None of the above is always true.
Having established that the criminal was most likely dumb—with exceptions—the question became, how was he avoiding detection? A rifle shot actually makes two loud noises: the boom or bang caused by the exploding gunpowder and the loud crack when the bullet breaks the sound barrier.
When he was in the Army, in Serbia, Virgil had once spent some time in the pits below the targets on a rifle range. He was six hundred yards out from the shooting line and became familiar with the difference between a muzzle blast and a supersonic crack. The two sounds were separate and distinct. The passing bullet produced a crack—some people described it asZINGGGG!orWHIZZZZ!—that was quite loud, followed by the hollow boom of the muzzle blast. On the other hand, theZINGGGG!didn’t sound like what most people thought of as a gunshot.
Other than Bram Smit, the old man with the shotgun, nobody had reported either one, and Smit had said the noise he heard sounded like a muffled thud—somebody dropping a shoe overhead. The muzzle blast would be attenuated by the suppressor, but it would still be loud. There must be other ways to muffle a shot, though—and that might be the thud that Smit had reported.
Maybe, Virgil thought, other witnesses actually had heard the shots but hadn’t recognized them for what they were.
If they had heard them at all...
If the bullet was subsonic and didn’t break the sound barrier, that would be far more interesting. There were a few commercial loaders of subsonic .223, but the energy levels of subsonic bullets were far lower than ordinary bullets, and the shooter would probably have to be much closer than they’d thought—likely not more than a hundred yards out, and possibly closer than that.
The arcing ballistics of the bullet might explain the two lowerbody shots. At a hundred yards, a subsonic bullet could drop a foot, so the shooter, not aware of that, might have been aiming at the victim’s heart and hitting too low. And then by the Osborne murder, might have fully compensated for that.
A combination subsonic ammunition and suppressor would mean that the shot would be silent at the point of impact with the victim. As far as he knew, nobody had looked for the shooter at only fifty to a hundred yards out...
But all that subsonic stuff sounded crazy smart and didn’t explain the two thuds heard by Smit. Nope. The shooter was probably using standard ammo, and the witnesses simply hadn’t identified the sonic boom as a rifle shot. Sonic booms, as far as Virgil knew, might be reduced by the frontal area of the bullet, and .223s were small, sleek slugs.
But Smit... Smit created a problem. Was it possible that he hadn’t heard the muzzle blast, the bang, but instead heard only the sonic boom, as the bullet passed close to his house?
—
Virgil was shaving when another thought occurred to him. He’d had an appointment the day before to meet Bud Dexter at Skinner & Holland at 4 o’clock. Virgil’d run a few minutes late, and they’d been talking for a while, but not too long, when Osborne got shot. She’d been shot, he’d bet, at 4:15, at almost exactly the time the other two were shot.
Why 4:15, or within a couple of minutes of 4:15? The obvious answer was that 4:15 was the time when you got the biggest crowds on the street corner across from the church. The first service was at 4:30, and if the Virgin Mary were planning to pop up, you’d want to be there a bit early to get a good seat.
But exactly 4:15? There’d be people on the corner at 4:10 and 4:25, as well. Maybe the shooter was coming from a job that ended at 3:30 or 4, and after going through whatever preparations he had to perform, it simply worked out to 4:15?
Nope. That wasn’t right.
Another little mystery.
—
When he was cleaned up and dressed, Virgil thought about walking out to Mom’s Cafe but decided he couldn’t face a Mom’s pancake. There wasn’t much to eat at Skinner & Holland, either, but even a nuked chicken potpie would be better than Mom’s.
Holland was hauling in more edible crap when Virgil walked into the store. The crowd was noticeably thinner than it had been the other times Virgil had been there, and he overheard two people who looked like townies complaining about the toll the shootings had taken on the tourist trade. “If I catch that rat, I’ll pop his head like a fuckin’ pimple,” one guy said to the other, who replied, “Shhhh. That’s the cop.”
Virgil nodded, and said, “How ya doin’, boys. If you catch the guy, let me know. I’ll come over and shoot him for you all legal-like.”
“Nice thought, but that’s not what I heard about you,” the pimple popper said.
Hung up deciding between a turkey potpie or a chicken, Virgil took a chicken, then put it back and took a turkey, then put that back, and one of the guys said, “Take the chicken. The turkey gives you bad gas.”
Virgil took the chicken, walked it into the back room, andshoved it in the microwave. Holland came through with a box full of blue corn chips, and said, “Hope I can sell this stuff.”
“I ought to bust you for trying,” Virgil said.
“That’s how Communism got started,” Holland said, as he disappeared through the curtain into the store. He was back a minute later, and said, “You know what goes with a chicken potpie?”
“A water glass full of Everclear?”
“Well, yeah, but I was thinking of Zingers. I got a gross of Zingers coming through in a minute.”
Virgil waved off the Zingers, when they came through, and poked holes through the potpie cover with a plastic fork. Holland took the Zingers into the store. He was back a couple of minutes later, pushing through the door curtain with the empty box, when Virgil heard Skinner’s voice call, “Wardell! Wardell!”
Wardell turned, halfway through the curtain. “Yeah?”
