Virgil turned to the woman. “Thank you for helping out. I apologize for the language, but he scared me to death.”
“He didn’t mean no harm,” she said, anxiously twisting her hands together. She was also heavyset and also windburned; they had to be husband and wife, Virgil realized.
“Doesn’t make any difference if he meant no harm,” Virgil said, his voice softening. “If he’d jiggled that trigger, he’d have cut me in half.”
Bram and Laura Smit—“Not Smith, Smit, ending with the ‘t’”—disagreed about the sniper’s gunshots. They’d been home when the two shootings took place, and Laura Smit hadn’t heard anything that might have been a gunshot. Bram thought he might have, but was uncertain.
Laura said, “That was your tinnitus, honey.”
Bram shook his head. “I’ll tell you why I know I heard it. Because with the second one, I called it before we knew anybody was shot.”
“That’s true,” Laura admitted.
Now Virgil was interested. “What did it sound like, exactly? Was it close by?”
“Couldn’t tell where it came from, how close it was, or anything, but it didn’t sound like a gun,” he said. “It sounded like when you’re downstairs and somebody upstairs drops a boot. More like a thump than a bang. Not too loud. With the first one, I went to see if Laura had fallen or something, but she hadn’t, so I almost forgot about it. Then, later that day, we heard about the shooting down by the church, and I wondered if I might have heard the shot.”
“You tell anyone?”
“Well, no, because I really didn’t think I had,” Smit said.
“But the second shot . . .”
“Yesterday afternoon, I had my head in the refrigerator and I heard that sound again. I went and found Laura, and said, ‘I heard it again,’ and she thought I was imagining it. Then we found out somebody had been shot again.”
“Did you tell anyone about that?”
“I talked him out of it,” Laura confessed. “I didn’t think, you know, it was any of our business . . . if there’s somebody around shooting people. Bram got his gun out . . . I mean, there aren’t any police around here, Virgil. Not since Wally left, and that was three years ago. We’re on our own, and I don’t want to go poking a stick in a hornet’s nest.”
Virgil walked around the garage with them, into their house, which smelled like cookies because Laura had been baking. Virgil accepted a peanut butter cookie and looked out some of the windows; from nowhere in the house could he see the place where either of the victims had been standing when they were shot.
They went out in the yard, and he looked at the other houses in the neighborhood. As far as he could see, none of them had clear sight lines to the shooting scenes, but, then, the shooter wouldn’t need much of an opening. A .223 slug was about the thickness of an ordinary number 2 pencil—if the shooter could find an opening the size of a soup can, he’d be able to use a scope and have a clear line between the muzzle and the target. In other words, he could shoot right through most solid-looking trees, just as you can see blue skies through most trees if you look around a little.
He accepted a second cookie, and said to Bram, “I’m sorry I kinda lost it there, but I’ve had too many guns pointed at me lately. I’m going to give you a card, and if you think of anything I might need to know, or if you hear the sound again, give me a call.”
Smit nodded. “I will. We’re not Catholics, but that church saved the town. Everybody knows that. This crazy man could send us back to the poorhouse.”
* * *
—
Virgil spent another half hour wandering around the area on the back side of Main Street but didn’t see anything that made him want to look closer.
He went back to Main Street, got an exceptionally bad cheeseburger and even worse fries at Mom’s Cafe, the only restaurant he could find, then headed back to Skinner & Holland. Skinner was behind the cash register, and Virgil picked up a package of cinnamon gum to get the taste of the burger out of his mouth, paid most of a dollar for it, and dropped the change in a jar that said “Tips. Help the Deserving.”
“You the deserving?” Virgil asked Skinner.
“Maybe,” he said.
“How come this place is called Skinner and Holland, Eats and Souvenirs, and the only eats you’ve got are Sno Balls and Cheetos and fake-cheese crackers?” Virgil asked.
“There’re some frozen entrées in the freezer, and you’re welcome to use the microwave,” Skinner said. “That’s what me’n Wardell mostly eat. We’re talking about starting a diner, but we haven’t found the right venue. And Holland’s mom would get pissed. She owns Mom’s Cafe.”
“She sure doesn’t need the competition,” Virgil said. “I ate the worst cheeseburger of my life there about five minutes ago.”
Skinner winced, and said, “I wouldn’t wander too far from a toilet. They got three cooks there; we call them Hepatitis A, B, and C. That burger’s gonna hit the bottom of the bucket in one piece, if you know what I mean.”
“I do,” Virgil said. “Maybe I ought to start a cafe if you’re afraid to piss off Holland’s mom.”
Holland had come up behind him, and now he said, “Who’s gonna piss off Mom?”
Skinner said, “Virgil got a cheeseburger down at the cafe.”
“That’ll teach you,” Holland said. “God knows where the meat comes from. Probably from a veterinarian’s.” Then, “Figure anything out?”
“Found a guy who thinks he might have heard the shots; I need to check some sight lines.” A couple of customers had edged up to listen in. Virgil said, “We can talk about it later.”
“That’s more than anybody else has gotten,” Holland said.
“If you could prove that it’s Holland’s mom who did the shooting, it’d benefit everybody,” Skinner said.
“Except Mom,” Holland added. To Virgil: “You had a hepatitis shot?”
“Already heard that joke,” Virgil said.
Skinner and Holland looked at each other, and then Skinner said, “That wasn’t a joke.”
“Ah, Jesus,” Virgil said.
* * *
—
Virgil left Skinner & Holland, chewing his way through the pack of gum, walked around to his truck, opened his camera case and took out his Nikon and a long lens. He hung the camera on a shoulder and got a pair of image-stabilizing Canon binoculars out of the gear box in the back. After locking the truck, he trudged over to where the shooting victims were hit and glassed the west side of the business district, picking out spots where a shot might have come from.
There were several. He took a series of photos that he could later review on his iPad.
On his way back to the truck, he saw Skinner leaving the store.
“Solved the restaurant problem,” Skinner said.
“Yeah?”
“Taco truck,” Skinner said. “Who doesn’t like tacos? On top of the tourists, we got a whole bunch of Mexicans in town, so that’d add to the market. Bet there’s a truck up in the Cities that we could buy—I’m gonna look at it this week. Get it going. Maybe we could find a Mexican lady to run it. I know there are some in town who make damn good tacos ’cause I’ve eaten them.”
“Why don’t you start a corporation?” Virgil said.
“Where would that get us?” Skinner asked.
“It’d give me an opportunity to buy some of your stock.”
“Ah,” Skinner said. “Hmm. Let me think about that.”
4
Virgil downloaded the photos to his iPad and walked back to the business district, checking the photographs for holes in the foliage or any other place where the shots might have come from. He discovered that the photos were a lot less help than he’d imagined they’d be. If the shot had come from that area, it could have come from anywhere.
When he finished, it was late in the afternoon. He heard the bells from St. Mary’s, saw a rush of people cross the street to the church for the first Mass. Nobody had been shot, so he went back to his car, found the address where Holland had arranged a room, and drove over.