Rough Country

off.”
    Jenkins said, “The first woman who got shot, in the canoe—shooting her like that was pretty unprofessional, you know? If he’s four inches off at eighty or ninety or a hundred yards, on a moving target, he misses clean, and she’s over the side and under water. He could have shot her in the chest, which is twice as big a target. So the thing is, he was either showing off, or . . . well, there isn’t an or . He’s proud of himself. Proud of his ability to do that.”
    “So why’d he shoot the other woman in the back?” Virgil asked. Something was tickling at the back of his brain, a thought, but he couldn’t catch it.
    “We don’t know, but I bet there’s a reason. Bet the shot was longer. You said she was riding a bike. If she was moving fast, and it was a long shot—that might have been one hell of a shot,” Jenkins said. “Not moving, between the eyes, eighty yards, is an easier shot than hitting something that’s moving fast, bouncing maybe, at two hundred yards. We need to know how far away he was. . . .”
    “So you think he’s a shooter. A marksman.”
    “He thinks he is,” Jenkins said. “Or he’s like Lee Harvey Oswald—he’s trying to prove something.”
     
     
     
    VIRGIL HAD BEEN LEANING against a wall, and now he straightened and said, “I’ve got to get my ass back up there.”
    “She out in the car?” Shrake asked.
    “Who?”
    “Your ass,” Shrake said, and he and Jenkins faked laughs and bumped knuckles.
    “Listen, boys, if I get to the point where I need to beat the answers out of somebody, I’ll give you a call,” Virgil said.
    “Always happy to protect and serve,” Jenkins said.
    Virgil left, still trying to catch the thought that the two thugs had stirred up; still didn’t catch it, but it was back there, and felt like it did when he went to the supermarket and forgot to buy the radicchio.
    A thought that itched.
     
     
     
    VIRGIL HEADED NORTH, up I-35, stopped more or less halfway at a diner called Tobie’s. Hungry as he was, he didn’t feel like diner meat, so he got a piece of blueberry pie and a cup of coffee, pushed on, north and then west, and pulled into his motel in Grand Rapids at ten minutes after ten. He carried his bag up to his room, and found the phone blinking. A message from Signy: “I talked to Zoe a minute ago and she thought you might have a question for me, about Jan Washington. I’m always up until midnight, so come on over if you want.”
    He thought about it for a minute—he was tired, but not too—and headed out, stopped at a supermarket and got a hot whole-roast chicken and a six-pack, and drove out to Signy’s. He saw her shadow on the window when he pulled in, and then she pushed the door open, a wry smile on her face, saw the supermarket bag, and said, “Oh, you brought me roses. You shouldn’t have.”
    “Bought you something better than roses—I bought you a roast chicken,” Virgil said.
    He went through the door, and she said, “You must think I’m sitting out here starving.”
    “No, but I have the feeling that you’re not much interested in cooking,” he said. “Maybe that’s why Joe left; he wanted a pork chop.”
    “You could be onto something,” she admitted. She opened the chicken bag and the scent filled the room, and she said, “You cut up the chicken, I’ll open the beer.”
    They ate at the little table, facing each other, and he asked her about her day, and she told him about the quilt group that couldn’t talk about anything but the McDill murder, and how, halfway through the quilting bee, Zoe had called her to tell her about Jan Washington, and how the group had freaked out.
    “They really, really couldn’t figure that out. We all decided that there’s a crazy man loose. You’re going to start getting some pressure, I think. People want this guy caught right away. They don’t want to hear how it’s hard. And if you can’t, then bring in more cops until everybody’s got their own cop.”
    Virgil told her about his day, and asked about the woman Barbara Carson, whom Constance Lifry had called before she was murdered. “Barbara,” she said. “Hmm. I know her, she used to work for the county in human services or something like that—welfare, I think. But she’s an older lady . . . if you wanted me to swear that she’s not gay, I couldn’t. I couldn’t swear that she was, either. Zoe might know.”
    “How about Jan Washington?” Virgil asked. “We think it’s the