Holy Ghost (Virgil Flowers #11)(6)

“Huh. Then yesterday . . .”

“Same deal,” Holland said. “Even the exact same time, four-fifteen, or a minute or two after that, just before the first evening service at St. Mary’s. The second time, the shooter—whoever he is—took out a woman. She got hit in the hip, the shot went all the way through. She won’t die, either, but she’s in a lot worse shape than Coates. Busted the ball in her hip joint; she’s got bone splinters all through her pelvic area. She’s gonna need a full hip replacement before she can walk again. She’s over at the Mayo.”

“You say there’s no bullet?”

“Nothing. No idea of where it ended up,” Holland said. “Both times, the people were waiting at the corner and they were all talking with each other and turning this way and that. We know where the slugs entered and exited, but since we don’t know their positions, exactly how they were standing, we don’t have a good idea of where the bullet came from. The deputies talked to both of the victims and they themselves don’t know where they were standing. I believe—”

From outside, Skinner shouted, “Wardell! ’Nother cop!”

“Gotta be the sheriff,” Holland said. He heaved himself out of the chair and went to the curtain, and called, “Karl. Back here.”

Karl Zimmer came through the curtain, spotted Virgil, and said, “It’s that fuckin’ Flowers. Nice to see you, Virgie.”

“Karl,” Virgil said, as they shook hands. “I heard you sank your boat.”

“That’s not a happy subject,” Zimmer said. He was a tall man with a gray crewcut and gold-rimmed glasses, wearing a tan Carhartt canvas jacket with a badge sewn on the left side. He looked around, picked a kitchen chair as Holland sank back into his easy chair. “My kid was over on the Cedar, hit a snag, ripped a hole in the hull. Instead of beaching it, he tried to run back to the ramp. Sank it with the engine running full bore, which didn’t do it a hell of a lot of good.”

“Insurance?” Virgil asked.

“Well, we’re arguing about the engine,” Zimmer said. “The Farmers guy said hitting the snag and putting a hole in the boat was an accident but wrecking the motor was negligence. We’ll get something, but I don’t think we’ll get it all. Two-year-old Yamaha V MAX 175.”

“Ouch,” Virgil said.

“Yeah. But, you know, shit happens . . . Did Wardell tell you all about the shootings?”

“He’s started to fill me in,” Virgil said.



* * *



—

The woman who’d been shot the day before was named Betty Rice and she’d been in town for two days, going to all the church services at St. Mary’s, hoping for an apparition. “She was over from Sioux Falls with her sister and a friend,” Zimmer said. “Never been here before; none of them had. Same with the fellow who got shot last week.”

“You didn’t call for a crime scene team?”

“What’d be the point?” Zimmer asked. “We don’t know where the shooter was, we don’t know where the bullet went.”

“Crime scene might’ve been able to tell where the bullet came from by looking at the blood spatter,” Virgil said.

Zimmer shook his head. “We thought about that. The fact is, after she got hit, everybody went running, and, when nobody else got shot, they all came running back. It happened on the grass over there. Everybody was calling for doctors and police, and by the time things got sorted out the whole area had been trampled over for an hour and they’d moved the woman around a couple of times and she was bleeding bad . . . Virgil, I’m saying we had a bloody mudhole, and you couldn’t tell anything in there.”

Virgil nodded. “Okay.”

Holland said, “I think the shot came down from the business district. Maybe from a two-story building on the east side of the street. There are only a dozen of those, but most of the top-floor rooms are still empty. Some of them are being rehabbed to rent, and the walls are open for the construction work. Guy could get up there and have a pretty nice sniper’s nest. I borrowed one of Karl’s deputies, and we walked up and down over there, never found anything—no shells, nothing. Judging from the wounds, I suspect both people were shot with a .223. Small entry, bigger exit, but not all that big. About as big around as your middle finger, and clean on the edges. So: powerful, small-caliber full metal jacket slug. Maybe military ammo or target stuff.”

“You seem to know a lot about it,” Virgil said.

Holland lifted his prosthetic foot. “Infantry, Afghanistan. I’ve seen wounds like it.”

“Why do you think it was from a second story?” Virgil asked.

“Clear sight line. Had to be on the east side because on the west side the guy would have to lean way out the window to get the shot off. At that time of day, there are people on the sidewalks and on the street, crossing . . . lots of movement. I think the guy’s picking out people who are headed for the church but are standing still, waiting for traffic, when he pulls the trigger. And it occurred to me last night that maybe he isn’t trying to kill them.”

“Or maybe he’s so far out there that he’s shooting center of mass and hitting low,” Zimmer suggested. “Maybe he’s five hundred yards out, doesn’t have the elevation on his scope quite right. Maybe on that first shot he was holding on Coates’s chest and hit his leg instead. Adjusted the scope to hit higher but didn’t know what he was doing, gave it two or three clicks instead of five or six, was holding on Rice’s chest but still hit her in the hip. With a woman like Miz Rice, there aren’t more than about eight to ten inches between a ball joint shot and a heart shot.”