“I think we’ve connected.”

“More here. To one address, a Whidden Bullet Pointing Die System. It’s a new, hot lick by which you can ‘sharpen’ the bullet point, which assists greatly in long-distance shooting. And, if I’m not mistaken, this other thing is an electric annealing machine, by which you heat-treat prefired brass and make it more consistent.”

“This guy must read all the gun magazines,” said Chandler.

“No, this stuff ain’t been in the magazines yet. He’s that far ahead. And that fits in neatly with Juba’s patient, plodding, one-step-at-a-time methodology, very thorough, not rushing, not making any mistakes. Both Mrs. McDowell and Mr. Gold make that point. All t’s crossed, i’s dotted. Not that he did the ordering, but he provided the operating plan and the security requirements to whoever was working with him on this.”

“So here’s my thought,” said Chandler. “Let’s run the addresses for each of the six locations and see what we turn up.”

“Good move,” said Swagger.

It didn’t take long to pull the data free.

“No homes,” said Swagger. “They’re all FedEx Office or UPS outlets, all places that take packages for people.”

“Yes, and though usually those places rent you a post office box,” she said, “in this case Brian Waters requested or paid extra not to list a P.O. box but just the street address of the little shop. I suppose that was part of the camouflage operation.”

“Yeah, and, moreover, most mail-order places won’t ship to post office boxes, only to residential addresses. But it’s not a rigorous system. The guy at the sending end isn’t going to check. If it’s just an address, he doesn’t have the time or the interest to make sure the street address is a house, not some retail thing.”

“Well, let’s run the credit card number that paid for all this stuff.”

Another quick discovery: Brian Waters again.

One man with six addresses, each FedEx Office unknown to the other five, had ordered all the goods.

Swagger went to his list of competitors.

“He placed highly in the thousand-yard championships at the NRA range in New Mexico. He’s a shooter. They had to use him as the fulcrum of their operation, alive or dead, probably dead.”