“Motherfucker who’d lock a live dog down in the basement,” Zimmer said. “I don’t think Glen would do that if he decided to kill himself. He’d at least let the dog outside. If Glen was murdered . . . Well, I can understand shooting somebody, but why would you do that to a dog?”

“If it’s the Wheatfield shooter, we already know he’s an asshole,” Virgil said. “I don’t think a dog would mean much to him.”

—

Zimmer looked back at Andorra’s body, waved toward it, and asked, “Suppose he was murdered. This tell you anything? The whole . . . you know . . .”

“The shooter probably came out to the range regularly enough that Glen knew what he was shooting. I’ll say in passing that the Nazis used to come out here until Glen kicked them out, though that doesn’t prove anything,” Virgil said. “I think the gun on the floor will turn out to be the weapon that killed him.”

“In my experience, people who like military stuff are attracted to 1911 .45s. Nazi people.”

“Still not proof,” Virgil said. “Besides, they might be more attracted to Lugers or something German. You also have to consider that Glen didn’t like those guys—but he let the killer come right into his TV room. Working backwards from that, I’d say that the shooter was somebody he knew fairly well and who shot him because he knew that Glen had seen him sighting a .223. Or knew he was a good shot with a .223. Also, the guy had a big handgun, which means he’s not a casual target shooter. He likes guns, and he probably has several.”

“There are fourteen thousand people in Lamy County, half of them women. And of the other half, half of them are too young or too old and feeble to pull this off. That leaves about thirty-five hundred male suspects, and we can eliminate most of them by reading through the phone book and saying no,” Zimmer said. “That ought to get us down to a few hundred.”

“I’d bet that one of your deputies knows the shooter personally and knows that he has some guns,” Virgil said. “Ask them. Ask who they think it could be.”

Zimmer nodded. “I’ll do that. And I gotta find Glen’s son. My wife thinks he lives up in the Cities somewhere.”

“Glen didn’t have a wife?”

“Divorced. My wife thinks his ex lives in Seattle.”

“Maybe I should be talking to your wife,” Virgil said.

“I don’t think you’re ready for that,” Zimmer says. “You’d need several years of preparation.”

—