“I’d rather talk now,” Virgil said. “If I’ve got to drag my ass all the way back to Bluestem, then when I come back, I’ll come back with a search warrant and five deputies and we’ll tear this place apart.”
“You ain’t got no cause.” The shotgun was there, but the man hadn’t twitched it in any direction: it was simply there.
“You think a Stark County judge would give a shit?” Virgil asked.
The man stared at him for a moment, as if calculating the inclinations of every judge he’d ever met, then said, “Wait here.”
IT HADN’T BEEN obvious from the road, but Feur’s house and the outbuildings were actually sitting on the slope, which continued back to the east, but flattened out across the road to the west. To the north and south, you could see forever: and they’d been able to see Virgil’s dust trail from virtually the time he rolled off the tarmac county road and onto the gravel, five miles away.
Looking around, Virgil noticed the heavy tracking on the dirt side-yard, and the crushed grass around the perimeter of the dirt; it reminded him of the grass ad hoc parking at a county fair. There’d been a bunch of cars and trucks in the yard, all at once. A prayer meeting? The shop building off to his left was a leftover Quonset hut from the Korean War era, made out of steel. Wouldn’t defeat a rifle, maybe, but a pistol shot would bounce right off.
A wooden Jesus, carved out of a cottonwood stump by somebody moderately handy with a chain saw, peered across the yard at him, one arm raised, as though blessing Feur’s enterprise.
THE MAN with the gun—now gunless—came out on the porch. “Come in,” he said.
“Thank you.” Virgil nodded at him, climbed the three steps to the porch, said, “After you,” and followed the man into the house.
Feur was sitting in a wooden rocker at the corner of the parlor, smoking, and drinking what looked like tea out of a china cup. A small man with black eyes, black beard, and a chiseled, sunburned nose, he was dressed all in black, and wore shiny black leather boots; in a movie, he would have played Mr. Scratch. There were two pictures on the walls, both of a black-haired, black-eyed Jesus, one on the cross.
Feur said, “Mr. Flower? Do you have some identification?”
Virgil nodded, took his ID out of his breast pocket, and held it out. Feur peered at it without touching, said, “Flowers,” then nodded at a couch and said, “Have a seat. You wouldn’t be related to Rusty Flowers, would you?”
“No. I don’t know the name,” Virgil said. He sat down, lifting his jacket enough that he didn’t pin the gun under his leg.
“Not even sure it’s a real name,” Feur said. He was younger than Virgil had expected—probably the same age as Stryker, in his middle thirties, but his lined face made him look, at first glance, as though he were ten years older. “I was standing on a bridge at Dubuque, Iowa, one time, and I saw a towboat named Rusty Flowers. Often wondered if it was a man, or just something that somebody made up.”
They shared a few seconds of silence, then Feur asked, “So what do you want?”
“You’ve probably heard that Bill Judd got burned up,” Virgil said.
“That’s what I heard,” Feur said. He sighed, blew some smoke, tamped out the cigarette in an aluminum ashtray. “He was a bad man, but he was moving toward the Lord at the end. Too late, though. He hadn’t accepted Jesus last time I saw him; he was unwilling to take the step. I suspect Mr. Judd’s house fire was only a preliminary introduction to the flames he’s feeling right now.”
“I wouldn’t know about that,” Virgil said.
“I do know about that,” Feur said, and his black eyes glittered with what might have been humor. “What does Mr. Judd’s death have to do with me?”
“I was hoping for a Revelation,” Virgil said.
“You think I could give you one?”
“If you wanted to,” Virgil said. “People say you hand them out in the streets.”
“A book of Revelation. Of course.” He looked past Virgil at the man with the shotgun, and said, “Trevor, could you get a book for Mr. Flowers?” And to Virgil, “Happy to see a man of the law reading the good book.”
Virgil, when the gunman was gone, asked, “Trevor?”
Feur shrugged: “What can you do? Your mother gives you a name, and you wear it.”
THEY WAITED, and Virgil asked, conversationally, “What’s this whole thing with the shotgun?”
“Some people don’t like what we have to say. Some of them would like me dead. We are prepared to exercise our right to common, ordinary self-defense,” Feur said.
“I understand you have a problem with Jim Stryker,” Virgil said.
“We’ve had our differences. He put me in prison for robbing, and I don’t say I didn’t do it. But I’ll tell you something: he’s a man with a lot of hate, a lot of violence in him. You don’t see it, but it’s there. If it hadn’t been for this other killing, the Gleasons, if it’d only been Judd, I would have said that Stryker would be your number-one suspect. Still might be—but I can’t see him doing the Gleasons. Don’t know what that would be about.”
TREVOR CAME BACK and handed a red-bound volume to Feur, who looked at it and asked, “Who is worthy to open the book, and loose the seals thereof?”
He handed the book to Virgil, who asked, “How many of these have you given away?”
