"Can you fix it?" David asked. Henry shook his head as he stared down at the disassembled N-frame revolver.

"Not here. It's nothing serious, but I didn't bring a spare center pin. First one of those I've ever broken. Must've had bad heat-treat." / hope I don't get hit by a bolt of lightning for that blasphemy Henry thought. He began to reassemble the revolver.

"So what do you want to do?"

"We're on a canoe trip-let's do some real canoeing. Let's see how far we can go 'fore we get really hungry."

"Your arms are going to give out."

"Like hell they are," Henry answered with a forced grin. "Your arms may be a little stronger from jerking off all the time, but don't think you got me beat on endurance."

"Hurry your ass up, Einstein, and we'll see who's got the endurance."

Several times during the next three hours, Henry Bowman was close to telling his friend what had really happened. The event seemed too enormous to hold inside. Each time, however, he saw all kinds of future problems resulting, and he remembered a conversation he had overheard in Goodmans' about a front-page murder case that was baffling the police. One of the customers, a county cop, had said something to Henry's Uncle Max that Henry had never forgotten: 'If it weren't for guys ratting each other out, only busts I'd 'a made in the last ten years'd be speeding tickets, and that's the goddamn truth, Max. That stuff in the books and movies is a bunch a crap. Guy works alone and keeps his mouth shut, and doesn't do some dumb shit like cut off the dead guy's dick as a souvenir and stick it in the freezer where his girlfriend will find it and rat him out the next time she gets busted by an undercover for soliciting, hundred to one we 'II never catch him. And if by some fuckin' miracle we do turn the mutt up as a suspect, and he still keeps his mouth shut, prosecution won't have enough to go to trial. And if the DA is an idiot and does take the case to a jury, and the guy still keeps his mouth shut, and doesn't try to explain where he was, and what he was doing, and all that shit, you'll never get twelve people to convict. Never.'

When the two boys banked the canoe next, David Webb was none the wiser. It was almost dark and David and Henry were both exhausted and famished. They were also thirty miles away from the site of the shooting.

After the pair returned home, Henry Bowman watched the newspapers carefully for several weeks after the incident. He found no mention of any young men being shot to death in that area of Missouri.

September 15, 1968 "Hello?"

"Yes, this is Mr. Jackson at the library calling. May I speak to Cammie Lynn, please? It's about her library card." I feel like an idiot Henry Bowman thought. It was his fourth call on the list of Lynns in the local directory. He had a roll of quarters in front of him at the drug store pay phone.

"Just a minute. I'll get her." Henry's heart jumped. She's alive! he thought. Unless there're more than one. He heard an adult yell for the girl and then the sound of another receiver being lifted.

"Hello?"

"Ah, yes, this is Mr. Jackson," Henry repeated, lowering his voice and feeling stupid. "At the library. Is this Cammie Lynn?" He was stalling for time, hoping the other person would hang up the other extension. "Yes," the girl said. There was a questioning tone in her voice. She did not have a library card, and in fact did not have any idea where the nearest library was located.

"Good. The...ah, reason I'm calling is-" Henry stopped in mid-sentence when he heard the other extension click off. "I'm not from the library," Henry said quickly. "I called to see if you were all right. I met you when you were having some trouble last month." Henry heard a sharp intake of breath.

"Who are you?" the girl whispered urgently. "And why didn't you kill Nat Bivins? You let him get away," she said accusingly.

"I didn't have the stomach to murder him," Henry said with a hint of apology. "Listen, I'm not going to call again. I just wanted to make sure you...made it."

"I can't run too good yet. Have to see the doctor some more, too. But, uh, thanks for killin' the others, Mister. Dad said they needed it."

"You're welcome, Cammie," Henry replied. "I think your father was right. Good luck," he added, then hung up the phone. He felt a sense of unreality about the conversation he'd just had. His spirits, though, were much higher than they'd been just a few minutes earlier.

Henry Bowman had never been told of the concept of 'Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.' In 1968, that theory was not popular, if indeed anyone had thought of it at all. Thus, Henry Bowman had to discover on his own what the emotional aftermath of a killing was like, without being told by any experts what to expect.

The experience with Cammie Lynn's attackers taught Henry Bowman two lessons that he would never forget. He learned that not only was it possible to kill someone and not be convicted, as the cop in the gun store had explained, but it was also possible to not ever be suspected of the killing in the first place.

