“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.”
STRYKER SHOWED AT 8:30 .
Jesse didn’t wait for him to come in. As soon as he pulled up, she came out, walked around the front of the truck, and climbed in. Stryker did a U-turn and headed out of town, toward the interstate. They were ten miles from anywhere, so it’d take them twenty minutes to get back, even if they had a fight and called the date off…
So there was the second car. Virgil watched for fifteen minutes, half an hour, hoping in the fadi
ng light that Margaret Laymon would go for a ride. A few minutes before nine o’clock, she came out to her car. He wasn’t precisely sure it was she, but whoever it was got in the Taurus, did a turn, and headed for the interstate.
Virgil started the truck, and rolled in behind her.
Watched her taillights disappear…
Was it possible, he wondered, that Jesse, having already learned from her mother that she was a Judd heir, had also learned there might yet be a third heir? And not knowing that the third heir was already in town, had gone about eliminating any leads to him? Or might there be a conspiracy to set Jesse up with an inheritance?
That, he thought, sounded like a TV show.
So why are you sitting in this truck, Virgil, with a butter knife in your hands, a butter knife that you stole, showing no conscience about it at all, from the poor folks at the Holiday Inn?
Because a butter knife was the perfect thing with which to slip the crappy lock on the Laymons’ front door.
HE DIDN’T HIDE. He made sure Margaret was well out of town, then turned back and parked in front of her house. Put the metal wand in a jacket pocket, held the butter knife partly up his coat sleeve, in his right hand. Pushed the doorbell, heard it ring. Pushed it and held it. Dropped the butter knife into his hand. Held the doorbell, looked back toward the interstate. No headlights.
Slipped the knife into the crack of the door, pushed, felt the lock slip, and pressed the door open with his toe. Stepped inside, into the light. Five minutes to go through the house. Checked a bedroom, found old photos, a made bed, and a framed Doors poster. Had to be Margaret’s.
Next bedroom: an iPod on the nightstand, the bed unmade. Jesse’s. Now where…?
Virgil looked around, turned on the wand, and began to hunt. He moved through the bedroom quickly, getting metallic pulses from almost everything. But nothing in a wrong spot…
And finally got a strong pulse from a pair of knee-high winter boots in the closet, which was the second place he’d looked, after the chest of drawers.
Turned the boot, and the revolver tumbled out into the lamplight.
He didn’t touch it immediately, but he smiled. Pretty good. He took a pencil from his pocket, moved the gun around. Smith & Wesson, .357 Magnum. He slipped the pencil down the muzzle, used it to lift the gun and drop it into a Ziploc bag. He put the bag in his pocket, then sat back on his heels, working it through.
After a minute, he moved back through the house, closed the door behind him, heard the lock latch. In the dark, he could see lightning both to the southeast and to the northwest, but could hear no thunder. Those storms would miss Bluestem. Overhead, a million stars twinkled down from the Milky Way.
VIRGIL WAS PARKED on the street in front of Stryker’s house when Stryker pulled into his driveway. Virgil got out of the truck, a bad taste in his mouth. Stryker had pulled into his garage, and was standing outside waiting, the garage door rolling down, as Virgil walked up the driveway. Stryker: “Something happen?”
“Maybe,” Virgil said. “But I’ve got a little trouble talking to you about it.”
Stryker cocked his head: “What’s that mean?”
“I’ve gotten a tip—won’t tell you where from—that Jesse might have been up at Judd’s place the night of the fire—that she might have walked back down the hill after it started, instead of coming in from the outside.”
“That’s goofy,” Stryker said. “She was with a bunch of people from the bar.”
“Then it shouldn’t be a problem,” Virgil said. “Everybody knows everybody. All we have to do is track down everybody who was up there, and find who gave her a ride up there. My tip says, she wasn’t driving her own truck.”
“Well—let’s do that. We’ll get the guys on the gate, see who was there, see who saw who.”
“First thing in the morning?”
“Well—some of the guys who were on duty at the time, should be on duty right now. Let’s call Little Curly and George Merrill. They were on the gate. Let’s go do it.”
Virgil followed him back to the courthouse, and inside. He got Curly and Merrill on the radio, told them to come in, quick. They both acknowledged, and Stryker led the way to his office, sat down, and said, “If you won’t tell me where the tip came from, it came from a deputy. I can see the guy’s problem, but goddamnit…”
“Don’t push anything with anybody,” Virgil said. “This is tangled up enough, without you starting your reelection campaign. Just keep your mouth shut.”
MERRILL GOT BACK FIRST. He came in, thumbs hooked on his belt, looked warily at Virgil and then Stryker: “What’s up?”
Stryker: “George, we need the names of everybody you saw down by the gate on the night of the fire…”
Merrill said, “Well, you know, the usual guys…”
Little Curly came in while they were making the list; Stryker told him what they were doing. He looked at the list, added a name. Virgil asked, “You both saw Jesse Laymon. Did either of you see her truck?”
