Also, he thought, evidence-free.
* * *
—
Virgil walked back down the stairs and into the church, looked up at the half dome that framed the altar. The light fixtures were two-thirds the way up, shelf-like affairs of painted plaster that concealed both the lightbulbs and the service door.
As he headed down a side aisle to the front of the church, Brice called out, “Virgil—hang on.” Brice said something to the men and women gathered around the meeting table, then hurried over to Virgil, and asked, “Was that you rattling around above the altar?”
“Yeah, it was. I didn’t mean to disturb you.”
“What disturbed us was the possibility that it was raccoons or a skunk,” Brice said. “Law enforcement officers are a lot easier to get rid of.”
Virgil laughed, and Brice asked, “Did you find anything interesting?”
“Actually, no.” Virgil scratched his neck and looked up at the altar. “It’s just that . . .”
“You’re looking for a scam, a cheat,” Brice said. “You’re not buying into a miracle.”
“I’m not there yet,” Virgil admitted.
“Neither am I,” Brice said. “If you find that there’s something . . . awkward . . . going on, it probably won’t be directly related to the shootings. In other words, not a crime that would be of professional interest to you. I hope you’d alert me before any announcement.”
Virgil nodded. “I’m not in the business of making announcements even when there is a crime,” he said. “I let other people do that. If I see something . . . awkward . . . I’ll let you know.”
Brice said, “Thank you,” and clapped him on the arm.
As Virgil was leaving, he realized that whatever the origin of the apparition, it probably had nothing to do—and everything to do—with the shootings. He suspected that there would have been no shootings without the apparitions, but the immediate cause of the shootings was something else. As Danielle Visser had suggested, money could be one cause, although a twisted religious fanaticism could be another.
* * *
—
Think of the devil and she shows up: Danielle Visser almost ran over the toes of Virgil’s cowboy boots as he was starting to cross the street and she was pulling over. The window on the passenger side of her truck rolled down, and she leaned across the seat, and said, “Virgil. We got a reply on the BD initials at the shooting range. Bud Dexter called and said he shoots out at Andorra’s from time to time, and when he’s shooting with someone else, he’ll initial his targets.”
Virgil leaned in the window, and asked, “Did he say when he was last out there?”
“I asked him that exact same question, and he said it was a couple of weeks ago,” Visser said.
“How do I get in touch?”
“He works over at the Spam Museum in Austin. He gets off at three, he’ll be home around four or a little before. He’ll hook up with you at Skinner and Holland.”
“Excellent,” Virgil said. “I guess you got nothing on Andorra’s girlfriend or you would have mentioned that first.”
“That’s correct. I gotta tell you, not knowing is killing me. I’ve been matchmaking in my head all morning.”
He fished a notebook out of his pocket, flipped it open, and said, “Somebody mentioned a gunsmith, Bob Martin. Know where I could find him?”
She patted the truck seat. “Hop right in here, and I’ll run you over. Six blocks, and he’s retired, so he’s usually around.”
He hopped in, and she drove him over to Martin’s house. Frankie drove a truck, and Virgil thought about how there was something about truck-driving women that made them even more attractive than they naturally were; even the Eagles sang about it.
Visser was chattering along about nothing, the sun reflecting off the downy hair on her forearms and her near-invisible eyebrows, and if she’d had a little J.J. Cale on the radio, Virgil could have ridden around like that for all eternity, but they got to Martin’s house in three minutes.
She waited on the street while he rang Martin’s doorbell, and when he saw an elderly man making his way onto the porch, he waved at her and she drove away.
Martin was a burly man, probably in his late seventies, unshaven, wearing rimless glasses thick enough to burn ants with. He had a spot of what looked like dried egg yolk on his chin. He peered through the porch’s screen door, and asked, “What?”
Virgil identified himself, and said, “I need to talk to you about what local people might have which guns.”
“I wondered if there might be a cop coming around,” Martin grunted. He pushed the door open, and said, “Come on back. I heard somebody went and shot Glen Andorra.”
