As they walked toward it, Brice said quietly, “We have to have our meetings in the church. There used to be a rectory right outside, where the little park is, but it burned down thirty years ago. Never replaced.” He added, “Probably shouldn’t go wandering around the altar, but you can see the back parts of the church if you take the stairs over there.”
He pointed out the left side of the transept as he turned right, toward the men around the table. Virgil went left, out a door at the end of the transept, where he found a closet containing threadbare vestments and church paraphernalia, a tiny kitchen, two restrooms, a room full of new-looking cleaning gear—push brooms, mops, buckets—and a back door. The door opened to the parking lot. He went back inside.
Everything about the structure was old and not recently repaired, but originally had been well built and well fitted with brick and oak, and now it was very clean, as if every inch had been scrubbed by hand. Virgil realized that being the scene of a miracle, it probably had been.
A door that must have been directly behind the altar, which was on the other side of the wall, opened to a narrow winding stairway. Virgil took it up to the top of the tower. There was still a bell there, but both it and its clapper had been tied off with heavy blue nylon ropes that appeared to be years old, if not decades.
Openings to the street were covered with louvers. There were four newer-looking 4×12 Marshall speaker cabinets perched on metal racks so that they faced up and down Main Street, with two amplifier heads connected to a central control unit connected to a CD player. Three CD cases sat next to the player: three identical copies of the Bells of Notre-Dame.
Nothing to see up there, Virgil thought. He went back down the stairs; partway down, there was a small maintenance door in the wall. Virgil tried to open it, but it was locked.
He listened for the sound of anyone nearby, then took out his pocketknife and went to work on the simple lock; opening it only took a few seconds. The door was less than half height and opened on a crawl space that was behind the altar but within the wall that separated the altar from the back rooms. The space went in both directions and apparently was used to service the lights that illuminated the altar.
He crawled a few feet to his left, to a small door in the wall. When he opened it, he found himself looking at a floodlight. The door wouldn’t be visible from below, and he couldn’t see down, only the back of the light fixture. He closed the door and crawled back out. He noticed that while the walls of the crawl space were made of aging plaster, everything was remarkably clean and dust-free.
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.”