The other scrubbed-out stain was in the entrance to the dining room. There were three dug-out bullet holes in the carpet. Standing there, in the quiet, Virgil saw how it must have happened. They knew the killer-Anna was comfortable in her regular spot, and hadn't bothered to get up. Russell and the killer had both been standing, and fairly close to each other. The killer pulled the gun, if it wasn't already out, and leaned into Anna and fired once. She hadn't made a move to get off the couch. Russell turned, got three steps, and was shot in the back.
But they knew the killer, Virgil thought: they must have. Anna was facing the TV, as though she might not even have been part of the conversation. If she'd been ordered to sit down, or forced to sit, she would have been facing into the room, where the killer was; she wouldn't have been facing the TV.
He quickly checked the end table for any possible effort by Anna to leave something behind-a scribbled name, anything. Felt foolish doing it, but would have felt more foolish if he hadn't, and something was found later. Nothing. The books were a novel by Martha Grimes and a slender volume titled Revelation, which turned out to be, indeed, the book of Revelation.
Virgil muttered, to nobody but the ghosts, "And I saw, and behold, a pale horse, and its rider's name was Death, and Hades followed him…"
HE CHECKED the table by Russell's reading light; nothing interesting. Drifted out of the shooting area, through the rest of the place. A den opened off the dining room, with file cabinets and an older computer. A hallway next to the den led to a big bathroom, but without a tub or shower-the public bath-and three large bedrooms, each with a full bath.
He walked through the master bedroom, looking, not touching, and into the kitchen. He was in the kitchen when he heard the sound of a vehicle outside. He went back to the front door, and found a sheriff's patrol car stopped behind his, and a deputy looking at his license plate.
He stepped out on the porch, and the deputy's hand drifted to his hip, and Virgil called, "Virgil Flowers, BCA." Across the way, at the next house down the ridge, he could see a man standing in his backyard, watching them with binoculars.
The deputy said, "Larry Jensen. I'm the lead investigator for the sheriff."
Jensen was another of the tall, thin types, burned and dry, sandy hair, slacks and cowboy boots, sunglasses. They shook hands and Jensen asked, "See anything in there?"
"Nope. I'd like to come back later and go through those file cabinets."
"You're welcome to…" Jensen turned and waved at the man in the next yard, who waved back. "That's the guy who ratted you out."
"Too bad he wasn't watching the night the Gleasons were killed," Virgil said.
"Got that right."
Jensen was easy enough, took him in the house, told him how he thought the killings must have happened, and his reconstruction jibed with Virgil's. They walked through the rest of the house, including the basement, and on the way back up, Jensen said, "I have the feeling…" He hesitated.
"Yeah?"
"I have the feeling that this was something that stewed for a long time. I went through every scrap of business dealings that the Gleasons had in the last ten years, I talked to about every single person that they knew, interviewed the kids and the kids' spouses. I have the feeling that this goes back to something we don't know about. I'm thinking, Russell was a doctor. What if he did something bad to somebody. You know, malpractice. What if back there somewhere, years ago, he killed somebody, or maybe didn't save somebody, a wife or somebody's daddy, and they just stewed and stewed and now they snapped? I mean, Russell dealt with a lot of death in his time-he was the county coroner for years-and what if it goes back to something that just…happened? Like happens to all doctors?"
Virgil nodded. "That's a whole deep pit…"
Jensen nodded. "When I worked through it, I decided that it meant everybody in the county would be a suspect. So it's meaningless."
Virgil said, "I've got a question for you, but I don't want you to take offense."
"Go ahead."
"Did your office ever issue.357s? To your deputies?"
"Yeah, you could of gone all day without asking me that," Jensen said. "We did, but years ago. We went to high-capacity.40s when the FBI did."
"What happened to the.357s?"
"That was before my time. As I understand it, guys were allowed to buy them at a discount. Some did, some didn't. Tell you the truth, some went away, we don't know where. Record keeping wasn't what it should have been. This was two sheriffs ago, so it doesn't have anything to do with Jim."
"But you thought of that," Virgil said.
"Sure."
THEY TALKED for another fifteen minutes, and Jensen said that he was looking through medical records at the partnership that had taken over Gleason's practice, and also at the regional hospital. "It's buried back there somewhere. Maybe the same guy killed Bill Judd, if Judd is really dead. He and Gleason were almost exactly the same age, so there's gotta be a tie. Maybe this killer-guy is waiting to go after somebody else, sitting out there thinking about it."
"Could have gone all day without saying that," Virgil said.
VIRGIL FOLLOWED JENSEN back into town, cut away when Jensen turned north toward the courthouse. The motel clerk had recommended two lunch spots, Ernhardt's Cafe and Johnnie's Pizza, both on Main Street. Virgil decided Italian might be too much, and checked out Ernhardt's.
The cafe turned out to be a combination German deli and bakery, cold meat, fresh-baked potato bread, pickles, and sauerkraut. Virgil got a roast beef on rye with rough mustard, a pickle, and a half pound of bright yellow potato salad, and took it to one of the low-backed booths that lined the wall opposite the ordering counter.
A minute or so after he sat down, the sheriff's sister stepped in, blinked in the dimmer light, said hello to the woman behind the counter, ordered a salad and coffee, spotted Virgil in the back booth and nodded to him. He nodded back, and a moment later, she carried her lunch tray over and slid into the seat on the other side of the booth.
"Are you going to save Jimmy's job?" she asked.
She was not perfectly good looking-her eyebrows might have down sloped a little too much, her mouth might have been a quarter-inch too wide-but she was very good-looking, and certainly knew it. She was smiling when she asked her question, but her green eyes were serious.
"Does it need saving?" Virgil asked.
"Maybe," she said. And, "My name's Joan Carson. Jimmy said you had some nice things to say about my ass."
"Jimmy's job just got in deeper trouble," Virgil said, but she was still smiling and that wasn't bad. "Tell me about that, though. His job."
She shrugged, dug into her salad. "This is his second term. Most sheriffs have to get over the third-election hump. That's just the way it is, I guess. You've pissed off enough people to get fired, if they're not so impressed that they feel obligated to vote for you."
"They're not impressed?"
"They were, until the murders," she said. "Jimmy runs a good office, he's fair with his deputies. Now, he's got these murders and he's not catching who did it."
"Did he tell you that?" Virgil asked.
"Common knowledge," she said. She picked a raw onion ring out of her salad and crunched half of it, and pointed the crescent-moon remainder at Virgil. "Everybody knows everybody, and the deputies talk. Nobody's got any idea who did the shooting."