“Yeah, but we’re not exactly sure of the circumstances. He was apparently shot with a .45 while he was sitting in his easy chair, and there was a .45 on the floor.”
“A 1911?”
“Yes.”
“Probably his,” Martin said. “I reload for him. Did you find the bullet that killed him?”
“Yes, but I don’t know what it is yet,” Virgil said.
“Check and see if it’s a 230-grain plated roundnose. If it’s plated, not jacketed, it’s one of mine. He supplies the brass, I supply the bullet and powder. I can sell them to him for thirty cents a round and make a dime apiece. I guess that’s gone now,” Martin said. His house smelled like a soft-boiled egg, confirming the yellow spot on his chin. “They’d cost forty cents each if you bought them at a store, so he saves a dime apiece. He probably shoots a thousand rounds a year . . . Saved himself a hundred bucks.”
“Do you know if he had a .223?” Virgil asked, as Martin led him into a dining room that had been converted into a gun-repair shop and pointed him toward one of two leather easy chairs.
“Yeah, he did. Bought it up to Cabelas,” Martin said, as he dropped into one of the leather chairs. “A CZ 527 Varmint with a Leupold variable-power scope. Is that what those people got shot with downtown?”
“I think so. Mr. Andorra’s been dead a couple of weeks, so he didn’t do it. There’s an empty spot in his gun safe.”
“You’re saying it probably wasn’t a suicide, then,” Martin said.
“You could think of ways that it could be . . . He shoots himself, a friend drops in and finds him dead, decides he might as well do a little shopping down in the basement.”
Martin shook his head. “This is a small town. If a guy was going to steal a gun, it wouldn’t be something like that—it’d get spotted in a minute. Got this big, fat bull barrel on it, for one thing.”
“Okay.”
“Anyway, Glen wouldn’t commit suicide. He was tough, one of those guys who can live through hell and who’ll still go every last inch before he gives up the ghost. I don’t believe it would occur to him to shoot himself. Of course, it could have been an accident . . .”
“But the missing .223 wouldn’t be and the people downtown weren’t shot by accident,” Virgil said.
“That’s true,” Martin conceded. “I’ve been thinking about those shootings. One hit in the leg, the next in the hip. That’s either good shooting or bad shooting. Can’t tell until he shoots one more. With that scope and a decent rest, a good shot could keep five rounds inside a playing card at four hundred yards. He either meant to shoot them where he did or he doesn’t know how to use that scope. It’s a real good scope.”
Virgil said, “Huh.” He peered out the room’s side window, letting the silence drag on.
Martin: “You figuring something out?”
“Nobody at the shooting scene heard the shot,” Virgil said. “It just occurred to me that we don’t know that he shot just once. He could have missed, and nobody noticed.”
Martin said, “Somebody should have heard the shots.”
“Can’t find them if they did,” Virgil said.
; “You’re sure they were shot with a .223?”
“Seems most likely. Why?”
“A .243 might do a similar amount of damage if it was a solid point. I know a guy in town who could shoot a two-inch group at four hundred yards, half minute of angle, but his go-to gun is a Remington 700 in .243. He does have a .223, and I believe more than one. Nice enough guy. The only thing that brings him to mind is, he’s a little gun nuts.”
“Nuts, how?”
“You know that big-titted girl that shoots the bow and arrow in that movie?” Martin asked.
Virgil thought he did.
“This guy would rather play with his guns than play motorboat with that girl,” Martin said.
“Okay, I’m gonna need his name,” Virgil said. And, “You’re a dirty old man.”
“Yeah, well, at my age, that’s what I got,” Martin said. His tongue flicked out and picked up the egg on his chin. He said, “Mmm.”
8
The gun nut’s name was Clay Ford. A tall, too-thin man with silvery eyes who appeared to be in his early forties, he was wearing a cowboy hat inside his house; otherwise, he was dressed like Virgil: T-shirt, jeans, and cowboy boots. He lived three blocks over from Martin, and when he saw Virgil standing on his porch, he said, “I didn’t do it. If I had done it, I’d have done it better.”
