Dark of the Moon

the postmaster who’d shared a bed with Judd and the girls, and had made a point: nobody could really come in from the outside and do this. A persistent stranger would be noticed; even a car seen too often. And a man coming back after years away—or a woman coming back, for that matter—would be noticed instantly, and remembered, and commented upon. He might be missing something, but he believed that he was standing within a half mile of the killer…
    The shower was perfect. Even the breakfast was good. Might have been the start of a perfect day, if his cell phone hadn’t rung at 6:45, with two syrup-drenched link sausages still on the plate.
     
    S TRYKER, BREATHING HARD: “Ah, Jesus Christ, Virgil, we got another one. Two.”
    “Who?”
    “Roman Schmidt and his wife,” Stryker groaned. “You gotta get over here.”
    “Wait, wait, slow down. Roman Schmidt. I know the name…”
    “He was the sheriff, three before me. Thirty years. Jesus, people are going to be rioting in the streets.”
    “What’s the body look like?” Virgil asked.
    “Just like the other one. Propped up on a tree branch, this time. It’s just…fuckin’…nasty.”
    Virgil got directions to the Schmidt house, threw fifteen dollars on his plate. As he went by the pale-faced night clerk, the clerk blurted, “Have you heard?”
    “Ah, man…”
     
    O UT THE DOOR, into his truck. He opened his cell phone, scanned down through the directory, punched the call button. A minute later, Lucas Davenport, his boss, said into the phone, “This better be good. You better not be in a fuckin’ fishing boat.”
    “Listen, we got two more down here,” Virgil said.
    “Oh, boy…” Davenport was in bed, in St. Paul. “Same guy?”
    “Yes. There’s display on the body. Worse than that. It’s Roman Schmidt, a former sheriff and his wife. Stryker says that townspeople are gonna be in the street. And since this makes five, we’ll start getting heavy-duty media heat.”
    There was a moment of silence, and then Davenport said, “And?”
    “And? And what?”
    “What does this have to do with me, when it’s not even seven o’clock in the morning?” Davenport asked.
    “I thought you’d like to know,” Virgil said.
    “I would have, I guess, at nine-thirty,” Davenport said. “But at seven o’clock—before seven o’clock—it’s your problem.”
    “Thanks,” Virgil said. “Listen, does that Sandy chick still work for you?”
    “Part-time.”
    “Can I call her?” Virgil asked. “Get her to carry some water for me?”
    “Yeah. Call me after nine, and I’ll get you her cell number,” Davenport said. “She goes to school in the morning.”
    “What about the media? What do I do about them?”
    Davenport said, “Wear a fresh shirt, tell them that you’re following up a number of leads but you’re not able to talk about them for security reasons, that all state and local authorities are cooperating, and, uh, you expect a quick resolution to the case.”
    “Thanks, boss.”
    “Virgil, I didn’t send you out there to be stupid. Handle it, handle the press, get back to me when you’ve got it figured out,” Davenport said. “I’ll monitor your activities on Channel Three.”
     
    I F V IRGIL was having a bad morning, it was nothing in comparison to Roman Schmidt’s. The killer had pushed a forked stick into the dirt of the driveway and had pushed the fork rudely beneath Schmidt’s ears, one tine of the fork on either side of his neck. It was enough to hold the sightless body upright, but the down pressure of the body, pulling on the stick, had forced his tongue out. Flies were crawling around his face, into the eye sockets and his mouth.
    His legs were splayed, and his penis peeked out of the fly of his boxer shorts.
    “That is brutal,” Virgil said, standing with his hands in his jeans pockets. “The family here yet?”
    “Not much family, not that we know of—maybe some cousins. They never had children.”
    Virgil and Stryker were fifteen feet from the body and Virgil could see heel grooves in the dew-soft soil of the parking area, where the body had been dragged from the house. “Where was he killed?” Virgil asked.
    “Right at the back door,” Stryker said. “The first shot took him low in the heart, out a little higher in back. It looks like somebody knocked on the door, was standing on the step, Roman opened the door and bam! He’s dead. We know he opened the door because the slug didn’t go through