* * *
—
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.”