Dark of the Moon

about Janet.”
    “The word is, the murdered people probably knew the killer. What do you think, Virgil?”
    Virgil nodded. “I think that’s right.”
     
    T HEY RAN DOWN to I-90, and up the ramp, heading west, and talked over the murders. Virgil filled them in on the Roman Schmidt killing, the killer’s tendency toward display.
    “So what are they looking at?” Laura asked. “They must be looking at something.”
    “Gleason was looking at his backyard and up the hill, Schmidt was looking straight down his driveway at the road. Nothing in particular,” Virgil said.
    A minute later, Laura asked, “What direction were they facing? If he was facing down his driveway, Roman was facing east, and if Russell was looking up the hill, he was facing east. Would that be right?”
    Virgil thought for a moment, orienting himself, and then said, “Yeah, that’s right.”
    “They were killed at night—so maybe toward the sunrise,” Laura said.
    Joan asked, “But what would that tell you? That you’re dealing with a religious nut?”
    “That Feur person,” Laura said. “Jesus was resurrected at sunrise. Maybe that has something to do with it. And in the Bible, east is the most important direction.”
    Virgil said, “Huh. Well, Judd was burned to death. What does that mean? Hellfire?”
    “We’re talking about a crazy person,” Joan said. “I don’t think you’re gonna figure out anything from that kind of stuff. He’s doing it because he’s crazy.”
    “Interesting to talk about, though,” Laura said.
    They talked about the Laymons. The story was all over town five minutes after the first person picked up a newspaper. “Margaret Laymon. I didn’t know it was Bill that did it, but it doesn’t surprise me,” Laura said. “Margaret was a hell-raiser when she was young. Somebody was going to do it, sooner or later.”
    “They didn’t have the pill yet?”
    “Yes, but…I don’t know. Maybe she wanted to have a baby, and wanted Bill to be the daddy. Women get strange, sometimes.”
    “You being one, I’ll take your word for it,” Virgil said. “I hadn’t noticed, myself.”
     
    C ROSSING THE BORDER into South Dakota, Virgil asked, “Was Betsy Carlson prominent in any way? I mean, before she came here?”
    “Oh, lord, yes. Her parents were very well-off early settlers, owned a good chunk of land along the railroad, one of the banks, at least for a while. Betsy was the life of the party when she was young,” Laura said. “Everybody was a little surprised when Bill Judd married her sister, instead of her.”
    “There were rumors that he didn’t actually have to marry her, to get what he wanted,” Virgil said. “The old ‘Why buy the cow if you’re getting the milk for free?’”
    “Could be some truth to that,” Laura said. “Back then, people tended to look the other way…Have you been talking to other people…mmm…related to Bill Judd?”
    “A couple,” Virgil said. “Margaret Laymon, of course. A woman who now lives somewhere else—I’ve got a list I’m working down.”
    “Well, cough up the names,” Joan said.
    “Ah, you don’t want to know,” Virgil said. “Besides, I couldn’t tell you if I wanted. I scrawled them all down in my notebook, and it’s back at the motel. He apparently got around town, though.”
    His eyes caught Laura’s in the rearview mirror. She was watching him with just a hint of a smile on her face.
    Virgil added, “The question I was working up to, was, why wouldn’t there be any press clippings about Betsy Carlson? I was looking in the newspaper files today, and there’s not a single one.”
    After a moment of silence, Laura said, “Well, that’s ridiculous. She was in every club in town, she was president of most of them, at one time or another. There should have been a hundred stories about her.”
     
    T HE FLOOR NURSE at Grunewald rest home was not happy to see Virgil again, and got in his face. “Betsy was very agitated after you left. She still hasn’t recovered. She tries to walk, but she’s too weak. We’re here to protect our clients, and you could be hurting her.”
    “I’m sorry about that,” Virgil said, with not much contrition. “But we’ve got a fairly desperate situation over in Bluestem. There were two more people killed this morning, and we believe they involve something that started in Betsy’s time. So: we’ve got to talk to her.”
    The nurse let her disapproval show, but when she took them to see