be. Either that or you're drooling and I'm too polite to say."

Tim wiped at his lips, scowled at Art. "I asked you before if I was drooling. You never said."

"Let me see who's in. Maybe we can get you a private tour."

"Any tasting possible?"

"I'm sure we have something open behind the bar in the guest house, for the public tours, of course."

"Of course," said Art. "For the tours."

There was a shared nod of conspiracy.

The master distiller was in and happy to talk about the theft, hash it through again for sympathetic and helpful ears. He gave Art and Tim an insider's tour while they talked, left them alone after an hour standing at the oak bar in the back of the gift shop, each sipping happily on a sample of the distillery's namesake bourbon after a taste, with grimaces from them both, of the White Dog Mash #1.

"I definitely like it better after it's been barreled and aged." Art smacked his lips together and leaned back against a post. "All right, Tim. I think I'm ready. Where were we?"

"You really want to do this? It's nothing."

"Tell me, or I'll write you up for drinking on duty."

"That would be hypocritical."

"Then don't make me do it."

Tim appeared to be contemplating the logic in that reasoning, then eventually, giving way to the inevitable, he told Art what he wanted to hear. "He's this asshole I met at a dinner thingy."

Art turned slightly paler, his expression now more worried, if that were possible. "He's not a felon?"

"Not as far as I know. He's a philanthropist. Though I did find mention of him in the database, mostly customs infractions."

"You ran his name?"

"It was an accident."

"An accident? How…? Oh, never mind. I don't care. What did he do to earn being a target?"

Tim took a deep breath in, let it out in a huff. "He said snipers were cowards."

"Oh." Art took a deep breath, too, but let it out slowly, reflecting on the comment. "Did he know about you and your particular career history?"

"No."

"Not personal then."

"Very fucking personal."

"All right, okay, calm down."

"I am calm. I got to shoot the fucker four times today with my sniper rifle. Now I'm calm."

"Tim…"

"Uh-uh, no way. If he'd been insulting just me, I couldn't give a shit. But it's not just about me. I got a lot of friends who are snipers. These guys all had to prove themselves in the rifle squads first. These guys train hard and put themselves out there to protect their buddies. They risk it, too. They got families. It's not an easy thing to take a life to protect someone, not when it's not a direct threat to you. It takes a certain kind of thinking. Cold and calculating, sure, whatever – I'll live with that – but not cowardly."

"Tim, no one who knows you would call you a coward."

"He said it to my face."

"He didn't know."

"Doesn't matter. You shouldn't make blanket statements like that if you don't know shit." Tim wagged his head, almost a comedy. "Ignorance is a lame excuse for being an asshole. Can't shoot a guy for being ignorant though."

"No, you can't." Art scrambled for a redirect. "What was this dinner thingy?"

"It was for a charity that Milja's involved in."

"So she was there?"

"Yep."

"Did she hear this?"

"Yep."

"What did she do?"

"Oh, you can imagine. She took one look at my face and decided we needed to leave early, shoved me out the door. Then she took me home and distracted me from thinking about it too much."

"She managed to distract you from a comment like that?"

"Yeah."

"How? Maybe it's something she could teach me."

Tim twitched, stepped back. "No. Uh-uh. Chief, trust me – it's something only she could do."

"Oh...right." Art cleared his throat, studied his glass. "We'll pretend this part of the conversation never happened."

There was an awkward pause before they finished their drinks and headed to the car.

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Author's note: In case you missed it the first time, the 'sniper's are cowards' thing is from a comment made by Michael Moore. Whatever you might think about war, that's still a silly thing to say. The man's a blunt instrument - a cattle prod is a good metaphor for him, I think.