“Aw, don’t waste your time on them. It’s two guys and their girlfriends, and they don’t have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of,” Skinner said. “They decided they wanted to be somebody, get somebody to pay attention to them, so they signed up to be Nazis and got themselves a couple of pit bulls. They’re not exactly harmless, but bar fights are really more their style. The Nazis, not the pit bulls.”

“Then they’re seriously stupid.”

“Yeah, they are that. They used to work over at the elevator, but after they signed up to be Nazis they got fired. Now they all live on welfare. They didn’t shoot anyone, though. The shooter is somebody smarter.”

“Got any ideas?”

Skinner scraped his lower lip with his upper teeth, then said, “No. It could be somebody who doesn’t like what’s happened to the town since the apparitions, but I can’t think who that would be. If maybe there are a couple of people like that, none of them would be crazy enough to go around shooting people. You have to understand—I know every single person who lives here. Not counting the visitors.”

“You think it’s a visitor?”

“Could be. When I lie in bed and try to think of a person I know, who could be doing this, I come up with a total blank. We got our assholes, we’ve got a couple of goofs, some people angry from watching Fox News . . . but it seems to me that it has to be something more than a goof.”

“Like what?” Virgil asked.

“Don’t know. It’s like an oxymoron: random shootings for a reason,” Skinner said. “Gonna have to think more about it. The two people who got shot, Rice and Coates, don’t have any connections. Nothing at all. Didn’t know each other, didn’t come from the same place, Coates isn’t even a Catholic. The only thing they have in common is the fact that they were shot and where they were shot. That could mean the shooter has a particular spot he likes to go to and is maybe sighted in at a specific range.”

“I told Wardell and the sheriff that we need to figure out why people were shot . . .”

“That’s exactly right, Virgil,” Skinner said. “If you can figure that out, we’ll know who’s doing it. Unless he’s some outsider religious nut and he really is crazy. But how would he know the town well enough to find a spot and not be seen or even caught? People here notice if you drop your Sno Ball wrapper on the ground. That he can get away with shooting people . . .”

Skinner shook his head.