Behind them, two deputies came up the stairs, carrying the collie in a blanket they’d stripped off a second-floor bed. They’d folded it like a hammock, with the dog slung inside. One of the cops had a sack of dog treats in his car and he fed peanut butter–flavored cookies to the collie, who ate them slowly, but wanted another. And another.
“Motherfucker who’d lock a live dog down in the basement,” Zimmer said. “I don’t think Glen would do that if he decided to kill himself. He’d at least let the dog outside. If Glen was murdered . . . Well, I can understand shooting somebody, but why would you do that to a dog?”
“If it’s the Wheatfield shooter, we already know he’s an asshole,” Virgil said. “I don’t think a dog would mean much to him.”
* * *
—
Zimmer looked back at Andorra’s body, waved toward it, and asked, “Suppose he was murdered. This tell you anything? The whole . . . you know . . .”
“The shooter probably came out to the range regularly enough that Glen knew what he was shooting. I’ll say in passing that the Nazis used to come out here until Glen kicked them out, though that doesn’t prove anything,” Virgil said. “I think the gun on the floor will turn out to be the weapon that killed him.”
“In my experience, people who like military stuff are attracted to 1911 .45s. Nazi people.”
“Still not proof,” Virgil said. “Besides, they might be more attracted to Lugers or something German. You also have to consider that Glen didn’t like those guys—but he let the killer come right into his TV room. Working backwards from that, I’d say that the shooter was somebody he knew fairly well and who shot him because he knew that Glen had seen him sighting a .223. Or knew he was a good shot with a .223. Also, the guy had a big handgun, which means he’s not a casual target shooter. He likes guns, and he probably has several.”
“There are fourteen thousand people in Lamy County, half of them women. And of the other half, half of them are too young or too old and feeble to pull this off. That leaves about thirty-five hundred male suspects, and we can eliminate most of them by reading through the phone book and saying no,” Zimmer said. “That ought to get us down to a few hundred.”
“I’d bet that one of your deputies knows the shooter personally and knows that he has some guns,” Virgil said. “Ask them. Ask who they think it could be.”
Zimmer nodded. “I’ll do that. And I gotta find Glen’s son. My wife thinks he lives up in the Cities somewhere.”
“Glen didn’t have a wife?”
“Divorced. My wife thinks his ex lives in Seattle.”
“Maybe I should be talking to your wife,” Virgil said.
“I don’t think you’re ready for that,” Zimmer says. “You’d need several years of preparation.”
* * *
—
Virgil’s boss, Jon Duncan, called to say that the crime scene crew was loading up, but it’d be 7:30 before they made it down. Virgil locked the doors of the house with a key he found in a kitchen cupboard, turned the scene over to the deputies, telling them that he’d be back at 8, and warned them not to go inside.
The dog was gone, loaded into one of the sheriff’s SUVs and taken to a shelter. “Hope he’s not too far gone. You let a dog go too long without water and it kills his kidneys,” Zimmer said. “That’s a good mutt. I’d take him myself if I didn’t already have three.”
* * *
—
Virgil caught Willie Nelson singing “Stardust” on the satellite radio on his way back to town; listened and thought about how far the song was from the afternoon’s death scene. He needed something to eat before what would be a long night but stopped at the Vissers’ to take a shower and change clothes to get the stink of the dead man off him. As he was parking, a battered Jeep pulled up to the front of the house, and Wardell Holland got out.
“I heard,” he said. “Must’ve been ugly.”
“Still is,” Virgil said. “You know anybody who can operate a .45?”
Holland rolled his eyes up, thinking, then said, “Nope. Haven’t had them in the Army for quite a long time, but they were always a popular gun, so I’m sure there are some around. Bob Martin—he lives over on Walnut—does some gunsmithing, he might know.”
Roy Visser came out, slapped hands with Holland, said to Virgil, “We were in the Army at the same time. He was a hero; I fixed trucks.”
“Trucks were more important than lieutenants,” Holland said.
“That’s true,” Visser said. To Virgil: “Did you talk to Glen?”
“Glen’s dead,” Virgil said.
Visser’s mouth literally dropped open, and Virgil scratched him off any possible list of suspects.
“Shot? Somebody shot him?”
Virgil nodded. “Sometime back. Probably more than a week, maybe even two.”
“Holy cow . . . What about his dog?”
Virgil shook his head. “Locked in the basement. There was a sack of dog food on the landing, he had ripped it open, but he was hurting for water. Still alive, last time I saw him. Got some water in him.”
“Oh, man. That’s Pat. Pat the dog. World’s best dog. Where is he?”
“Took him to the shelter,” Virgil said.
“I’ll go out and take a look,” Visser said. “We lost our Lucky a year ago; it’s about time we got another one.”
Virgil said, “Do that. I’ll call Zimmer and fix it. I need to get something to eat and get back out to Andorra’s place.”
“Hell, Danny’ll fix you something,” Visser said. “C’mon. And you kinda stink, so throw your stuff in the washer. I’ll go see about Pat, later on . . .”
“Gonna need a vet,” Virgil said. “He was locked down there for days.”
“I got a vet,” Visser said. “You c’mon, eat. And, Wardell, you need something to eat, too. You can’t eat any more of that shit from the store.”
“I resemble that remark,” Holland said.
Visser herded them inside. Virgil went to take a shower and change clothes; Danielle got his clothes and carried them away while he was still in the shower. He wasn’t particularly body shy, and she apparently wasn’t easily impressed, so that’s what happened, and without unnecessary commentary. When Virgil made it back to the kitchen, she’d warmed up leftover meat loaf and nuked a bag of frozen french fries.
“I’m going out to the shelter with Roy,” she told Virgil. “I know Pat.”
The food wasn’t great, but it was hot, and tolerable when covered with ketchup, and Holland rambled on about the Marian apparitions being a mixed blessing: “If they hadn’t happened, Glen would probably still be alive.”
“Maybe, but the town would be dead,” Roy Visser said, “And you’d still be sitting in that double-wide shooting flies.” To Virgil: “I suspect he shoots them sitting, but he claims he wing-shoots them.”
“I’d never shoot a sitting fly,” Holland said.
“That’s not what Skinner told me,” Danielle said.
Roy Visser’s eyes narrowed, and he asked, “You been talking to Skinner?”
“Shut up, Roy. He’s a nice boy.”
“He’s screwed half the women and girls in town, and I don’t want him messing around in my territory,” Roy Visser said. “But I would like to know what that boy’s magic is.”
“You don’t need to know,” Danielle Visser said. “You already got me.”
“And the answer’s simple,” Holland said.
They all waited.
“He likes women,” Holland said.
Roy Visser and Virgil looked at each other, then Virgil said, “We all like women.”
“Yeah, but Skinner really likes women. Not just sex. He likes women. Young women, old women. I’ve seen him bullshitting ninety-year-olds. Making them laugh, too. Getting a twinkle from them.”
Roy Visser said, “Whoa! That’s kinda nasty.”
“I didn’t say he was screwing them. He likes them and they know it. That’s his whole secret.”
They contemplated that, then Danielle Visser said to her husband, “Let’s go get Pat. All you men can think about is Skinner liking women and what you might learn from it.”
* * *
—
When they finished dinner, Virgil drove back to Andorra’s house. Bea Sawyer was standing on the mudroom stoop when he got there, a 3M mask hanging under her chin. In addition to the crime scene van, there were two sheriff’s cars in the yard, with the deputies leaning on fenders and chatting with each other. The chances that Sawyer, the crime scene crew chief, would let a deputy into her crime scene were nonexistent.