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.

Virgil walked over, and asked, “Suicide?”

“Don’t believe so. The way the slug went through his head, he was leaning away from it, but the shot came in level. We found the bullet hole in the wall, hit a stud. We can dig it out.”

“Brass?”

“One shell. Like you’d get in a suicide.”

“But no note, or anything?”

“Eh, I wouldn’t say not anything. Andorra was divorced, as I understand it, and his ex-wife lives a long way from here. But, he was still sexually active. There’s a box of condoms in the top drawer of his bedroom dresser, a Trojan Super Value Pleasure Pack, hundred-count. Looks like there are about sixty of them left . . . so forty or so were used for protection, unless he was sponsoring a balloon festival.”

“How about the sheets?”

“The sheets are absolutely fresh and unmarked. In my opinion, too fresh and unmarked. It looks like the last thing he did before blowing his brains out, or getting his brains blown out, is that he changed the sheets.”

“Which you normally wouldn’t do before eating a bullet.”

“Can’t tell. Maybe he was naturally neat. Some suicides get all dressed up for the act because they don’t want their bodies to be disrespected.”

* * *

—

Don Baldwin, Sawyer’s partner, stuck his head out the door, and said, “I thought I heard you, Virgil. Another interesting one, huh?”

“I’ve been hearing about it from Bea,” Virgil said. “How you doin’, Don?”

“Got something to add. I should probably tell Beatrice first, you know, so everything stays in the proper bureaucratic channels.”

“Oh, for God’s sakes, Don, what is it?” Sawyer asked. Before he could answer, Sawyer told Virgil, “I’ve got him finishing the scan of the house.”

“Down in the basement, there’s a workbench with a canvas bag full of gun-cleaning tools, earmuffs, and a partial pack of handgun targets,” Baldwin said. “There are four boxes of .45 shells in the bag, two partially used. There’s also a gun safe. I opened it, and there’s a custom slot for a handgun that isn’t there but which would fit a .45 perfectly.”

“Then that’s probably his own gun on the floor,” Virgil said.

Sawyer said, “If that is the case and it’s not a suicide, it brings up the question of how the killer got hold of the gun.”

“Could have just come back from the range with the killer,” Virgil said.

Baldwin said, “There also appears to be a missing rifle. There are two shotguns on one side of the safe, one with a two-power scope, probably a slug gun for deer hunting, the other a twelve-gauge pheasant gun. There’s a .30–06 on the other side, and then an empty slot that looks used, but the barrel would be too slender to be a shotgun. Did I mention that there’s a box of .223 FMJ shells in that range bag?”

“Ah, shit,” Virgil said. “The .223 we’re looking for belonged to Andorra. The guy came here, killed Andorra, and took the rifle.” Everything that Virgil had imagined about the shooter sighting the gun on the range and killing Andorra because Andorra had seen him doing it went out the window.