Dark of the Moon

6

WHEN HE'D GOTTEN off the phone with Williamson, Virgil punched up Stryker's cell-phone number, thought about it for a moment, then tapped it. Stryker came up five seconds later. From the background rush, Virgil could tell that he was in his truck.

"Did you talk to the Laymons?" Virgil asked.

"Yeah: sex and money on the low plains," Stryker said. "They're telling the truth. They've talked to an attorney over in Worthington, and they're going to petition the district court for a part in the probate process. Margaret says Jesse will stand up to a DNA test."

"Where're you at now?" Virgil asked.

"Heading back to the office."

"Got your heart in your mouth?"

"I wish I hadn't told you about that," Stryker said. "You gonna spread it all over town. On the other hand, I've got Joanie to hold over your head."

"Listen. I'm just coming up to I-90 after talking to Feur. Not much to report there. So: tell me how to find the Laymons. And give me their phone number."

GEORGE FEUR'S readiness to swear on the Bible, and in a comprehensive way, had impressed Virgil. Feur had the stink of fanaticism about him, and fanatics, whatever else you might say about them, didn't take the Word lightly. Interesting, though, that he'd denied knowing the Gleasons. That was something that could be falsified…

The town of Roche once had a bar and a combination grocery-gas station. Now it had two empty and unsalable old commercial buildings slowly sinking back into the earth, and a dozen houses, some neatly kept, some not: flower gardens here, untrimmed lawns there; grape arbors and old wire fences, rusting swing sets and a brand-new tree house, a collapsed chicken house, abandoned farm equipment from the first half of the twentieth century, all gathered on the banks of the Billie Coulee, a seasonal creek that ran down to the Stark River.

A white dog with floppy ears was sitting in the middle of the street when Virgil got there, twenty minutes after talking to Stryker. The dog examined the front of Virgil's truck, realized that it didn't belong to anybody in town, and so ambled off to the side, keeping an eye out for trouble.

The Laymons' house was on the left side of the main street, a white-clapboard story-and-a-half with a brooding dark roof and a brick chimney at one end, a narrow front porch with a white-painted railing. Orange earthenware pots of geraniums sat on the railing, and hollyhocks grew next to the steps. A huge cottonwood stood in back, towering over two smaller apple trees.

A side yard was occupied by a vegetable garden, neatly laid out, tilled and weeded. The sweet-corn leaves were showing brown edges, the corn silk brown, the ears ready to eat. Four rows of potato plants marched along at eighteen-inch intervals, and cucumber and squash vines sprawled around the corn. The whole thing was edged with marigolds, which, Virgil thought, were intended to ward off some kind of rootworm.

In any case, his parents still did the same thing: grew an annual vegetable garden, and edged it with marigolds.

Virgil parked and got out and the white dog barked at him, but only once, and then tentatively wagged his tail. Virgil grinned at him: a watchdog, but not an armed-response dog. At the house, a blond woman came out on the porch. She was dressed for an office in black slacks and a white blouse. She said, "You're Mr. Flowers."

MOTHER AND DAUGHTER didn't look much alike. Margaret, the woman who'd met him on the porch, was in her mid-fifties, Virgil thought, and dressed from Target or Penney's, standard office wear. She was about five-six, a bit too heavy, and busty, with short, heavily frosted hair, plastic-rimmed glasses, and the lined face of a woman who'd been long out in the wind. She'd been pretty; still was, for her age.

Her daughter was almost her opposite: long dark hair, eyes that were almost black, slender, with high cheekbones and a square chin. She was wearing jeans, cowboy boots, and a plain white T-shirt. She had pierced ears, and was wearing silver crescent-moon earrings. She was waiting in the living room, standing next to an old upright piano. An electric guitar was propped next to it, with a practice amp; the window ledges were lined with pots of African violets.

Virgil stood in the living room for a moment, blinking in the dim light, and Jesse asked, "Ooo. Do you like to rock 'n' roll?"

"I do," he said. He recognized her. She'd been at Bill Judd Sr.'s house, the night of the fire. She'd had a beer can in her hand.

