Dark of the Moon

about it.”
    “If I do that, and if I don’t come up with something in ten days, I am truly screwed.”
    “If you go out there and say we ain’t got jack-shit, you’re truly screwed anyway,” Virgil said. “If you go out and say the hounds of hell are on the killer’s heels, maybe he’ll make a move that we can see.”
    “Mother of God.”
    “She ain’t here, Jim. It’s just you and me.”
     
    S TRYKER STRAIGHTENED himself out, and as they were about to go out, asked, “How much detail?”
    “More than you think you should. The eyes, and the fact that it seems to be a ritual. The stick that propped up Schmidt, facing toward the east. That Gleason was propped up, facing the east. That nothing was left of Judd but his ankle and wrist bones, and the wire from his heart. They’ll eat that up…”
    “I’m gonna need some heart work,” Stryker said. “Honest to God, I’m gonna need some heart work.”
    At the last minute, walking down the hall, Virgil whispered, “You’re the grim sheriff of a rural county. You’re an honest, upright, tight-jawed, God-fearing cowboy. You don’t want to talk about it, but you think you should, because we’re in a democracy. You’re grim. You don’t smile, because the dead people are friends. This guy is killing your people.”
    “Grim,” Stryker said.
     
    H E WAS, and he pulled it off, barely moving his jaws.
    Virgil said thirty-two words: “We’re working on it hard, and like the sheriff says, we’re rolling. But the BCA’s position is that the sheriff runs the operation, and we let him do the talking for us.”
    A woman from a television station in Sioux Falls liked Stryker a lot, got tight with him, pushed him a little: “What’re you gonna do when you catch this guy?” she asked.
    “Gonna hope that the sonofabitch fights back,” Stryker said, his face like a rock. “Save the state some trial money.”
    They didn’t even cut the sonofabitch .
     
    A FTERWARD, in Stryker’s office, Virgil told him the truth: “I think you did it.”
    “So we got ten days or two weeks.” He took a turn around his office. “What’d you think about the chick from Sioux Falls?”
    “If Jesse doesn’t work out, give her a call,” Virgil said.
    “She had a nice…bodice.”
    Made Virgil laugh.
     
    T HE TV PEOPLE were packed up and gone by four-thirty, leaving behind a crowd of locals who were dissipating like the fizz on a hot Coke. Virgil picked up the box lunch at Ernhardt’s, and called Joan: “You ready?”
    “Not until after the news.”
    Virgil went back to the motel, peed, put on a cowboy shirt and running shoes, let the shirt hang outside his pants to cover the pistol. On the way to Joan’s house, he dialed Sandy, Davenport’s research assistant. “How are we doing with the tax returns?”
    “I’ve got them stacked up to my elbows,” she said. “I talked to Lucas, and I’m sending them down there with a messenger. He’ll leave here tomorrow at eight, you should have them by noon.”
    “Terrific. Get me one more set of records, if you can: Carol and Gerald Johnstone, both of Bluestem, owners or former owners of the Johnstone Funeral Home.”
    “They’ll be in the package,” she said.
    “Also: check with the state historical society, and see if they have copies of the Bluestem Record newspaper for the months of May through September, 1969.”
    “I couldn’t do that today—they’ll be closed,” Sandy said. “Tomorrow I won’t be here—and then there’s the weekend. I could see if I could find somebody else…”
    “Ah, boy…” Virgil said. “Okay. Monday, first thing?”
    “First thing.”
    He described the dead woman on the table, told her she might have been an auto-accident victim. “If I find anything, I’ll fax it to the motel,” she said.
    “No, no—call me on my cell. You can read it to me. I don’t want to give this away.”

11
    T HE NEWS WAS just coming up when Virgil knocked on Joan’s front door. She shouted, “Come on in,” and he went through into her living room. “Did you see me at the press conference?”
    “No…”
    “I got crushed,” Joan said. “I was in the back and this fat guy from the Firestone store, I got welded to his butt. Here we go…”
     
    T HE PRESS CONFERENCE was the lead story and sucked up four or five minutes of the broadcast. Virgil had been right about the details: they loved it. And the cameras loved Stryker’s face, and the tight jaws. “That’s my brother,”