Holy Ghost (Virgil Flowers #11)(20)



He drove to the pistol range, found what appeared to be new targets sitting at the top of the nearly full trash barrel. The targets had been gathered in a stack and then folded over before they were dropped in the barrel. Each target showed more than a dozen shots, grouped in a smaller-than-palm-sized space near the center. The occasional target showed individual holes that suggested the shooters had been using 9mm, or .38 caliber and .22 caliber, handguns. Virgil thought the targets may have been used by the couple he’d seen. Not bad shooting, if they were doing rapid-fire self-defense work.

He started digging through the trash, pulling it out and dropping it on the ground. There were used targets, water and soft-drink bottles and cans, empty ammo boxes, a couple of pizza boxes, sandwich wrappers from Subway, and two black plastic bags of the kind used to pick up dog poop. The deeper he got, the soggier he found the contents, from the intermittent rainstorms.

Some of the targets had names on them; most did not. He was nearly to the bottom of the can when he pulled out three that he would bet had been shot with a .45. There were other possibilities—a .40 caliber would make a hole only slightly smaller, and a .44 would be almost indistinguishable from a .45—but the .45 was by far the most common, and they knew that Andorra had one.

He set the targets carefully aside for processing by the crime scene people. There had been a couple of layers of cans and bottles above the .45s, but there were six targets that had been above those with the .45 holes.

They were soggy, but he could see that they were shot full of 9mm or .38 holes, and on one of them he could make out the initials “BD.”

Whoever BD was, Virgil thought, may have been shooting around the time the .45 holes got punched.

If God were on his side anyway.



* * *





The range had fallen into twilight by the time he left. He drove back to Andorra’s house, gave the targets to Sawyer and Baldwin for analysis. “Doubt that we’ll get much, but you can never tell,” Sawyer said. They both agreed that the initials on the target were “BD.”

Sawyer and Baldwin still had work to do around the body and wouldn’t be moving it to the medical examiner until later; an ME investigator was on his way with a van and would do the actual removal.

“I’m going back to town,” Virgil said. “If anything amazing comes up, call me.”



* * *





When he got back to Wheatfield, the place was closed: a few people lingered in the park between the two downtown churches, but the last service at St. Mary’s had ended an hour earlier, and none of the stores, not even Skinner & Holland, were open. He was tempted to drive back to Frankie’s farm, a little more than an hour away, to spend the night in a familiar bed, but, in the end, he drove back to the Vissers’.

On the way down Main Street, he saw a couple standing on the sidewalk, and the woman was poking the man in the chest. Virgil couldn’t see the man’s foot in the bad light, but he thought it might be Holland.

At the Vissers’, he parked at the side of the house, took his weapons out of the truck, walked around to the rear entrance, and, as he was stowing the guns under the bed, Danielle Visser knocked on the interior door, and called, “Virgil?”

Virgil opened the door, and she said, “I thought you might like to know that we’re going to take Pat. He’s weak, but the vet said he should be okay when he’s all rehydrated and everything. His kidneys are still working okay, that was the big threat.”

“Good,” Virgil said. “Listen, do you know if Glen Andorra had a girlfriend?”

“No, I didn’t know. Does he?”

“There are some indications.”

Visser turned, and shouted, “Hey, Roy! Did Glen have a squeeze?”

Roy walked down the hall, and said, “Not that I know of. We got a mystery woman now? Cool beans.”

“Anything else happened since dinner?” Danielle asked. “Anything I can put in the town blog?”

“The town has a blog?”

“Sure. I’m the editor.”

Virgil shook his head. “Probably not anything significant. I’ll be looking for a guy whose initials are ‘BD’ and who goes out to the gun range and shoots a nine-millimeter or .38 caliber handgun. I’d also like to talk to the woman who was involved with Andorra.”

“So would I!” Danielle Visser said. “That’d pump up the traffic on the old website. No idea who she is?”

“I don’t even know it’s a she,” Virgil said.

“C’mon. Nothing queer about old Glen,” Roy Visser said.

“Minnesota’s full of Norwegian bachelor farmers,” Virgil said. “Not because none of them can find women.”

“Maybe, but not Glen,” Roy said. “He’d come here twice a year for a haircut, and about the time Danny got finished working over his ear, we had firm indications that he was a straight shooter, if you get my meaning.”

“You were checking him out? I find that interesting,” Danielle Visser told her husband, who was not even slightly embarrassed. Back to Virgil: “Now, about this BD? Is he a suspect?”

“Not at all,” Virgil said. “There’s a chance he might have been the last person to talk to Glen, but even that’s a little unlikely.”

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