The second thing Henry learned was the same truth Irwin Mann had discovered over twenty years earlier: Killing someone was not an emotionally devastating experience when the person you killed was evil. Actually, when you got right down to it, Henry felt pretty good about the way things had worked out.

November 2, 1968 "You headed down to the foundry again?" Catherine Bowman asked as Henry excused himself from the dinner table. "You've been down there all weekend."

"Got more cutting and numbering to do, Mom," Henry said cheerfully. "This thing's going to be a one-shot deal, assuming it's not a trap."

"You sure you don't need me to sign my name to these pieces of muffler pipe you're cutting up?" Catherine Bowman joked. She found it most amusing that Henry was so adamant about how he was going to need her to become a gun dealer under these new laws that were coming.

"No, I don't think so."

"Just don't get me thrown in jail, all right?" she said wi th a laugh. The idea that the Federal government might arrest a middle-aged woman for agreeing to do this was, of course, utterly absurd. "I'll try not to," Henry Bowman said, then ran down the basement stairs to his late father's workshop to wear out some more hacksaw blades.

Henry's well-focused vigor was understandable. One of the provisions of the 1968 Gun Control Act was that interstate commerce in all firearms was now going to be heavily restricted. Dealers were now going to have to be federally licensed, and would not be able to sell to purchasers under the age of eighteen for long guns and twenty-one for handguns.

In conjunction with many other restrictions soon to go into effect under the 1968 Gun Control Act, the government was promising a 30-day amnesty where National Firearms Act weapons could be registered 'live' without payment of the normal $200 tax. After the month was up, however, there would be no provision to register a weapon that was not in the system. Going one step further, non-functional weapons were soon to be registerable items under the 1968 Act. It would no longer be possible for a citizen to take the internal parts out of his Thompson to render it inoperable and expect to be left alone by the authorities.

Given that many people thought the Amnesty might be a trap, this set of circumstances posed a real dilemma to shooters like Henry Bowman who had large numbers of non-taxed NFA weapons. If the Amnesty was a trap, every gun he registered would be destroyed by the Feds. If the Amnesty was legitimate, then every gun he did not register would be one he wouldn't be able to take out and shoot again, for it would be contraband.

Henry was fairly sure the Amnesty was not an immediate trap, but there was another thing to consider: There were no guarantees as to what would happen in the future, and confiscation was always preceded by registration. Anyone with any knowledge of history knew this. Henry Bowman, because of the personal experiences of those in his family, was considerably better-versed than most people on what governments were capable of doing when left unchecked. That was why even if President Johnson himself had given him a document on Presidential stationery that the Amnesty Registration was on the level, Henry Bowman was not about to submit all of his machine guns and cannons for governmental approbation.

Henry Bowman had spent a lot of time thinking about what to do. Since the Amnesty involved guns owned before the passage of the 1968 Act, it did not have an age minimum, and Henry therefore did not have to involve his mother in the registration process. In the end, he had settled on a plan of action that he thought covered all the eventualities in the best possible way.

Henry had decided to register six machine guns: His .30-06 Colt Monitor, a 1918A2 BAR, a .45 caliber 1928 Thompson, a 9mm STEN, a .303 BREN, and a .30 caliber Model 1917 belt-fed Browning water cooled gun. These six machine guns were the ones he shot most, and if the Amnesty was not a trap, these were the ones he wanted to be able to use every weekend and during the summer without problems. He had a second example of five of them held in reserve in case of confiscation. Henry did not have a duplicate Monitor, but since he owned two other BAR variants which used the same magazines, he felt he was covered. He had twenty-three other machine guns of various types that he did not shoot very often, and these he was not going to register either.

In amending the National Firearms Act of 1934, the 1968 Act also reclassified military weapons with bores over a half-inch into a newly-created 'destructive device' category, which also required registration. Henry planned to register the 20mm Lahti he had recently bought, and let the Solothurn S18-1000 his father had given him remain a free-market weapon. Both guns fired the same ammo, and Henry made his choice based mainly on the fact that the Solothurn had a quick-change barrel which meant it could be broken down without tools into manageable pieces for discreet storage, while the Lahti was nine feet long and would stay that way.

What Henry had been working on the last few days involved the third area covered by the Amnesty: firearm silencers.

