Wardell Holland, the mayor of Tarweveld, Minnesota, was sitting in the doublewide he rented from his mother, a Daisy match-grade pellet rifle in his hands, shooting flies. His mother suspected he let the flies in on purpose, so he could shoot at them. He denied it, but he was lying.

Holland had been elected mayor as a gag played by the voters of Tarweveld on the town's stuffed shirts. What made it even funnier was that after an unsuccessful first term, Holland was re-elected in a landslide. He'd run for office on a variety of slogans his minions had spray-painted on walls around town: "No more bullshit: we're fucked," "Beer Sales on Sunday," "I'll do what I can."

Skinner dragged a chair around from the breakfast bar, straddled it backwards, facing Holland on the couch, and said, "I was walking by the Catholic Church last night."

Holland had nothing to say for a long time. He stared across the space between them and finally said, "Jesus Christ, that could work, J.J. You say it'd cost six hundred dollars? I mean, I got six hundred dollars. I'd have to look some stuff up on the Internet. And that thing about buying out Henry... I think he'd take twenty grand for the place. I got the GI Bill and my mother would probably loan me enough for the rest, at nine percent, the miserable bitch, but... Jesus Christ."

Five months later, Mayor Wardell Holland told Virgil Flowers that there weren't any available motel rooms in Tarweveld and not even over in Blue Earth, down I-90. He'd checked. "Your best bet is Mankato. It's an hour away."

All three of them, Virgil, Frankie and Honus the yellow dog were eating Cream of Wheat, and two of them were reading different pieces of the Free Press when Holland called back. "Okay, I got you a place. Mother-in-law apartment of the local hairdresser and her husband. Separate entrance and you get a refrigerator and a microwave. Nice folks. Fifty bucks a day. Extra ten for housekeeping if you want it."

"When will you be back?" Frankie asked, when Virgil was off the phone.

Frankie went to shower and get dressed while Virgil got his traveling gear together, which, as usual, bummed out Honus. Honus was a yellow dog of no specific breed, although there had to be some Labrador DNA in the mix: he loved to go out to the swimming hole. That wouldn't happen for another few weeks, as the water coming out of the uphill spring was essentially liquid ice.

Virgil was a tall man, thin, athletic, with longish blond hair and an easy smile. He was wearing a 'got mule' t-shirt, purchased in the parking lot at a Gov't Mule show a year earlier in Des Moines; an inky blue corduroy sport coat; and boot-cut blue jeans over cordovan cowboy boots.

Virgil had passed through Tarweveld a couple of times, but had never stopped. He knew little about the place, other than what he'd read in the newspaper stories, of which there had been many in the past few months: it had been settled by Dutch pioneers in the 19th Century, who gave the town its name, which meant "wheatfield." The Dutch were followed by a bunch of Bavarians and finally a few Irish. About every other lawn had a miniature Dutch windmill on it, the product of a manic carpenter who loved building windmills and insisted on doing it.

As Virgil rolled past a million acres of newly sprouted cornfields toward Tarweveld, he realized that there were damn few wheatfields around anymore. Everything had gone to beans and corn. A patch of oats might pop up here and there, recognizable by its bluish tint, and there were spotty plots of commercial vegetables — cucumbers, string beans — but that was about it.

Virgil crossed I-90 and ten minutes later entered Tarweveld. Most similar small prairie towns resembled the main street in the movie High Noon before the shooting started — a line of ramshackle stores with empty streets. Tarweveld had all the ramshackle you could hope for, but was busy. Even six blocks out, he could see people crossing Main Street and walking along the sidewalks, and cars lining in the block-long business district.

Holland was Virgil's height, heavier in the chest and shoulders, clean-shaven with reddish brown-hair; he was wearing a blue work shirt and jeans, and one boot; his other foot had been replaced with a flexible curved sickle-shaped piece of black metal. He waved Virgil at a well-used green easy chair and took a matching chair on the other side of a battered round coffee table. The back room was mostly used for storage, stacks of cardboard cartons full of chips and soft drinks and beer, and smelled exactly like that: cardboard and beer, with an undertone of pizza. In addition to the easy chairs, four more chairs, no two alike, were arranged around a card table, with a microwave on a shelf over a sink on the back wall. The room was apparently used for employee breaks.

The woman who'd been shot the day before was named Betty Rice and she'd been in town for two days, going to all the church services at St. Mary's, hoping for an apparition. "She was over from Sioux Falls with her sister and a friend, never been here before. None of them had been. Same with the fellow who got shot last week," Zimmer said.

Virgil, Holland and Zimmer talked a while longer — Virgil asked whether there were any known anti-Catholic bigots around town, but neither one of them knew of any. Zimmer mentioned that a couple of Nazis lived out in the countryside and were known to have .223 black rifles, but Zimmer said, "They're basically play-Nazis. I've known both of them since they were born and they're a couple of dumbasses."

Holland took over the cash register and Skinner trailed Virgil outside.

"Aw, don't waste your time with them. It's two guys and their girlfriends and they don't have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of," Skinner said. "They decided they wanted to be somebody, get somebody to pay attention to them, so they signed up to be Nazis and got themselves a couple of pit bulls. They're not exactly harmless, but bar fights are really their style. The Nazis, not the pit bulls."

Virgil walked Skinner up to the corner where Rice was shot and then down the street where Coates was hit. They talked about possible angles, but if you made the simplest assumption, that both were square to the street, then the shots would have come from the general area of the business district. If their hips were turned, one way or the other, the shots could have come from a miscellany of businesses behind either side of Main Street, or from a residential area further back.

They exchanged cell phone numbers — Virgil gave Skinner his direct number, on the chance that Skinner actually might think of something — and then Virgil went out to his truck and got his iPad. A Google Earth satellite photo gave him a solid overhead shot of the town. The picture had been taken in the winter, with no leaves on the trees, so he had an unobstructed view of the street layout.

Time for a walk-about.

When he'd worked his way down one side of Main Street and up the other, Virgil walked around behind Main Street, first on the east side, then on the west. The east side was bricked in with commercial buildings, a Goodwill Store in an unpainted metal hobby barn, a Burden's Tractor & Implement, a car wash, a brick Fraternal Order of the Eagles, which was mostly a bar with a rooftop that might have provided a sniper's nest, and an STM Wine and Spirits. The Eagles Club wasn't open, but Virgil saw somebody walking around inside, and banged on the door until Goran Bilbija pulled it open an inch and said, "We're closed."

Virgil declined the offer and worked his way up the back of Main street, on the west side, and found a more complicated situation, a mix of mostly ramshackle pre-war homes and small businesses, some of the businesses in converted houses. A Pro-Nails place had a dusty hand-written "Out of Business" sign in a window, but Auto Heaven, Buster's Better Quality Meats and Trudy's Hi-Life Consignment were still operating; none of the operators had heard a shot.

Virgil turned to the woman: "Thank you for helping out. I apologize for the language, but he scared me to death."

Virgil spent another half hour wandering around the area on the west side of Main Street, but didn't see anything that made him want to look closer.

Virgil left Skinner & Holland, chewing his way through the pack of gum, walked around to his truck, opened his camera case and took out his Nikon and a long lens. He hung the camera on a shoulder and got a pair of image-stabilizing Canon binoculars out of the gear box in the back. After locking the truck, he trudged over to the spots where the shooting victims were hit and glassed the area on the west side of the business district, picking out spots where a shot might have come from.