“Give me fifteen minutes. I’ll pick you up,” Virgil said. “You got the arrows?”
“No, the sheriff’s got them. Carbon fiber, identical; three broadhead blades, sharp as razors. When we get the guy, maybe he’ll have a few more to match.”
When Virgil had bought his Tahoe, he’d negotiated to get premium seat covers thrown in the deal. They resembled the real leather seats beneath them but were actually a skillfully manufactured vinyl, because Virgil often transported untoward people and occasionally things like bait buckets. That had paid off, because when he went out to get in the truck, he found the passenger seat covered with dried blood.
He spent five minutes, and used most of a roll of paper towels and half a bottle of Formula 409, cleaning it up. When Jenkins got in the truck, he sniffed, and said, “Four-oh-nine . . . Original, not Lemon Fresh.”
“The policeman’s friend,” Virgil said.
At the Fairmont medical center, they found Shrake awake and in a bad mood—but a groggy bad mood, more pissy than violent: “They say I’m staying here for three or four days. If I keep running my mouth, they’ll keep me for a week.”
“Must have some smart people running the place to shut you up like that,” Jenkins said. “So, you gonna live?”
“I don’t feel like it right now, but they don’t seem to be concerned about how I feel,” Shrake grumbled.
“Still hurt?” Jenkins asked.
“It’s more annoying, than anything, and I expect I’ll be annoyed for several more weeks, from what they tell me.”
“Any good-looking nurses?”
“Yes. They already worship me.”
Jenkins suggested that the scar would tighten up Shrake’s wild golf drive, and Shrake advised him to go fuck himself. “Attaboy,” Virgil said. “You’re on the way back.”
Virgil apologized again for setting up the trap to catch the shooter, but Shrake waved him off. “We had nothing, and it coulda worked, shoulda worked. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking, though, standing around in the night with a flashlight, looking for a guy in camo and carrying a bow. What’d I think was gonna happen if I found him?”
* * *
—
They talked for a few more minutes, said good-bye, and Virgil and Jenkins headed back to Wheatfield. When they got there, they found Zimmer and five deputies working the neighborhood where the shooter had been seen, going door-to-door. Virgil told Zimmer about Shrake’s condition, and Zimmer nodded, and said, “This guy’s local, and he’s a bow hunter and a shooter. There are going to be several dozen guys in town who fit that description, and a few hundred around the county.”
“What about Osborne?” Virgil asked. “Margery’s son. Is he a bow hunter?”
“I don’t know—I could ask. What’re you thinking?”
“I’m thinking that he lives up in that corner of town, where we last saw the shooter. And he’s directly connected to Margery.”
Zimmer said, “I’m not doing anything. Why don’t we go ask him?”
“I’ll come along, in case I have to kill him,” Jenkins said.
Zimmer looked at him strangely, then said, “If you do, don’t hit me with the ricochet.”
“It’ll be one of those bare hands deals,” Jenkins said. “If he’s the guy, I plan to yank his lungs out.”
“Okay, then,” Zimmer said. “Meet you there.”
* * *
—
At Osborne’s house, Zimmer was leading the way to his front door when Virgil glanced at the van in the driveway, noted the logo on the side, hooked Zimmer’s arm, and asked, “‘Steam Punk’—that’s a rug-cleaning company?”
“That’s what it is.”
“When we went into Andorra’s house, there were two rolled-up rugs in the kitchen. You think he could have been waiting for . . . Osborne? Or maybe Osborne delivered them, and Andorra never had the chance to unroll them?”
They all looked at one another, and then Zimmer said, “Damn,” and Jenkins said, “I’ll rip his lungs out.”
Virgil said, “Wait, wait, wait . . . it’s not a sure thing. We need to look at Andorra’s checkbook, or his bank records, or his credit cards, and see if he paid Osborne and when . . .”
Osborne’s door popped open, and Osborne, dressed in jeans and a “Steam Punk” T-shirt, looked out at them, and called, “Are you coming here?”
Virgil said, “Yeah . . . we’re working our way through the neighborhood. We’re trying to figure out who’s a bow hunter and who isn’t.”
“Well, I’m not,” Osborne said. “I don’t hunt anything. Guns, bows, spears—nothing.”
Virgil was momentarily nonplussed. “Really?”
“Yeah, really,” Osborne said. “Bow hunting is barbaric. Bow hunters retrieve less than half the animals they shoot. The rest are left to die out in the woods and rot.”
“All right,” Virgil said. “I’m sorry we disturbed you. We’re asking around. Another question: was Glen Andorra a rug-cleaning client of yours?”
“Nope. Never was. I did know him, but not well. Why do you ask?”
Virgil considered not answering the question but, after a few seconds, said, “He had a couple of rolled-up rugs in his kitchen when he got killed. Like he didn’t have a chance to unroll them. Or maybe he was waiting for them to be picked up.”
“Okay. Well, you have to understand, I don’t haul rugs around with me. I steam them right in the client’s house, and it’s hardly ever rugs, it’s wall-to-wall carpet. If somebody has good rugs, like Persians, they’d take them to a specialty house. If they’re crappy rugs, they’ll clean them by themselves, with cleaner they get at the hardware store. It’s the wall-to-wall carpet they can’t clean by themselves, because you gotta have the machinery that’ll suck the cleaning fluid back up out of the rug. If you pour fluid on them and then try to soak it up with a mop or something, it’ll stink to high heaven for weeks.”
That was more than Virgil needed to know about the rug-cleaning business, and he thanked Osborne again, and said to Jenkins and Zimmer, “Time to move on.”
* * *
—
They sort of trotted back to their vehicles, and, when they got there, Zimmer asked, “What do you think?”
“I think he sounded real,” Virgil said, looking back at Osborne’s house. “I can tell you, the guy last night knew what he was doing. He had the gear, too—the camo. He shot Shrake in the dark at, what, twenty-five yards? If that arrow had been three inches farther forward, it would have gone through Shrake’s heart. And he hit me right in the heart.”
Jenkins chipped in. “I’m with Virgil. He sounded real to me, too.”
Zimmer asked, “Do you think he was right about recovering deer? I’ve been thinking about getting a bow.”
“I bow-hunt, and I’m eight for ten, so . . . what’s that? A twenty percent loss rate?” Virgil said. “I’m gonna have to think about it.”
“You a good shot?” Zimmer asked.
“Yeah, I am,” Virgil said. “Most bow hunters aren’t. There’s a tavern up where I hunt that has a shoot-out the night before the season opener. I’ve seen guys who couldn’t get an arrow inside a full-sized paper plate at twenty yards. These were guys who actually entered an archery contest.”
Jenkins: “So what we’re looking for is a guy who probably isn’t primarily a gun hunter, because he had to steal the gun he’s using and he killed to do it. But he’s probably an expert shot with a bow, which takes practice.”
“Lots of practice,” Virgil said. “Let’s ask around.”
* * *
—
Virgil and Jenkins drove back to Skinner & Holland, where the back room had become their unofficial headquarters. Neither one of them had eaten breakfast, so they got potpies out of the freezer, carried them back to the microwave, and nuked them.
“We still haven’t figured out a motive,” Jenkins said. “We could get the names of every bow hunter in the county, but if we can’t figure out a motive, and we can’t prove where he was at the time of the killings . . . we’re toast.”