Dark of the Moon

17

Monday Afternoon CUMULUS CLOUDS WERE thick as cotton balls in a hospital room, some of the bottoms turning blue: more thunderstorms coming in. Stryker was sitting at his desk, fingers knitted behind his ear, heels on the corner of his desk, staring out the window across the parking lot. Virgil sat across from him, saying not much.

Finally Stryker yawned, stretched, dropped his feet to the floor, and said, "Well, that was your basic cluster-fuck."

"There's a connection in there. Gotta be," Virgil said. "I will bet you one hundred American dollars that he's the guy."

"It was one dollar this morning."

"One hundred dollars," Virgil repeated.

"Straight up? A hundred dollars?"

Virgil thought about it for a moment, then said, "You'd have to give me two to one."

Stryker tried to laugh, then shook his head, said, "Damnit, he's gonna crucify us Thursday morning."

"Then we need to give him a better story," Virgil said. "I'm thinking about calling Pirelli. See what he has to say for himself."

"You do that, "Stryker said, standing up. "I've got to run over to the jail. If I don't see you later, I'll see you tomorrow."

VIRGIL WANDERED OUT of the office, stopped at the men's room. The second-best place to think, after a shower, was a nice, quiet urinal.

Williamson claimed that Judd found him; that he hadn't found Judd. That had a certain straightforward logic to it that appealed to Stryker. If Williamson was Judd's kid, Judd would have known it. Was it possible that as he'd gotten old, and maybe started to think about what was coming, maybe started to read a little Revelation, that he'd softened up, and gathered his children around him? Was that why his will wasn't in the safe-deposit box? Had he been thinking of changing it? Would that have given Junior reason to get rid of the old man?

On the other hand, Williamson's alibi, that he'd been at the Firehouse Funder, was too convenient for Virgil's taste. The fund-raiser had been held at Mitchell's, the local sports bar. Mitchell's back door emptied into an extra parking lot. From the parking lot to the Gleasons' house was a five-minute jog along the railroad tracks, then across the bridge and up the hill. All suitably dark. And by ten o'clock, the eating had been over for two hours, and the drinking had gotten under way. Would anybody have noticed if Todd Williamson, so evident around the place all evening, had slipped away for twenty-five minutes? Had not gone to the john, but out the back door?

As far as Virgil was concerned, the alibi was far short of watertight.

Stryker disagreed.

Fuck him.

HE WAS WASHING his hands when a deputy stepped in, glanced at the two empty toilet booths, then said, "I need a word with you, but I don't want it getting out that I talked to you."

Virgil shrugged: "Sure, but…"

"But what?" The deputy's name tag said "Merrill." He was nervous and blunt. He wore gold-rimmed glasses and a brush mustache.

"But this is a murder case," Virgil said. "If you've got something to say, you oughta say it. I can't promise to hold it confidentially."

Merrill rubbed his nose, looked at the door, and then said, "I saw you up to the fire at Judd's."

Virgil nodded: Let the guy talk.

"So…this is probably nothing, and that's why I hate to say anything…but…"

"Say it; I ain't gonna bite," Virgil said.

"Jesse Laymon was there. Drinking beer, rubberneckin'."

"Yeah?"

"Well, she's seeing the sheriff, socially, everybody knows that. The thing is, I know her truck, and I didn't see it come in, and I didn't see it go. I never saw her ride off with any of the other people there. I know about everybody in the county, everybody who was up there, and I've been asking around…I can't find anybody who took her, or who brought her in. It was raining like a cow pissing on a flat rock; seems odd to think that she walked in."

"She had a can of beer in her hand when I saw her," Virgil said.

"Yup," Merrill said. "I assumed that she came up with the folks from the bar. But I can't find anybody she rode with."

"You sure you'd know her truck?"

"Man, Jesse is…one of the hottest chicks in the county. I know her truck. I wave at her every time I see her."

Virgil looked at him for a minute, then said, "Keep your mouth shut on this."

"You gonna do something about it?"

"I will."

BUFFALO RIDGE was something like the hill at the Stryker farm, but twenty or fifty times as large, covered with knee-high bluestem grass, outcrops of the red rock, with a spring, a stream, and a lake on the north side, and Judd's house and the Buffalo Jump bluff on the southeast. There were park roads both north and south; the south road came off a state highway and curled around the top of the mound; halfway to the top, Judd's driveway broke off to the east to the homesite, now just a hole in the ground.

Virgil took the drive, parked next to the foundation hole. He got out and looked in. The ash had been worked over with rakes. Looking for a safe, Virgil thought; Junior hoping for a will.

Okay. If he were going to kill a man, and set fire to his house, how would he run? Wouldn't run south, because you'd fall over the bluff and kill yourself. Wouldn't go east, because there was nothing there but a lot of hillside, weeds, and rocks. You could break a leg in the dark.

