“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.

“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.”

Ford scratched his chin, and said, “Everybody in town knows that Glen Andorra’s been killed and that you think it goes together with the people shot downtown. Why would he murder Glen and then shoot two people to wound? Why not murder them, too? Won’t make any difference if he’s caught. And if he’s trying for a public relations disaster, murder is better than dinging somebody up.”

Virgil said, “Maybe because he had to kill Glen to get the gun, but he didn’t have to kill the others, so he didn’t?”

“That’s a goddamn generous way of looking at it,” Ford said. “If he’d killed Glen, I don’t think he’d much care about the others, especially if they were out-of-towners. I could be wrong.” He pushed the door open. “You better come in. I’ll show you my guns.”

“You obviously know who I am,” Virgil said, as he followed him inside.

“Everybody in town knows who you are,” Ford said over his shoulder. “Danny Visser put up a story on the town blog and links to some newpaper stories about you. I liked the one where all those school board members were arrested for murder. You ought to arrest more government people, IMHO.” He said the letters as words: “Eye Em Aich Oh.”

* * *

—

Virgil was mildly annoyed that Visser had put up newspaper stories about him but said nothing as he followed Ford through his neatly kept house to what once had been the master bedroom. Ford had covered the windows with slabs of heavy sheet plywood, “to defeat possible burglaries,” he said. “I don’t want to arm any criminals.”

He had a gun workbench against one wall and eight high-end gun safes, which he said were anchored to the house’s concrete slab. He used a magnetic card to open the safes; he had forty guns.

“I divide them into three groups,” he said, pointing at them as he read them off. “My carry guns, all pistols, nine-millimeter or .45. And my rifles: .22, .223, .243, .308. And if that won’t do it, one Barrett .50 cal.”

“Why so many?” Virgil asked.

“There’s a day coming in this country when you’re gonna need a gun to survive,” Ford said. “That’s why I’m living here in Wheatfield. It’ll take the dictator’s men a while to get here, and that’ll give us time to organize.”

He was completely unself-conscious about it. Virgil said, “Okay.”

Ford was just getting warmed up. He waved an arm at the gun safes, and said, “That’s why I have all these different calibers. What do you notice about them?”

Virgil shrugged. “I don’t know . . . Maybe they’re all pretty accurate?”

“Of course they’re that. They’re my guns, and I won’t have an inaccurate gun in the house,” Ford said. “But they’re common, that’s the main thing. Every one of them, except the .50. There’s no more common pistol ammo than nine-millimeter or .45 ACP, except maybe .22, which would be worthless as an anti-personnel round in a SHTF situation.” He pronounced the letters individually again: “Ess Aich Tee Eff.” “The grid goes down, people can’t get food or gasoline, transportation falls apart . . . You won’t fight off the incoming with a .22. The only thing a .22 will be good for is hunting. I got ten thousand rounds, which is a lot of rabbit. Along with thousands of square miles of corn, to eat and feed the animals with, we got a chance of making it. I got fifteen semiauto .223s in there, and I got fifteen thousand rounds of ammo—enough to set up my own platoon, to defend us. I got six .308s for sniper teams, along with the Barrett. Of course, to use them right, we’d have to have time to train. Nobody wants to train. They think I’m goofy.”