A $200 tax on a machine gun was very high, but a $200 tax levied on what was essentially a muffler for a lawn mower was ridiculous. Henry Bowman had only heard of one person in his life who had actually paid $200 to make his gun quieter. Virtually all registered silencers were owned by NFA dealers who paid $200 a year to deal in NFA weapons and who were thus exempted from the per-unit tariff. Henry fully intended to become an NFA dealer, but he knew he had to wait until his twenty-first birthday. He had already checked up on that.

The Amnesty was going to allow registration of silencers without having to pay the tax, during the onemonth 'window'. That was why Henry was spending a great deal of time cutting and putting serial numbers on various diameters and lengths of stainless steel aircraft tubing. He had decided that fifty would probably suffice for a lifetime supply, given his high-volume shooting habits. The outer tubes were what was important. He could make the internals up later, as they were needed.

Stainless steel was a lot harder to cut than mild steel, and Henry was soon sweating again. Christ! Henry said to himself. Cutting off pieces of aircraft tubing and stamping numbers on them all weekend 'cause it's the only time when you don't have to pay the Feds two hundred bucks for each one. His hands began to sweat, so he gripped the saw more tightly to compensate. Is this a joke or what? Henry thought for perhaps the hundredth time as he drew the saw back and forth and watched the blade slowly make its way through the two-inch seamless tubing.

February 8, 1969 "Hey, get your own french fries!"

"Jesus, Bowman, don't have a cow. I was only taking one."

"Well, take one from somebody else, Kerth, if you're too cheap to cough up a quarter and buy your own."

"Aw, keep your damn french fries. They're no good here, anyway." Jimmy Kerth was a notorious mooch, but it was mainly an act. He was absolutely fearless when it came to talking to girls, and because of that, his friends overlooked his minor shortcomings.

"Don't whine at me," Henry said. "I told you we should have gone to Steak n Shake, but you guys aren't happy unless the cooks salt the piss out of everything, and you get to eat off of cardboard instead of china." "Very funny. Asshole."

"Hey, Henry!" Bill Pressler called from one of the other booths. "Come here a minute. Need your help on something." Henry Bowman shoved the last of the salty french fries into his mouth and slid off the vinylcovered bench seat.

"What's up?"

"Sit down. Here-want some fries?"

"I'm full." / wonder what he wants. And I wonder who this older guy with him is.

"Dick, this is Henry Bowman, the guy I was telling you maybe could help you out."

"Dick Gaines," the older boy said, looking a little uncomfortable as he shook Henry's hand across the formica tabletop. Henry could tell Gaines was embarrassed about something. Bill Pressler took charge of the situation.

"Dick goes to school with my brother Gordon, at Hilldale." Which means that Dick is probably a dumbshit Henry thought to himself. "Dick's got the SAT coming up," Bill went on, "and he doesn't do so good on tests." Now it's been confirmed Henry said silently as he put a concerned expression on his face and nodded for his friend to continue. "I told him he ought to talk to you."

"Can you help me out?" Gaines asked, feeling embarrassed at the entire situation, and especially the fact that this new kid was younger than he. Bill says you took it a year early and aced it."

Henry shook his head. "Look, I don't think I can help on something like that, especially since it's in-what? Two weeks?"

Richard Gaines broke in quickly. "Oh, that's no problem. I can get all the stuff made up in three days-five, tops."

What on earth is he talking about? Henry wondered at this odd assertion. "Well...even if you can, the SAT isn't something you can really cram for. You can try to learn vocabulary for the English part, and that'll help some, but two weeks isn't much time." He took a deep breath and went on.

"The math section...well, either you can do arithmetic or you can't. I don't think I can teach you the math part in two weeks if you're really weak there. Now, what I can do," Henry said, warming to the subject, "is teach you to see the way the test writers think, which is a big part of being able to get all the way through the test before time is called." And something that anyone with half a b rain can see after reading the first two or three questions he wanted to add. "The most important thing is-"

"No, no, you're missing the point," Bill Pressler broke in. "Dick doesn't want a tutor, that's not going to be enough, especially not now, with two weeks left, like you said."

"Then...how can I help him out?"

"Take the test for me." Henry's mouth opened as he stared at Dick Gaines. He was dumbfounded. Gaines went on quickly. "That's all you've got to do. Walk into the center, show the right ID, sit down and take the test for me. You remember what it was like-a whole bunch of kids you didn't know showing up at a place you'd never been before. A couple hours easy work, and you'll be out of there. Right?"

