The muzzle moved a foot to the left, and Virgil took a breath. They stood there like that, and then, a moment later, Laura yelled, “Wardell says he’s a state police officer.”

The guy considered that, then lifted the muzzle, pointing it at the sky. “I thought you were maybe that sniper guy,” he said, “a stranger sneaking around like that.”

Virgil walked up to him. The guy was holding the gun in one hand, and Virgil snatched it away from him, then turned and kicked the guy in the ass—hard. “You fuckhead, you could have killed me. Jesus Christ, I oughta beat the crap out of you. I mean . . . Jesus, going around pointing a shotgun.”

“I thought . . .” the guy moaned, squeezing his ass with one hand.

“You think you see the sniper, call the cops,” Virgil shouted. He was still furious. He broke open the gun’s action and ejected two shells that looked as old as the gun itself.

A woman came out from behind the garage and asked the heavyset man, “Now what have you done, Bram?”

Virgil, shaking his head, shouted at him again, “You fuckin’ moron . . .”

Bram said, “There aren’t any cops. You know how long it takes a cop to get here? A half hour, if you’re lucky. If you live in this town, you take care of yourself.”

Virgil looked at him for another few seconds, then tossed the gun back to him. He kept the shells. “You point this fuckin’ gun at anyone else, I swear to God I’ll stick it so far up your ass you’ll blow your head off if you sneeze.”

“I thought you was the sniper . . .”

Virgil shook his head again. “Man!”

* * *

—

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.”