Carr, the crime-scene tech, had recovered all four slugs, but they were so distorted that their use in identifying the weapon would be problematic. The.357 was almost certainly a revolver-Desert Eagle semiautos, made in Israel, were chambered for.357, but that would be a rare specimen out on the prairie. The fact that no brass was found at the scene also suggested a revolver, or a very careful killer.

A heavy-load.357 was not a particularly pleasant gun to shoot, because of recoil. A lot of samples passed through the hands of lawmen, who were more interested in effect than in pleasant shooting. A.357 would reliably penetrate a door panel on a car, which made them popular with highway patrolmen and sheriffs' deputies, who were often working in car-related crime.

Something to think about.

JENSEN AND CARR both mentioned in their reports the possibility that the break-in had been drug related, an attempt to find prescription drugs in the doctor's house. Two aspects militated against the possibility: Gleason had been retired for years, and anybody who had known where to find him would have known that; and Carr had found several tabs of OxyContin in a prescription bottle in a medicine cabinet, left over from a knee-replacement operation on Anna. A junkie would not have missed them.

Russell Gleason still had a hundred and forty-three dollars in his wallet. Anna had seventy-six dollars in her purse. Junkies wouldn't have missed that, either. The money hadn't been missed, Virgil thought. The killer simply wasn't interested.

THE COPS HAD INTERVIEWED fifty people in the case, including the housekeeper, and all the neighbors, friends, relatives, business associates, members of the golf club. There were some people who had disliked the Gleasons, but in a small-town way. You might go to a different doctor, or you might have voted against Anna when she was running for the county commission, but you wouldn't shoot them.