Nothing was moving back there. He kept running, looking for movement, three hundred yards out, crossed a street and saw only two people, to his left, standing on Main Street, and they were looking down toward the shooting. It wouldn’t be two people, he thought, and not in the middle of the street. The shooter had to be a singleton.

Five hundred yards and another street, nobody to his left on Main, but, a block down to the right, a woman getting in a car. He ran that way, shouting at her, and when he got close, she saw the gun and put up her hands, and he shouted, “Police,” and, “Did you hear a shot? Did you see anyone running?”

She was twenty feet away, and she said, “No, no, I came out of my house . . . I just came out, I didn’t hear anything . . . Has there been another one?”

Virgil turned away and ran back to the street behind the businesses, and ran even farther out . . . He thought he must be six or seven hundred yards from the scene, and there was nothing moving.

He ran toward the scene of the shooting, swerved when he came to the house where the old man with the shotgun lived, kicked open the gate, and banged on the back door.

Laura Smit looked at him from well back in the house, then hurried to the door and pulled it open.

“Did you hear a shot? Is Bram here? Did either of you—”

“I didn’t hear a thing; I was using the vacuum,” she said. “Bram isn’t here, he went to the SuperValu over in Blue Earth.”

“Goddamnit,” Virgil said, and he spun around and ran out to Main Street, where people were still looking down toward the church. Virgil hurried over to the largest group, and said, “I’m an agent with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. Did anyone hear a shot a few minutes ago?”

Nobody heard anything, everybody had questions, which Virgil ignored, and he ran farther up Main, away from the shooting, asking everyone in the street. He couldn’t find anyone who’d heard the shot.

Next, he crossed to the other side of Main, behind the storefronts. Nothing at the Eagles Club; the door was locked. He ran in widening circles and still found nothing. For the next fifteen minutes, he visited one store after another—there were only seven still open—asking if anyone had seen a man hurrying away in a long coat that a rifle could have been hidden beneath or with anything a rifle could have been concealed in. No luck.

He finally jogged back to the scene, where a single sheriff’s car was now parked. The deputy had pushed the now thin crowd well back, and Holland was standing at the edge of the circle of onlookers.