“Yeah, really,” Osborne said. “Bow hunting is barbaric. Bow hunters retrieve less than half the animals they shoot. The rest are left to die out in the woods and rot.”
“All right,” Virgil said. “I’m sorry we disturbed you. We’re asking around. Another question: was Glen Andorra a rug-cleaning client of yours?”
“Nope. Never was. I did know him, but not well. Why do you ask?”
Virgil considered not answering the question but, after a few seconds, said, “He had a couple of rolled-up rugs in his kitchen when he got killed. Like he didn’t have a chance to unroll them. Or maybe he was waiting for them to be picked up.”
“Okay. Well, you have to understand, I don’t haul rugs around with me. I steam them right in the client’s house, and it’s hardly ever rugs, it’s wall-to-wall carpet. If somebody has good rugs, like Persians, they’d take them to a specialty house. If they’re crappy rugs, they’ll clean them by themselves, with cleaner they get at the hardware store. It’s the wall-to-wall carpet they can’t clean by themselves, because you gotta have the machinery that’ll suck the cleaning fluid back up out of the rug. If you pour fluid on them and then try to soak it up with a mop or something, it’ll stink to high heaven for weeks.”
That was more than Virgil needed to know about the rug-cleaning business, and he thanked Osborne again, and said to Jenkins and Zimmer, “Time to move on.”
—
They sort of trotted back to their vehicles, and, when they got there, Zimmer asked, “What do you think?”
“I think he sounded real,” Virgil said, looking back at Osborne’s house. “I can tell you, the guy last night knew what he was doing. He had the gear, too—the camo. He shot Shrake in the dark at, what, twenty-five yards? If that arrow had been three inches farther forward, it would have gone through Shrake’s heart. And he hit me right in the heart.”
Jenkins chipped in. “I’m with Virgil. He sounded real to me, too.”
Zimmer asked, “Do you think he was right about recovering deer? I’ve been thinking about getting a bow.”
“I bow-hunt, and I’m eight for ten, so... what’s that? A twenty percent loss rate?” Virgil said. “I’m gonna have to think about it.”
“You a good shot?” Zimmer asked.
“Yeah, I am,” Virgil said. “Most bow hunters aren’t. There’s a tavern up where I hunt that has a shoot-out the night before the season opener. I’ve seen guys who couldn’t get an arrow inside a full-sized paper plate at twenty yards. These were guys who actually entered an archery contest.”
Jenkins: “So what we’re looking for is a guy who probably isn’t primarily a gun hunter, because he had to steal the gun he’s using and he killed to do it. But he’s probably an expert shot with a bow, which takes practice.”
“Lots of practice,” Virgil said. “Let’s ask around.”
—
Virgil and Jenkins drove back to Skinner & Holland, where the back room had become their unofficial headquarters. Neither one of them had eaten breakfast, so they got potpies out of the freezer, carried them back to the microwave, and nuked them.
“We still haven’t figured out a motive,” Jenkins said. “We could get the names of every bow hunter in the county, but if we can’t figure out a motive, and we can’t prove where he was at the time of the killings... we’re toast.”
“You’re saying we need more information,” Virgil said.
“Yeah. The best information we have is, Andorra was worth a lot of money, even if it wasn’t visible to most people. You actually have to jump through some hoops to understand it. I mean, how many people driving past some old farmhouse, with a barn out back, a subsistence garden, and a goddamn clothesline, would reckon that the place might be worth four million bucks? I mean, why would you think somebody worth four million bucks would keep riding around backwoods Minnesota on a fuckin’ tractor when he could take the cash and move to Miami and buy a fuckin’ Ferrari?”
Virgil poked his fork at Jenkins. “Here’s another thing. We think Larry Van Den Berg figured out who the killer was. What did he have to go on? Money. Janet Fischer said he knew more about money than anyone in town—who has it, who wants it. Has to be money, one way or another. But, Osborne didn’t have any. So, why was she shot? Maybe she wasn’t the primary target? Did she step in front of someone?”
“Or, maybe the shooter is a random sniper, and is nuts,” Jenkins said. “I mean, they’re out there. Something like this religiousapparition thing might be the kind of spark you need to set somebody off.”
“Which is completely backwards from what you were saying. You were saying we have to devote time to finding a motive; now you’re saying that there might not be one.”
“Being nuts is like a motive,” Jenkins said. “Have you thought about asking around town about who might be nuts? If somebody was treated? In a town this size, people would know.”
Virgil thought about that, then shouted, “Skinner!”
Skinner pushed through the curtain, and Virgil asked him if he had somebody to take over the cash register. “For a minute anyway,” Skinner said.
“So, who in town is certifiably nuts?” Virgil asked. “Not a little eccentric, but, you know... insane.”
Skinner shook his head. “Nobody I know of. There have been some... unsettled people here, but they usually get out. If people start avoiding you in a small town, all you get is silence all day long. So they move to Rochester, or up to the Cities.”
“Can you think of a crazy person who might be carrying a grudge, resenting Wheatfield ever since things started getting better for the town, so they would come back and try to upset the apple cart?” Virgil asked.
