Dark of the Moon

willing to do him a favor. But: if you think the same person killed the Gleasons and Bill Judd…I understand that Feur was trying to save Judd’s soul, and that they got along. So that doesn’t seem to fit.”
    “It’s a connection, though.”
    “It is…” she said. “Feur’s a violent man. He was violent when he was a boy—his old man abused him—and he’d go around robbing stores and maybe even banks, when he was in his twenties. Jim tracked him down after a robbery up in Little America. Arrested him out at his aunt’s place. He went to prison, got Jesus and all the other crap, too—the white supremacy, and that. Went out west, someplace, studied for the ministry, got a license in Idaho. When his aunt died, he came back here and took over the farm. We’d thought we’d seen the last of him.”
    “He ever shoot anybody? Ever suspected of it?” Virgil asked.
    “Not as far as I know. I do know he used a gun in the robberies.”
     
    O N THE WAY BACK to Bluestem, out on I-90, Joan said, “You are very talkative for a cop. I’ve known every cop in Bluestem and a few from Worthington; some of them were pretty old friends, and none of them have been as talkative as you—telling me all about the case, and so on.”
     
    “A PERSONALITY FAULT, ” Virgil offered.
    “Really? I started to wonder, ‘Did this man take me out to a fancy Tex-Mex restaurant, and tell me all of this, because he figures I’ll blab it all over the place, and that’ll stir everything up?’”
    “I’m shocked that you’d even think that,” Virgil said.
    “You don’t sound shocked,” she said.
    “Well, you know,” he said. He glanced at her in the dark, and said, “One thing—you’re a little smarter than I was prepared for.”
    She laughed and they went on down the highway.
     
    L ATE THAT NIGHT, Virgil turned on his laptop, flexed his fingers, and began writing his story, a little fact, and a lot of fiction. Fiction was different than outdoor writing. Different because you had to think about it, make it up, rather than simply report an experience. He stared at the computer screen for a moment, and began:
    The killer climbed out of the river valley, stumbling in the dark, slipping on the wet grass; paused at the edge of the yard, then crossed quickly to the sliding glass door at the back of the house. He’d seen the Gleasons arrive, their headlights carving up the hillside through the night; you could see them from a half mile away.
    Now, through the wet glass, he saw Russell Gleason standing in the living room, hands in his pockets, looking at the television. His wife, Anna, came out of the kitchen, carrying a glass of water, sat on the couch. They were talking, but with the rain beating off the hood of his jacket, the killer couldn’t hear what was being said.
    The killer touched the gun in his pocket: .357, always ready. No safety, no spring to get soft, every chamber loaded. Inside, Gleason laughed at something: a last time for everything, the killer thought.
    The killer stepped back in the dark, walked around the house to the front door. Gleason had been involved in it, right up to his chin: he and Judd would have to pay. He rang the bell…
    Virgil touched his chin, reading down the electronic document. He was already cheating: he kept writing “the killer,” repetitively, which clanked in his writer’s ear. He needed a workable synonym. He couldn’t use the pronouns “he” or “she,” because he wasn’t sure which was correct. And Gleason had been involved in whatever it was, with Judd, right up to his chin—but what was it?
    He had no idea.
    But there would be, he thought, a link.
    Before he finished the story, though, he’d need a lot of other answers. Where did the killer come from? Where did the gun come from? Where did he/she learn to use the gun? Why was the body dragged to the yard, why were the lights turned on? Had the killer known about the lights on the exterior, and where the switch was, suggesting a familiarity with the house, or had the act been spontaneous? Why the shots in the eyes?
    Why then, at that exact moment, had the killer come to the Gleasons?
    Why hadn’t Stryker mentioned that his father had killed himself because of the Jerusalem artichoke scandal, and his relationship with Judd? How had he, Virgil, managed to get picked up by Stryker’s sister on his first day in town? Why had she steered him toward Todd Williamson and George Feur?
    Things you had to know, for a