Holy Ghost (Virgil Flowers #11)(50)

“How about this?” Shrake asked. “What if he’s on a roof? And he doesn’t get out? He stays there with his rifle maybe for hours and sneaks off after dark? Has anybody looked on a roof?”

“I looked on the Eagles Club roof, but only because you can jump off it,” Virgil said. “Never occurred to me to look on the roof of the higher buildings. You know, where you might need a ladder or a rope to get off of it.”

“I didn’t think of that, either—that the guy would hide right where he was,” Holland said. “He’d still need a way to get up there. Couldn’t just put up a ladder with nobody noticing.”

Virgil pointed at him. “What about those remodeling jobs? Was there anyplace where they opened up the roof, and you could get up on top from the inside? Where there was like a hole in the ceiling?”

Holland said, “I don’t remember any—but I don’t know.”

“We have to go look,” Virgil said. “If he was up there and left anything behind—anything—we could get DNA.”

“And we got two guys we should interview, the ones who live here,” Shrake said.

Jenkins sighed. “We gotta do all that, but you want to know something? The roofs ain’t it. And neither one of those townie guys is the shooter. That’s all too easy. This guy’s doing something else.”

“Mr. Bright Side,” Holland said. To Virgil: “I was arguing with Father Brice about opening the church. I suggested we form a kind of militia to walk the streets before and during the Masses. I thought we could get Clay Ford to organize it. Brice said he’d think about, but I don’t think he’ll do it.”



* * *



—

Virgil, Jenkins, and Shrake all trooped down to the business district. They could find no openings from the remodeled apartments that led to the roof, but one building at the near end of the downtown block did have access. The building housed what had been a dying hardware store that lately had been doing better. The owner opened what looked like a closet door on the second-floor storage area and led them up a dark, narrow staircase to the roof.

Up on top, they had a good view of the corner where the victims had been shot, and the building’s parapet would have made an excellent rifle rest. They searched the area on hands and knees and came up with not one atom of evidence nor any indication that anyone had recently been up there.

“If the guy came up to the roof and put a sandbag on the wall here,” Jenkins said, pointing at the two-foot-high parapet, “there’d be no sign. With this hard tar roof, there’s no scuffing. There’s nothing here.”

“Possible sequence,” Shrake said. “The guy has a key to the hardware store—don’t ask me how. He comes up here at the crack of dawn, before the store opens. He has a rifle and a sleeping bag and maybe even one of those little tents like canoe guys use. Maybe a rope, for a possible emergency getaway. He bags out all day until the bell rings and he shoots. Then he takes a nap until dark and the excitement’s over and he slides out the door.”

Jenkins said, “I’m still back where I was: the roof ain’t it. This guy is too smart to put himself where he could be trapped with no way out. The guy’s doing something else.”



* * *



—

They interviewed the two townies. Both had alibis for at least one of the shootings, and the alibis were convincing. One of the men, who claimed to be the best shot in town after Clay Ford, and possibly Roy Visser, said, “You tell us the guy didn’t even have his own rifle. You don’t even know how close he was when he fired it, so you don’t know if he was a good shot or not. I gotta tell you, it doesn’t sound to me like he’s a big marksman if he had to steal a rifle and had to kill to get it, huh? Sounds to me like it could be anybody who’s ever looked through a scope, which is everybody in town. No offense, but you need a whole new tree to bark up.”

His wife poked Jenkins in the chest, and said, “Yeah.”





14


Virgil went to bed discouraged. Every time he found something that looked like a lead, it turned out to be a dead end. God didn’t show up that night, so he slipped off to sleep without conversation.



* * *



—

Bell Wood, the Iowa state investigator, called at 9 o’clock the next morning, and said, “We’re going through Humboldt right now, so we’re an hour out of Armstrong. We still on for ten o’clock?”

“Might as well be, I’m not solving any murders,” Virgil said. “And who’s ‘we’?”

“Special Agent Easton, Special Agent Rivers, and myself,” Wood said. “If this thing works out, I might take a day off and come up and solve your Wheatfield problem myself.”

“I’d appreciate that,” Virgil said. “See you in a bit.”



* * *



—

Virgil called Jenkins and Shrake, who were at Mom’s getting breakfast. “I’ll be there in four minutes,” he said. He drove to Mom’s, parked, went inside, and saw Jenkins and Shrake picking at their pancakes.

When they saw Virgil, Shrake pointed at his plate, and asked, “What are these things?”