“Well, you don’t know that,” Virgil said through the screen door. “’Cause if you didn’t do it, you probably don’t know what he was doing. He shot two people and he did it under the pressure of shooting another human being and then having to get away with it. And he probably did it from four or five hundred yards away. Maybe farther, because nobody heard the shots.”
Ford scratched his chin, and said, “Everybody in town knows that Glen Andorra’s been killed and that you think it goes together with the people shot downtown. Why would he murder Glen and then shoot two people to wound? Why not murder them, too? Won’t make any difference if he’s caught. And if he’s trying for a public relations disaster, murder is better than dinging somebody up.”
Virgil said, “Maybe because he had to kill Glen to get the gun, but he didn’t have to kill the others, so he didn’t?”
“That’s a goddamn generous way of looking at it,” Ford said. “If he’d killed Glen, I don’t think he’d much care about the others, especially if they were out-of-towners. I could be wrong.” He pushed the door open. “You better come in. I’ll show you my guns.”
“You obviously know who I am,” Virgil said, as he followed him inside.
“Everybody in town knows who you are,” Ford said over his shoulder. “Danny Visser put up a story on the town blog and links to some newpaper stories about you. I liked the one where all those school board members were arrested for murder. You ought to arrest more government people, IMHO.” He said the letters as words: “Eye Em Aich Oh.”
* * *
—
Virgil was mildly annoyed that Visser had put up newspaper stories about him but said nothing as he followed Ford through his neatly kept house to what once had been the master bedroom. Ford had covered the windows with slabs of heavy sheet plywood, “to defeat possible burglaries,” he said. “I don’t want to arm any criminals.”
He had a gun workbench against one wall and eight high-end gun safes, which he said were anchored to the house’s concrete slab. He used a magnetic card to open the safes; he had forty guns.
“I divide them into three groups,” he said, pointing at them as he read them off. “My carry guns, all pistols, nine-millimeter or .45. And my rifles: .22, .223, .243, .308. And if that won’t do it, one Barrett .50 cal.”
“Why so many?” Virgil asked.
“There’s a day coming in this country when you’re gonna need a gun to survive,” Ford said. “That’s why I’m living here in Wheatfield. It’ll take the dictator’s men a while to get here, and that’ll give us time to organize.”
He was completely unself-conscious about it. Virgil said, “Okay.”
Ford was just getting warmed up. He waved an arm at the gun safes, and said, “That’s why I have all these different calibers. What do you notice about them?”
Virgil shrugged. “I don’t know . . . Maybe they’re all pretty accurate?”
“Of course they’re that. They’re my guns, and I won’t have an inaccurate gun in the house,” Ford said. “But they’re common, that’s the main thing. Every one of them, except the .50. There’s no more common pistol ammo than nine-millimeter or .45 ACP, except maybe .22, which would be worthless as an anti-personnel round in a SHTF situation.” He pronounced the letters individually again: “Ess Aich Tee Eff.” “The grid goes down, people can’t get food or gasoline, transportation falls apart . . . You won’t fight off the incoming with a .22. The only thing a .22 will be good for is hunting. I got ten thousand rounds, which is a lot of rabbit. Along with thousands of square miles of corn, to eat and feed the animals with, we got a chance of making it. I got fifteen semiauto .223s in there, and I got fifteen thousand rounds of ammo—enough to set up my own platoon, to defend us. I got six .308s for sniper teams, along with the Barrett. Of course, to use them right, we’d have to have time to train. Nobody wants to train. They think I’m goofy.”
Virgil understood “SHTF” to mean a “Shit Hits The Fan” situation.
“Interesting,” he said. He bobbed his head, and said, in his best gun nut voice, “I would have put in a couple of twelve-gauge shotguns. They’re good threat guns when you don’t want to shoot anyone but might have to. They’d also be good for pheasant, in a SHTF case.”