Jesse, to her mother: "He looks like a surfer dude, doesn't he?"

"He's a police officer," her mother said dryly. "You probably should remember that."

"Police officers gotta fuck," Jesse said, flopping back on a worn couch, smiling up at him. "If they didn't, where'd we get all those goobers who go to monster truck rallies?"

"Jesse!" her mother said.

"Thank you," Virgil said. Jesse teased her mother with the f-word, and her mother pretended to be shocked, but wasn't; it looked like an old mother-daughter game. "If I ever have any little goobers, I'll name one of them Jesse."

She laughed, and said, "Want a Pepsi?"

"No thanks, I just want to chat," Virgil said.

"Might as well. The newspaper just called, and every single soul from Fairmont to Sioux Falls will know about it tomorrow morning…"

HER MOTHER had been at work when the Judd mansion burned down, and had no idea where she'd been when the Gleasons were killed. Jesse had been on her way to a bar in Bluestem, and saw the fire on the ridge, and trucks pulling out of the bar's parking lot, heading up the hill.

"That good enough?" Jesse asked.

"If you hadn't been to the bar, where'd you get that beer? The one you had at the parking lot?"

She tipped her head toward the kitchen: "Out of the refrigerator."

"So you just went up to the fire to look at it?"

"Of course," she said. "What do you think? You ever lived in a small town?"

"I have, and I know what you mean," he said.

"THESE PEOPLE who got killed, the Gleasons and Judd. They were the same age, and friendly, at least," Virgil said, turning to Margaret. "I'm wondering if there's something way back that's only coming out now. Something that really pissed somebody off, thirty or forty years ago, and winds up in these murders."

Jesse looked at her mother, and Margaret shrugged. "I had a pretty hot affair with Bill Judd, but the only thing I came out of it with was that girl…" She nodded at Jesse. "I loved her from day one. For the first eighteen years, Bill sent me a check every month to cover her upbringing, so I don't have any complaints that way, either."

"Don't have any complaints that he didn't marry you?"

"He never asked, which would have been polite, but I wouldn't have done it, anyway," Margaret said. "He could be a good time, but he was twenty-five years older than me, and he could be a mean jerk. I mean really, violent, beat-your-face-in mean."

"How long did you date him?"

"Oh…a year or so. But it wasn't exclusive, on his part. He'd screw anything he could get his hands on." She smiled, then tilted her head and asked, "Have you talked to his sister-in-law? She might be able to tell you about those days."

"I didn't know about a sister-in-law. What's her name?"

"Betsy Carlson," Margaret said. "Sister to his wife. She's been in a rest home over in Sioux Falls for, gosh, twenty-five or thirty years now. Think Bill was paying for that, too."

Virgil said, "You sort of linked screwing, with his sister-in-law. Was there something going on there?"

"Yeah." She said it flatly, her voice like flat rocks smacking together.

"Before his wife died, or after?" Virgil asked.

"If you want my opinion, I'd say before he married his wife, during, and after," Margaret said.

"How'd his wife die?"

"Heart attack," she said. "Thirty-two years old."

"Sure it was a heart attack? You say he was beat-your-face-in mean…"

"This was before the thing with Jerusalem artichokes, and before everybody hated him, so there wasn't that mean talk you would have heard later. All the official stuff said it was a myocardial infarction, so I guess that's what it was."

"Huh." Virgil said, and he thought, Russell Gleason was the coroner.

HE TURNED BACK to Jesse. "How long have you known that Bill Judd was your father?"

Her tongue peeked out, and she rubbed it on her upper lip, thinking. "Mmm, for sure, since the day after the fire. Mom sat me down and told me. But I thought he might be, from one thing or another that she said over the years. I knew it was somebody from around here. She'd start talking about being responsible even when you're having fun, and his name came up a couple of times. And I kind of look like a Judd."

"So, you've sorta known for a while."

"Yeah, but I didn't really care," she said. "Everybody said he was a jerk, and he looked like a jerk, and his son was a jerk, so why would I care? I wouldn't even have thought about it when he died, if Mom hadn't said that I should be practical."

