Ford tilted his head back, his eyes going to the ceiling. “I don’t have a candidate right now. If you’d asked me before yesterday who was the best shot in town, I wouldn’t have hesitated: me. But now you bring up some interesting points . . . If he shot them from far enough away that nobody heard the shots, and he wasn’t shooting to kill, then he’s got to be good. On the other hand, I suspect he hadn’t figured out the drop over the distance he was shooting and underestimated it. He hits that first man in the leg, then the woman up higher. Next one will get it in the heart. If that’s what happens, we’ll all know he was using live targets to sight his rifle. Seems like he might be a guy who knows how to hold on target but has only shot some other rifle before, like a little .22, and doesn’t know about ballistics. About the sound thing—nobody hearing the shot—that could mean he’s got a suppressor.”

“He’s maybe using a CZ .223 Varmint that he took from Glen Andorra,” Virgil said. “Did Andorra have a suppressor?”

“Not that I ever saw,” Ford said. “I was out there a lot, too. I even shot that particular gun a couple of times, if it’s the same one the killer is using. It’s decent; if you gave it to me, I’d want to tune it, but it’s decent as is. It wasn’t threaded for a suppressor, or, at least, it wasn’t when I fired it, which was probably a year ago or more. Didn’t have a muzzle brake, either. You need a muzzle brake if you go the quick-attach route for your suppressor. If he bought a suppressor on his own, he had to get a federal permit for it. You could check that.”

Like most hunters, Virgil liked to talk guns from time to time, but he was out of his depth with Ford. “You don’t know anybody who can shoot up to your standard?”