Dark of the Moon

used to close up his breastbone after the bypass. And eight inches away, she found a couple of titanium screws and a steel rod that she says came out of Judd’s spine. She says there should be X-rays up at the medical center, and she can check, but she thinks that’s what she’s got. She also thinks she found the back part of a skull, looks like a little saucer, pieces of two kneecaps and maybe some wrist and ankle bones.”
    “So he’s dead,” Virgil said.
    “I believe so—DNA will tell, if they can get some out of the bone marrow. The arson investigator says that there was an accelerant, probably ten or twenty gallons of gasoline, because he says the fire did a broad lateral flash through the house, instead of burning up,” Stryker said. “He means it spread laterally much faster than up, and with all this wood, it should have gone up faster.”
    “How can he tell?”
    “Beats me. That’s what he said—so, we’ve got another murder.”
    “Huh,” Virgil said.
    “What’s that mean?” Stryker asked.
    “You up there? At the Judds’?” Virgil asked.
    “I am. I’ll be here for a while.”
    “See you in a bit,” Virgil said.
     
    J OAN POINTED her fork at him. “Bill Judd?”
    “Yeah.” Virgil dabbed his lips with a napkin. “They think they might have found some remains. I gotta go.”
    “If I was a forensic anthropologist, I’d come up and help,” she said. “Unfortunately, I don’t know anything about forensics or anthropology and I don’t much care for bodies.”
    “What do you do?” Virgil asked.
    “Run the family farm,” she said. “Twelve hundred and eighty acres of corn and soybeans north of town.”
    “That’s a mighty big farm for such a pretty little woman,” Virgil said.
    “Bite me,” she said.
    “Thank you, ma’am. You want to go into Worthington tonight?” Virgil asked. “Tijuana Jack’s ain’t too bad.”
    “Maybe,” she said. “Give me your cell number. I have to drive over to Sioux Falls for some parts. If I get back in time…Mexican’d be okay.”
     
    V IRGIL, pleased with himself, went back through town, up to Buffalo Ridge, through the park gates, and around the corner of the hill to the Judd house. He was astonished when he saw what was left. In most fires, a corner of a house will burn, and at least a wall or two will survive. Of the Judd mansion, nothing was left but the foundation, cracked and charred, and a pit full of twisted metal, stone, and ash.
    Stryker and one of his deputies, an older fat man with blond curly hair, were talking to a third man, who had a reporter’s notebook. A man in a suit was peering into the pit, and three people scuffled around the bottom like diggers on an archaeological site.
    Virgil walked up, looked in the hole: picked out ductwork and air conditioners, two furnaces, the crumbled remains of what must have been a first-floor fireplace, three hot-water tanks, a couple of sinks, three toilets, a twisted mass of pipes. The diggers in the bottom were working next to the wreck of a wheelchair; the guy in the suit, Virgil realized, was Bill Judd Jr.
     
    V IRGIL WALKED OVER to Stryker: “How’n the hell they find anything in there?”
    Stryker said, “This is Todd Williamson, he’s editor of the Bluestem Record ; and Big Curly Anderson.” A warning to watch his mouth.
    “I met a Little Curly the other night…” Virgil said, shaking hands with the two men. Big Curly’s hands were small and soft, like a woman’s. Williamson’s, on the other hand, were hard and calloused, as though he ran his own printing press.
    “That’s my boy,” Big Curly said.
    Stryker: “To answer your question, it was pretty much luck. They saw the wheelchair down there and started digging around, looking for a body, and they found that coil of surgical wire. Now they’re trying to figure out how the wheelchair got on top of all that trash and the ash, and the body was under it. They’re starting to think that Judd was in the basement, and the wheelchair was upstairs, on the second or third floor, and dropped down when the fire burned through the floor.”
    “Coincidence?”
    “Seems like. I don’t know what else it could be,” Stryker said.
    “You gonna take this case?” Williamson asked.
    “I’m working the Gleason investigation,” Virgil said. “Our contact with the press either runs through the local sheriff or the BCA spokesman in St. Paul. I can’t talk to you about it.”
    “That’s not the way we do things