"You mean, get a chunk of the estate," Virgil said.

"That's what it comes down to," Jesse said, and smiled.

"Do you know George Feur?"

"Know who he is, never met him," Jesse said. Margaret shook her head.

"Tell me," Virgil said to Margaret, "what was it like back then, when Judd was on the loose? There are all these rumors…"

JUDD HAD SLEPT with an untold number of local women, Margaret said-untold being the literal word, since nobody knew how many. But many. "He liked to go three at a time, when he could find the girls willing to do it. The word was, he liked to do one of the girls, then watch them do each other, and then he could get it up to do another one. And around and around…"

"Mom!" Jesse said, maybe really shocked.

Margaret shrugged. "That's the way it was, honey. I didn't get involved in any groups; I was strictly one-on-one. But you know, on the right night, if I'd had a couple of drinks, might have gone for a roll with a couple of the girls. I mean, we were rock 'n' rollers-everything was getting loose, the Stones, the Beatles, the war, smoking dope." She reached out toward his chest, and the Stones T-shirt: "We old people lived that T-shirt."

"Were there any other guys involved?" Virgil asked.

"Never heard of any-but there could have been, I guess," she said. "Is that relevant?"

"Somebody had to drag old man Judd down to his basement to kill him," Virgil said. His eyelids dropped, and he looked Jesse over. "Seems more likely to be male than female. Could have been a strong woman."

Margaret said to Jesse, "See-looks like a surfer, thinks like a cop."

"Do you know any other of the local women?" Virgil asked.

"One was Betsy Carlson. I know two more, but…I think I'll only tell you one. Michelle Garber, who lives in Worthington, now. She's in the book."

Virgil wrote the name in his notebook. "Why won't you tell me the other?"

"Because she's got a happy marriage and I don't want to mess it up. And it would, if it got out," Margaret said.

"What if her husband found out, and he's the killer?" Virgil asked.

"He isn't," Margaret said coolly. "I know for sure that he doesn't know. And I won't tell who it is."

Jesse's mouth hung open for a moment, and then she said to her mother, "You gotta be kidding me."

Virgil to Jesse: "You know who it is?"

"I just guessed," she said.

"You shush," Margaret said.

"If it turns out to be that man, I'll do my best to put you two in jail," Virgil said. His voice had gone cool, and Jesse sat back. "You gotta understand that."

"It's not him," Margaret said.

Jesse bobbed her head and said, "It really isn't."

WHEN MARGARET suggested there had been a lot of local women, Virgil wondered, did that also imply nonlocal women?

"There were professionals from Minneapolis," Margaret said. "That was the rumor. Supposedly one of the local women…came down with something that we wouldn't get around here. Supposedly it came from a woman he got at a striptease place up in Minneapolis, on Hennepin Avenue."

Virgil thought, She'd need a doctor, like Gleason. "Was this Garber who came down with it?" He looked back in his notebook. "Michelle Garber?"

"No, no…I don't know who it was, if there was anybody. Just a rumor. Michelle might know, though. She spent more time with Bill than I did, and she was quite a bit wilder than I was. She might be able to give you more names. Group names."

Virgil tapped his notebook against his chin, looking at Margaret, and said, "Sounds like Judd was out of control."

"If you were ever going to look for one sentence for Bill Judd's tombstone, 'Out of Control' might be it," she said. "He never had enough money, enough land, enough power, enough women. He was an animal."

"He was my daddy," Jesse said thoughtfully.

"Well, there's something to be said for animals," Margaret said. "He certainly could get me going. For a while, anyway."

WHEN THEY were done, Margaret excused herself, said she had to run off to the bathroom. Jesse took him out the front door and they looked at the dog on the street, and Jesse said, "That's Righteous…" and then she touched him on the chest, on the old Stones shirt, and asked, "You really like music?"

"Yes, I do," Virgil said. "I'm a damn good dancer, too."

"Who do you like?"

