Holland was Virgil’s height, heavier in the chest and shoulders, clean-shaven, with reddish brown hair; he was wearing a blue work shirt and jeans and one boot; his other foot having been replaced with a flexible, sickle-shaped piece of black metal. He waved Virgil at a well-used green easy chair and took a matching chair on the other side of a battered round coffee table. The back room was mostly used for storage, stacks of cardboard cartons full of chips and soft drinks and beer, and smelled exactly like that: cardboard and beer, with an undertone of pizza. In addition to the easy chairs, four more chairs, no two alike, were arranged around a card table, with a microwave on a shelf over a sink on the back wall. The room was apparently used for employee breaks.

“Sheriff will be here in five minutes,” Holland said. “We’re seriously worried. Right on the edge of desperate. The sheriff says you’re the man for the job.”

“Nice of him,” Virgil said. “I heard about the first shooting, but nobody called us.”

“We thought it might be accidental. Lots of hunters around here, and nobody heard the shot or had any idea where it came from. Could have come from a mile away,” Holland said. “The guy who got shot—his name was Harvey Coates, and he and his wife were here from Dubuque—wasn’t hurt all that bad. I mean, bad enough, but he won’t be crippled, or anything. Dimples on his thigh, is all, after he heals up. Two inches lower and he would have lost a knee. Anyway, we didn’t have a slug, didn’t have any clues . . . Not much we could do. And, besides, like I said, we thought it might be an accident. We asked the shooter to come forward but nobody did. That’s now starting to look . . . idiotic. We should have called you guys.”

“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?”