Merrill and Little Curly glanced at each other, then they both looked at Virgil and shook their heads: “Nope.”
“That’s what we needed,” Virgil said. “Thank you much.”
When they were gone, Stryker, who was looking at the list, said, “First thing tomorrow. I’ll have these guys run down by ten o’clock.”
AT THE MOTEL, Virgil got a beer, carried it up to his room, broke out the laptop, looked at the motley, disconnected collection of paragraphs about Homer and his investigation of the Bluestem murders.
Sat down and wrote,
With the .357 in his hand, Homer rocked back on his heels, and wondered whether somebody was trying to frame Jesse; was trying to screw the investigation; was trying to provide contrary evidence for a later trial; or if Jesse might actually have something to do with the murders.
Whichever it was, somebody had deliberately fed Merrill into the investigation—which was why Homer asked Bill Judd Jr. about the lawn-mowing service. The hole in the ground that used to be Judd’s place held no gas-fired engines, as far as Homer could see. No lawn mowers or snowblowers or utility carts. So if Jesse hadn’t gone up there with her truck…how’d she gotten the gas up there, the gas that was used as the accelerant? Maybe she’d run up a mile-long hill in a thunderstorm with fifty or sixty pounds of gasoline, and carried the empty cans out the same way?
Bullshit, Homer thought. Somebody was setting her up, trying to push Homer into searching her house, where the gun was planted in the second-most-obvious place. Be interesting to see if the .357 was actually the murder weapon…
He knew at least one possible suspect who had access to Jesse’s bedroom, but it was so obvious that it couldn’t be right; couldn’t be Stryker. Couldn’t be.
Virgil yawned and closed down the laptop.
Who’d fed Merrill to him?
Have to ask.
18
VIRGIL AWOKE to a tapping on the motel-room door. Light was pushing through the drapes, so it had to be morning. He crawled across the bed and looked at the clock: seven A.M. Another knock, more insistent this time.
“Hang on,” he called. He got his pistol, checked it, stepped over to the door, not crossing in front of it, reached across, and rattled the chain.
No gunshots. “Who is it?”
“Joan,” Her voice quiet.
Virgil popped the chain, opened the door, standing there in his shorts and gun. “What’s going on?”
She was dressed in worn jeans and a T-shirt, and had a bandana wrapped around her head, covering her hair. “I was headed out to the farm, I saw Jim on the street, he says you’re thinking Jesse. I’d like to hear about it.”
“Come on in,” Virgil said. She stepped inside and he closed the door and put the gun away, and said, “I might be onto something, but this goddamned town, I’m not telling anybody.” He grinned at her, trying to soften it, make it a little jokey.
“Including me.” She crossed her arms. Always a bad sign with a woman,
Virgil thought. “That’ll be a first,” she said, “Virgil Flowers keeping his mouth shut.”
Virgil said, “I’m gonna shave. You can watch.” She trailed him to the bathroom, and Virgil splashed water on his face, and said, “When you come into a small town like this, on a dead case, you have to do something to get things moving again. I talk. It works.”
She was skeptical: “You mean, you’re a naturally reticent, quiet, bashful, introverted sort of guy, who’d never say anything about anybody, and it’s all been a technique to mess with us Bluestemmers?”
Virgil was smearing shaving gel on his face. He stopped under his nose, looked at her in the mirror: “First time I ever heard ‘reticent’ or ‘Bluestemmer’ in a spoken sentence.”
“So. Are you just fuckin’ with me?”
“Joanie, you are a great woman and that’s the truth,” Virgil said, “but we’ve got at least five dead people and one psycho. I came here to get him. That’s what I’m going to do.”
She showed a smile. “So it’s not Jesse. You said ‘get him.’”
He rinsed the razor under the faucet and said, “That first night we went out, I mentioned that you were smarter than I thought. You just wormed an objective personal pronoun out of me…Want to wash my back?”
WHEN JOAN had gone, Virgil went online, checked his mail. Sandy, Davenport’s researcher, had shipped him what she could find on Williamson, and it was all fairly routine. No arrests, three speeding tickets over two decades, three years in the Army, including Iraq in ’90. Never married. Adoptive parents not listed in Minnesota directories, hadn’t filed income taxes with Minnesota in at least ten years.
He didn’t bother checking Jesse: he had Jesse’s story.
Judd: he spent an hour crawling through the paper he had on Judd. The accountant, Olafson, had done the numbers, but he was hoping for a name, an event, an association…
And did no better than he had with Jesse.
He thought about the .357. Wondered how long he should wait. Sooner or later, he thought, there was a good chance that somebody would suggest searching Jesse’s house. He wanted to see where the suggestion came from, but didn’t want to wait too long.