Dark of the Moon

11

THE NEWS WAS just coming up when Virgil knocked on Joan's front door. She shouted, "Come on in," and he went through into her living room. "Did you see me at the press conference?"

"No…"

"I got crushed," Joan said. "I was in the back and this fat guy from the Firestone store, I got welded to his butt. Here we go…"

THE PRESS CONFERENCE was the lead story and sucked up four or five minutes of the broadcast. Virgil had been right about the details: they loved it. And the cameras loved Stryker's face, and the tight jaws. "That's my brother," Joan said, delighted, when it was over. "He looked like a movie star."

"He was good," Virgil said.

"You've been holding out on me, too," Joan said. She'd stacked a duffel bag near the front door, and picked it up on the way out. "You never told me that you guys were rolling, you've been all downbeat."

"Yeah, well…" he mumbled.

"What?"

"Nothing," Virgil said.

"What'd you say?" They'd just gotten into the truck. "You said something."

He leaned over, kissed her on the cheek, and said, "It's all bullshit. We got nothing."

She was flabbergasted. "Virgil."

"That's the way it is."

"Virgil…"

"We got ten days."

He backed out of the driveway, and she didn't say another word until they were out of town. Then, "Did you bring the food?"

"Exactly what you ordered," Virgil said.

"You got nothing?"

"Well. Maybe something."

"Virgil!"

He then fumbled behind the seat, in his briefcase, and hooked out one of the color Xeroxes and passed it to her. She recoiled: "Yuck."

"Any idea who it is? Probably before your time, though…"

"No. Where'd you find this?" she asked.

"In Roman Schmidt's safe-deposit box. Nothing but the photograph. No other paper that might suggest what it is. I have a feeling that it's before the middle of 1970."

"Did you look in the paper?"

"The paper's on microfilm, in the library," he said. "Somebody stole a roll from the middle of 1969, but there's no way to know if that's the one we're looking for."

"Really. Virgil, you may…" She hesitated, then: "Does Jim know about this?"

"Not yet. I'm going to tell him when I see him, but I think he might be out of town at the moment," Virgil said.

"Out of town? He can't be," she said. "What else happened?"

He grinned. "I swore I wouldn't tell anyone."

"I don't care-tell me anyway."

Virgil laughed and said, "I think he's taking Jesse Laymon out to dinner. Someplace far away, where nobody'll see him. Because he's supposed to be working the Roman Schmidt case night and day, even if there's nothing to do."

"Oh, my God." She pulled her bottom lip: "Well, I hope he gets laid. And if he does, I hope it's worth it. Because he really is in trouble, here, Virgil. I wouldn't be surprised if one of the Curlys declares that he's running for sheriff, one of these days."

"You think?"

"Big Curly thought he was the natural successor to Roman Schmidt. He might be past it now, but Little Curly would take the job in a minute."

"Neither one of them struck me as a wizard," Virgil said.

"No, but their families have been here forever, they know everyone, they've slapped every back in the county, and, they're fairly good-natured. If Jim really slips, one of them will run."

"Ah, we'll get the guy. Next week or so," Virgil said.

"You think?"

"Yup."

"Will anybody else be killed?" she asked.

He had to think for a minute, then said, "Maybe."

JOAN MADE HIM park the truck in the barn, a gesture toward discretion, and then they walked through the low weeds to the creek, and up the path into the Stryker's Dell. The running shoes made the going easier; cowboy boots weren't made for climbing rocks. At the top, on the left side of the pond, Joan opened the duffel and took out a quilt. "Straight from Wal-Mart; makes the rocks softer," she said.

Virgil unloaded the food and beer, and when he looked up, she was unbuttoning her blouse. He squatted on the rock, watching, as she took it off, slipped out of her shoes, socks and jeans, popped the brassiere, tossed it with the other clothes, and slipped out of her underpants. "See anything you like?"

"Well, yeah," he said.

"Last one in," she said, and she was over the side of the rock, six feet into the water, and Virgil was shedding shoes, shirt and pants as quickly as he could get them off. Fifteen seconds after she went over the side, he followed, the water a bracing slap. When he came up, she was there to push his head back under.

They played around the pool for a few minutes, laughing and sputtering, the water cool but not cold, refreshing in the summer heat; and the stones in the direct light of the setting sun were warm as toast.

The pool's back wall, to the east, where the spring came down, had eroded into a steep ramp. At the top of the ramp was a finger of dirt and grass, and beyond it, a rocky hillside running up to the crest. The pool walls on the north and south sides went straight up forty feet or so, solid red rock. A local kid had once jumped off the top on a dare, Joan said, had landed in not quite the deepest part, and had broken a couple of foot bones when he hit bottom. "That was the end of that," she said. "We had to carry him out."

The west side was the canyon, with the sun setting right in the center of the slot. It did that in May and August, she said, then swung farther north and south, depending on the season.

They were facing each other, blowing water, Virgil working on a new game; he had a handful of her pubic hair, and her two hands were on his chest, and he was about to suggest a different move when he caught the reflection up the hillside, beyond the head of the pool.

