Holy Ghost (Virgil Flowers #11)(10)
Virgil identified himself, and Bilbija let him in and pointed to a stairway that led to a second-floor office and storage room. Virgil looked in both, but neither had a window that a sniper could have shot out of. A ladder, bolted to the wall, led to the roof, with a hatch held in place by heavy hooks, the kind seen on barn doors.
“I don’t know the last time that was opened, but it’s been a while. When we retarred the roof—that was, mmm, five years ago?—we did it with ladders from the outside,” Bilbija said.
Virgil climbed the ladder anyway, got the hooks loose, and when he pushed up on the hatch a double handful of dust rained down on his hair and shoulders.
He managed to heave the hatch up onto the roof and climbed outside. When he looked at the hatch, he decided Bilbija was right: the thing hadn’t been opened in years, and part of the problem with pushing it open was that it had been tarred shut.
On the other hand, the roof had good sight lines to the places where the shooting victims had been standing. When Virgil walked around the roof, he found the second floor was built over half the structure, with the back half dropping to a single story. If someone had a short ladder—not even a stepladder but one of the three-step stools used to reach high cupboards—he could have climbed onto the back roof, then used the stool to climb to the top. Getting down would be even faster, if it had become necessary to flee. He could have gone from roof to roof with no more than a three-foot drop.
If the shooter climbed up and down the back of the building, between the wall and the dumpster by the kitchen door, he might even do it unseen.
Virgil put it down as a possibility. The roof didn’t show any footprints, discarded DNA-laden cigarette butts, a book of matches from a sleazy nightclub, an accidentally dropped driver’s license, or any other fictional possibilities, so he went back down the hatch and pulled it shut.
“Find anything?” Bilbija asked.
“A nice view, but . . . no.”
“Didn’t think you would,” Bilbija said. “Say, you want a beer or a quick shot to keep you going? I got a nice rye.”
* * *
—
Virgil declined the offer and worked his way back up Main Street, this time behind the stores on the west side, and found a more complicated situation, a mix of mostly ramshackle prewar houses and small businesses, some of them in converted houses. The ProNails place had a dusty, handwritten “Out of Business” sign in a window, but Auto Heaven, Buster’s Better Quality Meats, and Trudy’s Hi-Life Consignment were still operating; nobody had heard a shot fired.
Because of the way the houses and businesses were mixed, there were multiple spaces and slots between hedges and behind fences where a rifleman could have hidden. Virgil was lining up a theoretical shot down toward the churches when a man’s voice called, “Hold it right there! I got a gun on you!”
Virgil raised his hands: “I’m a cop. Don’t shoot.”
A heavyset man in a blue T-shirt and a ragged pair of Dickies coveralls stepped out from behind a garage twenty feet away. He was maybe fifty, balding, with a wind-eroded face. He was aiming an ancient twelve-gauge double-barreled shotgun at Virgil’s stomach. “Cop, my ass.”
“Call the sheriff, ask him. Call the mayor. My name is Flowers, I’m with the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.” Virgil was talking fast and trying to keep his voice from shaking, not entirely successfully.
The guy looked less certain in his resolve but didn’t drop the muzzle of the gun; from Virgil’s point of view, the twin bores of the shotgun looked about the size of apples. Instead, the man half turned his head and shouted, “Laura! Call down to the store and ask somebody if they know a cop named Flowers.” To Virgil he said, “Keep your hands up.”
Virgil kept his hands up, and said, “Point the gun somewhere else.”
“Bullshit.”
“You pull that trigger and you’re gonna spend the rest of your life in Stillwater prison for killing a cop,” Virgil said. “I’ve identified myself, and if you don’t point the gun somewhere else, I’m gonna bust you for aggravated assault, and that’s a minimum of five years. Now, point the fuckin’ gun somewhere else.”
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 . . .”