Virgil found Will Courtland working on a piece of farm machinery in the welding shop next to his house. The shop smelled of hot metal and welding rods, and Virgil got him out in the driveway and asked about Andorra’s friends.

“The thing about Glen was, everybody liked him but he wasn’t a hang-out kind of guy,” Courtland said. “As far as I know, he mostly worked around his farm and at the range. Close friends . . . I’m not sure he had any. I can tell you the names of a couple of people I supposed would be his closest friends and maybe they could tell you more, but I can’t say that they’re superclose to him. I wasn’t. But, you know, you don’t have to be a close friend to go inside somebody’s house. You get deliveries from UPS and boxes from the mailman; you maybe get plumbers or electricians for stuff you can’t do on your own . . .”

He gestured to the machine in his shop, and said, “I’m working on this fellow’s rake. When I take it back, I’ll probably go sit at the kitchen table while he writes a check or gives me his VISA card. I mean, I’m friendly with him and all, but we’re not close. But there I’ll be, right in his house. Like the guy who shot Glen.”

—

That’s the way the day went.

They met at 5 o’clock at the Tarweveld Inn, where Jenkins and Shrake checked in. They left their luggage in their rooms, and Virgil took them down the street and introduced them to the back room at Skinner & Holland. Holland sat in with them.

Virgil summed up. “We got six consensus names and seven more random maybes,” he said. “The problem being, not a single person thinks any of those guys would be the shooter, and only two of them live in Wheatfield.”

“You think the shooter has to live here?” Jenkins asked.

“I think the shooter has to be somebody that people see regularly, so that he fits in, and they ignore him. Also, he’s familiar enough with Wheatfield that he’s got a spot to shoot from, and that he can get out of, without people noticing.”

“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.”