“That’s true,” Martin conceded. “I’ve been thinking about those shootings. One hit in the leg, the next in the hip. That’s either good shooting or bad shooting. Can’t tell until he shoots one more. With that scope and a decent rest, a good shot could keep five rounds inside a playing card at four hundred yards. He either meant to shoot them where he did or he doesn’t know how to use that scope. It’s a real good scope.”

Virgil said, “Huh.” He peered out the room’s side window, letting the silence drag on.

Martin: “You figuring something out?”

“Nobody at the shooting scene heard the shot,” Virgil said. “It just occurred to me that we don’t know that he shot just once. He could have missed, and nobody noticed.”

Martin said, “Somebody should have heard the shots.”

“Can’t find them if they did,” Virgil said.

“You’re sure they were shot with a .223?”

“Seems most likely. Why?”

“A .243 might do a similar amount of damage if it was a solid point. I know a guy in town who could shoot a two-inch group at four hundred yards, half minute of angle, but his go-to gun is a Remington 700 in .243. He does have a .223, and I believe more than one. Nice enough guy. The only thing that brings him to mind is, he’s a little gun nuts.”

“Nuts, how?”

“You know that big-titted girl that shoots the bow and arrow in that movie?” Martin asked.

Virgil thought he did.

“This guy would rather play with his guns than play motorboat with that girl,” Martin said.

“Okay, I’m gonna need his name,” Virgil said. And, “You’re a dirty old man.”

“Yeah, well, at my age, that’s what I got,” Martin said. His tongue flicked out and picked up the egg on his chin. He said, “Mmm.”

8

The gun nut’s name was Clay Ford. A tall, too-thin man with silvery eyes who appeared to be in his early forties, he was wearing a cowboy hat inside his house; otherwise, he was dressed like Virgil: T-shirt, jeans, and cowboy boots. He lived three blocks over from Martin, and when he saw Virgil standing on his porch, he said, “I didn’t do it. If I had done it, I’d have done it better.”

“Well, you don’t know that,” Virgil said through the screen door. “’Cause if you didn’t do it, you probably don’t know what he was doing. He shot two people and he did it under the pressure of shooting another human being and then having to get away with it. And he probably did it from four or five hundred yards away. Maybe farther, because nobody heard the shots.”