He thought it might be water on an eyelash, a refraction off a splash, something else, but then he caught it again and he pushed her head underwater and ducked under himself, caught her arm, and dragged her deeper toward the head of the pool. She struggled against him, but he pulled hard, until he felt the east wall, and then they rose two feet to the surface and she shouted, "Virgil, Virgil, what are you doing…?"

A frightened tone threaded in her voice as she shook water away from her face.

Virgil shoved her against the wall and said, urgently, "There's somebody on the hillside above us. I saw a reflection off glass, off a lens…"

She turned to look, but they were out of the line, against the face, "What?"

"Somebody up the hill…"

"A camera?"

"Could be a camera," Virgil said.

"What else…?"

"Could be a scope," he said. "When somebody's looking at you with glasses, you can usually see their arms."

She looked at him, shocked, then looked at their clothes. "Oh…God."

"Yeah."

"You're sure?" she asked, craning her neck to look overhead.

"I saw it twice." He looked back at their clothes, and then said, "I want you to stay right here. I'm going underwater to that corner right there, I'm going to come out fast. I don't think…he's at least a couple of hundred yards away, maybe three hundred. I don't think he can get me if I'm moving fast. Once I'm behind that lip, I can get out to the clothes, get my gun."

"I thought…"

"I started carrying it today…tell you later. Now. Stay here. I'm going."

He took two deep breaths, then pushed himself straight down the wall. Had to go deep, because the water was clear. When he hit bottom, he oriented himself, pushed off the wall, kept thinking, stay deep, stay deep, felt the bottom shelving, came up slightly off-line, surged forward with a butterfly stroke, lurching toward a groove in the rock and was almost there, almost in, when there was a slap on the wall to the right. One hand slipped and he went down, lurched again, slipping, and then he was into the groove, hurting, registering the crack of a rifle shot, pushed himself up the groove, skinning his knees, crawled up behind the wall, six feet from his weapon.

Joan shouted, "Virgil, he's shooting, Virgil!"

Not hit, he thought. Everything still working. He looked back at the wall and could see the pockmark where the slug had hit: two feet above where his head had been. Not that close, but close enough to scare him.

He shouted back to Joan, "I'm okay. You stay there." He started counting. One minute, one minute thirty seconds. Joan made a questioning gesture, and he put up a finger: wait. Two minutes…

WHEN HE'D HUNT deer up north, and he'd see a buck threading through the trees, he could focus on any given shot for a minute or two. After that, he'd lose precise focus. He'd trained himself to wait until the deer was right down a shooting lane before he even started to focus, because two minutes were a long time to concentrate on a shot. Two minutes, twenty seconds, and he coiled himself against the wall, spotted his pistol, said to himself, go, go, go: and he went.

Six feet out, half a second, get the gun, six feet back. The incoming slug was just that fraction of a second too slow, slapping off the rock a yard wide and again, too high.

He had the gun. He stood, popped his head out for a half second, pulled back. Dropped to his knees, popped his head out again, saw movement: like a bear, somebody in dark clothes near the crest, running toward the crest, away from them. He pulled back, stood, turned around the corner, braced himself on the rock, aimed the pistol five or six feet high and started pulling the trigger, counting out seven shots. He had no idea how much elevation he needed at four hundred yards, but it'd be a lot-the pistol shot almost five inches low at a hundred yards.

If he hit something, the chances of which were vanishingly small, that was all to the good. Mostly he wanted a bunch of slugs flying around the guy like bees.

Because, he thought, the guy couldn't take the slightest chance of getting hit. If he was hit, or even seen, he was done…

SO: A STALEMATE. Virgil was down in the pool, without any way of going after the guy. But Virgil was also armed and wary, down among the jumble of rocks, and would be hard to get at.

Virgil stood next to the wall, ready to take cover, and watched, and watched, and saw nothing more. Finally, he shouted at Joan, "Underwater, just like I did, into that groove. He's not there anymore, but don't take any chances. Get out of there quick."

She nodded, pushed herself under, and a few seconds later, surfaced and crawled into the groove, across the rock, and then stood up next to him.

"Now what?" She shivered. She'd been in the cool water too long.

"Now I do this for a couple more minutes, and then I grab the clothes."

"Virgil…"

"I'm about ninety-nine percent sure he's gone. He can't be seen. You can hear that rifle for a mile or more, and it's not hunting season…He's got to move. He's got to get out of here."

"Probably go straight north on Holman. There's nothing there, before you hit Highway Seven. Once he's on Seven, he's just another car."

"Then that's probably it," Virgil said, and he thrust himself away from the wall, grabbed the clothes, and was back. He handed her her bra and blouse, then pushed her back against the wall and kissed her and said, "Getting shot at makes me horny."

"And your penis is about a half-inch long. Cold water does it every time. It's sort of a tragedy, isn't it?"

Virgil looked down at himself and said, "That wasn't the cold water, sweetheart. That was fear, pure and simple." He stepped back, looking up the hill. "If he'd been cool about it, he could have slipped up close, we'd be playing in the pool and bang! He could have done both of us."

