“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 apublic 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.”
Virgil understood “SHTF” to mean a “Shit Hits The Fan” situation.
“Interesting,” he said. He bobbed his head, and said, in his best gun nut voice, “I would have put in a couple of twelve-gauge shotguns. They’re good threat guns when you don’t want to shoot anyone but might have to. They’d also be good for pheasant, in a SHTF case.”
Ford regarded him levelly for five seconds or so, then said, “Now you’re fuckin’ with me. You think I’m goofy, too. I admit, it could turn out that way. New generation—could be all sweetness and light. That’s not the way I see it, though. A rising tide of mean little fascist rats, is what I see.”
—
Virgil swerved away from the argument: “Who do you think might have done the shooting in town?”
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?”
“Not in town. There are some good shots, by any regular standard, guys who can keep it inside a minute of angle, as long as they’ve got the time and are shooting with a support. You can see them every day out at Glen’s. I’ve never seen Wardell Holland shoot, but he was infantry in Afghanistan, or Iraq, so he’s probably an okay shot... I kinda asked around about him, and he was in his store, with people talking to him, when the shootings happened, so he’s out. Old Man Martin, he’s a local gunsmith; his eyes are so bad, he couldn’t hit the side of a barn from the inside. Glen was a hunter-level rifle shot, and a better pistol shot, bordering on good, with his .45, but, of course, he’s dead. No, I can’t think of anyone in town who’d be good enough to make those shots from way out on purpose. You gotta consider the possibility that the placement of the shots was accidental.”
“Where were you when those people got shot, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“Surprised it took you this long to ask,” Ford said, with a thin grin. He’d taken a .223 black rifle from one of the safes and was handling it, turning it, as easily as a drum major twirling a baton. “I got my own business doing computer maintenance and WiFi installations, and also solar panel sales; I got an associate who does the installation on the solar panels. With that first shooting, I was at the Creighton house over in Fairmont. It’s new construction, big house, they want WiFi in every room and solar on the roof. George and Elizabeth Creighton—they were both there the whole time I was. The second shooting, I was sitting in Elmer’s Tap, off the Interstate, eating a hamburger and watching some guys shoot pool. I can give you names and all.”
Virgil took a card from his pocket, wrote his BCA email address on the back, and said, “I believe you, but this is murder, so I gotta check. Email me the names.”
“I’ll do that soon as you’re out the door,” Ford said.
