“Yeah, but we’re not exactly sure of the circumstances. He was apparently shot with a .45 while he was sitting in his easy chair, and there was a .45 on the floor.”

“A 1911?”

“Yes.”

“Probably his,” Martin said. “I reload for him. Did you find the bullet that killed him?”

“Yes, but I don’t know what it is yet,” Virgil said.

“Check and see if it’s a 230-grain plated roundnose. If it’s plated, not jacketed, it’s one of mine. He supplies the brass, I supply the bullet and powder. I can sell them to him for thirty cents a round and make a dime apiece. I guess that’s gone now,” Martin said. His house smelled like a soft-boiled egg, confirming the yellow spot on his chin. “They’d cost forty cents each if you bought them at a store, so he saves a dime apiece. He probably shoots a thousand rounds a year . . . Saved himself a hundred bucks.”

“Do you know if he had a .223?” Virgil asked, as Martin led him into a dining room that had been converted into a gun-repair shop and pointed him toward one of two leather easy chairs.

“Yeah, he did. Bought it up to Cabelas,” Martin said, as he dropped into one of the leather chairs. “A CZ 527 Varmint with a Leupold variable-power scope. Is that what those people got shot with downtown?”

“I think so. Mr. Andorra’s been dead a couple of weeks, so he didn’t do it. There’s an empty spot in his gun safe.”

“You’re saying it probably wasn’t a suicide, then,” Martin said.

“You could think of ways that it could be . . . He shoots himself, a friend drops in and finds him dead, decides he might as well do a little shopping down in the basement.”

Martin shook his head. “This is a small town. If a guy was going to steal a gun, it wouldn’t be something like that—it’d get spotted in a minute. Got this big, fat bull barrel on it, for one thing.”

“Okay.”

“Anyway, Glen wouldn’t commit suicide. He was tough, one of those guys who can live through hell and who’ll still go every last inch before he gives up the ghost. I don’t believe it would occur to him to shoot himself. Of course, it could have been an accident . . .”

“But the missing .223 wouldn’t be and the people downtown weren’t shot by accident,” Virgil said.