Dark of the Moon

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.”
     
    V IRGIL 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…”
     
    T HE G RUNEWALD 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