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"I know I look like him," Keller said, "and you’re not the first person to notice the resemblance, but I’m not him and I can prove it"

"You just save your story for the lahy don’t you?" And the hand that wasn’t holding the gun reached for the phone

"I’m not him, I swear it," Keller said

"What did I just say? You got an explanation, there’s ot to say"

"The law’s afterelse"

"How’s that?"

"Ali bitch and the kid’s not mine, and we even proved that with DNA tests and the courts still say I gotta support him"

"You must have had some lawyer"

"Look, letfro for peruy’s chest before he could get off a shot

13

The impact had knocked the one to the floor with it, losing his Homer Simpson cap on the way down Keller went around the counter and checked him, but it was just a formality Both bullets had entered the left side of his chest, and at least one of them had found his heart, and that was that

Keller’s ears were ringing frounshots, and his hand ached a little froh theThere was a car parked at one of the pu for the second or two it took hiht where he’d parked it

The dead er, and Keller had heard stories of ers curling at the onset of rigor ht even have been a plot element in a comic book he’d read as a child, but in any event he wanted the gun It was a SIG Sauer automatic with a fully loaded fifteen-shot clip, and his own revolver was down to two bullets, and had just been used in a hoe as it had looked, there was nothing like having a gun pointed at you to h it was in fact a little larger and heavier than the revolver He tried it where he’d been carrying the revolver, and it rode there just fine, and he figured that closed the deal

He wiped his prints fro the still-warger guard No one was terribly likely to buy the idea that the old guy had shot hiood a place as any to stow the revolver, and at the very least it would give so to think about

He looked for a cash register and didn’t see one There was an old wooden Garcia y Vega cigar box on the counter, and that turned out to be where the fellow kept cash and credit card slips The cash was all fives and singles, with a couple of tens in theand hard at the twenty, Keller thought It was probably the first one he’d seen all month

He didn’t particularly want to touch the dead ht-hand hip pocket of the n en so worn and weathered that Keller could barely make out what it was He could see it was a crest of some sort, and it looked familiar, but he couldn’t place it

Inside the wallet, he found the very same crest on the card that identified its owner, Miller L Re of the National Rifle Association Guns don’t kill people, Keller thought Sticking your broken nose in other people’s business, that’s what kills people