Standing at the end of the Quonset that faced the church, Virgil said, “Guess what? You couldn’t see the targets from here.” They couldn’t because there was a low wooden hut in the way, with signs on all three sides that said “Pet Parlor—Pet Bathing and Grooming.” The signs were old, and the hut appeared to be vacant.

Jenkins stepped back from the Quonset, looked up, and asked, “How about from up there?”

Virgil stepped back and looked up. The roof of the Quonset overhung the vertical wall, under which, right at the top of the wall, was what looked like a ventilation grille. They walked back along the side of the hut, trying to see the grille through the windows, but they couldn’t because of the way the windows were pushed out from the rounded sides, each under its own small gable.

They walked around to the swinging doors, which were locked with a hinge and a padlock; but there was a half-inch space between the doors, near the bottom, and when Virgil got down on his knees and looked through the crack, he could see light coming through the grille at the other end.

“What?” Jenkins asked.

Virgil stood, brushed off his knees, looked up at the Quonset’s overhanging roof. “That’s, what do you think, sixteen to eighteen feet up there? Something like that?”

“Probably.”

“It’s clear, open space inside, and I don’t see any ladder.”

“He could bring one . . . A construction guy’s probably got to have one,” Jenkins said.

“Let’s go back to the scene of the shooting, see if we can see the top of the Quonset from there.”

They got in the truck, drove past Bram Smit’s house on the way out to Main Street, and down to the church. On the way, Virgil said, “You know what? I bet you could raise that excavator bucket up high enough that he could crawl up there.”

Jenkins said, “I bet you’re right.”

Across the street from the church, where the three victims had been shot, Virgil got out of the truck, got his Nikon and longest lens, and looked down the street toward the Quonset. It would have to be three hundred yards away, he thought; and while he couldn’t see much of the building, he could see the peak of its roof and the ventilation grille. He took a picture.

“Time to call the sheriff,” he said.

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