Henry didn't know what to say. Getting a ringer to take the SAT for you. Jesus! Who is this guy? he thought. Ought to call himself 'Dickhead' Gaines. Despite this reaction, Henry's mind instinctively went to analyzing the obstacles to pulling off such a plan.

"Well, the main problem would be the ID. When I took it last year, I wasn't sixteen yet, so I used a copy of my birth certificate. Everyone else had a driver's license, though, and I think if someone who was supposed to be seventeen or eighteen like you are tried to say he couldn't drive a car, they'd look real close at him."

"Hey, I said that's no problem. I can get a real driver's license for you, not a fake one. Your picture on it, my name, address, and birthdate." Henry thought about that for a moment.

"Yeah, sure, I go in to the license bureau, say I'm you and lost my license, they look up your address, take a new picture, and mail you off the new license. Since we're under 21, it can't be a liquor scam, and high school kids don't have any other ID anyway, so what are they going to ask for as proof-a note from your mother? Guys must pull that trick all the time for their underage brothers, sometimes even for friends, if they really trust 'em. Except I'm four inches shorter than you are, and you got blonde hair. They're sure to spot that; and even if they didn't, we still wouldn't get the thing in two weeks, not even if we went for the picture tomorrow." Why the hell am I even talking about this stupid idea? Henry asked himself.

Gaines was impressed at how quickly Henry had realized how to get a real driver's license issued with someone else's picture on it. "You'd be right about the clerk spotting the different description and the time it would take," he said with a broad smile, "except for one thing. My dad owns the license office. I can fill out the forms myself, stamp his signature on it, and tell 'em I need immediate turnaround. Five days, tops." Richard Gaines looked very smug.

Henry frowned. "How can your dad own a driver's license office?" he immediately demanded. 'Those are state offices. Missouri state government owns and operates them." Henry was thinking about all the times he had gone with his father and waited while surly workers had taken their time waiting on them. The first time he had gone by himself, to license his '64 Chevy II Super Sport, the delay had been even worse.

Dick Gaines was almost laughing now, and shaking his head happily. "No, my dad owns one. The state owns the land and the building, but he owns the business. He gets the money from license fees. I can do all the paperwork for the new driver's license tonight." Henry Bowman ignored this last comment. He wanted to know more about this license office setup.

"So...if the state owns the land and the building, how does somebody get to own a driver's license office?" he asked.

"The Governor appoints him," Richard Gaines said proudly.

So that's it Henry thought. Another damned political scam. Fits right in with our new Missouri vehicle inspection law, where you get to hang around a gas station for two hours, waiting for a gangly kid with bad skin to take your money so he can tell you that your horn, turn signals, and brakes are working. His thoughts returned to the license office. Wonder what the Governor got out of this asshole's dad for that little gold mine? More than a pardon ?

Most Missourians, and everyone with politicians or newsmen in their families, knew that Democratic Governors in Missouri sold pardons. Trial lawyers found this practice especially irritating when the Governor charged less than they did, as was the case currently, but there was little they could do about it.

"Yeah-my dad's good friends with the Governor," Gaines lied.

This guy talks too damn much Henry thought. He had no intention of taking the SAT for anyone, but there was no way he would ever do it for Dick Gaines.

"Look, I have to tell you, I'm not wild about this idea. There may not be much chance of getting caught, but if something happened and I did, I'd be up shit creek."

"So would I," Gaines said immediately. Henry snorted.

"Yeah, but you're fucked right now. Your grades are lousy and you're going to bomb on the one test every college uses to level out the applicants from different schools. You got to take some risk. I don't. In fact, I don't need this shit at all."

Richard Gaines was used to being talked to this way from his father, but not from someone he barely knew, and who was two years his junior. He didn't like it at all, and he wanted to get up and leave, but he was desperate.

"Look, I know that. Hey, I came to you, right? Listen, we can work something out. I'd be willing to pay you." Oh, did you originally hope to find someone who'd do it as a favor? Henry thought sarcastically. "But I'm not going to pay someone unless I know he's going to come through."

Trying to take control of this conversation, are we? 'That's not a problem," Henry said easily. "I'm very performance-oriented. I'll guarantee you at least fifteen hundred combined score. That also means each will be over seven hundred. The math will probably be higher than the verbal." Henry's mind was working quickly to come up with terms that would be impossible for Gaines to agree to.