“Few hundred, I suppose. We also publish other books. We find that with most folks, the Bible goes down easier in small chunks,” Feur said. “But you didn’t come out here to get a book, Mr. Flowers. What do you want?”
“The book, actually,” Virgil said, turning it in his hands. It was identical to the one he’d seen at the Gleasons’. “I came here to investigate the Gleason murders, not Judd’s, but now I’m doing both. I’ve only found one connection to both crimes.”
Feur’s eyebrows went up. “You’re going to tell me?”
“Yeah. It’s you.”
“Me?” Feur’s eyes pinched together. “Are you serious?”
“You were known to have been talking to Judd. You just told me so yourself. When I went into the Gleasons’ house to look around, what should I find at Mrs. Gleason’s right hand, but a copy of your Revelation? So what I need to know is, how close were you to the Gleasons? And how close to Judd, and what is your connection with the two of them?”
Feur sat back in his chair, spread his hands. He had small, feminine hands, but hard and cracked. “I spoke occasionally to Mr. Judd. He shared some beliefs with us, but not all. We were hoping to bring him to the true Lord, and also, to be honest, we were hoping he might provide some financial support. He hadn’t done that at the time of his death. His son, as close as I can tell, is useless as tits on a boar. So that is my connection with Mr. Judd. For the Gleasons, I don’t believe I ever met them, or were in their presence. I have no idea how they got one of our Revelations. Unless the sheriff put it there. The sheriff doesn’t like me. He doesn’t like any of us. He is a politician to his bones, and politicians no longer wish to hear the truth.”
“Yeah, well.” Virgil peered at him for a second, then turned to the other man and said, “Trevor. Get us a Bible, will you?”
Trevor looked at Feur, who nodded. Trevor stepped into what must have been the dining room, and was back a second later with a leather-bound Bible. Virgil passed it to Feur, and said, “Put your hand on it and swear you didn’t have anything to do with the death of Judd or the Gleasons.”
Feur said, “You’re very close to pissing me off, Mr. Flowers.”
“Why?”
“Because you don’t strike me as a believer, and this is a cynical way to twist me up,” Feur said.
“You’d be wrong. I am a believer,” Virgil said. “Not quite your kind, but a believer. Now, if you don’t want to put your hand on the Bible…”
Feur grasped the Bible between his small hands and said, his eyes turned to the ceiling, “I swear on this book, and on my everlasting soul, that I had nothing to do with the murders of Bill Judd or Mr. an
d Mrs. Gleason. I swear that I play no word games here, that there are no prevarications, that I did not do these murders, killings, and I did not cause them to be done.” He looked at Virgil: “Amen.”
“Amen,” Virgil said. He pushed himself out of the chair. “I guess I’ll be going.”
“That’s it?”
“Maybe. I’d still like to figure out where the Revelation came from. When I find out, I could be back.”
“And you’ll be judged according to your works,” Feur said.
“Revelation 20:12,” Virgil said.
Feur cocked his head: “Are you born-again?”
“I’m a preacher’s son,” Virgil said. “I talked the Bible at supper every night of my life until I went to college, Mr. Feur. You don’t get that kind of an education at Stillwater.”
“Maybe not,” Feur said. “But I kept one book in my cell, the King James. When we were locked down, I had that one book to read; and I read it twenty hours a day. When we weren’t locked down, I read it four hours a night, every night for three and a half years, there among the sodomites and catamites and child molesters. You didn’t get that kind of education.”
Virgil sat back: “Revelation is your text?”
“It is…” Feur’s eyes went to the light coming through the window, playing on the floor…“It is the most powerful thing I’ve ever read. It was a Revelation.”
“My personal belief is that Job is the key book in the Bible,” Virgil said. “The question of why God allows evil to exist.”
Feur leaned forward, intent on the point: “Job talks of the world as it is. Revelation tells us what is coming. I’m not entirely of this world, Mr. Flowers; not entirely. Some of this world has been burned out of me.”
Virgil said, “We’re all entirely of this world, Reverend. You’re just like anybody else, going to and fro on the earth, and walking up and down on it.”
Feur was smiling at him, then shook his head once and said to Trevor, “Show Mr. Flowers to the door. And give him one of our booklets about the niggers.”
ON THE WAY back to town, Virgil’s cell phone rang. He glanced at the dashboard: one minute after two. Williamson from the newspaper. He flipped open the phone and said, “Yes?”
“Todd Williamson. You had some news for me.”
“This comes from the sky, from nowhere. You can get confirmation of the rumor from a Mrs. Margaret Laymon or her daughter, Jesse. Jesse, we are being told, is the natural daughter of Bill Judd Sr.”
After a moment of silence, Williamson said, “Fuck me with a barbed-wire fence,” which Virgil thought was pretty prairie-like of him.
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?”