She leaned out from the wall and asked, "I wonder why he didn't?"

"He might have been planning to, but he stopped to look things over with the scope. That's when I saw him. I think he wanted to wait until we were out of the water so he could get a full body shot, but he got impatient and stopped to look us over…"

They were dressing as they talked; when they were done, Virgil said, "I'll get the stuff."

"Fuck the stuff," she said.

"He's gone," Virgil said. "He's gone…but we stay close to the wall anyway. If there's any other place he'd wait, it'd be while we're coming out of the mouth of the canyon."

VIRGIL POPPED OUT AGAIN, grabbed the food, and jumped back. Then out again, snagged Joan's duffel, and hopped back. Never exposed for more than a second. Time enough for a snap shot, but not a good one, not if the shooter couldn't anticipate the move.

When they were ready, Virgil said, "Squeeze in close to the wall, and when we have to show ourselves, move fast. One at a time. You first."

Fifty feet back into the canyon, they were protected. They stopped and Joan used the quilt to wash the blood off Virgil's face. "You've got five small cuts." She traced them with her index finger, on his temple and cheek. "I don't think stitches, but you could use some Band-Aids."

"Got some in the truck."

At the mouth of the canyon, an obvious ambush spot, they sat, watched, and finally made the move, running one at a time past the stock tank, crouched through the weeds, behind the barn.

Breathing hard, Joan said, "That's a heck of a fourth date. I don't think you've got a reasonable encore."

THE BARN was going dark as the sun went down. Virgil got a box of shells from the truck and reloaded the magazine for the pistol, the shells clicking into place. When he was finished, he opened the back hatch, lifted the concealment cover, took out a shotgun and a box of shells, loaded the shotgun.

Joan said, "It was you he wanted."

"I think so. He's getting tired of my act."

"That's a relief," she said. "At least I'm safe."

He laughed. "Yeah. Listen, about that short penis thing…"

"It's not your fault."

"It's not that; I just wish you'd use some word other than penis, you know? Sounds too much like peanut." He finished loading the shotgun and pumped a shell into the chamber and put it between the front truck seats. "Why don't you say…dick. That'd be good."

"Seems crude."

"Whatever." He stepped away from the truck and looked up at the overhead light. "Does that light come on when the barn door goes up?"

"Yes."

"It'll silhouette us. I'll get it." He took off his shoes and climbed up on the hood of the truck, and then on the roof, reached up and unscrewed the lightbulb, left it hanging by a thread. "Punch the door lift, just enough to turn on the light."

She punched the lift button, and the lightbulb remained dark.

"When I say to lift the door, lift it; then climb in the backseat, get down low, and hang on. I'm getting out of here."

He climbed into the truck, started the engine, and braced the shotgun, muzzle down, between the passenger-side floor and seat. "Punch the button; get in."

She did, and he watched the door going up, seeming to take an eternity; then he hit the gas and the truck blew through the opening, backward, and he kept it moving, backward, in a circle, around the parking circle, jabbed the brake, jammed the shift into Drive, and tore down the short driveway to the county road, skidded onto the road with a quick brake and another pulse of acceleration, and they were gone.

"We okay?" Joan asked.

"Yeah. He's long gone; but we're so far away from help that we didn't dare take the chance…"

He drove past the hill, away from town. "Where're we going?" Joan asked.

"Got some people to talk to." He slowed, pulled over, and said, "Let me get rid of the shotgun, and you can ride up front."

THEY STOPPED at five farms along Highway 7, and spoke to one guy mowing a ditch: Who had they seen on the highway?

Shrugs and shaken heads: nobody in particular.

On the way back to town, Virgil said, "I thought everybody knew everybody else's car."

"Not out here. In town. If it'd been something unusual, like a Toyota or a Mercedes, somebody might have noticed. But a Ford or a Chevy, unless there's a sign on it…"

VIRGIL DIDN'T WRITE much that night: he was stuck on story development.

Homer was pissed off and scared. The killer was coming after him: time to let somebody know about that, file a report.

But: the man in the moon. He spent some time considering it-thought about Jesse Laymon's moon earrings. Those had a man in the moon, but Homer didn't think Betsy would be talking about a symbol. She was talking about a man.

And Homer thought about the new moon coming up as he was driving into the thunderstorm, on the way to Bluestem, the crescent moon in his rearview mirror. Could the moon be triggering this guy? A new moon? Huh. The moon came up in the east, just like the sun did. Were Gleason and Schmidt propped up facing to the east, because that was where the moon came from? Facing the moon, but not allowed to see it?

Crazy talk.

Before going to sleep, Homer thought about the shooting that afternoon. Scary, but the guy had missed. Could have gotten a lot closer…

Did the shooter intend to kill, or only to frighten? If only to frighten, why?

Virgil went to sleep hoping that Homer would come up with an idea; because at this point, Virgil himself had none at all.

Went to sleep dreaming of Joanie Stryker on the rock at the dell…