"You know, some old, some new. Kind of like alternative; used to listen to some rap, but it got pretty commercial…"

"Music's the only thing that ever moved me, aside from sex," she said. She whistled sharply, and Righteous heaved himself to his feet and started toward them. "I wish Jimmy Stryker liked that stuff. He wants me so bad that he gets little drops of blood on his forehead, every time we talk. But he's…so straight. He listens to old funky country, Bocephus, Pre-Cephus and Re-Cephus, or whatever they call them."

"He's a good guy, Jim is. And I don't think you'd be bored." Virgil gave her a small smile. "You might be a little too busy for the first, oh, ten years or so, to think much about his music."

"Huh." The dog came up and sat on the porch step and Jesse scratched him on the top of the head, between the floppy ears. "Maybe I'll give him a try. Or maybe not, now that I'm a rich woman."

"You ain't rich yet, honey," Virgil said. "Even if you do get rich, it'll be a while before it happens. Might as well fill up the space with Jimmy. You could find out something good."

"I already know something bad, though," she said.

"Yeah?"

"One time, this was five or six years ago, before he was sheriff, he was a deputy. There was a fight down at Bad Boy's, and he came to break it up. One of the guys in the fight gave him a shove, a little punch, maybe, and Jim…I mean, he just beat the hell out of this guy. I mean, beat the hell out of him. Cuffed him, dragged him out to the patrol wagon, banged his head off the ground, banged his head into the car. He was way, way rough."

"Two things," Virgil said, not smiling. "Cops hate to get hit, especially in a crowd of drunks. You can get mobbed if you don't move fast. You get punched, you take the guy down, put him on the floor, put your hand on your gun butt, look at faces in the crowd like you're looking for somebody to shoot. Face them down, right then. Sober them up."

"Still…what was the second thing? You said there were two."

"Maybe he was showing off for somebody in the crowd," Virgil said. "Some guys think the tough stuff impresses women. Hope it does."

She nodded. "I've seen that. Just didn't think about it with Jim." Thought about it a second, then said, "It did make me a little hot."

VIRGIL GOT Judd Jr.'s office on the phone as he drove back to I-90, and the woman who answered said Judd was just going out the door and she'd try to catch him. Judd came up a minute later: "What?"

"You have an aunt in a nursing home in Sioux Falls," Virgil said. "I'm out that way, I thought I'd stop and see her. Could you tell me which one it is?"

"Why do you want to see her?" Judd asked.

"Well, we've had three murders. All three people were elderly, and I'm starting to wonder if maybe the cause isn't back years ago," Virgil said. "So, I'm talking to people who knew your father and the Gleasons back when."

Judd seemed to think a minute, and then said, grudgingly, "That's an idea. It's the Grunewald rest home. It's actually north of Sioux Falls, north of I-90…"

Virgil memorized the instructions and when he'd gotten off the phone, decided the news of Jesse Laymon's claim hadn't yet gotten to Judd. He'd been entirely too calm and matter-of-fact. He wondered if Williamson, working on borrowed time, now, was planning to break it on him like a rotten egg. Let him wander around, unknowing, until somebody said, "Uh, Bill…"

THE GRUNEWALD REST HOME sat on one of two nearly identical hills a mile north of I-90, ten miles west of the Minnesota line, with a county highway running through the groove between the two hills. Both hills were nicely wooded, with broad lawns beneath the trees. The one on the right showed the Grunewald, a wide brick box, three stories tall, with white trim. The one on the left showed neat rows of white stone; a cemetery.

Nice, Virgil thought. The Grunewald residents could look out the windows every day and see their future. Virgil pulled into a visitor's slot in front of the home, and walked inside.

The Grunewald was run like a hospital or a hotel, with a front reception desk and lobby with soft chairs. A tiny gift niche was built to one side of the reception desk, and was stocked with candy, soft drinks, women's and family magazines, and ice cream. A tall black woman in Somali dress was working behind the desk.

She nodded at Virgil and he took out his ID, showed it to her, and asked to see Betsy Carlson. The woman's eyebrows went up, and she said, "She doesn't have many visitors…You'll have to ask Dr. Burke."

