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.”

“Lot of maybes in there,” Holland said. “I keep thinking psycho in a sniper’s nest.”