Dark of the Moon

the table and the Portiboy go way back. Before our time.”
     
    V IRGIL ASKED, “What about the man in the moon?”
    Knew he’d taken a misstep. They were both mystified, and showed it. Carol said, “What?”
    “Betsy Carlson said something about the man in the moon. That she’d seen the man in the moon. She seemed to think there might be a connection…”
    Carol shook her head, but again, Virgil thought he saw a spark in Gerald’s eye. Virgil said, “She told me, ‘Jerry was there for the man in the moon, Jerry knew about it.’”
    Carol was shaking her head, but Gerald’s eyes drifted away as he said, “It’s a complete mystery. What does it mean?”
     
    V IRGIL, LOOKING DIRECTLY at Gerald Johnstone, said, “If you remember anything , you let me know. You called this killer a nutcase, and that’s the exact truth of the matter. Keep your doors locked—if he thinks you might be involved in whatever is going on, you’re both at some risk.”
    Carol Johnstone said suddenly, “This will sound silly…”
    “Tell me,” Virgil said.
    “The night the Gleasons were killed, we weren’t here. We’re here two hundred fifty nights a year—we have a place in Palm Springs where we go in the winter—but that was one night we weren’t. We were in Minneapolis, visiting our daughter, and seeing a show. When we came back the next day, there were police all over the street…”
    “Ah, this is nothing,” Gerald Johnstone said.
    “I’d like to hear it anyway,” Virgil said.
    Carol nodded: “Anyway, we stopped and found out from one of the deputies what happened, and Larry Jensen came over and interviewed us, but we didn’t have anything to tell him. We were gone. But when we first came in the door, the welcome mat was moved.”
    “Oh, Carol,” the old man said, rolling his eyes.
    “Well, it was,” she said. “You know how I like everything neat, and it was off to the side of the door. I thought then that somebody moved it. Well, the Gleasons were killed in the middle of the night, and we were back at one o’clock in the afternoon, so…who moved it?”
    “You think that whoever killed the Gleasons…?”
    She shivered. “They were right there, down the street. We have timers on our lights so it looks like somebody’s home, lights going off and on…Maybe…”
    He looked directly at Johnstone: “If you remember anything, you tell me. We don’t want somebody else to die.”
    “I’ll think as hard as I can,” he said.
    “If it turns out you’re lying to me, you could spend the rest of your life in prison, as an accomplice.”
    Carol got hot: “Hey! He’s not lying. We’d do anything to catch this…monster.”
    “I’m just saying,” Virgil said.
     
    H E LEFT THEM at that—interesting, that Gerald Johnstone should be lying. He needed to track down the photo, and then he needed to come back and pound on Johnstone.
    As he got back in the truck, he thought about the welcome mat being moved, sighed, dug his pistol out from under the car seat, and clipped it to his belt. He drove back across the coulee, went to the newspaper, and found Williamson sitting at his computer, writing.
    He looked up when Virgil came through the door: “Hell of a story on the Laymons,” he said. “I owe you a large one.”
    “You hear anything new on the Schmidts?”
    “No. Damnit, if they were gonna get killed, I wish they hadn’t done it on the day the paper comes out. We won’t be able to print a word for a week. In the meantime, we’re getting eaten alive by the Globe and the Argus-Leader .” The Globe and the Argus-Leader were the dailies in Worthington and Sioux Falls.
    “You can pay me right now, for the one you owe me,” Virgil said. He looked at his watch; fifteen minutes to two. “I’d like to see the papers from 1970.”
    Williamson said, “We don’t have them that way. Not whole papers. Back before 1995, they’re on microfilm, and they have them at the library. If you have a name, it’d be in the clip file…?”
    Virgil shook his head. “No name. I don’t even know what I’m doing. Where’s the library?”
    “Just up the hill…Are you going to the press conference?”
    “Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Virgil said.
    “Neither would anybody else in town. I don’t know what Stryker’s going to do—people are already starting to crowd into the courtroom. Won’t be room for the reporters.”
     
    V IRGIL HUSTLED UP to the library, a flat red-brick building on the