“All right,” Virgil said. “Have you seen Glen Andorra around today?”

“Haven’t seen him for a while,” the shooter said. “But I’m not out here that much. Can’t afford it.”

“That’s where a .223 would be good, if you could get a bolt-action,” the scope man said to the shooter. “Get more practice with centerfires, don’t get banged up by the recoil. Then, shoot the mag enough to be sure its hittin’ where you want, and don’t go burnin’ whole boxes of million-dollar ammo.”

“What are you usin’ the mag for anyway?” Virgil asked.

“Brother’s got a place out in Colorado with elk on it. Me’n Bill drive out every year,” the shooter said.

“Good deal,” Virgil said.

They talked guns and hunting for a few minutes, and Virgil mentioned his sideline as an outdoors writer. The shooter said, “You oughta do an article on supercheap elk hunts. Everyone thinks they’re superexpensive, but they don’t have to be. You get somebody with a piece of land out in Wyoming or Colorado, bunk on their kitchen floor, you’re only spending three hundred bucks for gas. Plus, you gotta pay for the tags. That’s another six hundred. We shot a big cow elk out there, we took a hundred and eighty pounds of boned meat off her—that’s five bucks a pound for better than anything you’d get out of a supermarket. Don’t have all them chemicals, and so on.”

“Not a bad idea,” Virgil admitted. He took their names, and said, “I might call you about that.”

As Virgil was walking away, another pickup rolled down into the shooting bowl and turned off toward the pistol range. Virgil stopped to talk as the couple in the truck were getting their weapons out of the back of the camper, but the woman said, “We don’t pay much attention to the rifle people. We shoot handguns at seven yards.”

They hadn’t seen Andorra for a couple of weeks, and the man said they came out to shoot most evenings.

—

No card was needed to get out of the range. The gate slid sideways as Virgil approached it, and he took the dirt road out to the highway and turned left. Andorra lived in a typical early-twentieth-century Minnesota farmhouse, a white four-square clapboard, with a front porch, a side entrance off the driveway, and triangular attic dormers.

The place was neatly kept, without having been modernized. There was still a clothesline, on the side of the property opposite the driveway, with a rug hanging on it; the lawn needed to be cut, if you were a serious lawn guy. Virgil couldn’t see any cars, but they could be in the garage in back. He got out, sniffed the country air—cows, he thought, but not too nearby—went to the side door, and rang the bell. And rang again. No movement inside.