Ford regarded him levelly for five seconds or so, then said, “Now you’re fuckin’ with me. You think I’m goofy, too. I admit, it could turn out that way. New generation—could be all sweetness and light. That’s not the way I see it, though. A rising tide of mean little fascist rats, is what I see.”
* * *
—
Virgil swerved away from the argument: “Who do you think might have done the shooting in town?”
Ford tilted his head back, his eyes going to the ceiling. “I don’t have a candidate right now. If you’d asked me before yesterday who was the best shot in town, I wouldn’t have hesitated: me. But now you bring up some interesting points . . . If he shot them from far enough away that nobody heard the shots, and he wasn’t shooting to kill, then he’s got to be good. On the other hand, I suspect he hadn’t figured out the drop over the distance he was shooting and underestimated it. He hits that first man in the leg, then the woman up higher. Next one will get it in the heart. If that’s what happens, we’ll all know he was using live targets to sight his rifle. Seems like he might be a guy who knows how to hold on target but has only shot some other rifle before, like a little .22, and doesn’t know about ballistics. About the sound thing—nobody hearing the shot—that could mean he’s got a suppressor.”
“He’s maybe using a CZ .223 Varmint that he took from Glen Andorra,” Virgil said. “Did Andorra have a suppressor?”
“Not that I ever saw,” Ford said. “I was out there a lot, too. I even shot that particular gun a couple of times, if it’s the same one the killer is using. It’s decent; if you gave it to me, I’d want to tune it, but it’s decent as is. It wasn’t threaded for a suppressor, or, at least, it wasn’t when I fired it, which was probably a year ago or more. Didn’t have a muzzle brake, either. You need a muzzle brake if you go the quick-attach route for your suppressor. If he bought a suppressor on his own, he had to get a federal permit for it. You could check that.”
Like most hunters, Virgil liked to talk guns from time to time, but he was out of his depth with Ford. “You don’t know anybody who can shoot up to your standard?”
“Not in town. There are some good shots, by any regular standard, guys who can keep it inside a minute of angle, as long as they’ve got the time and are shooting with a support. You can see them every day ou
t at Glen’s. I’ve never seen Wardell Holland shoot, but he was infantry in Afghanistan, or Iraq, so he’s probably an okay shot . . . I kinda asked around about him, and he was in his store, with people talking to him, when the shootings happened, so he’s out. Old Man Martin, he’s a local gunsmith; his eyes are so bad, he couldn’t hit the side of a barn from the inside. Glen was a hunter-level rifle shot, and a better pistol shot, bordering on good, with his .45, but, of course, he’s dead. No, I can’t think of anyone in town who’d be good enough to make those shots from way out on purpose. You gotta consider the possibility that the placement of the shots was accidental.”
“Where were you when those people got shot, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“Surprised it took you this long to ask,” Ford said, with a thin grin. He’d taken a .223 black rifle from one of the safes and was handling it, turning it, as easily as a drum major twirling a baton. “I got my own business doing computer maintenance and WiFi installations, and also solar panel sales; I got an associate who does the installation on the solar panels. With that first shooting, I was at the Creighton house over in Fairmont. It’s new construction, big house, they want WiFi in every room and solar on the roof. George and Elizabeth Creighton—they were both there the whole time I was. The second shooting, I was sitting in Elmer’s Tap, off the Interstate, eating a hamburger and watching some guys shoot pool. I can give you names and all.”
Virgil took a card from his pocket, wrote his BCA email address on the back, and said, “I believe you, but this is murder, so I gotta check. Email me the names.”
“I’ll do that soon as you’re out the door,” Ford said.
“What about the Nazis?”
Ford made a farting sound with his mouth. “Those guys are an embarrassment to the whole county. When the SHTF, they’ll probably get eaten first.” He hesitated, then added, “I’ll tell you, though, they got one little woman out there, name of Rose, if she wanted to move in with me . . . I’d say yes in a New York minute. She’s got a sense of humor, and she’s not a bad shot, either. She’s a little wild, but maybe you need somebody like that when the SHTF.”
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