Burke was a busy bald man in a corner office down the hall from the desk. He listened to Virgil's story and then shrugged, and said, "Sure. Go ahead."

"What kind of shape is she in?"

"She is…damaged. Hard to tell why. Could be genetics, bad wiring, or she might have taken some drugs and had a bad reaction, or even environmental poisoning. She grew up on a farm. Lots of bad chemicals on a farm when she grew up-they used to spray DDT around like it was rainwater. So, it's hard to know. She's not crazy, she just goes away. Her memories are screwed up, but she has a lot of them. She's never been active and she's gotten less active, so her legs don't work very well anymore…So. She is what she is."

On that note, Burke called back to the Somali woman at the front desk, told her to get somebody to escort Virgil into the home, smiled, and wished Virgil good luck.

Virgil's escort was a middle-aged but still apple-cheeked nurse carrying a plastic garbage bag full of something Virgil didn't ask about. They went through a set of locked doors and Virgil asked, "Everybody's locked in?"

"No. We have a locked area for Alzheimer's victims, because they tend to wander and the younger ones can be pretty aggressive. But those doors"-she jabbed a thumb back over her shoulder, at the doors they'd just come through-"they're only locked one-way, to keep people out. Years ago, before we started locking the doors, we had a very nice man as a visitor. He'd visit every couple of days. It turns out he was molesting some of our residents."

"Nice guy."

"When we started to suspect something was going on, we set up some video cameras and caught him at it." She smiled cheerfully at Virgil. "A couple of our Alzheimer's orderlies escorted him to the lobby so the police could pick him up. He resisted on the way, tried to fight, and was somewhat beaten up before they got him to the lobby. He won't come back here, even when he gets out of prison."

"Hate it when they resist," Virgil said.

"It's a bad idea," she agreed.

THE NURSE SPOTTED Betsy Carlson in a chair facing a television that was showing a man chopping up onions and cabbage with the world's sharpest knives, guaranteed not to get dull. "There she is," the nurse said. She put a hand on Virgil's sleeve and said, "She can be a little difficult, so it's best to be sweet with her. If you push too hard, she gets stubborn."

"Dr. Burke said her memory is messed up."

"Yes, but the memories that go back…those generally tend to be better. She can't remember what day it is, but she can tell you what she was doing in 1962. And she likes telling you. Another thing, though, is that she sometimes gets…she has…hallucinations. She sees bugs in her food."

"And there aren't any?"

"Please. Not only bugs, she sees people. She sees people's faces in the knots in wood. We're scared to death that someday she's going to see the Virgin Mary in a rust stain and we'll wind up with ten thousand pilgrims on the lawn." She paused, and then said, "She'll be happy to see you-but she'll forget your name all the time, and ask for it."

BETSY CARLSON was tucked into her chair with an afghan. She was the ruin of a beautiful woman, with high cheekbones, an elegant, oval face, and what must have been fine, delicate skin, now furrowed with thousands of tiny wrinkles. Her hair was cut short, and her hazel eyes were glassy and placid. She smiled reflexively when Virgil pulled up next to her.

The nurse said, "Betsy, you have a visitor."

She stared at Virgil for a moment, uncomprehending, then frowned, and asked, "Who are you?"

"Virgil Flowers. I'm a police officer from Minnesota."

"I haven't done anything," she said. "I've been here."

"We know," Virgil said. The nurse nodded at him and drifted away with her garbage bag. "I need to talk to you about Bluestem and some things that have been going on there."

"Bluestem. Founded in 1886 by the Chicago and Northwestern Railway. My great-grandfather was among the first settlers. Amos Carlson. His father fought the Indians in the Great Uprising. My father owned six hundred and forty acres in Stafford Township, the best land in Stark County. He was killed in an automobile accident on County 16 in a blizzard. His skull was crushed. I was born the very next day. My mama always said I was a special child, God's gift. There was a death in the family, and then new life, all at the same time. What did you say your name was again?"

Virgil reintroduced himself, and then began pulling out memories of Bluestem, and Bill Judd and her sister, the days after her sister's heart attack.