You could run back down the drive, to the park road, then down the park road to the entrance. Would you get to the entrance before the fire department? Must be a mile or more, and the fire department had a couple of first responders on duty all the time. If you were in a car, or a truck, you could get down there in a minute, but running, even with a small flashlight, would take you eight minutes or so.

Or you could go north, climbing the hill, and then circling around. That would be more dangerous, again risking rocks and holes, but you could take it slow in the rain, and work up behind the rubberneckers…

He knew the road, so he walked the north route, across the hillside. Came over the top, saw the first of the buffalo. They were far enough away not to be a problem, but he kept an eye on them; and they kept an eye on him. The day was still warm, close to perfect, but the clouds were thickening up. He zigzagged looking for a trail, a break that somebody might have followed through the high grass, but saw nothing in particular.

And the going was rough. He tried walking with his eyes closed, and floundered around like a two-legged goat. Huh.

He looked back at the road. The road was it.

BACK IN BLUESTEM, he walked down to Judd Jr.'s office. His secretary was standing in the door of the inner office, talking, and stopped when Virgil came in. She said, "Mr. Flowers is here."

Judd stepped into Virgil's line of view, cracked a smile: "You got old Todd hung from a light post yet?"

"Not yet," Virgil said. "I need to talk to you for a minute."

Judd pointed at a chair, and said to the secretary, "Run up to Rexall and get me a sleeve of popcorn."

She wanted to stay and listen, but shook her head and shuffled off. Virgil waited until she was gone. Judd said, "I don't need any more family members, Mr. Flowers. I already had one too many."

"Yeah, well, I guess you should have talked to your father about that," Virgil said. He asked, "Who cut your father's lawn? Who cut that piece of short grass out between the house and the bluff? I didn't see any lawn mowers on the garage pad."

Judd was puzzled: "Well, he had all of his yard care done by Stark Gardens. They got a greenhouse and do lawn care and cleanup…Why?"

"Trying to nail a few things down-who might have been coming and going," Virgil said. "The night of the fire, do you have any idea of how long it took the fire department to get up there?"

Judd shook his head-"You could ask them, but I imagine, let me see: Somebody had to call it in, then the guys had to get going…had to get through town…Doesn't seem long, but I bet it was eight or ten minutes."

"Okay." Virgil stood up. "Thanks."

Judd said, leaning back in his leather chair, "I'd like to know something. Just between you and me. Private."

"Ask," Virgil said.

"You gettin' anywhere?"

Virgil said, "I think so. I feel like things are about to break."

Judd said, "Jesus, I hope. I made some calls up to the Cities, to ask about you. Word was, you're pretty good. I need to stop walking around feeling like there's a crosshairs on my neck."

Virgil thought about Pirelli and his DEA crew: "I can sympathize. You could be excused for feeling a little twitchy right now."

AT THE SHERIFF'S OFFICE, he asked for Margo Carr, the crime-scene tech. She worked the north county as a full-time deputy when she wasn't doing crime-scene work, he was told. He borrowed a radio and called her.

"You keep your crime-scene stuff in your truck?"

"I do," she said.

"Meet me somewhere," he said. "I need to borrow some spy equipment."

There was a moment's silence, then she said, with a smile lurking in her voice, "Mr. Flowers, Agent Flowers…"

Flowers said, "Just meet me."

They hooked up five miles out of town. Carr was a redhead, chunky in all of her gear, and not that pretty, but she gave off a distinct vibe, and Virgil had the feeling that there'd never been a shortage of men coming around. He borrowed a metal-detecting wand from her. "When you said 'spy equipment'…" she began.

"Between you and me, that was for other listeners," Virgil said. "If other listeners ask me what I borrowed, don't tell them."

THE SUN WAS a red ball, still two hand-widths above the horizon, thunderheads starting to pop up, when Virgil turned off the interstate and headed into Roche. The bad thing was, it was Monday evening, and most people didn't go dancing on Mondays. The good thing was, Roche was tiny. He could park a half mile away, down the back road out of town, on the crest of a hill, and watch the Laymon house with his Zeiss binoculars.

That's what he did. There was a Ford Taurus and a beat-up Ford F-150 parked in the side yard, one for each of the women, he thought. Jesse would be out, or going out. Stryker was all over her, and she did like to move around. Her mother was the question…

While he waited, he put through a call to Pirelli. Pirelli was working, he was told, and would probably call back in a minute or two, or maybe never.

Pirelli called back: "Things are moving. Be patient. I won't talk to you about this on a cell phone, but we got to an inside guy, one of the local grain handlers. There's a building out there that they call 'the lab,' and none of the locals are allowed in. We are ninety-nine percent, and after tonight…we should be better. So…"

"Stay in touch."