“You will,” Virgil said.
Virgil drove to Bob Martin’s house, the elderly gunsmith. He was home. “I need an empty .223 cartridge, and I need you to keep your mouth shut about me needing it,” Virgil said.
“The first is easy, the second is harder,” Martin said.
“Yeah, well, if you don’t keep it shut, you could hurt the town even worse than it already has been.”
Martin agreed to keep his mouth shut, retrieved an empty shell from his workbench, and said, “Listen, Virgil, I think I know what you’re planning to do and I don’t like it.”
“About keeping your mouth shut,” Virgil said, “I wouldn’t mind if you told your friends I came over and fingerprinted you and cleared you when I compared your print to a picture that I had on my cell phone... that I got off this shell... You gotta lie sincerely.”
“I can do that... But, jeez, Virgil, you gotta be careful.”
—
When Virgil got back to Van Den Berg’s house, Sawyer and Baldwin were examining the streak of blood in the back of the Jeep.
“That nails down the Jeep transporting the body,” Sawyer said.
“Good work,” Virgil said, not mentioning that he’d already seen the blood and knew that the Jeep had been used to transport the body, and that none of that helped. He showed the .223 cartridge to Sawyer—she wouldn’t have let him use the actual cartridge found in the garage—and rolled his thumb across it. “I need you to fume this and pull the print.”
“I don’t like this,” she said. “You’re going to get hurt.”
“Nah, I’m gonna live forever.”
“I’ll only do it under protest,” she said. “Then when I visit you in the hospital, or at the funeral home, I can tell you that I told you so.”
“I’ll take it any way you want to do it.”
—
The fuming wand looked like a black, industrial-strength dildo but was actually a butane torch with a brass tip filled with Super Glue. The idea was to heat up the glue and then fume the .223 cartridge; the glue’s fumes would stick to the fatty acids in Virgil’s print and would then harden. When it was hardened, Sawyer dusted the print with a black powder, making it more visible. The process took only a few minutes, and, when it was done, Virgil took a photo of the print with his cell phone.
“And I need one of your tiny evidence bags. Plus, one of those fingerprint ink pads,” Virgil said.
The pad looked like a woman’s compact, except it was made of plastic and half as large. The pad inside was filled with purple ink that would make a nice, readable fingerprint on ordinary paper. The .223 cartridge went in a transparent four-inch ziplock bag.
“You think the shooter will believe you’re walking around with evidence in your pocket?” Baldwin asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe it’d be more believable if I let out the word thatyou’rewalking around with evidence in your pocket,” Virgil said.
“Never mind,” Baldwin said.
—
Virgil left them to process the house and drove down the street to Skinner & Holland. On the way, Shrake called to say that they’d located Andorra’s son, heir to the farm, and he had good alibis for two of the shootings: he worked at a truck dispatching company and had signed out on time-stamped loads. “He’s out,” Shrake said.
“Okay. Look, I need you guys back here. Change cars—find some old crack-and-dent sedans that you can get comfortable in. We’re talking surveillance mode.”
“You got a suspect?”
“Not yet, but I hope to get one.”
—
At Skinner & Holland, Skinner was behind the cash register, and Holland was in the back room, counting the daily take. When he saw Virgil, Skinner said, “Jennie’s back. She’s down at her house, and she’s okay. Except she hurts.”
“Good. I need to talk to you and Wardell.”