She remembered the day of the heart attack: "My sister drank too much, and then she'd fight with Bill; you could hear them screaming all over the house. Usually, about money-he had it, but he hated to spend it. The day she had the heart attack, she was drinking, but she wasn't fighting. She started feeling sick in the morning, and thought maybe she'd drunk too much the night before. Anyway, she decided to move some furniture around in the living room, and we were dragging couches here and chairs over there, and pushing this old upright piano around, and we were just about done when she cries out, 'Lord almighty,' and she falls down. I ask her what's wrong, and she says, 'I hurt so bad, Betsy, I hurt so bad. Go get the doc, go get the doc.' So I ran and got the doctor…"

"Dr. Gleason?"

Her eyes faded a bit, and she seemed confused, and then said, "I don't think Dr. Gleason. I don't think we went to Dr. Gleason then. We went to him later."

"Do you remember the doctor?"

"I did. But then, you said Gleason, and that got me sidetracked…I, uh, I can't remember."

She did remember about manure spreaders and the funny things that might happen with them; about canning tomatoes, and how everything changed when freezers came in; she remembered playing the piano with her sister, and her sister's wedding to Bill Judd.

"Christ Lutheran Church. I was maid of honor. All the maids wore yellow and carried bouquets of yellow roses. But Bill Judd…He was a bad man. He was even bad when he was a boy. He used to steal, and then he'd lie about it, and get other children in trouble. You know what he'd steal?"

"No, I don't," Virgil said.

"Money. He wasn't like other children, who might steal somebody's toy or candy or something. You'd have him to your house and he'd always be looking around for loose change. My mother used to keep a sharp eye on him, after she figured it out. He was bad right from the beginning."

Tears trickled down her cheeks and she said, "After my sister died, there was all kinds of trouble. Bill didn't care about anything, then. She used to hold him back, but after she died, nothing could hold him back."

She began to weep, and a nurse stepped toward them with a question on her face.

"Are you okay?" Virgil asked.

"Bill did bad things, bad things," she said. Her eyes cleared a bit and she said, "Men are no damn good."

"I don't want to get you upset," Virgil said, "but I'm trying to figure out who might have started hating Bill Judd back then. And Russell Gleason…"

The nurse asked, "Everything okay?"

Virgil said, "She's a little upset."

"She's late for her nap," the nurse said.

Carlson looked at Virgil and said, "Russell Gleason was there for the man in the moon. That was the thing. The man in the moon. Bill did a terrible thing, and we all knew. Russell knew, too. So did Jerry. Jerry knew about it."

"Who's Jerry?"

She broke into choking sobs, and her whole body trembled. The nurse said, "I think you should stop talking to her. This is not good."

"I just…"

"You're really messing her up, is what you're doing," the nurse said. To Carlson she said, "It's okay, Betsy. The man is going away. It's okay. Let's get a Milky Way and then get a nap. Let's get you a Milky Way."

"Not the Milky Way," Carlson said to Virgil, ignoring the nurse. "It was the man in the moon: and he's here. The man in the moon is here. I've seen him."

She began sobbing again, and the nurse glared at Virgil and said, "Take a hike."

Virgil nodded, tried one last time: "Betsy? Do you know the name of the man in the moon?"

She looked up and asked, "What? Who are you?"

ON THE WAY OUT, Virgil stopped and asked the woman at the front desk if they required anybody to sign in.

"Nope. Not yet. That's probably next."

"Do you remember anybody visiting Betsy Carlson?"

"You know, I think I do. But I couldn't tell you who it was, or even what he looked like. I just remember that she had a visitor, because it was so unusual. This must've been…oh, years ago."

"I'm looking into a murder over in Bluestem," Virgil said. "A guy named Bill Judd, who was Betsy's brother-in-law. Do you know if Judd was paying for her care?"

The woman shook her head. "You should ask Dr. Burke that. But as I understand it-just between you and me-Betsy inherited some property from her parents, and when she was admitted here, it was put in trust. I think that's all she's got."